For reference, here are my previous posts on MJB and their ads:

• Some Old Ads Never Die
• Again, Why?
• Why? Because.

Now walking down Third street to the office I happened to look up and guess what I saw? “MJB”!

I remember from reading “Coffee, Martinis and San Francisco” by Ruth Bransten McDougall that after the 1906 earthquake the MJB company rebuilt their San Francisco warehouse and headquarters south of Market – and as it turns out, on Third and Townsend. The building still stands, and the MJB logo seems to have been faithfully re-painted over the last century.

I doubt that there is anything else about the building that is left from MJB’s tenure here, but it was a nice surprise to see the logo on one more building in San Francisco.

The ZX81 can easily be credited as the milestone that launched the computer revolution in Europe – Apple IIs and Atari 800s were very expensive in Europe at that time, and there wasn’t much else yet that could inspire young people to take an interest in computers.

And on March 5th 1981, everything changed. The ZX81 was ridiculously cheap, about $100 – a feat only possible by accepting some hair-raising compromises: 1K of RAM, which was also used as shared video memory. A tiny, flat pressure sensitive keyboard. Memory extensions that were plugged straight onto exposed copper on the main board. A tape drive mass storage system that had to be operated without feedback. No sound. No color.

But the machine sold incredibly well and it introduced a generation of teenagers all across Europe to programming. It would be superseded within a year by the much more advanced ZX Spectrum, but for that one glorious year it was a roaring success and Sinclair could hardly produce enough of the little black boxes.

It was the first computer that I owned, and I have happy memories of spending nights typing game listings in Basic out of computer magazines into the little machine, always careful not to push the keys too hard to avoid kicking loose the memory extension. We’ve certainly come a long way in 30 years…

Happy Birthday, ZX81!

…and here it is!

Amanda did a great job with this picture – I really love the way she captured the dark & wet atmosphere of that evening, with the glittery lights of broadway reflected in the rain-splattered street.

The textures in this painting are amazing – it’s certainly something I haven’t seen done in watercolors before.

Great job, Amanda!

The film can be best described as a meditation on architecture, photography and the sense of space and depth in the world around us.

Alex Roman recreated several modern buildings as 3D renderings and then uses some quite amazing craftsmanship to give the viewer a sense of depth with very subtle animations where the virtual camera slowly floats through the buildings, with ever so slight changes in focus.

Many of the effects are so subtle, especially in the first half of the film that I didn’t even believe that I am looking at CG rendered versions of the buildings. Alex has a great sense for lighting and clearly must have spent many hours tuning the lighting set ups to create extremely photorealistic settings. Only in the second half of the film, when he introduces surrealistic effects, does it become apparent that we have been looking at computer graphics all along.

Here is a video with some of the scenes as compositing breakdowns in case you want to see a peek under the hood of several of the scenes in the film.

It should be mentioned that Alex also created the soundtrack for the film, making this all around a major tour de force.

Here is a gorgeous look at the 56 ethnic groups (long page with big photos), from the western deserts to the eastern ocean shore and from Russian enclaves in the far north to tribal villages in the jungle near the Burmese border.

I wasn’t able to find much information about this amazing photo shoot, but it is obvious that serious funding and much work was involved in creating these unique tableaus – each of the photos must have taken several days to prepare and clearly much care was taken in selecting the members of each community and in encouraging them to put on their traditional clothes.

Gosfield manufactured the life story for an imaginary 1960s French singer, complete with posters, records, many magazine covers and even a music video and documentary material. All of it done to excess.

I would have loved to see the pieces in real life and really hope this show makes it to the Bay Area sometime – the style of the artwork on the records and the magazine covers captures the feeling of the 60s in every detail and the range of the created evidence of Gigi’s existence is amazing.

Gosfield spent more than a year working on this project and not only must have photoshopped his heart out, he also commissioned songs to be written and created a short film documentary about the life and times of Gigi.

What is interesting to me is that while browsing through the pictures and looking at the videos, knowing all along that this is fake history, every now and then doubt sets in – maybe Gigi Gaston did exist! And if so, where is Gigi now?

Their latest episode – Blood And Fire – has amazing production values way beyond any of the original Star Trek episodes and probably even better than most of what you’ve seen on Next Generation. The torrent site at the link above has both parts 1 and 2 of the double episode.

The story of Blood And Fire is very deep and is based on a script that was originally developed for a never-realized Next Generation episode. It deals in one story arc with homosexuality, and in a pretty action-packed main story line with a rescue from a bloodworm-infested research vessel while the Enterprise is under attack by Klingons.

But what is really standing out is the technical quality of the show – the props, the lighting and the color coordination are spot-on and the special effects are quite impressive.

Atari 800 (wikipedia.org)

The Atari 400 and 800 were both based on the 6502 CPU and had a number of custom chips that definitely pushed the envelope in the late 70s and meant that close descendants of these machines were still being sold in the late 80s.

I very much remember the first time I saw an Atari 800 in person back in a office supply store in my hometown in Germany – it must have been 1982, when most affordable home computers where small plastic boxes with the simplest possible keyboards, often no sound, and quite often black-and-white TV video output.

The Atari 800 towered over these other machines, with cartridge ports under a neat lid in the top and the large keyboard in an extremely heavy case. And that machine was able to provide very robust graphics and amazing sound for the time.

Many hours were spent “testing” that machine and the few games available in that store, but I never bought an Atari 800 until much later when I got myself an Atari 800XL in the mid-80s when they were on sale for ridiculously little money after the Atari ST series machines had come out.

The 8-bit Ataris, during most of their production time, were overrun by cheaper competition, chief among them of course the Commodore C64, which had a slightly simpler architecture and a cheaper price, which helped in attracting huge sales numbers worldwide and as a result of that the full attention of software developers everywhere.

There were many great early arcade game conversions for the Atari 800 and I have very fond memories of both Mr. Do and Dig Dug among others. An original release for this machine was Lucasfilm’s Rescue on Fractalus – which made the most of the limited 8-Bit machine and certainly was one of the highlights of this era.

For some reason I hadn’t seen any announcements for this one, so dragging the hardcover book to the checkout counter filled me with glee. And it’s good – started reading it and like it a lot.

At the same time, I got my copy of Memories of the Future by Wil Wheaton. I’ve read most of the original posts that make up the base material for this book, and I already know it’s great. So I’m going to try and read it slowly to enjoy all the nuances of the final, edited book.

OK, enough blogging – I have two books to read! 

Mesmerizing and inspirational don’t even begin to describe the art behind this video. And what really blows me away is the confidence and fast, flawless performance of the artist. Check it out: