Looking at history

Version Museum concentrates on the look of applications more than it does the story behind that redesign.

Version Museum showcases the visual history of popular websites, operating systems, applications, and games that have shaped our lives. Much like walking through a real-life museum, this site focuses on the design changes of historic versions of technology, rather than just the written history behind it.

It’s a pity the selection of applications is so limited right now, but what is there is covered pretty well.

Looking at the Microsoft Excel entry mostly reinforced how much I loathe the Ribbon interface. I don’t care how many studies Microsoft wave around proving that the average user prefers the way the Ribbon surfaces what Microsoft claim are the application’s most-used features. Taking away the user’s ability to add their most-used features to the Ribbon was (and remains to this day) a lousy idea.

[Via Daring Fireball]

I demand an Old Night spin-off

It’s a real shame that The OA reportedly won’t be returning for a third season:

Farewell to _The OA_, the Netflix series created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij and starring Marling, which lasted two ambitious, lopsided seasons. It told a story of alternate realities to which characters could travel by working through the rejected sections of a community mime class.

I had a horrible feeling that they were going to have a hell of a job moving on from the none-more-meta second season finale,[note]It’s by no means inconceivable that this whole cancellation story is a ruse and the truth is that Marling and Batmanglij started writing a season where Jason Isaacs found himself playing Jason Isaacs, who was both Brit Marling’s husband and a devious and creepy scientist who planned to experiment on her all season, and at a certain point they just realised that they couldn’t pull it off. Not even with the help of a psychic octopus and an the fungal telepathy of an entire planet-worth of trees.[/note] but I’d have loved to see them try.

Stormy Weather

Vorticity 2 is one crazy impressive piece of work. Demands to be seen on the largest screen (with the most capable sound system) that you can get access to.

At times, as the lightning made an appearance, I full expected to see a mighty God of Thunder arriving, loudly demanding, “Bring me Thanos!”

[Via Kottke.org]

Enter Sandman (with kazoos)

I am indebted to MetaFilter user Slarty Bartfast for posting a link to this masterpiece in a thread about a (completely different) cover version of Metallica’s Enter Sandman.

Granted, it looks as if it’s going to be very silly, but somehow it really isn’t. Just keep an eye on the drummer. (You’ll soon realise which of them I mean by that. Trust me on this.)

Apparently this has been on the internet for years, but I somehow hadn’t clapped eyes on it until earlier this evening.

[Via MetaFilter]