Start dreaming
VIRVIE is an ambition - to realize la vie
virtuelle - and to break the
boundaries while doing it. It is inspired by ambitious projects all
over the (real) world:
The
Race for the Sky of the Chrysler Building
In the summer of 1929, a "race for the sky" broke
out on the island of Manhattan. Automobile tycoon Walter Chrysler
battled Wall Street powerhouse Bank of Manhattan Trust Company for the
title of world's tallest building in what many historians consider to
be the most intense race in skyscraper history. In the spring of 1930,
just when it appeared that the bank might capture the coveted title, a
small crew jacked a needle-thin spire hidden in Chrysler's building
through the top of the crown to claim the title of world's tallest at
1,046 feet.
Not only was the Chrysler Building the world's tallest structure, it
was also one of the most decorated office buildings in the world.
Chrysler wanted "a bold structure, declaring the glories of the modern
age" -- and he got it. He decorated his skyscraper with hubcaps,
mudguards, and hood ornaments, just like his cars, hoping that such a
distinctive building would make his car company a household name.
Today, the Chrysler Building is recognized as New York City's greatest
display of Art Deco, a decorative style characterized by sharp angular
or zigzag surface forms and ornaments.
(from Building
Big)
The
Flight of Nike's Air Jordans
The
Air Jordan I was released in 1985. In the 1984 NBA Draft, Michael
Jordan was selected by the Chicago Bulls with the No. 3 overall pick.
This was after seeing Jordan perform a wonderful three years in North
Carolina and co-captain and star of the Olympic basketball team in 1984
which as you all know picked up the gold medal. Nike understood that
this player would turn out to be something else and signed him up to
create a line of shoes and apparel.
The Air Jordan I was designed by Peter Moore and marked a new era in
basketball shoewear design. There has been multiple fakes of this shoe
and also other shoe brands made models where you could see lots of
similarities with Air Jordan I. The black/red model was banned by the
NBA back in 1985 due to NBA color rules and this actually helped to
create more publicity and interest for the shoes. Who knows, it might
have been a marketing trick from Nike.
A great thing with the original Air Jordan I's were that they came with
a double set of laces to match the two different colors the shoe was
made up in. For instance the black/red's came with one set of black
laces and one set of red laces. When talking about colors it should
also be said that the Air Jordan I's were the Air Jordan's that were
released in the most colorways of all AJ's. 23 colorways (samples
included) even beats the number of Air Jordan XI retros.
The white/black-red and black/red were released as retros in 1994 and
sold very poorly. No one seemed to want them. They went on sale for $20
at some stores in the US.In 2001 they re-retroed them and this time
around the demand was a lot greater. At some stores they sold out in
just a few minutes. I bet a few of the people buying them was wishing
they were around back in '94...
(from Air-jordans.com)
The Power of
the Button on BMW's M5
"Whenever I see someone in an M5 I’m
overcome with a wave of respect, because here is someone who has paid a
fortune to hide his light under a bushel. I like that, and as a result
I was desperately looking forward to my first go in the new model.
It has a 5 litre V10 engine that churns out 400bhp. It’ll do
0-60 in 4sec and could, if it didn’t have an electronic Bill
Oddie under the bonnet, hit 204mph. And yet, apart from a few fancy air
ducts on the front it looks pretty much identical to your
doctor’s normal 5-series. Sounds like quite a recipe.
Unfortunately, however, the recipe has been spoilt somewhat by someone
who thinks pure engineering can be improved with a blizzard of
technobabble.
So before setting off for a 50-mile journey home on a lovely
summer’s evening, I had to choose from 11 different settings
on the seven-speed flappy paddle gearbox. Then I had to decide how
ferocious I wanted the gearshifts to be, very fierce, quite fierce,
moderately fierce, boring or very boring. And then I had to choose from
three settings on the electronic differential.
And then, since I didn’t know where I was, I had to set the
sat nav, which meant hitting a knob, twiddling it, moving it to the
side and then twiddling it again. It’s a good job this car
has so much power because by the time you’ve set it up for
the journey that lies ahead you’re already very late.
Anyway, off I toddled, cursing the BMW gearbox’s inability to
cope with town traffic no matter what setting you choose. Pretty soon,
however, the road opened up, Bob Seger came on the radio, and with a
determined shove I put my foot down. And pushed a knob on the steering
wheel that I assumed controlled the volume. It didn’t. It
changed the station, so now instead of Hollywood Nights I had some fat
opera bint warbling on Radio 3. Damn. So I had to get the screen out of
sat nav mode into entertainment mode and then tell it I wanted an FM
station, whereupon it presented me with a million local alternatives
that nobody who has £61,000 to spend on a car would ever
listen to. I just want one button for Radio 2 and one for Radio 4. And
that’s it.
Eventually I relocated Bob Seger but unfortunately I was approaching a
roundabout and the sat nav woman had decided I was an idiot. So she
told me to go straight over and then repeated herself and then repeated
it again. And by the time she’d shut up Bob had been replaced
with a miserable sounding girl called Dildo.
Happily, by this stage I knew where I was so I thought,
“Okay, I’ll turn the sat nav off.” Well
you can’t. It doesn’t matter what button you press,
she continues to give her instructions over and over again until you
want to bludgeon her and her family to death with an axe. Even if you
pull over and turn off the engine, she lies in a state of suspended
animation, waiting to spew electronic diarrhoea all over the cockpit
when you set off again.
To make matters worse, in the desperate search for the right button
I’d hit something called “power”, which
had ruined the ride. And then I’d made the mistake of
reaching for the indicator. You can’t turn that off either.
It doesn’t matter what you do with the stalk, it just goes on
blinking until it’s decided you’ve made the turn.
By this stage I was properly angry and now the sat nav cow was not only
giving me audible instructions but flashing them onto a head-up display
on the windscreen. And the indicator was still on and I
couldn’t find Radio 4. And
then I hit another button on the steering wheel called
“M”.
This brought up a rev counter in the head-up display and caused the
seat to start attacking my back. I’m not joking. Every time I
went round a corner some electronic chip decided I needed more support
and firmed up the appropriate bolster. They say a Dutch bargee can
swear for two minutes without repetition or hesitation. But in the new
M5 I beat that easily. Why, I wailed to myself, can there not just be
one big red button in the middle of the steering wheel which turns all
this crap off? Why do I have to live in some German geek’s
wet dream? And then to improve my mood still further, I came up behind
a Rover that was being driven by someone who was a hundred and seventy
twelve. In a temper I put my foot down to get past and
couldn’t believe what happened.
It seems that the M button, in addition to electrifying the seat, had
told a computer deep in the bowels of the engine that I was in the mood
for some fun and games. So now the V10 was no longer developing 400bhp.
It was handing over a massive 507. That’s right, 507. And as
a result the M5 just flew. In the last five miles of my journey I
discovered that deep beneath the layers of utter and complete
electronic nonsense, and the rather ugly body, there’s one
truly amazing car.
Just when I was thinking that BMW had made yet another car for yet
another software consultant, it did something I really wasn’t
expecting.
It became a full-on M5. And praise doesn’t come higher than
that."
(from Jeremy
Clarkson Driving)
The Wonder
of Dubai's Palm Islands
The
Palm Islands in Dubai are three large artificial islands, currently
being constructed by Nakheel. Each settlement will be in the shape of a
palm tree topped with a crescent and will have residential communitites
and resorts.
Such examples of reclaimed land are made feasible in the area by the
wide continental shelf off the Dubai coast, with the Persian Gulf at a
shallow depth.
The Palm, Jumeirah had construction started in June 2001 and expected
completion time is late 2005 to early 2006. There are plans for three
five star hotels with international themes to be built on The Palm,
Jumeirah: Okinawa, Brazil, and Venice, recreating the ambiance of these
places to be built on the crescent of this settlement.
The Palm, Jebel Ali was begun in October 2002 and expected completion
time is late 2007. It includes boardwalks which circle the 'fronds' of
the 'palm', spelling out a verse of poetry in Arabic, which reads:
"Take wisdom from the wise - It takes a man of vision to write on water
- Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey - Great men rise to
greater challenges."
The Palm, Deira began construction in November 2004. The Deira Palm is
set to be the largest of the three Palms.
The islands will be built by a Dutch company from 80 000 000 m3
landmass from the approach channel.
Al Nakheel Properties is one of the leading real estate developers in
Dubai and creators of land reclamation projects: Palm Jumeira, Palm
Jebel Ali, Palm Deira, Dubai Waterfront, and The World.
(From Wikipedia
and Nakheel
The
'care-free reentry' to Earth! of the SpaceShipOne
On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne rocketed into
history, becoming the first private manned spacecraft to exceed an
altitude of 328,000 feet twice within the span of a 14 day period, thus
claiming the ten million dollar Ansari X-Prize. Part of the success was
due to the, elegantly simple, 'folding' wings on the spaceship. In
space, the wings are folded up to provide a shuttle-cock or "feather"
effect to give the ship extremely high drag for reentry. This allows
the reentry deceleration to occur at a higher altitude and greatly
reduces the forces and heating on the structure. Also, the ship, in the
feathered configuration, will align itself automatically such that the
pilot has a less-critical flight control task. We refer to this as
"care-free reentry". The atmosphere orients the vehicle to a
belly-first attitude without pilot input. Another benefit is that,
since the altitude is higher, the pilot can glide further after the
entry deceleration. A SpaceShipOne pilot can glide more than 60 miles
after he converts back to the non-feathered glider shape.
(adapted from Scaled Composites)
(Adapted from TED Talks) Also special mention
should go to twistori, a Twitter based variety
which I describe as 'realtime popular poetry-flow' (and also looks
great on an iPhone). 
The
amazing possibilities of representing life online
This is best exemplified by the works of Jonathan
Harris. He wants to make sense of the infinite world on the Web -- so
he builds dazzling graphic interfaces that help us visualize the data
floating around out there. Here he presents "We Feel Fine," a project
that scours blogs to collect the planet's emoti(c)ons, and the "Yahoo!
Time Capsule," which preserves images, quotes and thoughts snapped up
in 2006. And he premieres "Universe," which presents current events as
constellations of words -- a tag cloud of our collective consciousness.
See a demonstration in the video below: