A laser cut record & things that made last week

1 minutes estimated reading time

Laser cut record

A frickin’ laser-cut record. How awesome is this? Back in the day there were efforts to use laser pick-ups to read vinyl records in a way that wouldn’t affect the records over time. Dragging a diamond tipped needle through a groove was viewed as destructive. The first prototype was demonstrated publicly in 1977.

An American company called Finial demonstrated a commercial product. But its business no longer made sense and eventually the intellectual property was picked up by Japanese company ELP Japan. ELP Japan build laser turntables to order. The laser cut record turns this philosophy on its head. The record is no longer a valuable artefact, but something that can be replicated over and over again.

A simple but delightful Japanese Vine. Simple but amazingly cute gerbil with a priceless reaction when its human stops stroking it. I remember petting the dog that I owned at the time and eliciting a similar reaction of why stop. This seems to be a reaction that’s hardwired in; a sudden stop in grooming by another might indicate that they sense danger and consequently I should be on alert.

A totally awesome Japanese game for the Sony PlayStation featuring Godzilla and all manner of kaiju. The odd thing about this Bandai Namco game is that it is for the PS3 rather than the PS4 which is gaining the lions share of console sales. One can only guess that this was a project that massively overshot its initial launch date?

A smooth jazz version of Van Halen’s Running With The Devil, which seems to use studio stems of this rock classic. It works amazingly well, which says a lot about Van Halen’s songwriting and general musicianship

Finally a video of park life in Beijing. It is hard to emphasise the amount of smoking that happens in China, so this video shows you instead. More related content here.