A creative couple, a game developer and a television writer, in Tokyo commissioned a living space from the architectural studio +0 located in the maze of cul-de-sacs and blind-alleys that characterise the city’s central wards to blur the boundaries of our understanding and expectations of public versus private space, with the ground storey of the “House in ลji” open to community ingress, egress and regress. What do you think? There is a touch of the surreal to the optical illusion, resolving a paved lane as one’s foyer. The owners can elect to close their doors and any pedestrian can still easily sidestep the structure and continue along the path unimpeded but I would personally feel really self-conscience and guilty over capriciously restricting access after opening up my home.
Wednesday 15 August 2018
a desilu production
Aside from dozens of studio albums that comprises a respectable discography on its own, the award-winning Schifrin garnered well-deserved aplomb for his talent, employing catchy time signatures like the five-four of his theme for Mission: Impossible, Schifrin quickly became television and film’s mainstay for scores and incidental music. Other television series include The Man from UNCLE, Mannix and Starsky and Hutch. Of the over one hundred-sixty movies Schifrin crated and synchronised the soundtrack for include Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Che!, THX 1138, Enter the Dragon, Return from Witch Mountain, Jaws, The Amityville Horror, Clint Eastwood’s Sudden Impact, The Dead Pool and the Rush Hour series.
blogoversary: we are ten
Wow—I’m happy to have reached that milestone, especially in an age where the allures and pressures of social media have kind of short-circuited other forms of curation and journaling and hope to be able to sustain it for years to come. After a decade, we are still finding our voice and bearing and treasure those new and old who’ve done the heavy-lifting and come along for the ride and indulge our rants and banter and tolerate our mistakes and missteps.
10. Some speculation on the identity of the inventor of Bitcoin
9. Assorted links including rescued laboratory animals and giving a voice to animal emojis
8. A short biography of the well-travelled Aloha Wanderwell
7. Weird plots for Star Trek: The Next Generation
6. More links including Twin Peaks mapped Super Mario style
5. The effects of an exclusively fast-food diet
4. The ballot in Nazi Germany
3. The paradox of time-travel
2. Geographic extremes
1. A panel discussion of vampiric vegetables
Now on to our second decade.
catagories: holidays and observances, networking and blogging
Tuesday 14 August 2018
tara on techwood
Built originally to house a community centre for the Russian-Jewish diaspora of Atlanta, Georgia in the 1940s, Curbed contributor Lisa Napoli presents a fascinating profile of the historic, stately structure that became the unlikely first headquarters of a new and novel venture from 1980 to 1987 when the operation relocated from midtown to the Omni Centre: a round-the-clock cable news network with nation-wide reach. The first journalists to work for CNN were relegated to studio space in the basement, while more prestigious programming had the upper storeys and founder Ted Turner himself occupied a loft apartment. Though no longer a hub for twenty-four hour reporting, the old mansion remains part of CNN’s campus.
catagories: ๐บ, ๐️, architecture
8x8
aurora: a primer for the Parker Solar Probe’s mission to touch the Sun, seeking answers regarding the solar winds and corona posed decades ago
banana for scale: an exponential (previously) romp through the Cosmos that will help one to appreciate perspective
of podcasts and puppets: an interview with the handler for MST3K’s Crow T Robot speaks on how novelty acts inform culture
dugout: via Slashdot, a visit to the remote Australian opal mining town where people live underground
maccoin bubble: enthusiasts in China are trading commemorative tokens (whose face-value is a hamburger) issued for the fast food franchise’s fiftieth birthday at greatly inflated prices
bride of frankenstein: actually she’s Trump’s monster
strandbeest evolution: Dutch artist Theo Jansen engineers giant kinetic Jabberwockies that travel the beach powered only by the winds
science fiction/double feature
Management reminds that this is not a blog about commemorations and anniversaries but marking some occasions are difficult to forego, like the debut on this day in 1975 in London of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, based on the popular musical stage production of two years prior. Technically still in limited release (at any given moment, playing in a cinema somewhere), after over four decades, it is the longest-running theatrical release in history, despite its exposure to wider audiences.
catagories: ๐ฌ, 1975, holidays and observances, lifestyle
blackout
Fifteen years ago over the next two days a massive disruption to the power grid in the northeast United States and Ontario left some fifty-five million without electricity, caused by a software bug at the control room of a single monitoring station that failed to compensate for an overloaded transformer (a fallen branch) that cascaded quickly across the entire network.
These memories of 2003, absolutely crippling metropolises like New York City, illustrate how delicate, brittle our infrastructure is and how quickly things fall apart and an important reminder how important it is to have a contingency plan for when things go wrong.
catagories: ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐บ๐ธ, holidays and observances
Monday 13 August 2018
departures and arrivals lounge
As Curbed reports, the restored 1962 Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA Flight Centre—originally designed as the terminal for the Trans World Airline’s hub at the John F Kennedy International Airport of New York City—the “Grand Central Station of the Jet Age” to be revitalised under protective status (not all were so decorously spared) as a historic landmark (Saarinen also designed the Gateway Arch of Saint Louis, Missouri) as a conference space and hotel that reference the Mid-Century Modern trappings of its inception is, construction work continuing a pace since 2016, already accepting bookings for a projected opening date early next year. Check out more photographs of the interiors with retro furnishings, skyboxes and other amenities at the link up top.
catagories: ✈️, ๐, ๐ฝ, ๐งณ, architecture