Neatorama |
- If AT-ATs Had Wheels
- Attack Of The Zombie Wasp Queens
- Pizza Is Mathematically Delicious
- A Black Knight Street Flyer
- 90 Insanely Adorable Corgies In Costumes
- This Giant Camera Takes Amazing Photos
- Watch the (Slowly Moving) Bucket
- Pumpkin Carving with Animatronic Eyes by Ray Villafane
- Viewfinder Bracelet
- Dandelion Ceiling
- Lucky Charms Sifter Gets Rid of All of that Unnecessary Cereal
- Tank Dog Costume
- Waterfall Nebula Spills out the Heavens
- Man Juggles Two Rubik's Cubes While Solving a Third
- Keep Alaska Weird
- One Step Closer to Lab-Grown Meat
- Epic Video Game Jack-o-Lanterns
- A Culture, Not a Costume
- Gameboy Is Back From The Dead
- Finally! Prince Of Persia Is On Commodore 64!
- Hitachi's New 3D Projector
- Printing New Homes For Hermit Crabs
- AeroShot: Inhalable Caffeine
- John Lennon's Tooth
- Purgatory
- 7 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to be True
- Koi Observation Tower
- Putting Today’s Video Games into Atari Format
- Strange Shop Sign
- This is Norway
- The Nerdiest Wedding Rings Ever
- The Lost Masterpiece
| Posted: 25 Oct 2011 02:46 AM PDT If AT-ATs had wheels, they wouldn’t fall down so easy. But they were built a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, possibly before the invention of the wheel. However, Christopher Aleria improved upon the design by setting an AT-AT body atop an Axial Rock Crawler 4×4 remote control vehicle. Link -via Illuminations and Other Stuff  |
| Attack Of The Zombie Wasp Queens Posted: 25 Oct 2011 01:16 AM PDT Parasites are raising an army of zombie wasp queens to do their bidding, and it’s a good thing that these parasites aren’t more ambitious, because they’d probably be well on their way to taking over the world by now! The parasites cause common wasps to believe that they are queens, rejecting their normal caste and acting as self serving loners in wasp society: Infected P. dominulus — better known as common European paper wasps — reject their genetically preordained roles, abandon their hives and embark on a long, macabre journey during which a few live for a time as queens, albeit murderous queens. Read on about this fascinating example of parasitic mind control at the Wired link below, and pray these little critters don’t develop a taste for human blood! |
| Pizza Is Mathematically Delicious Posted: 25 Oct 2011 01:14 AM PDT
|
| Posted: 25 Oct 2011 12:54 AM PDT Derek Eads has a great series of pop culture street flyers, the best of which is this great Black Knight one from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. It’s called, “Take One…’tis just but a Scratch.” |
| 90 Insanely Adorable Corgies In Costumes Posted: 25 Oct 2011 12:47 AM PDT If you love corgis and pets in costumes, then you’ll love this great BuzzFeed post featuring a whopping 90 of these little shorties in absolutely precious costumes. If you don’t like corgis, well then, I feel bad for you. |
| This Giant Camera Takes Amazing Photos Posted: 25 Oct 2011 12:00 AM PDT When photographer Darren Samuelson set up to take photos of Manhattan with his massive six foot long view camera that weighs over 70 pounds, authorities were alerted and the police had to be convinced that he wasn’t pointing a weapon at the city! This amazing device, which Ansel Adams will likely come back from the dead just to get his hands on, was created to use x-ray film three feet wide, and it takes some truly awesome panoramic photos. Hit the link to see a short video of the big daddy view camera in action! Link –image by John B. Carnett |
| Watch the (Slowly Moving) Bucket Posted: 24 Oct 2011 08:34 PM PDT
Well, one crook had this brilliant idea involving a bucket. A slowly moving bucket:
Link - via News of the Weird |
| Pumpkin Carving with Animatronic Eyes by Ray Villafane Posted: 24 Oct 2011 06:33 PM PDT
Laughing Squid has the (creepy) video clip: Link |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 06:32 PM PDT Etsy seller Beth Tastic took photographs and coated them with resin to produce this gorgeous bracelet. It’d be a fine way to preserve special memories. Link -via Dude Craft |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 06:13 PM PDT Regine Ramseier apparently sprayed 2,000 blooming dandelions with some substance which caused them to retain their seeds. Then she stuck them in straws and attached them to panels, which she hung from the ceiling of a room. Click on the link to see more photos of this gorgeous installation. Link (Google Translate) -via Colossal |
| Lucky Charms Sifter Gets Rid of All of that Unnecessary Cereal Posted: 24 Oct 2011 06:01 PM PDT Since 1964, General Mills has sold Lucky Charms cereal, padding the weight with toasted oat bits. Why? No idea. All they do is get in the way of the marshmallows, which contain all of the good luck (toasted oats are not good luck). Thankfully, Tom Lombardi warmed up his 3d printer and came up with this sieve to solve that problem. Link -via That’s Nerdalicious! |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 05:51 PM PDT (Video Link) YouTube user darkbluedrew no doubt deserved to win first prize at a dog costume competition. Her pooch can comfortably walk around in a rolling thank. Be sure to watch the other video, which shows the gun in action. Another Video -via Craft |
| Waterfall Nebula Spills out the Heavens Posted: 24 Oct 2011 05:39 PM PDT This unusual nebula, officially and rather dully named HH-222, stretches across ten light years of space. What caused its shape to form? NASA officials say, “One hypothesis is that the gas filament results from the wind from a young star impacting a nearby molecular cloud.” Link | Photo: Zoltan G. Levay, NASA |
| Man Juggles Two Rubik's Cubes While Solving a Third Posted: 24 Oct 2011 05:32 PM PDT (Video Link) Sure, David Calvo can solve a Rubik’s Cube under these somewhat challenging conditions. But can he do it when, say, the three cubes are on fire? That I would like to see. -via Geekosystem | Calvo’s Website |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 05:24 PM PDT Which caliber for a flying eye laser beam-shooting grizzly bear? Bag limit of two per season. I haven’t been able to track down the artist responsible, but some people think that this is an illustration for a 90s era RPG called The World of Synnibarr. -via The Uniblog |
| One Step Closer to Lab-Grown Meat Posted: 24 Oct 2011 04:32 PM PDT
|
| Epic Video Game Jack-o-Lanterns Posted: 24 Oct 2011 04:21 PM PDT Feast your eyes on these creative jack-o-lanterns designed to display your favorite video games! Ranker listed 35 of them -not 35 jack-o-lanterns; there are way more than that, but 35 video games that have been carved on pumpkins. From Oregon Trail to Halo, from Tetris to Doom, you’ll see them all, and get some great ideas for your own jack-o-lantern! Link -Thanks, Brian! |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 04:12 PM PDT Halloween is a time for silly costumes, and some use it as an excuse to drag out every racial and cultural stereotype they can think of for a silly costume. That’s not cool. Students Teaching Against Racism (STARS) is an organization at Ohio University that put out a series of posters to “educate and create dialog” and to ask people to think before they select an insensitive Halloween costume. See the rest of the posters at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Link -via I Am Bored |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 02:45 PM PDT GameBoy has crawled out of it’s grave and is hungry for some computer brains! This nifty little figurine was made by Kodykoala, a guy who has created an impressive array of custom figures, most of which place beloved Nintendo characters in *ahem* awkward situations. Click on the link and check out Nintendo characters gone wild! Link –via Destructoid |
| Finally! Prince Of Persia Is On Commodore 64! Posted: 24 Oct 2011 02:43 PM PDT It would have been great if the game Prince of Persia had come out for the Commodore 64 in 1989 when I actually owned and used a C64, but sadly we had to endure the greatness of this classic game rubbed in our faces by our friends with Apple II computers. However, hope is not lost, as the tireless efforts of retro gaming enthusiasts have finally paid off- Prince of Persia has been ported to the C64! So dust off your emulator and take this bad boy for a spin, or check out the video and pretend you played it through oh so many years ago.
|
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 02:42 PM PDT This amazing new device does a lot more than project little duckies onto objects, it projects a truly 3d image onto whichever surface you choose. You can walk around your projection, view it from all sides, and would make for the greatest ghost prank ever. Scooby Doo-style crimes via ghostly projected images have never been easier! |
| Printing New Homes For Hermit Crabs Posted: 24 Oct 2011 02:39 PM PDT Hermit crab homelessness is reaching critical levels, leaving many of these fine clawed fellows without a shell of their own. Now, thanks to 3d printers and our tireless search for new things to print out, there’s a solution: custom printed hermit crab shells! The printed shells will last longer, look cooler and are sure to stir up feelings of jealousy among other hermit crabs. If only we could print houses for homeless humans! |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 02:31 PM PDT
Put down that venti soy Americano! Don't reach for that cup of Java when you next need a caffeine hit. Inhale it instead. Behold the AeroShot, an inhalable caffeine "shot" invented by David Edwards (who previously invented inhalable chocolate) Would you um, snort one? |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 12:30 PM PDT
So let's come together. I've got a feeling this auction will be a big hit: Link |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 09:08 AM PDT This Twaggie, illustrated from a Tweet by @charstarlene, really hits close to home. My daughters are 13, 13, and 14, and their computers are in my office so they can feed off my modem. Purgatory, indeed! Link |
| 7 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to be True Posted: 24 Oct 2011 08:31 AM PDT
Read the rest of this story and six others. And don’t be spooked! Link -Thanks, Jack! |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 08:29 AM PDT German aquaculturist TCHelmut put a glass observation tower in his koi pond. The fish get a good view of their surroundings and people get a good view of the fish! There are more videos at his YouTube channel, including the installation of the tower and how it looks at night. -via The Daily What |
| Putting Today’s Video Games into Atari Format Posted: 24 Oct 2011 07:36 AM PDT An art project at the Something Awful forums had gamers and artists transforming 21st century video games into 8-bit screenshots, as they would look played on an old Atari system. The Legend of Zelda looks a lot different! Check out a gallery of other games in the old style at Unreality magazine. Link |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 07:32 AM PDT Twitter user Carrie Bishop took a snapshot of this sign announcing a business vacation. It doesn’t have to be true to be eye-catching! Link -via Boing Boing |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 07:30 AM PDT This video tour of life in Norway is not particularly new or accurate, but it sure is interesting! It was produced by Norwegian YouTube member petepants. -via Breakfast Links |
| The Nerdiest Wedding Rings Ever Posted: 24 Oct 2011 07:11 AM PDT For his wedding, redditor joeythehobo had rings of Damascus steel inscribed as you see here. As you can see, the wedding went off without a hitch. Or with a “hitch,” as it were. Link -via @johncfarrier |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 05:22 AM PDT
A few years ago one of our BRI writers saw the classic 1931 horror film Dracula for the first time …and thought it was terrible. He never knew there was a story behind why the film had so many problems -or even that other people agreed with him that this Hollywood classic was flawed- until he came across this story in a book called Hollywood Gothic by David J. Skal, a leading authority on the history of monster movies. UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE One of the nice things about silent films is that everyone can understand them, regardless of what language they speak. Of course, they needed title cards to help explain the plot, but it was easy -and cheap- to write new cards for each foreign market. As a result American films found their way into countries all over the world, and silent films became a truly universal art form: American studios made half of their revenues from foreign film sales; silent screen stars like Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan became the most recognized human beings on the face of the earth. SILENT TREATMENT But the advent of talking pictures changed everything -and not just for silent-screen stars whose thick accents quickly consigned them to the Hollywood scrap heap. Suddenly, American films became incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t speak English. American film studios faced the prospect of losing up to half of their business overnight.  Bela Lugosi Foreign countries that had become used to a steady stream of Hollywood films found themselves left out in the cold; some threatened to retaliate by slapping tariffs on films with dialogue in English, or by boycotting American films entirely. Making matters worse, sound recording and synchronization technology was still very primitive, and dubbing foreign-language dialogue onto English-language films was all but impossible. Besides, one of the things that attracted audiences to the first “talkies” was the thrill of hearing their favorite actors speak for the very first time. Even if dubbing had been practical, it might not have been very popular. There was no easy solution to the problem, and as a result many foreign language markets were left out of the early years of the talkie era -except for the Spanish-language market. Spanish was too popular, and Mexico, Central, and South America were too close for Hollywood to ignore. THE DOPPELGÄNGER ERA No film crew works 24 hours a day. At some point everyone goes home, leaving the soundstage and the expensive sets unused until morning. So, reasoned Hollywood studios, why not bring in a second cast and crew at night to film foreign-language versions of the same films that were being made in English during the day? GRAVEYARD SHIFT  Lupita Tovar Universal Pictures was one of the last major studios to adopt the idea, when it filmed Spanish and English versions of the film The Cat Creeps in 1930. Dracula was slated to be only the studios second Spanish-language film. Paul Kohner, Universal’s head of foreign production, hired director George Melford, who’d worked with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, and cinematographer George Robinson. A 38-year-old Spanish actor named Carlos Villarias was cast as Dracula, and a multilingual actor named Barry Norton was hired to play “Juan Harker.” A 17-year-old Mexican actress named Lupita Tovar was hired to play Harker’s fiance Eva, who was known as Mina in the English version. “The American crew left at 6:00 PM and we were ready,” Tovar recalled. “We started shooting at eight. At midnight, they would call for dinner… They didn’t pay us much, but we didn’t complain. We were happy to have some money -most actors were starving.” FIRST RATE Since they were using a second-rate cast and crew after Hollywood’s finest had gone home for the day, the assumption was that the film made at night would be inferior to the original. That may have been true in most cases …but not in the case of Dracula. For all of its popularity and accomplishments as Hollywood’s first vampire film, on a technical level, the English-language Dracula is considered a very poorly made film. A lot of the blame for this goes to director Tod Browning, a hard-drinking recluse with a reputation as a troublemaker. Browning had been fired from at least one studio for his drinking, and was blacklisted from the entire industry for two years in the early 1920s. Making matters worse, Browning had directed nine films starring horror superstar Lon Chaney, Sr. when both men worked for MGM, and he was still reeling from Chaney’s recent death from throat cancer. Browning’s myriad personal problems found their way into the finished film. “In scene after scene,” Skal writes, “the script demonstrates just how much Browning cut, trimmed, ignored, and generally sabotaged the screenplay’s visual potentials, insisting on static camera setups, eliminating reaction shots and special effects, and generally taking the lazy way out at every opportunity.” In one scene, a piece of cardboard the crew used to reduce the glare of a lamp takes up nearly a quarter of the entire screen, and in the film’s climax, Dracula’s death isn’t even shown on film; moviegoers had to settle for the sound of Lugosi groaning offscreen. ON PURPOSE Legend has it that cinematographer Karl Freund got so exasperated with Browning’s slipshod style that he just turned the camera on and let it run unattended, Skal writes:
As if that isn’t sloppy enough, in the final credits, Universal President Carl Laemmle’s title is misspelled as “Presient.” ¡EL VAMPIRO! The film crew on the Spanish Dracula was another story. Kohner, who had produced the Spanish version of The Cat Creeps, was headstrong and ambitious -and not above second-guessing the English-language unit, trying to improve upon their work. On The Cat Creeps, he watched the daily footage produced by Robert Julian, the director of the English version, and found the scenes to be poorly lit and uninspiring. So when filming the same scenes for the Spanish film, Kohner relit every set and filled them with atmosphere-creating candles, cobwebs, and shadows that had been missing in the English version. Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle, Jr. was so impressed with Kohner’s work that he ordered Julian to refilm his own footage, this time using Kohner as his artistic advisor. Kohner did the same thing during the making of the Spanish version of Dracula. Using a moviola machine that was kept on the set, they watched the daily footage, or “dailies” that had been shot for the English-language version, made notes of the sloppiness and mistakes, and then made sure that their own scenes were better. One thing they didn’t try to improve on was Bela Lugosi’s masterful performance as Count Dracula. Instead, Kohner insisted that Carlos Villarias imitate Lugosi as closely as possible, and he alone among the actors was allowed to watch the English-language dailies to make sure he got it right. They even let him wear Lugosi’s hairpiece, although it’s unclear whether Lugosi ever knew about it.  Carlos Villarias as Count Dracula
Now You See Him, Now You Don’t Perhaps the most notable difference between the two films is their use -or lack thereof- of special effects. In scenes showing Dracula climbing out of his coffin, for example, the Spanish version uses a double exposure to show a cloud of mist rising out ofthe coffin and turning into Dracula. In the English version, the coffin lid starts to tremble, the camera turns away from the coffin and points at a wall …and by the time it returns, Bela Lugosi is already out of the coffin. NUMERO UNO When completed, the Spanish version of Dracula cost just over $66,000 to make and only took 22 nights to film, compared to the seven weeks and $450,000 it took to film the English version. In fact, the Spanish crew shot the film so fast that they ended up shooting some of their scenes on sets that weren’t completely finished. Rather than wait for them to be finished, the filmmakers compensated for the empty sets with clever lighting. The first preview was held in early 1931, before the original Dracula was even finished, and the reviewers who saw the Spanish version were impressed. “If the English version of Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, is as good as the Spanish version,” Hollywood Filmograph magazine wrote, “why, the big U (Universal) hasn’t a thing in the world to worry about.”  Villarias and Tovar
The only problem, of course, was that the English version wasn’t as good, as Filmograph reported a few weeks later. The first few minutes of the film were enthralling, the magazine wrote, but quickly deteriorated after that. “Tod Browning directed, although we cannot believe that the same man was responsible for both the first and later parts of the picture. Had the rest of the picture lived up to the first sequence in the ruined castle Transylvania, Dracula would have been a horror and thrill classic long remembered.” INTO THIN AIR Dracula was one of the last foreign-language films produced in Hollywood. By 1931 the Great Depressions was in full swing, and American film studios, desperate to cut costs whenever possible, abandoned Spanish-language markets almost entirely. Universal never even bothered to register the copyright on the film and never had preservation copies made so that new prints could be made when the originals wore out. The Spanish Dracula made the rounds of Spanish-language countries into the 1950s, then gradually disappeared. Life After Death It was thought to be lost entirely until the late 1970s, when an incomplete negative was found in a warehouse in New Jersey. Then, in 1989, a complete version of the film was found in the Cuban Film Archives in Havana. In the late 1990s, Universal and the UCLA Film Archives restored the film and released it to cable and video markets, where it is developing a new following and has finally received the recognition it deserves. Here is the complete movie for your enjoyment.
_______________________________
The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader’s Institute has 504 pages crammed with fun facts, including articles on the biggest movie bombs ever, the origin and unintended use of I.Q. test, and more. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out! |
It’s in the name, pizza was just invented to be delicious based on mathematical formulas. It makes so much sense now. Kind of reminds me of our puntastically fun 
Neatoramanauts, think like a criminal. You've stolen important financial documents from a local store, and would like to exchange them for money. But you know that the money drop-off point would be swarming with cops. What to do?
We've featured 
We've written about 
Baby, you're a rich man ... and a hardcore Beatles fan, so while money (that's what I want) can't buy you love, it can certainly buy the molar of John Lennon:
Cracked has posted the fifth in a series of urban legends and the true tales behind them. The stories are all plain weird, like the guy in Japan who started noticing food in his apartment was disappearing.
The following is an article from 
The article above is reprinted with permission from 
| You are subscribed to email updates from Neatorama To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.