Rexfeng

Eric Bellefeuille works at BioWare as a UX (user experience) artist. That means he works on stuff that you actually interact with, from heads-up displays to computer menus.

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Great feature for Vegas Seven by David G. Schwartz marking the 25th anniversary of The Mirage:

Wynn had one advantage over his detractors: While many of them disdained the nuts and bolts of casino design, Wynn lived and breathed it. He was intimately involved with the design process — not to micromanage the team, but to provoke and inspire them.

“He created creativity,” Bergman recalls. “I can’t put it any other way. He has an insatiable work ethic. We had a ton of talent, and he brought it out in everyone. It was a fun project. There were moments, of course, where we struggled with the look of the building. The tower, for instance — we weren’t sure what we were going to have there. We built 50 different study models, then it fell into place.”

All along, Wynn was there, asking questions and sometimes offering answers. His own forte was space planning: What did the guest see when he arrived? How long could it take to get him where he wanted to go? Most important, how could he get there without getting frustrated?

The creative process was casual, with few set rules, but everyone knew that their boss wouldn’t tolerate anything less than excellence.

The difference between a Wynn casino — Mirage, Bellagio, Wynn/Encore — and nearly all other Vegas casinos is like the difference between an Apple Store and a Best Buy.

(Schwartz’s Grandissimo, by the way, is one of the best books I’ve read this year.)

There's only one Shake Shack on Earth that will serve you a breakfast sandwich, and it's at JFK Airport's Terminal 4 (though legend has it the Madison Square Park one used to serve breakfast). This isn't new, but maybe it's new to you? Maybe you were eating a Cinnabon like a sucker on previous airport visits? [ more › ]

Since our last article on Eiko Ojala (previously) the Estonian graphic designer and illustrator has continued his fantastic three dimensional drawings for leading publications around the world. His process involves a mix of digital illustration, paper textures, and a mix of both real and artificial shadows. Eiko won a 2013 Young Illustrators award and an ADC Young Gun award, and his work has appeared in Wired, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Dwell Magazine and elsewhere. You can see more over on Behance.

For filmmakers, Los Angeles is basically infinite. It is a mega-city that contains every other city within it—indeed, seemingly every other Earthly landscape is hidden somewhere in plain sight—whether it's a street that looks like Manhattan or a county park that literally looks like another world. In Los Angeles, something as simple as an empty parking lot can be transformed into a virtual window, a portal or gate through which film or TV crews can pull distant visions of another location. Around that corner could be Chicago, London, or even Seoul.

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It's late at night, you've got a pocketful of crumpled bills and coins, and your hunger exceeds your self-esteem. Thanks to a clever hack, now all you have to do is send your budget to a special email address to generate a maximum calorie Taco Bell menu.

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Want to edit a Google Drive document from your mobile device? Now you'll need not one, but three apps: Google just removed editing capabilities from the Drive app. You'll have to install Docs or Sheets to get your editing powers back. [Android Police via TechMeme]

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Sometimes, small arms fire just doesn't cut it. So when special forces teams around the world need more long-range, tank-stopping punch than a conventional bazooka or panzerschreck can deliver, they give Carl a call.

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 Applying to preschool in San Francisco is not that different from when you may have applied to college 15 years ago. You have to complete a bunch of applications either by hand or print them out from an online application, and then you have to mail them in manually with a check to each school. It's archaic and fairly frustrating in the highly connected world we live in (I don't even own a… Read More

Google Drive - Sometimes, a Nyan Cat anonyme appears for anonymous profiles.

The incredible success of comic book movies isn't just changing the landscape of summer blockbusters. It's completely changing what Hollywood expects out of movie stars. Actors of all types are now required to bulk up like never before as movie studios cast more roles seemingly designed for demigods. And as ripped men are continually splashed across movie posters around the world, actors in other, lower-key roles are expected to keep pace in the physique race. An insightful feature story in this month's Men's Journal takes an in-depth look at the crazy industry that helps actors who'll do anything to get superhuman looks.

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About an hour from Munich, Audi basically runs a city. Its headquarters are situated in Ingolstadt, a city of around 125,000 people. Audi employs over 35,000 here, an enormous complex housing corporate offices, research and development centers, production lines, and a large museum and visitors' center. Today I'm standing in one of the many innocuous buildings, in front of the company's new TT coupe — or at least a grotesquely splayed version of it. Before releasing any car, Audi's engineers...

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The questions about the N.S.A. are strikingly similar to those about how Google, Yahoo, Facebook and thousands of application makers crunch their numbers.

After three full days of deliberations, a jury in San Jose, California found that Samsung had infringed upon two Apple patents, and that it owed the Cupertino company $119,625,000 in damages. But it also found that Apple had infringed on one of Samsung's two patents, and owed $158,400 as a result.

In a decision, the jury said Samsung primarily infringed on two of Apple's five patents, the '647 and '721 patent covering features that turned addresses and phone numbers into links, and Apple's slide to unlock patent respectively. On the flip side, the jury said three models of the iPhone, and two models of the iPod touch infringed on a Samsung patent covering a photo and video gallery feature.

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And now for a delightful reminder about the pure, unadulterated magic of moving line drawings. This little bouncer above is demonstrating the ol' "Squash & Stretch," one of the 12 basic principles of animation laid out in the 1981 book The Illusion of Life, by two of Disney's Nine Old Men.

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 Bill Gates sold 4.6 million Microsoft shares recently, an SEC filing released today indicates. That action lowered his holdings to 330,141,164 shares in the company. Former CEO Steve Ballmer owns 333,252,990 shares. The sale therefore dipping Gates' holdings under those of Ballmer, the second CEO of the company. Read More

The Daily Overview offers up an interesting satellite photo every day. The site's name is inspired by the Overview Effect:

The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts' perspective of Earth and mankind's place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment. 'Overview' is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features important commentary on the wider implications of this new understanding for both our society, and our relationship to the environment.

The Planetary Collective made a short documentary about the Overview Effect:

(thx, pavel)

Tags: Google Maps   photography   video

I’m curious to see how big a public role she’ll play at Apple. Decidedly few Apple executives ever step out from behind the curtain, but I expect Ahrendts to be one of them.

Andy Ihnatko:

Are we ever going to see a MacBook Air with a magazine-quality Retina-grade display? I’m sure it’s coming but Apple seems to feel little pressure to deliver such a beast. It’s going to suck down a lot more battery power than what’s in there now and Apple appreciates that next to the Air’s insubstantially slim design; the centerpiece of the experience is its amazing battery life. The 13-inch Air can outrun even an iPad. Apple isn’t going to dent that superlative feature unless it’s under duress from an alien invasion.

Decent second choice.

Sukiyabashi Jiro may serve the planet's most famous sashimi, but that wasn't Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's first choice for his cozy dinner with the president. Kondo — a two-star tempura hot spot literally a block away — was, but the restaurant was completely booked for that night, and the chef refused to bump any of his guests even after the Japanese government came calling. "Customers with reservations are more important," chef-owner Fumio Kondo reportedly explained. "Even for the president of the United States, I can't disappoint my customers who already made bookings." Considering the president only ate half of Jiro's sushi anyway, maybe battered and fried would've been the better way to go. [Gentai.net via RocketNews24, Related]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: state dinners, barack obama, jiro dreams of sushi, jiro ono, sashimi, shinzo abe, sukiyabashi jiro

From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: Robyn Lee, unless otherwise noted]

Sometimes good bread happens in circuitous ways. Alexis Faraci has roots in the Bronx and Italy, not Germany, but she has built the city's best pretzel bakery.

Here's how it happened: She loved baking and wanted to open her own business, a bakery in the Bronx. She didn't want to overlap with any other bakery's trade, so she thought, "How about pretzels?" She baked a batch from a recipe and gave one to a German friend, who said, "Pretty good." A promising start.

She kept working and began an e-mail correspondence with a baker in Germany who guided her step-by-step through the pretzel-baking process. After months of testing, she arrived at the perfect pretzel recipe, one that met the full approval of her German friends.

Alexis found ovens for her Bronx Baking Co. on City Island and began to pitch her product around town. What really got the business off the ground, however, was her invention of the Bacon Pretzel. She loves to play with pretzel dough—she also invented the Pretzel Calzone—so wrapping the arms of a pretzel with bacon seemed like a natural choice.

Today her Bronx pretzels and pretzel rolls are sold at Gourmet Garage stores and shops like Green Grape in Brooklyn. The bacon pretzel is only available at Dive Bar and at the Bronx Baking Co. stand at Smorgasburg. (More vendors here.)

The basic dough for Bronx Baking Co. pretzels is made from a mixture of high gluten flour, salt, sugar, butter, water, and yeast. What makes pretzels different from other breads is that the twisted dough is dipped into an aqueous solution of 4% lye. This gives the finished product its distinctive brown color and also its salty, slightly bitter taste. Without lye, a product would taste like any old white bread.

The basic Bronx Baking Co. Pretzel ($3) adheres very closely to the classic German model. Colored a deep brown, it's a loop of dough that has been twisted back on itself. Unlike those puffy and oversized street pretzels, this is divided into distinct sections for different textures. At the bottom of the loop you find a bulge, scored and sprinkled with salt, that's the softest part of the bread. Splaying out from the twist, the ends are much thinner and crisper, for those that prefer their pretzels crunchy. Wherever you bite, the pretzel has a thin and slightly leathery crust covering a dense but buttery crumb. All you need is some mustard and a stein of beer.

Bacon pretzel. [Photograph: Andrew Coe]

The bakery's Bacon Pretzel ($4) is simply a regular pretzel with a slice or two of bacon wrapped around the pretzel's bulge. It comes out of the oven with both bacon and pretzel perfectly cooked. The two go so well together one wonders why it hasn't been marketed much before, a noteworthy thing considering the pretzel's thousand-year baking history. Bronx Baking Co. also makes excellent chocolate pretzels and a wide range of pretzel-based novelties, including pretzel tacos and pretzel pitas.

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

How do you price a bottle of milkshake? Everyone from Ayn Rand to Karl Marx will give you a slightly different answer, but the majority of solutions boil down to some combination of cost, competition, popularity, and good old trial and error. That basic formula hasn’t changed for centuries.

The modern rise of supersized, sell-everything stores has, however, fundamentally altered the method of calculation. With over 200 different varieties of canned tomatoes on Walmart shelves, the complexity of putting a sticker on any one of them has exploded. To take the guessing out of this process, big store chains are now turning to data. Data of the scale and breadth to match their football-pitch-sized supermarkets. Big data.

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Nestled in the hidden valleys of Shikoku, Japan, is the village of Nagoro. Its remote location has led its residents to leave for big cities in search for work. With not even a local store, there's little reason for immigration, so as residents die there is no one left to fill their void. Nagoro is slowly shrinking.

Eleven years ago, Ayano Tsukimi returned to her home in Nagoro. Confronted with constant departures, she has populated the village with dolls, each representing a former...

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A train pulling into a subway station on Friday smashed into the back of another train that had stopped for a mechanical problem, injuring at least 170 passengers.

The first randomized trial of corrective helmets, which must be worn constantly and can be stressful for parents, found no better results than nontreatment.

threeA is one of the best toy companies on the planet. threeA has the license to make big, expensive Titanfall figures. This will only end well.

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Australian retailer JB Hi-Fi - never a bastion of serious business - has a sticker for The Elder Scrolls Online that is as funny as it is foreboding.

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Not every science fiction story is meant to predict the future, but some of them have forecast future events with incredible accuracy. This timeline sketches out some of the most exciting examples of times that science fiction became fact.

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Starbucks is offering 50% Off Frappuccino Blended Beverages from 3PM-5PM through May 10.

Find a Starbucks location near you.