[Alexwlchan] noticed something funny. He knew that not putting a size for a video embedded in a web page would cause his page to jump around after the video loaded. So he put the right numbers in. But with some videos, the page would still refresh its layout. He learned that not all video sizes […]
Although it might seem like there was a sudden step change from analog to digital sometime in the late 1900s, it was actually a slow, gradual change from things like record players to iPods or from magnetic tape to hard disk drives. Some of these changes happened slowly within the same piece of hardware, too. […]
Few of us keep big old cathode ray tubes in the house anymore, but we can still appreciate the form factor of the classic TV. Indeed, the Tinytron from [t0mg] is a neat little tchotchke in this vein — a miniature TV that you could just about fit on a keyring. [t0mg] wanted this project […]
When the files on the Titan submersible disaster were published, most people skimmed for drama. Hackers, however, would likely zoom in on the hardware autopsy. [Scott Manley] actually did this. He faced a hacker’s nightmare: three crushed PCs, bent SSDs, and an encrypted SD card from a camera that survived six kilometres under pressure, all […]
The basic principles of a motion picture film camera should be well understood by most readers — after all, it’s been well over a hundred years since the Lumière brothers wowed 19th century Paris with their first films. But making one yourself is another matter entirely, as they are surprisingly complex and high-precision devices. This […]
[Brian Haidet] published on his AlphaPhoenix channel a laser beam recorded at 2 billion frames per second. Well, sort of. The catch? It’s only a one pixel by one pixel video, but he repeats it over and over to build up the full rendering. It’s a fascinating experiment and a delightful result. For this project […]
In the 1930s, as an alternative to celluloid, some Japanese companies printed films on paper (kami firumu), often in color and with synchronized 78 rpm record soundtracks. Unfortunately, between the small number produced, varying paper quality, and the destruction of World War II, few of these still survive. To keep more of these from being […]
Sometimes it seems like there’s nothing Emacs can’t do. Which, of course, is why some people love it, and some people hate it. Apparently, [mbork] loves it and devised a scheme to show a video (with a little help), accept cut-in and out marks, and then use ffmpeg to output the video clip, ready for […]
Over on his YouTube channel the vivacious [Stephen Hawes] tells us that we never need to buy solder stencils again! A big claim! And he is quick to admit that his printed solder paste isn’t presently quite as precise as solder stencils, but he is reporting good success with his technique so far. [Stephen] found […]
Over on their substack [ObsoleteSony] has a new article: The Last Disc: How Blu-ray Won the War but Lost the Future. In this article the author takes us through the history of Blu-ray media and how under Sony’s stewardship it successfully defeated the competing format of the time, HD DVD. Sony started behind the eight […]