Minuscule (TV series)
Minuscule is a French series of short video animations giving "a bird's eye view of insects' day to day existence, distorted through a burlesque, yet poetic lens". The characters are computer-modelled in 3D and set against natural scenery. Each animation has a self-contained and usually humorous storyline. The audio is a combination of genuine insect and ambient recordings with artificial sound effects. The various protagonist insects often perform anthropomorphic activities, displaying ironically portrayed intelligence, enjoyment and, sometimes, pathos. The background settings are generally of rural France, and include farm houses, fences, cars, road surfaces, drains, gutters and garbage bins. In Season 1 episodes, humans appeared only peripherally (e.g., as mute drivers of intrusive vehicles) and large farm animals were the main reluctant witnesses to the variety of insect, spider and mollusc activities. Some Season 2 episodes depict more explicit interaction with humans. Production of a feature film that shares the same creative universe was commenced in March 2012. The feature film titled Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants, was released on January 29, 2014.
Minuscule 3686
Minuscule 3686 is an early 15th Century Venetian hand-written re-creation of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia. It is part of the Harleian Collection at the British Library.
Description
Original 2nd Century versions of Geographia typically did not survive to the High Middle Ages; early Renaissance cartographers were working from copies of copies. Examination of the codex indicates the scribe of Ms. 3686 was transcribing from an all-Latin copy. This codex is based on one of the few reprints that included the map sheets. Many other codices merely copied Book 1, which was text-only. Other scholarly sources indicate that it is near impossible to accurately create the maps from purely the text Ptolemy wrote describing how to produce the maps. Geographically-focused codices with maps often garner broad interest while those codices without maps typically only interest historians of mathematics and cartography. Despite this supposed broad appeal, very little else is easily available about Ms. 3686. The codex currently resides in the British Library but there have been very few scholarly examinations of it. Even the most well-known surveys of Ptolemaic mapping, Nordenskiöld’s Facsimile Atlas and Jesuit Priest Joseph Fisher’s Claudii Ptolemaei Geographiae Codex Urbinas Graecus, do not include Ms. 3686.
Gas
Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or compound molecules made from a variety of atoms (e.g. carbon dioxide). A gas mixture would contain a variety of pure gases much like the air. What distinguishes a gas from liquids and solids is the vast separation of the individual gas particles. This separation usually makes a colorless gas invisible to the human observer. The interaction of gas particles in the presence of electric and gravitational fields are considered negligible as indicated by the constant velocity vectors in the image. One type of commonly known gas is steam.
The gaseous state of matter is found between the liquid and plasma states, the latter of which provides the upper temperature boundary for gases. Bounding the lower end of the temperature scale lie degenerative quantum gases which are gaining increasing attention. High-density atomic gases super cooled to incredibly low temperatures are classified by their statistical behavior as either a Bose gas or a Fermi gas. For a comprehensive listing of these exotic states of matter see list of states of matter.
Gas (musician)
Gas is a music project of Wolfgang Voigt (born 1961), a Cologne, Germany-based electronic musician. Voigt cites his youthful LSD experiences in the Königsforst, a German forest situated near his hometown of Köln, as the inspiration behind his work under the name Gas. He has claimed that the intention of the project is to "bring the forest to the disco, or vice-versa".
Aliases and projects
Voigt is known for his numerous, nearly inexhaustible list of one-off projects and aliases. Of these, his best known is arguably Gas, a project that saw the marriage of ambient music and 4/4 techno.
Other names under which Voigt has released music include, but are not limited to, All, Auftrieb, Brom, C.K. Decker, Centrifugal Force, Crocker, Dextro NRG, Dieter Gorny, Digital, Dom, Doppel, Filter, Freiland, Fuchsbau, Gelb, Grungerman, Kafkatrax, Love Inc., M:I:5, Mike Ink, Mint, Panthel, Popacid, Riss, RX7, Split Inc., Strass, Studio 1, Tal, Vinyl Countdown, W.V., Wassermann, and X-Lvis.
Characteristics
Gas (1981 film)
(not to be confused with a similar sounding 1970 film Gas-s-s-s)
Gas is a 1981 Canadian comedy film released by Paramount Pictures, the plot of which was inspired by the 1979 energy crisis.
Plot summary
A small Midwestern town is thrown into chaos when the local oil tycoon (Sterling Hayden) orchestrates a phony oil shortage in order to increase profits. A news reporter (Susan Anspach) tries to uncover the plot, and a radio DJ in a helicopter (Donald Sutherland) reports on the craziness caused by the gasoline shortage.
Cast
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, pel, or picture element is a physical point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in an all points addressable display device; so it is the smallest controllable element of a picture represented on the screen. The address of a pixel corresponds to its physical coordinates. LCD pixels are manufactured in a two-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares, but CRT pixels correspond to their timing mechanisms and sweep rates.
Each pixel is a sample of an original image; more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable. In color image systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
In some contexts (such as descriptions of camera sensors), the term pixel is used to refer to a single scalar element of a multi-component representation (more precisely called a photosite in the camera sensor context, although the neologism sensel is sometimes used to describe the elements of a digital camera's sensor), while in others the term may refer to the entire set of such component intensities for a spatial position. In color systems that use chroma subsampling, the multi-component concept of a pixel can become difficult to apply, since the intensity measures for the different color components correspond to different spatial areas in such a representation.
Pixels (2015 film)
Pixels is a 2015 American science fiction action-comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures, 1492 Pictures and Happy Madison Productions. The film was directed by Chris Columbus. Its screenplay was written by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, with a screen story penned by Tim Herlihy and based on French director Patrick Jean's 2010 short film of the same name. The film features computer animated video games characters, special effects, and stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan, Brian Cox, Ashley Benson, and Jane Krakowski. The film's plot has extraterrestrials misinterpreting video-feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war, and invading Earth using technology inspired by games such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders. To counter the alien assault, the United States hire former arcade champions to lead the planet's defense.
Principal photography on the film began in 2014 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was released in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D in 2015. The film had a production budget of $88 million, with print and marketing bringing it to a total cost of around $145 million. The worldwide gross was $244 million. Despite receiving generally negative reviews, the movie was a commercial success.
