What I’m Reading

Okay, sorry for the sensationalist headline. While it’s true that members of the Japanese military are conscripted into building gigantic snow sculptures, it’s viewed as a team-building exercise, not punishment. Since 1955, troops in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have been erecting them for the annual Sapporo Snow Festival.

This year’s festival is currently underway, and the JSDF 11th Brigade spent a month putting up this Disney-sponsored masterpiece paying homage to the Dark Side of the Force. Even cooler, Lucasfilm Ltd. documented the construction with these shots:

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

Here’s a quick video shot by an attendee, showing what this thing looks like from the ground:

At night the festival organizers light it up with this kitschy light show:

Would’ve been cooler if they actually blew the Death Star up at the end, using real explosives.

Anyways, next time your kid tries to make a snowman, show ’em this entry and suggest that perhaps they could try a little harder.

Via Quartz

RFID and Bluetooth technologies exist, and eventually someone’s going to get rich off of it by creating a consumer-friendly way to track objects. When people can use little tags to easily locate of oft-misplaced items and roaming pets, they undoubtedly will.

But three things need to happen first. One is that the price of the tags needs to come down. Two is that the size of the tags needs to come down. And three is that someone needs to Apple-ize the manner in which the tracking is presented, creating an easy-to-use, intuitive interface.

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

The developers of Pixie have nailed the third thing. Take a look at their system:

In addition to forgetful consumers, I think the Pixie folks could have a huge hit on their hands by targeting gear-heavy professionals. In the photo studio I run, crews arrive with massive amounts of equipment in Pelican cases and all of it needs to be tracked; I’ve seen shoots derailed because the assistant forgot to bring the backup camera battery. In a city where Best Buy is a few blocks away that’s no big deal, but in the field it could be disastrous. Being able to use your phone to ensure you’ve got everything before you set out would save time and money in the long run.

However, I think it’s not quite ready yet. Ten dollars per tag seems a bit pricey, and I believe the tags are a little too big for mass uptake. But as technology marches on both of those things will come down; it’s the third thing, the interface, that’s arguably the most important one, and the Pixie folks seem to have gotten that right.

A hacked account can happen to the best of us, but it’s a bit embarrassing when you’re an executive of the service in question. Enter Anthony Noto, Chief Financial Officer of Twitter. He’s already suffered a “DM fail” — accidentally tweeting a messa…

Samuel Lee of Prince Armory has created a brilliant leather suit of medieval armor that looks like the one Darth Vader wears in Star Wars. The amazing amount of detail, evil black leather, and deadly red accents really place the famous sci-fi Sith Lord in the Middle Ages. Even more photos are available to view on the Prince Armory website.

Conceptually this was a very challenging project. When you work on a very iconic character you have to think long and hard about how much liberty you want to take with the design. On one hand you don’t want it to play it too safe and have it a borderline carbon copy; that would be boring. And on the other you don’t want to go so far it is no longer recognizable or make design decisions that puts the fan base up in arms.

So I settled on trying to capture a number of the design elements within the classic Vader such as the banding patterns and many design lines, and then expanded into the fantasy realm with the red inlays and articulated armor designs.

The design scheme overall is of course very alternate universe. Ultimately I was going for a blend of Sci-Fi, Medieval, and Mystical Fantasy.

images via Prince Armory

via Geeks Are Sexy

A new study has found that Twitter can predict rates of coronary heart disease better than traditional methods.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that expressions of negative emotions such as anger, stress and fatigue in a county’s tweets were associated with higher heart disease risk.

Conversely, positive emotions such as excitement and optimism were associated with lower risk.

Negative emotional language and topics, such as words like “hate” or expletives, remained strongly correlated with heart disease mortality, even after variables like income and education were taken into account. Positive emotional language showed the opposite correlation, suggesting that optimism and positive experiences, words like “wonderful” or “friends,” may be protective against heart disease.

When the data was compared with previous methods, Twitter was as or more accurate.

With billions of users writing daily about their daily experiences, thoughts and feelings, the world of social media represents a new frontier for psychological research. Such data could be an invaluable public health tool if able to be tied to real-world outcomes.

Twitter seems to capture a lot of the same information that you get from health and demographic indicators, but it also adds something extra. So predictions from Twitter can actually be more accurate than using a set of traditional variables.

(Source: Penn News.)