Market Street in 1906

Footage from the front of a cable car, traveling down Market Street, circa 1906. Fantastic. I absolutely adore these old videos of San Francisco!

Originally, this video was thought to have been recorded sometime in 1905. Recently, someone analyzed the weather, vehicles, and shadows from people / objects and concluded it was filmed four days before the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906!

This film, originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!). It was filmed only four days before the quake and shipped by train to NY for processing.

[Via Long Now Foundation and Flixxy]

Fighting dirty in Scrabble

Word with friends - getting owned

Recently, I downloaded a game for the iPhone called “Words with Friends.” It’s very similar to Scrabble, with a different board and slightly different letter values (one would assume to avoid Scrabble’s IP lawyers).

Many of my family and friends are playing the game and we’re all having fun trying to best each other’s scores. I like to think I have a good vocabulary, but apparently I don’t know how to effectively play for points, as evidenced above by the 60-point bomb that Kerry dropped on me, two moves into the game!

No matter though. I’ll just have to brush up on the following video, “Fighting dirty in Scrabble.”

Beats Antique at the Independent

Beats Antique at The Independent

Last night, we checked out Beats Antique (also on Last.fm) at the Independent. They’re a pretty awesome fusion of electronic music with a middle eastern bent. Pretty awesome stuff! I love this sort of ambient music as it makes perfect background music for working and such!

They also feature belly dancers during their live performances, who move in sync to their music. Here is a video recorded from the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco last year.

Nike soccer commercial

Just saw this brilliant advertisement again. I first noticed it last year, during the Euro Cup. It’s a commercial by Nike, following the career of an unknown teenage soccer player through their eyes. In two minutes, the commercial goes from playing in a youth league, to playing for Arsenal, to playing for Holland in the Euro Cup.

It’s really well done and quite creative!

Funny shorts in Barcelona

While traveling through Europe last year, we stopped for a few days in Barcelona to check out the capital city of Catalonia. The hostel we were staying in gave us a flyer of interesting things to do over the next few days.

One particular entry caught our eye.

“¡Una nit de curts còmic!”

It’s written in Catalan and basically translates to “a night of funny shorts!”

That was pretty amusing to us, especially because we all agreed that Sanjin had just bought some ridiculous and funny shorts right before we left on our trip.

Sanjin surfing a cannon

So we made plans that evening to set out for the bar / lounge (called the Mau Mau Underground) that was hosting “funny shorts night.” Sanjin decided to pack the shorts in his messenger bag and change into them when we got there, just in case the night ended up being a bust.

When we arrived, we noticed a distinct lack of activity in front of the bar. We paid a small cover and went inside, only to find the place fairly dead. A few people sitting on couches and either drinking beer or smoking.

Mauma Lounge

We decided to make the best of our time there and plopped down on a couch and ordered a few beers. After a few minutes, they started playing some ridiculous and hilarious movie. It was over within a few minutes. Another one immediately started, and it was also over within a few minutes.

One of us turned to the rest and asked, “what’s with all these funny short movies…”

Their voice trailed off and instantly, we all knew what funny shorts actually meant! We shared quite a bit of laughter over our pretty obvious mixup. We sat down, content to enjoy the rest of the evening, watching funny shorts and having some tasty Spanish beers.

Mary, Sanjin and Dave enjoying beer in a lounge

As an aside, one of the short films we saw that evening particularly stuck with me. It was an amazing stop-motion film focused on photography. Which is why I think it made such an impression on me. Ten Thousand Pictures of You.

“¡Una nit de curts còmic!”

Funny shorts night. It’s a phrase that will always bring a smile to my face.

The Known Universe

This video of The Known Universe is from the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and zooms out from the mountains of Tibet, showing every single satellite (artificial and not), star, and known galaxy in the universe. Absolutely incredible!

Can you imagine if this was displayed in the Cal Academy of Sciences’ Morrison Planetarium? (Which, if you haven’t been, is probably the most amazing planetarium in the world).

My immediate reaction on seeing this video was thinking back to the Powers of 10 video that I saw in a junior high math class, probably around 1995 or so.

[Via Kottke]