Epic de-lurk to post this video what I made. It's blown up a bit in the last week but I remembered this place and thought some of you would be interested. Enjoy!
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 8:45, Reply)
For me the lines disappear instantly, but there is some slight persistence with the cube, but then I blink and it’s gone.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 18:05, Reply)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_masking
I don't know that anyone's done what you have there before though!
Have you tried it with dithered animations/video clips? Now I really want to give it a try :)
(, Wed 14 Feb 2024, 4:21, Reply)
Yes, I've been playing with different effects - I've done a Bad Apple video with higher-resolution and more levels of gray that works quite well. Should be out tomorrow.
(, Wed 14 Feb 2024, 14:50, Reply)
How Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy makes himself invisible.
(, Fri 16 Feb 2024, 19:27, Reply)
That is very interesting and in response to the question "is there any research on this" I think they answer is "yes". The way your brain processes visual information is essentially integrative, starting from cells in your visual cortex that process on/off signals. These cells - adjacent to one another in the retina feed into higher level cells that are able to perceive the orientation of lines, and a series of further integrative cells can perceive shapes and so on, right up to hypothesised "face cells" that are sufficiently specialised to recognise the integrated signals as faces, or whatever other high level object. The persistence of the lines in the video is presumably an artefact of a series of cells perceiving an on/off state, i.e. change, and perceiving that as a line. Or something.
(, Fri 16 Feb 2024, 19:47, Reply)
here is the theme to its little-known American remake
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 7:31, Reply)
his normal speaking voice is exactly the same as the one you hear in his shows.
EDIT : Jesus Christ, I couldn't listen to that theme. It was like someone was taking a massive star-spangled shit all over my childhood.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 14:03, Reply)
This might make you feel better:
www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/feb/12/how-we-made-bagpuss-meccano-cameras-clanger-pink-cat
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 14:56, Reply)

Back in 2018 I went to an exhibition of all the Postgate and Firmin things; Clangers, Bagpuss, Ivor, Noggin, Pogles. Spent hours looking at all the exhibition.
My only selfie with a celeb I have is me and Bagpuss.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 19:45, Reply)
A friend who worked there said she ended up with Bagpuss in a box under her desk for quite a while waiting to be picked up. I was very jealous.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 22:37, Reply)
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pht5q
That Meccano set up and more of his homemade bits, and loads more insight
(, Tue 13 Feb 2024, 9:35, Reply)
tiny clangers voice was made from a biro.
Apparently Bagpus was supposed to be blue (and is meant to be an old English colonel from the Indian Raj), but they didn't have any blue dye, so he ended up pink.
The recording used in the Major Clanger speaking doll is from series 2, when he can't open a door. He kicks it and says "Sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again"
(, Tue 13 Feb 2024, 10:42, Reply)
but the execution left a lot to be desired in terms of the weak performance and careless distortion.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 15:03, Reply)
Randomly in Broadstairs in a bookshop lecture talk thing. Didn't book or anything, it was just happening... And yes it was brilliant.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 23:57, Reply)
I'm sure y'all know the story of this one, but we try and throw a few lesser known facts in, and of course have an honourable mention of Kate Winslett's boobies.
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 21:31, Reply)
OK, this is getting on for ten years old and is likely the glassiest of cocks, but:
My two boys, ages 3 & 5, bloody love this. I play it to calm them down after they've bounced around the house to "Tiny Japanese Girl". I'm in awe of the ability for someone to listen to the original and think "I know what I can do with that", and produce this.
Both the vocals are heart-breakingly beautiful, and the music just gets out of the way and lets them be.
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 21:04, Reply)
Might be GC. Ain’t been here for a while, but this is too good not to share. Might help if you like Radiohead and Ragtime. Luckily, I do.
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 20:30, Reply)
(, Tue 13 Feb 2024, 2:40, Reply)
like nothing ever happened. Explain yourself. We've been worried sick.
(, Sun 11 Feb 2024, 16:46, Reply)
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 19:02, Reply)
So just this one for now - I've got the data setup to calculate the actors in the most duos, trio,....octets and factor in a few other elements (so a new grid each refresh) but it costs loads to host so I'm finding good sets locally and adding static to this version. It's essentially a Kevin Bacon machine.
As you can imagine, The Avengers really messes things up.
Thanks for asking man! What did you score btw?
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 19:22, Reply)
If I'd picked the right combos of actors and titles would the photo grey out when all correct titles for a specific actor had been guessed?
(, Sun 11 Feb 2024, 0:17, Reply)
I did consider adding a 'getting warm' sign when you had a combo that was valid too.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 10:25, Reply)
But what? How do I play please explain to my donkey brain
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 19:47, Reply)
then enter the name of the film where the question mark appears above the photos
there is an autocompleted list of titles as you type
tap/click the title you choose
if you're right then you score points
(, Sun 11 Feb 2024, 0:12, Reply)
but it says I'm wrong
edit: there are 3 wanteds in the list and only one is the correct answer. Maybe it needs dates
(, Sun 11 Feb 2024, 20:50, Reply)
Super visuals too. The voice of Portishead, immense.
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 21:51, Reply)
I know it's not Portishead, but her voice can't remind me of anything else. Either way, it's lovely.
(, Sun 11 Feb 2024, 9:24, Reply)
that can supposedly turn 3kg of medical waste into 150km/s of delta-v! For the non-Kerbalese speakers, that's more than enough juice to go pretty much anywhere in the solar system and come back with samples, or to go on a grand tour of multiple planets/asteroids/etc.
I fucking love this idea.
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 23:20, Reply)
You can’t throttle natural decay after all.
Nice idea though.
And not to be a negative Nancy, what happens when the sail gets holed? The craft would need to continually correct with the RCS. Still, there are brighter minds than mine on this.
I tried Kerbal once but didn’t have the patience for it. Does it have solar sails yet?
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 16:52, Reply)
There are probably sail mods but they're not in the stock game afaik.
I think it would only stop accelerating once it had fully decayed, which would be 1-3 years for the medical waste. It's not much thrust though, comparable to ion engines. If I understand correctly there's a way of throttling using the two sheets, so maybe it can throttle down to 0 anyway (depending on the complexity of the sail design I guess).
Otherwise you could put your ship in a spin if you wanted to hold a particular spot in orbit (so it spends equal time thrusting in every direction). I guess if you absolutely needed to stop the micronewtons of acceleration you could kind of half fold up or roll up the sail, or jettison it entirely.
Supposedly when it gets holed there's not much of a difference in performance. The sail itself is dumb and mechanical, and can be re-angled to compensate for holes (all using tiny actuators and no rcs required).
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 22:00, Reply)
1-3 years seems a little short for those long missions, and obviously you would need to be able to throttle it for any sample return missions. You could easily do this if the sail were umbrella-shaped - just partially close it - but as I said the force from the sail would act to force it open again. (To be fair it would be doing that as soon as you built it in the first place.)
As for holes I wasn't thinking about performance; if there's a hole then it will tend to make the craft rotate regardless of which way you point it. It's not really a solar sail after all, just a very, very wide rocket nozzle.
It's a very interesting idea on the whole, rather like a solar sail that carries its own sun with it.
Incidentally, my issue with Kerbal is that I prefer proper games. I used to play a lot of bridge builder back in the day, but I wouldn't really call it "fun".
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 22:56, Reply)
The thrust is just photons, very weak. As you say, whatever mechanism is built to hold it in place for launch will be strong enough. It needs actuators for unfurling and sailing anyway... Making a system rugged enough to safely furl and unfurl several times might add a lot of weight though.
Assuming this sail can do everything a wind or solar sail can do, it could compensate for holes. Assuming the sail is sufficiently huge, a few dozen fist sized holes would be negligible.
If you lose 50% of the sail you lose half your thrust, but you'd also lose 50% of the mass of the sail, which would slightly compensate. There must be an equation for that.
Orbital rendezvous wouldn't be that much more difficult with a very slowly accelerating ship. Not colliding with the giant sail would the the tricky thing IMO.
(, Sun 11 Feb 2024, 0:33, Reply)
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 17:06, Reply)
*Peoples Of Distant Starsystems
Coming here, hiding in our greenhouses, growing, impersonating us and destroying our way of life
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 17:56, Reply)
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 21:33, Reply)
Ha. For so long they just stood awaiting their fate. They have actually been updated now and you can click through. (Not quite as easily as before though)
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 21:40, Reply)
Saw the amazing DakhaBrakha here a while ago, so I figured this would go down well here too.
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 16:14, Reply)
Malnourished peasant hotties. Fucking watchtower at 1.37. The girl on the hasn't seen the sun for years with that complexion. Sinister.
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 5:21, Reply)
One of the donkeys is underage too.
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 14:53, Reply)
Steve Gadd and Eric Gales.
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 12:07, Reply)
Think you have a stray "s" in there. Eric Gales (b. 1974) seems to be described as a child prodigy, but playing the guitar on The Hustle at 1 year old would have been exceptional!
However, I had not heard of either of the Erics, so I've learned something today, thanks.
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 0:52, Reply)
As Wikipedia says "not to be confused with Eric Gales". Well aren't I the prat.
This Eric is also an interesting man and played with Aston "Family Man" Barrett it seems (my last link!) at least with the Wailers
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gale
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 2:56, Reply)
He and Gadd played on Bobs Jameses Taxi music youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfJndz0utgOOcWZuON9FlYzgAdLHK9VYm&feature=shared
(, Sun 11 Feb 2024, 9:10, Reply)
this is beautiful stuff, I bought a Bob James album recently. Time for another one.
(, Mon 12 Feb 2024, 0:15, Reply)
Also, now it's an academy converter with an Ofsted rating of 'Needs Improvement.'
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 10:00, Reply)
I’ve spent the last couple of months binging my way through them, they’re surprisingly rewatchable
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 10:30, Reply)
I can still remember the particular smell of copies run off a Banda machine.
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 8:41, Reply)
'The special counsel concluded it would be difficult to convict the president of improper handling of files because "at trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory".

(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 6:46, Reply)
No idea if there are still tickets for this I only just saw it on Facebook. Graeme Garden in attendance. In Bristol if that helps.
(, Thu 8 Feb 2024, 22:02, Reply)
Posting this link partly because I wish I'd thought of the joke and done it here, but mostly because XKCD doesn't have the much needed facility to post a picture of Stephen Fry as Jeeves holding a frying pan in response to this.
(, Thu 8 Feb 2024, 18:54, Reply)
I'm only her for the picture of Stephen Fry as Jeeves holding a frying pan
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 12:09, Reply)
or one for submission to the competition for ads that would never be allowed
(, Sat 10 Feb 2024, 10:03, Reply)
I knew Rick Moranis had a good voice and all from Little Shop of Horrors but this is superbly done...
(, Thu 8 Feb 2024, 13:46, Reply)
www.youtube.com/channel/UCAaRIJe8RIT3tXZiZM4rfWw
Edit: and a personal fave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyeFLwX_WQA
(, Thu 8 Feb 2024, 15:13, Reply)
www.slashfilm.com/1106146/rick-moranis-had-to-sing-in-slow-motion-for-little-shop-of-horrors/
(, Thu 8 Feb 2024, 18:18, Reply)
Such a great film, those 3 singers are just amazing and the bass playing is fantastic and and and. It's all fuckin perfect
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 7:43, Reply)
for a workout. I had the soundtrack as a kid and I wore the tape to death.
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 9:45, Reply)
is interestingly bad
(, Fri 9 Feb 2024, 16:44, Reply)
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