Archive for April, 2014
The man, the legend DJ Jeff Phantom has been hard at work in the Hawaii club scene, but also creating new music. His newest creation, a bootleg of ‘La La La’ is one for the book, and another in the long resume of the Phantom legacy. For the next week, the track is only available here. take a listen to the track below.
The great American Past-Time, baseball has been around for quite a while. Many have gained success, and seen triumph while playing one of the most popular sports known to man. James Bennett has immortalized some of these stars with his own unique brand of illustration… Check the method.
A Justice League feature film is not only officially on track today, but has also announced a director. The Wall Street Journal reports that Man of Steel helmer Zack Snyder will make the ensemble blockbuster his follow-up to 2016’s Batman vs. Superman. The Man of Steel sequel will shoot back-to-back with JLA movie. “It will be a further expansion of this universe,” Warner Bros. president of worldwide production Greg Silverman tells the outlet. “’Superman vs Batman’ will lead into ‘Justice League.’” Although no Justice League cast is official at this stage, the project is likely to again star Henry Cavill as Superman, Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Ray Fisher as Cyborg (with a view that other JLAers are expected to be announced in the future).
We’re all familiar with ant colonies, where every tiny creature is running around doing just what it needs to. Well it looks like SRI International has taken inspiration from the giant mounds of insects, to create their own swarms of tiny worker robots that can put together mechanical assemblies and electronic circuits.
Diamagnetic Micro Manipulation (DM3) uses tiny magnets that move under a circuit board, to get the micro-robots to follow a set pattern based on a set of preprogrammed instructions. The system can be set up so just one or a couple of robots are working together, or you can have giant groups of them moving together in sync like some bizarre gymnastics routine. Despite their tiny size, the robots can move up to a foot in a single second, so they can haul around your micro manufacturing supplies pretty swiftly.
SRI says that DM3 can be used for prototyping parts, electronics assembly, biotech lab-on-a-chip experiments, and assembling small mechanical systems in hostile environments. Eventually they plan to scale up the technology, by developing a manufacturing head containing thousands of the little buggers that can build much larger assemblies.
As you might expect, the funding comes from the military, and is part of DARPA’s Open Manufacturing program.
Check out the video where you can see swarms of the micro-robots moving in unison, and then as a couple of them work together to build some pretty amazing truss structures. They even manage to dispense the super glue used to hold the rods together without getting it all over their fingers and sticking everything together.
Check out the Aqua Expedition steam, you will enjoy a chic boutique hotel that floats on Amazon. Yes, most people love nature but not all of us can abandon the comfort offered by large five-star hotels. But now there is Aqua Amazon Luxury Boutique Hotel Boat. This hotel-ship offers 12 luxury suits with lovely views from each one. The hotel accommodates up to 32 guests along with all the staff. 147-feet vessel was designed by well-known Peruvian architect Jordi Puig. Hotel was made from a simple boat. Jordi Puig also added to the project recreational room, hot tub on the open deck , a gym for daily exercise and fitness, and of course, a gourmet restaurant. Restaurant has its own captain – famous chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino.
Check Johammer J1, an electric motorcycle out of Austria that is styled like nothing else on the road. The work of one Johann Hammerschmid and his small team of experts, the Johammer J1 features a number of notable design decisions, including the electric motor being integrated into the rear wheel, a front wheel that uses hub-center steering and a double wishbone style front suspension mechanism, and side mirrors that offer a high-resolution display showing speed, range and other vital bits of data.
An innovative fashion watch that everyone, including the blind, can touch to tell time. Telling time shouldn’t require vision. The Bradley is a tactile timepiece that allows you to not only see what time it is, but to feel what time it is. The Bradley in this case is Navy Lt. Brad Snyder, who lost his eyesight after an IED explosion in Afghanistan, then willed his way to two gold medals in swimming at the 2012 London Paralympics. The watch can be used by a blind person or someone with sight, as it tells time via two ball bearings, with one indicating hours and the other minutes. The ball bearings are magnetically connected to a watch movement beneath the watch face, so even when they’re touched or moved, they always return to the right time with just a shake of the wrist.
Now you see it, now you don’t. This clever lamp is our latest obsession. Simply called “LIGHT“, it brings new meaning to “throwin’ shade.” Flip it on and light shines through a finely cut hole to create the illusion of a classic lamp shade shape against your wall. Minimal with a touch of humor, it’s attractive, interesting and a total conversation starter.
Emily Sears is an Australian born model who is currently based in Los Angeles, California. Growing up in the culturally diverse Melbourne,with art publishers for parents, Emily was exposed to the passion for aesthetics at a young age which over time has translated into a love for modeling beyond vanity and the superfluous. She grew up in a family of very practical and resilient Australian women, providing her with a grounded no fuss attitude, an off beat sense of humor and the fight it takes to be successful through rejection and ramen noodle diets. Having done her research a still unknown Emily shot with HARLEM PRODUCTIONS AUSTRALIA and her first shoot sold as two magazine covers. Her first cover with Australia’s highest selling men’s magazine Zoo weekly, received such positive sales feedback that she was offered a role as an advice columnist in each issue, and to date has 15 magazine covers internationally.
When writer Jessica Catcher put out her TV show workout guide via Mashable.com, we felt fit to add just a little bit to it. Watching TV doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be a couch potato. If one were to simply watch their favorite shows, and do some workout exercises while the shows were on, in theory the more TV you watch, the more of a workout you’d get. Check out our improved list of Netflix shows that could give you some of the best workouts by just following a few simple rules. Much like a drinking game, when something specific happens, you have a few actions to do… the more you watch, the better workout you get.
1. House
2. Arrested Development
3. FireFly
4. The Walking Dead
5. Game Of Thrones
6. Mad Men
7. Dr. Who
8. The X-Files
9. The Office
10. Breaking Bad
There has been a recent sect of videos being released that don’t focus mainly on the musical artist, but more on the visuals. ‘Turn Down For What’ was an exceptional example of this, and the new video Aerosol Can from Major Lazer and Pharrell is a brilliant visualization of the song. Featuring artwork from Mike Giant, the lyrics of the song are illustrated and animated in a way that brings the track to life. Check the method below.
Thump has just released a new video featuring DJ Technics where the Baltimore club don sits down with DJ Ayres to talk about the golden days of B’more. It’s future, it’s past, and it’s effect on modern culture. As a DJ who grew up listening to DMV area music (D.C., Maryland, Virginia), this is an interesting look into the music that some were never introduced to, and others will never forget.
As the smoke barely clears on the Icelandic Volcano, one brand is already seeking to capitalize on all the chaos and disruption caused by Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull. (I think thats how you spell it). Romain Jerome introduces the Eyjafjallajökull-DNA, a unique-piece memento of the eruption that tortured air travelers and newsreaders the world over. Like the other pieces in the DNA series the Eyjafjallajökull-DNA incorporates an element of the event it is celebrating in its design.
Just as the Moondust-DNA featured actual dust from the moon on the dial, so too does the Eyjafjallajökull feature actual ash and rock from the volcano. What is truly special, however, is the remarkable effect Romain Jerome has been able to achieve with the design of the dial. It actually gives the appearance that hot lava is bubbling just below the surface, ready to unleash its full force at any second. The piece is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity confirming that the volcanic rock and the ash used to create it do indeed come from the infamous volcano.
Irish researchers have achieved a breakthrough in the production of ‘wonder material’ graphene. Scientists at the AMBER, a materials science centre at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, have discovered a way to produce the material in industrial quantities. What makes “Graphene” so incredible you may ask? The substance is one the strongest known with a section 1mm thick being 200 times stronger than steel and a superconductor of electricity more than 1000 times more effective than copper. It’s also 97.3 per cent transparent and extremely bendable.
Until now, it was extremely difficult to produce because it is essentially a single-atom thick sheets of carbon made from graphite. In mass quantities, graphene could potentially revolutionize many parts of our lives, from providing the next step in battery technology, biomedical sensors, water filtration, to even photovoltaic cells used in solar panels The Dublin findings are to be published in the Nature Materials publication, heralded as a ‘global breakthrough’. “This shows how industry and academic collaboration can lead to research of the highest calibre, with real commercial applications,” Prof Jonathan Coleman from AMBER said. “Graphene has been identified as a life changing material and to be involved at this stage of development is a wonderful achievement.”
Minister for Research and Innovation Sean Sherlock praised the team’s work, saying producing graphene in mass quantities is “something that USA, China, Australia, UK, Germany and other leading nations have all been striving for and have not yet achieved”. Thomas Swan Ltd have now signed a contract with AMBER to scale-up production. The project was part of the Graphene Flagship, spanning 17 countries with 126 academics as well as industry partners working on a common goal, and was part of the €1 billion research project announced by the EU, of which Ireland received 1 per cent.
A simple breakdown of what graphene based products could do for our world reads just like this…
Plug your phone in for five seconds and it would be all charged up. The downside here is that you won’t be able to use a dead phone as an excuse anymore.
What if we actually had a clear solution for cleaning up the tainted water near Fukushima? Scientists at Rice say graphene could potentially clump together radioactive waste, making disposal is a breeze.
Water, water everywhere and EVERY drop drinkable. MIT mindshave a plan for a graphene filter covered in tiny holes just big enough to let water through and small enough to keep salt out, making salt water safe for consumption.
Touchscreens that use graphene as their conductor could beslapped onto plastic rather than glass. That would mean super thin, unbreakable touchscreens and never worrying about shattering your phone ever again.
Just a single sheet of graphene could produce headphones that have a frequency response comparable to a pair of Sennheisers, as some scientists at UC Berkeley recently showed us.
High-power graphene supercapacitors would make batteries obsolete. You wouldn’t have to charge your phone for years.
Graphene could pave the way for bionic devices in living tissues that could be connected directly to your neurons. So people with spinal injuries, for example, could re-learn how to use their limbs.
What is it exactly that makes a movie antagonist memorable? It’s not just how many innocent people they dispense of, their powers or abilities, or even their look. Sorry to say, but the Matrix 2 twins (pictured above) are NOT good villains. After the 2014 Oscars, DJ Storm got together with some friends, and discussed the heroes montage presented at the award show. There were many a hero that could have been added to the list, but more importantly it was noted that without incredible villains, those heroes wouldn’t have had a chance to show what they were made out of. So in the first custom djstormsblog video, we present to you our list of SOME of cinema’s most memorable villains. [NOTE: Horror Movie baddies were specifically left out, we didn’t forget about them. And this video does have some foul language.]
Lacoste is launching a bright, glow-in-the-dark edition of its Lacoste L714s aviator-style sunglasses. These special edition sunglasses are outfitted in a rainbow of bright colors: yellow and orange or blue, green and purple. The neon frames are made of a special plastic that absorbs sunlight and artificial light in the day. The result: trendy glow-in-the-dark frames at night. Lacoste also equipped these new glasses with mirrored lenses, another of the season’s top trends. The next-generation Lacoste L714s sunglasses will be available from June at €115 (around $160).
GM’s flagship supercar, the first headline unveiling of this year’s Detroit Motor show, potentially has enough in the tank to challenge anything from Ferrari or Lamborghini. The Z06 may look a lot like the standard Stingray, which itself was officially unveiled at the 2013 event, but it is extremely different where it counts most, under the hood. The extra power is thanks to a lightweight but potent supercharger that forces the car’s 6.2-liter V8 to pump out over 625hp. Making sure that the car doesn’t disintegrate under that extra performance are aluminum cylinder heads and titanium intake valves. Chevrolet has even taken a leaf out of its European competitors’ books and reexamined the engine’s weight, rods and pistons.
Making sure that power doesn’t disappear in an automatic gearbox’s torque converter, the Z06 will be coming with a seven-speed manual transmission as standard. However, for those that like the full track-day effect, an eight-speed paddle shift unit will also be an optional extra. But maybe the best thing is that because the new car is so rigid, the roof panel can still be removed for open air motoring without turning the car into the automotive equivalent of jelly. However, Chevrolet points out that there will still be a slight difference in handling when the panel is out. Potential owners will be happy to hear that the extra rigidity and performance has been paired with bigger brakes and with Chevrolet’s Magnetic Selective Ride Control dampers (an option on the standard Stingray) which will be fitted as standard on the Z06 when it appears in dealerships in 2015.
Listening to Birdman and Lil Wayne’s “Fire Flame Spitter” will have a brand new meaning after you hear it with the Pyro Board. The board itself is nothing more than a Ruben’s Tube (not a Rubix Cube) that’s stacked horizontally, creating a plane of fire spots that are influenced by sound waves. Seem a bit complex? It’s broken down incredible simply in the video below. Check it out and be amazed.
Beatport has been an incredible resource for DJ’s since its creation in 2004. Beatport allows your to manage your music collection within a free application built by DJs for DJs. Create and manage playlists, add extended metadata, tag your music with attributes, use advance filtering tools, and shop with multiple carts. Download it for free at http://pro.beatport.com.
There’s something about putting the word ‘Super’ in front of the title “Model” that elevates the common perception, and the new i-D video reminds us why. Featuring a galaxy of 26 stellar supermodels such as Cara, Joan, Lindsey, Natalia, Xiao – alongside cheeky cameos from the likes of J.W. and Rick – Jérémie Rozan and Charlotte Stockdale’s film continues our fashion alphabets series by bringing our favourite cover winks back to life, back to reality.
I was unfamiliar with i-D until I got a look at some of their material (starting with the A-Z of Dance). But after having check them out, they are a nice spot to stop for the very best in fashion and culture – supermodels, pop stars and designers in original films from our favorite directors. Check out some more of their work below.
As the release date for X-Men: Days Of Future Past draws nearer, a brand new trailer has just surfaced. This is not to be confused with the second theatrical trailer was released, opening with a post-apocolyptic future, and rouge bands of mutants running for survival. This new trailer seems to showcase the other side of that coin, the past. Take a look below to see the seeds of what happens when Wolverine speaks to the young Professor X, and who helps break Magneto out of the slammer.
Since the release of Jurassic Park we’ve been asking if de-extinction was possible. Today however, we’ve come a huge step closer to bringing recently extinct species back to life. Researchers have announced that they’ve grown early-stage embryos of the gastric-brooding frog, a species that has been extinct since 1983. At a TEDxDeExtinction event, University of New South Wales paleontologist Michael Archer announced the advance by the so-called Lazarus project. The bizarre gastric-brooding frog, the female of which incubated the prejuvenile stages of its offspring in its stomach, disappeared from the wild in 1979 and went extinct a few years later. However, Adelaide frog researcher Mike Tyler froze specimens of the frog prior to its extinction, leaving the door open for the species’ possible resurrection.
Scientists extracted DNA from a frozen frog specimen, and employed somatic-cell nuclear transfer, the same process used to clone still-living animals. The team took eggs from the distantly related great barred frog, deactivated that frog’s DNA with UV light, and inserted the gastric-brooding frog’s DNA into the eggs. The cells inside the eggs began dividing, becoming blastulas. The embryos died after a few days, long before developing into tadpoles, but DNA tests confirmed that they were gastric-brooding frog embryos, and Archer says they have high hopes for seeing this frog up and hopping soon.
Breeding programs are in place to attempt to bring certain extinct species back through selective breeding, and some selective breeding has been successful, but this is the first time that the embryo of an extinct species has been grown using this technique. However, lets not forget the Pyrenean ibex was technically the first cloned extinct animal because the clone was born (and unfortunately died) shortly after the species went extinct. The reason that the Lazarus project team is calling their frog the “first,” I believe, is that the DNA from the Pyrenean ibex was extracted from a live specimen, so the process began before the species went extinct.
Future drops the most anticipated track from his upcoming album, Honest, in stores April 22nd.
DJ Premier is the latest Serato Icon. A true cornerstone of hip-hop and a key figure in the development of the culture. An era-defining DJ and producer, his signature style was a blueprint for the underground and influenced a generation. Probably most well known as one half of Gang Starr, there’s a large chunk of an entire genre that he’s directly responsible for. He’s a legend for die-hard hip-hop fiends but also a household name.
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