I just love this photograph of IBM Tape Drives from 1965. Hardcore nerdism? (via BB Gadgets)

That’s a screenshot of After Effects 1.1, released in 1993 by the Company of Science and Art (bought almost immediately by Aldus, which would merge with Adobe a couple of years later). Even though the current, ninth version, obviously looks quite different, the way some things are instantly recognizable is uncanny (or it’s just me, who’ve used AE since version five). AE Portal News has the After Effects 1.1 demo reel, which is an interesting flashback into early 90s motion graphics (people did like Futura Condensed!).

Another great xkcd. I’ve saved it and from now on I’ll kindly forward this flowchart to people whenever they bother me for something that exists within a menu. Along with a link to Let Me Google that for You.

I really like the photo Boutique Airports I by Jasmina Cibic. I imagine an alternate history in which aviation started in the Baroque Age… (via VVORK)

Life Magazine’s gallery of thirty dumb inventions is so funny my instinct would be to repost every single photo here. I settled for Goodyear’s illuminated tires (1961), which I am in fact amazed didn’t catch on — I’m sure many people would love to pimp their rides with those. It’s interesting to note two inventor heroes of mine — Hugo Gernsback (the first television broadcaster and sci-fi pioneer) and Clive Sinclair (of the ZX Spectrum fame) — are present in this infamous list, as apparently both had some kind of miniature TV fetish in the 1960s (still, I wish to know in which way is cellphone television smarter than Sinclair’s miniature television set).

And another thing: what’s the story with all those smoking accessories? A tiny umbrellla for cigarettes? Serial cigarette apparatuses? Come on!

Steven M. Johnson is an inventor with some offbeat interesting ideas — such as human-powered washing machines or mass-producing pre-damaged cars (read on, it sort of makes sense)!

A sign of the times: It had been over a year since the last time I used film. So yesterday I loaded some Fuji 400 I had in the fridge into my old EM (it has a shutter that sounds and feels like a heavy slap in the face, but alas, my favourite camera — the Electro — took a nasty blow to the lens and is stuck on infinity). I went to the street and got to do what I seem to do best (because I’m a coward who doesn’t photograph people): silly planimetric street typologies.

This public domain photo of the whaling ship Chance aground at Bluff, New Zealand, in 1902 is the most haunting image I’ve seen all day.