If you think cameras are ubiquitous now, wait until this catches on. Researchers at Columbia University announced today that they have build the world’s first self-powered video camera. By leveraging the technology that powers both digital imaging and solar panels, they’ve made a prototype model that draws energy from the ambient light in a well-lit room. READ MORE: World’s First Self-Powered Video Camera Unveiled | Discovery News.
The endeavor, called the Sonnet Project, grew from the work of the New York Shakespeare Exchange, a local theater group. The group, which started the project in 2013, just completed its 100th film: Sonnet 27, starring Carrie Preston, an Emmy award-winning actress, and filmed on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, It will premiere April 8 on the Sonnet Project website and app. (Sonnet 108 will appear on April 22.) MORE: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, All 154, Reimagined Through a New York Lens | NYTimes.com
I can well imagine that the insertion of modern technology into many of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories would have a tremendous benefit for those stories’ victims, and a deleterious effect on their monomaniacal plots. In one of the ironies of cultural transmission, the timeless quality of Poe’s work seems to depend upon its use of deliberately ancient methods of surveillance and torture. In a further paradox of sorts, Poe’s work never suffers, but only seems to shine, when technology is applied to it.
MORE: Edgar Allan Poe Animated: Watch Four Animations of Classic Poe Stories | Open Culture
Last year we featured All of Bach, a site that, in the fullness of time, will allow you to watch the Netherlands Bach Society perform each and every one of Bach’s compositions, completely for free. Back when we first posted about it, the site offered only five performances to watch, but now you’ll find a full 53 waiting there, ready for you to enjoy.
Marie Wilcox is the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni, one of 130 different endangered Native American languages in the United States that dont have any kind of digital—or analog—legacy.
Over the course of seven years in Californias San Joaquin Valley, she worked with her daughter and grandson to catalog everything she knows about the language. First, she hand-scrawled memories on scraps of paper; then, she hunt-and-pecked on an old keyboard to complete a dictionary and type out legends like “How We Got Our Hands.” Next, she recorded the whole thing on audio for pronunciation—its very specific!—and posterity.
via How An Octogenarian Preserved An Endangered Native American Language | Gizmodo
Definitely recommend watching the video. I am in awe of Marie’s dedication to preserving the Wukchumni language. Amazing, inspiring story!
Several months ago, while performing an inventory of recently acquired video games, I happened upon a DVD-R labeled Duke Nukem: Critical Mass PSP. My first assumption was that the disc, like so many others we have received, was a DVD-R of gameplay. However, a line of text on the Copyright database record for the item intrigued me. It reads: Authorship: Entire video game; computer code; artwork; and music. I placed the disc into my computer’s DVD drive to discover that the DVD-R did not contain video, but instead a file directory, including every asset used to make up the game in a wide variety of proprietary formats. Upon further research, I discovered that the Playstation Portable version of Duke Nukem: Critical Mass was never actually released commercially and was in fact a very different beast than the Nintendo DS version of the game which did see release. I realized then that in my computer was the source disc used to author the UMD for an unreleased PlayStation Portable game. I could feel the lump in my throat. I felt as though I had solved the wizard’s riddle and unlocked the secret door.
via 24 Of Designs Most Important Principles, Animated | Co.Design | business + design
The website describes Bibliotheca as “The entire biblical library in four elegant volumes, designed purely for reading. The text is reverently treated in classic typographic style, free of all added conventions such as chapter numbers, verse numbers, section headers, cross references and notes.”
READ: Bibliotheca Bible Project Blows Up On Kickstarter With Chapterless Bible | HuffPo
infophile 