Interesting and/or cool stuff I've come across from art, design, technology, photography, movies I've watched and liked and, occasionally, my thoughts.
Marcin Wichary wonderfully writes about discovering an obscure technique for sharpening and de-moiréing old images using FFT or Fast Fourier Transform.
I also loved this bit:
I’ve always had this theory that any long-term project requires two ingredients: things you’re good at, and things you want to learn. The first group gives you a feeling of accomplishment and mastery. The other one? It keeps things interesting.
via Pixel Envy
Collected bits and pieces I've noticed this month.
Om Malik has some samples of what happens when computational photography meets (more) artificial intelligence — Apple's ProRAW image format combined with Adobe's new Super Resolution feature.
Huum, an Estonian design sauna heater maker has won two more Red Dot awards, very cool! I mean hot!
You should buy a whole chicken, really. I've never considered eating the cartilage, until now, and learned there's a piece of chicken called the oyster.
Microsoft is planning to replace Calibra with a new default font in Office apps. I never really liked Calibra. (via The Verge)
In other things Microsoft, a concept design that doesn't feel like a concept — reddit user u/Alur2020 re-imagines the Windows File Explorer UI. (via The Verge)
Hackers for Dear Leader: The Incredible Rise of North Korea’s Hacking Army
"In Conversation: Mads Mikkelsen" in The Vulture had this nugget in it:
"My approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing. That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference, because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something — a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career. Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important."
"Waves of Abandonment" The number of neglected abandoned oil wells in Texas alone is startling, the result of lax regulation and jerks running oil companies.
"When New Yorkers Were Menaced by Banana Peels" A brief history of slipping on banana peels in New York.
Dina Litovsky's photo series of the Amish on vacation.
“My Fares” — what NYC cab driver Joseph Rodriguez saw through his windshield in the 70's & 80's.
“See a City: Todd Webb’s New York”. Todd Webb’s photos of New York in the 1940s and 1950s.
Greg Girard’s photos from inside the infamous (since demolished) Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong.
Greg Miller photographs Country Fairs.
Punk portraits of New York by William Coupon.
Hiroji Kubota’s photos from North Korea in 1980′s.
The New York Times special about the supertall buildings of NYC, the people who live in them, the people who build them and what happens in, on, and around them. Oh, and some spectacular views.
For Retrace Our Steps French photographers Carlos Ayesta and Guillaume Bressio took residents of Namie, now a ghost town like many others in the region, back to their old settings as if the 2011 Tohoku earthquake never happened.
I could try and write a description of what this Adam Magyar guy is doing, but it’s just too awesome and you should do yourself a favor and read the whole story on Medium, then go and marvel at the rest of his work on his website.
Buckets of iron ore are transported to a major steelworks in Hunedoara, Romania, November1975. Photograph by Winfield Parks, National Geographic.
Hard to believe this is an actual photograph.
via natgeofound
Photographer Max Oppenheim collaborating with prosthethics artist Bill Turpin for a tribute to the epic “Black Hole” comics by Charles Burns.
via this isn’t happiness™
Japanese photographer Shinichi Maruyama combines thousands of still photos of a nude model dancing to these stunning sculpture-like images.