MetaFilter posts tagged with balloons

Window Dressing

Miko — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:59:01 -0800

Holidays on Display, currently on view at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, offers an image-rich online exhibit as well, detailing the way businesses learned to capitalize on one of the country's largest celebrations. Peer into the artistry of holiday window design as well. I was especially happy to learn via this exhibit about the artist, puppeteer, illustrator, and balloon designer Tony Sarg, who designed some of the most wonderful early balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - very 20s and 30s in style, sort of the Fleischer Studios of balloons. He also created a wacky sea serpent stunt on Nantucket.

Thanksgiving Day Parade

vronsky — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:44:06 -0800

Les grands ballons de Macy's

"And here is a red balloon.. I think of DARPA and note its exact coordinates"

jessamyn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:25:37 -0800

"To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge.... The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways." Teams must register by December 1st and have two weeks to submit balloon locations. Popular Science has a bit more. The Register offer some hacks. The Twitter will be here.

SQUIRREL!

Artw — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:26:02 -0800

The real world location behind “Up’s” Paradise Falls. But could that house really fly?

On Paper Wings

netbros — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:49:47 -0800

Japanese Balloon Bombs — "In 1944, during World War II, Japan launched a top secret project, nearly two years in the making, to send thousands of "balloon bombs" (called Fu-Go Weapons) to the United States. The goal of the attack was to create panic, forest fires, and show the United States that it could be attacked from afar. Each of the more than 9,000 balloon bombs launched towards the United States, over the course of several months, carried a 15 kilogram bomb that would detach from the balloon and explode on impact with the ground." On a Wind and a Prayer. The United States government went to extraordinary measures to keep information on the Japanese balloon bombs out of the media. The United States knew that Japan could only measure its success based on media reports. And giving them that type of intelligence information could cause them to refine the balloons to be more accurate and deadly. The story of the Japanese balloon bombs is intriguing because so few Americans (to this day) know the story. Few realize that the only six American civilian casualties in the continental U.S. during World War II happened at the hands of a balloon bomb. And five of those casualties were children. Most primary sources on the Balloon attacks remained classified until the early 1980s because information on the Fugo Balloon Bomb technology was used by the U.S. military for their own balloon spying activities against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

That giant fountain projection thing

Artw — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:39:58 -0800

Primal source at GLOW (video), Burble London (an implementation of Open Burble) (video), Evoke (video) - the transformative artworks of Haque Design and Research. Interview with Usman Haque. Previously.

They will see us waving from such great heights 'come down now,' they'll say...

Muddler — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:22:40 -0800

You wake up, walk out into the early morning air, kiss your wife goodbye, pet the Chihuahua, and sink into your lawn chair for another breathtaking flight. On Saturday Kent Couch set off to recreate, for the second time, the famous flight of Larry Walters, balloon-lawn-chair-aviator and Darwin Award Honorable Mention. Kent flew some 193 miles using 105 helium balloons, and unlike some previous fliers, his event was not only successful, it was photographed by a chase plane.

creative fun

nickyskye — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 17:38:00 -0800

Toy art: tribal scooters, spider car, little animal robots out of broken electrical parts, a color changing house designed by a 14 year old boy, of wood, wind-up, MunkyKing, Ugly Dolls, out of beer cans, with balloons, Cute Things, artoyz, toys from trash, tiny knitted dolls clothes and accessories, vintage and retro at Tick Tock Toys.

Pop-Up Video

Partial Law — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:10:11 -0800

BubblePLY lets you easily overlay subtitles and speech balloons over videos hosted on other sites.

Aces High

Smedleyman — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 06:50:00 -0800

In 1938 the British Balloon Command was established to protect cities and key targets such as industrial areas, ports, landmarks and harbours.Barrage balloons or "Bulging Berthas" were inflatable shiny silver-painted balloons, made of rubber-coated fabric, and filled with hydrogen gas used prevent low level attacks by enemy aircraft. The balloons flew anywhere from 500 feet to 10,000 feet. The 15 gauge flying wire that tethered them could clip the wings off a plane. They were also used at sea and to cover invasions. They were also effective against the V-1 flying bomb and back in the late 80s, at least one general thought they could still be used to protect airfields.

Bouncy, flouncy, fun

Capn — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:06:12 -0800

B i g B a l l o o n s!!!

Zero-gravity finger pulling is discouraged

DeepFriedTwinkies — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:41:06 -0800

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to pop a water balloon in space? (Check out this page for more videos)

Sky Ear

schoolgirl report — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 07:20:11 -0800

Sky Ear will be a one-night event in which a glowing "cloud" of mobile phones and helium balloons is released into the air so that people can dial into the cloud and listen to the sounds of the sky. The cloud will be made of one thousand large helium balloons each responding to the electromagnetic environment (created by distant storms, mobile phones, police and ambulance radios, television broadcasts, etc.) with coloured blue, red and yellow lights.

luser — Sat, 02 Nov 2002 07:08:52 -0800

"A man can't just sit around." This summer marked the 20th anniversary of the guy tying balloons to a lawn chair and floating along two miles high, shivering and brandishing his pistol at bewildered passing airline pilots. Also this year, the historic lawn chair was finally found.

tranquileye — Fri, 15 Jun 2001 07:38:05 -0800

The other side of globalization? For over three years, a balloon twister and a photographer went around the world and made balloon hats for everyone they met, for free, and took pictures of them.

roboto — Tue, 05 Jun 2001 12:49:03 -0800

My new hero John Ninomiya is going to fly tethered to a cluster of balloons this weekend. I've dreamt of doing this since a kid and I guess I'm not alone.