Microsoft Powerpoint and Apple Keynote have come a long way. Now, rather than boring people with presentations that are full of bullet points, you can bore people with presentations full of pointless transitions and effects (as I often do).
The side-effect of these features is that you can easily create some relatively sophisticated animation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-create famous movies scenes using nothing but Keynote or Powerpoint. Above you’ll find my first attempt at the Stay Puft scene from Ghostbusters: you can download the Keynote file I used to create it (Creative Commons licensed – do whatever you want with it).
I’ve thrown down the gauntlet; will you pick it up? Let’s see what you’ve got.
In the December issue of Vanity Fair, Jim Windolf takes on America’s increasing obsession with cuteness in his article Addicted to Cute. He posits that companies, who are doing bad and decidedly un-cute things, will often try to identify their brand with something that pushes our cute button, because it triggers the bit of our brain that probably evolved out of a desire to protect our offspring. If we associate a brand like Geico (an insurance company that deals with ugliness as a core part of its mandate) with an adorable gecko, consumers and potential consumers are distracted into thinking that the gecko is the company and we are less likely to think about their actual business. In fact, we may want to protect the company, in a strange and abstract way.
As another example, Windolf draws attention to the evolving face of Disney icon Mickey Mouse:
In a 1979 article for Natural History, evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould noted … [Mickey Mouse] evolved from the thin cackling rodent of the silent-film era to the high-voiced, plump-headed figure of the 1950s and beyond. So as the Walt Disney Company grew more powerful and profitable, its public face grew cuter.
The area of Wembley in north-west London and its world-famous stadium of the same name are synonymous, if not with prodigious concerts, with that most ghastly and heinous of pastimes: football. But the not-so-humble beginnings of the stadium lie with something altogether quite different.
Opened in 1923, the British Empire Exhibition Stadium–as it was known then–was constructed at a cost of £750,000 as the destination for the British Empire Exhibition which was to be held a year later in 1924: a huge colonial exhibition designed to celebrate the past and future of the British Empire, to boost trade between the Empire’s Dominions and to secure support for the regime and the future thereof.
By the end of the exhibition the cost of the event ran to an astonishing £12 million and had made history as the largest exhibition ever staged thanks to its 27 million visitors. Appropriately, given the deteriorating power and economic strength of the Empire at that time, the exhibition made losses of over £1.5 million despite a government subsidy of £2.2 million. This led to the exhibition and stadium becoming the butt of a national joke: quite befitting, given that the new stadium suffered a very similar fate after incurring a four year delay and having its costs spiral to £340 million more than the originally agreed price (eventually the most expensive stadium ever built).
Visitors to the exhibition, after meandering to the stadium down streets renamed especially for the event by Rudyard Kipling, were presented not only with large-scale re-enactments of the Zulu Wars, but a statue of the Prince of Wales constructed entirely of Canadian butter.
We don’t host exhibitions like we used to.
Palace of Industry photograph by R P Marks (one of the last remaining buildings constructed for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924).
Although it is arguable whether they were ever really ‘in’, the terrarium is making a resurgence. Not only does it seem to have situated itself in the same quasi-hipster cool category as knitting (think stich ‘n bitch) and dissenting cross stich patterns, it can also be ever so practical for people living in big cities with limited outdoor space. Also important, people are starting to make really cool and beautiful terrariums.
A terrarium is traditionally a glass container that is completely enclosed (like an old preserve jar), which is built to act like a mini-greenhouse. A drainage system is installed at the bottom of the jar in the form of gravel or rocks, that is covered in some rich soil where small succulents are planted, along with other more decorative elements like moss or little figurines (such as the one above, which is from Doodlebirdie’s Etsy shop). Basically, the terrarium creates a perfectly climatised little home for small plants – all you need to do is add water once in awhile.
Although some sites date the terrarium back to ancient Greece, most agree that it was a UK-based invention:
In 1831, when British surgeon Nathaniel Ward picked a fern, stuck it in a bottle and forgot about it. Several months later, the fern was thriving and grass had sprouted in the enclosed container – without any cultivation or watering from Ward. Twenty years later, Ward’s enclosed biosphere was put on display at the 1851 World’s Fair in London, and so-called Wardian cases became a fad. The inspiration for the Victorians may still be what draws us to terrariums today. (source)
There are lots of online tutorials for making your own terrarium if you are so inclined. In the meantime, here are some beautiful examples for inspiration:
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