Big Fat Ostrich

Guess what time it is. Time for some Ostrich News!

This week, we received a most egg-cellent email here at Big Fat Ostrich. The email came from photographer Simon Pizzey from Stroud, Gloucestershire. Simon, 45, is a press photographer for Gloucestershire Media and has been shooting  for 25 years.  You might say that Simon is the kind of photographer who thinks outside the darkroom.

Now, if you know anything about pinhole cameras, you’ll know that they’re very simple cameras employing the bare basics of photography to put together.  Simon has built them out of various containers including a Pringles tube, but the Ostrich Egg camera was a new one for him, and quite possibly a world’s first.  So what do you shoot with an Ostrich Egg?

You shoot ostriches!

But why go through the trouble of making a pinhole camera when you can buy a simple digital one for like, 50 bucks?

Simon explains, “My digital computerized camera produces fairly predictable results, but simple pinhole cameras constantly surprise you with the images they produce. I use pinhole, or lens less cameras to teach the basics of photography and the science of light to school children, students learn a lot more about light and the nature of photography this way rather than using digital cameras straight away.”

But as simple as a pinhole camera may be to make, getting your ostrich Mona Lisa is no easy feat: “The exposure need for the image was about 5 to 10 seconds, ostriches tend to stand still for about two, they constantly move their necks making it very difficult to capture a true likeness.”

With perseverance however, he gets the shot (click for full size):

And to achieve these results was no walk in the park. Ok, it was sort of a walk on a farm, but you know what we mean. Ostriches may not be too bright, but they can be intimidating:

“I’ve swam with sharks which was a far calmer experience, ostriches are basically dinosaurs they move like the velociraptors off Jurassic Park, they can give a very nasty peck and cause serious injury with a sudden kick, you need to keep looking over your shoulder, they creep up on you in pairs.”

Yikes! Well we’re glad you made it out unscathed.

I finally saw District 9 today and I have to say that I was completely pleased with the plot, acting and overall look of the film. The director avoided the sparkling Hollywood sheen in favour of a dirtier look while making good use of the hand-held camera. No doubt it’s not a Hollywood flick. This is a South African production which pulls plenty into its plot from its own unstable past (present).

I’d love to go ahead and spoil the movie here (come on, you must know what it’s about by now), but I’m just not that kind of reviewer. Let’s just say that District 9 is kind of like Independence Day, Cry Freedom, Iron Man, and Robocop all rolled into one (without the crappy over-the-top attitude of Independence Day). The aliens are awesome in their streamlined cthuluesque way. The acting is tight and the faux doc style is believable. I fully bought into it. Go see it.

m.

I did three very important things this weekend: I finished Resident Evil 5 and Castle Crashers with my good buddy Jerome, and I caught a fucking cold (hopefully not from my good buddy Jerome, because that would mean he drugged me and french kissed me in my sleep). The first 2 things were awesome though. Here are some thoughts on both games.

Resident Evil 5 took us quite a while to finish, but the pace of the game was still pretty fluid. The game is a perfect blend of action, puzzle solving, equipment management and exploration. The graphics are great, the cut scenes are well crafted, the difficulty is generally spot on. BUT the bad guys are fucking awful. The first boss dude is an annoying Joker type psycho who just made me angry. Then there’s the braless chick with a russian accent. COME ON! Those went out of style in the 70s goddammit! And the last guy is just the worst final boss ever.

Without spoiling anything, let’s just say the very last part of the game almost ruined my enjoyment of the whole game. The button mashing gimmicks and the fact that the bad dude just won’t fucking die almost made me destroy the disc. But all in all, still a great great couch co-op game.

As for Castle Crashers, it’s a RPG-ified Double Dragon style brawler, with loot, levels, magic powers and awesome cartoony graphics. We played through the whole thing in 2 sittings. It was tons of fun mixed with some tiny peaks of frustration.

The frustration all comes from the fact that the game is a bit too 2D at times, and it’s easy to miss targets or to even get confused about where your character is when there’s a lot going on in the screen at the same time. But other than that, it is a total blast to play. The humor, the great fighting, the epic action and the awesome music make Castle Crashers a must-own Xbox Live Arcade title.

I told you a couple of weeks ago about me buying a PSP just to be able to play Soul Calibur Broken Destiny. Well I finally got Broken Destiny and I have things to say about it. Good things mostly. Things that I will say in my next post, adequately titled “Tiny Reviews – Soul Calibur Broken Destiny extravaganza”.

That’s it for today.

- Dan

And yes, THE best bottle design ever.

Wyborowa (Exquisite) is one smooooth Polish vodka, unlike that turpentine Smirnoff’s crap. To be honest, the last time I had Smirnoff’s was when I raided my parents liquor cabinet and at that age, all alcohol was harsh. Now I’m not saying I ever took a drink before I was legal, but I’m not saying I didn’t either.

Back to our twisty bottle.

The bottle itself was designed by Frank Gehry, famed architect of Manhattan’s Guggenheim, and a few others around the world. It’s kind of nice to have a Frank Gehry in your home, or freezer, or however you like to store your vodka. Every bottle is in fact different with its own little idiosyncrasy, so check them out at your local alcohol store. The bottles do not fit snugly next to one another.

We shall file this one under ‘Food’ since it’s a consumable.

It Might Look Like David Suzuki

I’ve always been a fan of Jimmy Page, even though he started to look like David Suzuki sometime in the mid 1990′s.

The Edge had some influence over me on a few of the early U2 albums. Later on…hmm…not so much. Ok, Achtung Baby did it for me for almost a year.

And I have to credit Jack White with somehow doing new things with well overdone blues classics, as well as original White Stripes stuff. Plus he puts out an album like every 6 months. You might say that he’s the Stephen King of putting out albums!

Anyhow, all three of them are in In Might Get Loud, which is awesome. They discuss their gear, playing styles, and you know, general guitar geekery. It’s a guitar player’s wet dream is what it is.

I have to say, it is definitely THE most awesome movie of the year that I haven’t seen yet. So guess what I’m doing this weekend, or maybe next weekend if I don’t have time this weekend? Oh yeah, man.

m.

I have to describe myself as a non-TV watching TV lover. I don’t have the patience for the crappy sitcoms, and most of the reality shows are just so trite. They suck monkey elbows. In a big way.

Mythbusters however, I can never get enough of. I want to work there. I want to blow up stuff in the name of science. I want to spend weeks proving that a human cannot catch a bullet in their teeth (that show was awesome). It’s fascinating stuff and you can always win that argument with that guy at the bar by saying, “well on Mythbusters…”

Anyway, all that to say that this rocket sled is awesome:

Man, I love Tabbouleh (Tabouli) salad, especially with a great Shish Taouk sandwich.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be singing this one in my head for days. And I will never ever be able to order tabbouleh with a straight face ever again.

Tabbouleh, Tabbouleh, Tabbouleh
Make me shake, shake, shake my booty
Eat it with lots of falafel
Eat it on top of a camel

Enjoy!

To keep with our intellectual theme (I know, the last post is hard to top), I’m going to let you know about what I’m reading these days.

Higher (Neal Bascomb, ISBN 0-385-50660-0) lays out the rivalry between architects Craig Severance and William Van Alen, former partners, now locked in a race to design and construct the tallest building in the world at any cost. Severance is employed to build the Manhattan Company Building (now The Trump Building). Van Alen is designing the Chrysler building for Walter Chrysler.

At the time of construction, the Eiffel Tower holds the height crown for tallest man-made anything, ever. The American architects and money-men will have none of it. America must have the tallest. After all, this is the 1920′s where everybody and their dog is making fortunes on the stock market. Monuments must therefore be built to praise the most powerful men. Except it’s really not about praise at all, but ego.

Still, Higher offers us incredible insight into the details of modern day skyscraper construction. In order to put up these huge buildings, the limits of engineering were pushed and new techniques were created. At the end of 1929, the men who commissioned these buildings were so wealthy, money had no meaning anymore. Chrysler himself put up much of the money himself, giving Van Alen a blank cheque to just “go nuts”.

Bascomb goes into great detail about how these buildings were put up. Considering their size, they were both built in about 1 year, including the digging of the foundations. In todays terms, that’s a completely insane time frame. Keep in mind that wages were low and the builders gave everything they had to meet demands. Remember too, that in those days you could be fired for the most trivial of reasons. These guys had serious work ethic, and families to feed.

So who wins the race to the top? Well that depends on your perspective. Something bigger will always come along, and by the time these two giants were nearing completion, the Empire State building was already growing like the huge phallus that it is.

This is a fascinating read. For non-fiction, it’s full of drama: power, intense rivalry, and the debauchery of the 1920′s.

m.