Tinselman

Robyn Miller's AMA

I had a blast exposing my innermost secrets at yesterday's AMA! I answered a ton of provoking questions about Myst/Riven, some unexpected questions about my debut film, The Immortal Augustus Gladstone, but only one question about the elusive and extraordinary long horse. Thanks to everyone who attended!

 

Dreams of a Future Moon

The above is an artist's conception (1969) of how, according to National Geographic, "man may one day colonize his newest frontier." Wouldn't it have been nice?! Answer: yes.

Dreams of Space, one of my favorite blogs, just published the above illustration and the School Bulliten that goes along with it. Total eye candy. 

 

Future Shopping - 1966

The creators of this 1966 video predicted that we would (in the future) be using home computers to shop and bank from home. They were right! It's all surprisingly accurate... except for the weird chauvinism.

Teenage Engineering

It won't be out for awhile, but I'm already salivating for the OP-1, a small but surprisingly powerful controller-synth. At 4 x 11 inches, it's mega portable, sounds amazing, and is oh so styling.

Here's what Teenage Engineering, the designers of the synth, have to say about it...

OP-1 stands for Operator 1 and is a pocket size controller for your favorite software sequencer. Connect it to your laptop and it lets you control your sequencers transport with the common play, stop, rec, forward and rewind. Use it to control your software synthesizers with the 4 rotary encoders and 16 dedicated quick keys for fast selections.

There's also a built in motion sensor; you can shake the thing around to change the timbre of the sounds. Or sample beats directly from the built-in FM radio (how cool). You can even "memorize a tune by whistling it into the built-in microphone." All in all, it's pretty amazing what they fit into this thing. 

Interestingly enough... they're not mentioning a price.

• TE-10

• FM Synthesis

Link to OP-1 site

A City in a Day

More procedurally generated cities. When will it end?

• earlier: City Engine

Thanks, Rangachari

City Engine

I'm barely even sure what to say about this stuff. Yes, they are just plain cool... that's obvious. But more than that, I wonder if both products might just represent a sea change in the way we create. 

Not much description is necessary... just watch. First, City Engine, which procedurally constructs complex 3D cities. And then ILoveSketch, which allows artists to draw 3D models with––

Nevermind... just watch. And thanks Kevin, for pointing both products out!

Cool Car

The Honda Puyo concept car, announced at the 2007 Tokyo Auto show.

Right off the bat, I should admit... the vast majority of cars bore me. They all look pretty much the same. Concept cars bore me too... they all look like they were designed by the same designer. But the Puyo manages to adopt a retro-future personality while re-thinking the idea of a car.

The idea behind the car: to create a closer relationship, or understanding, between driver and vehicle (for people like myself). To this end, the car was designed to look like a pet. Which reminds me of another time honored car with which we're all familiar...

But unlike the VW Bug, the Puyo has a gel skin. It's true... the white skin of the car is actually soft to the touch. And all lights are hidden, directly beneath the surface of this skin. At the very least, it's an inviting concept.

More about the Puyo:

• powered by fuel cell technology
• glows in the dark
• spins 360 degrees, while staying in place
• operated with a joystick

But alas, even if if the Puyo is ever brought to wider production – an eventuality I highly doubt – I'll be stuck admiring it from the passenger seat or the side of the road (I have epilepsy... I can't drive).

More info and photos

Redesign Experimental

I forgot to mention, I've set up my new gallery as an experiment... you get to name the images. The site looks for the most frequently occurring words of your comments; those words become the ever-evolving title for any particular piece.

Redesign

My redesigned Tinselman website is now up and running. Nothing that fancy... straight too the point and easy to navigate. The new gallery has a few new images (which are all displayed in a variety of sizes), like the painting above. enjoy...

The Mother of All Demos

A number of years ago, in 1988, my brother and I were showing our first product, The Manhole, at the HyperExpo in San Francisco. We built The Manhole with a hypermedia tool called HyperCard, similar in many ways to today's web (at a time when the web didn't yet exist). HyperCard served, not only as the first wide-scale implementation of hypermedia, but also as an important precursor to the web.

While we were doing our thing, mostly just enjoying the Expo (it was our first intro to a software show), we couldn't help but notice an enigmatic group, run by one Ted Nelson, calling themselves Project Xanadu. They made themselves known by roaming the floor in mysterious black t-shirts, each t-shirt silk-screened with a large "X". How curious... like rebels amidst a HyperCard majority. Who were these men in black?

It might have been the first time I heard of the words hyperlink, hypertext or hypermedia . It was definitely the first I learned that the "link" concepts, so central to HyperCard, were not original inventions of Bill Atkinson. And it was the first I learned that these concepts, so central to today's web, were older than I was! 1965 to be exact... and the brainchild of aforementioned Mr. Ted Nelson, the leader of these Xanadu crusaders.

What I didn't know until recently, is that a stunted version of hypertext had been demonstrated as early as 1968. This was no run-of-the-mill boring-vision-of-the-future demo. This was, simply put, "The Mother of All Demos". Steven Levy first gave it that name and it seems to have stuck: The Mother of All Demos (and oh I really love that name). Douglas Engelbart's whirling vision of the future; it was the first public use of a mouse, as well as examples of cutting, copying, pasting, teleconferencing, video conferencing, email, and... hypertext. It's just too damn much for 1968! From Steven Levy in his book, "Insanely Great, The Life and Times of the Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything":

... a calming voice from Mission Control as the truly final frontier whizzed before their eyes. It was the mother of all demos. Engelbart's support staff was as elaborate as one would find at a modern Grateful Dead concert. ...

• click here to watch Engelbart demonstration.

• click here for a flyer of the original demo.

Update: Thanks to Kevin for telling me about Belgian inventor, Paul Otlet who, unbelievably, invented hyperlinking decades before Ted Nelson. Read more on Kevin's True Film's blog, or click images below.

Clip from the documentary about Paul Otlet, "The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World". (video)

In this google tech talk, Alex Wright explores the heritage of the web. (video)