Karan Bhangui

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Documentaries

I seem to have become a great fan of documentaries as of late. Here's a list of some of my favourite:

• Tetris From Russia with Love (8 part youtube video)
  I was first a bit skeptical about watching an hour long documentary on a simple game such as Tetris, but I'm glad that I did. The history of this video game is amazing, including stories about the KGB, and how it was brought to America against their will for our consumption. (It is interesting to note that the inventor of Tetris - interviewed in the documentary - now works for Microsoft).
• The History of Hacking
  This is an amazing documentary on the history of 'hacking'; hacking of course meaning the true definition of fiddling with computers. It talks about and interviews Steve Wozniac, my personal hero. He started the PC revolution by inventing the first commercial desktop computer, the Apple I.
• Helvetica
  Okay, so the documentary on Tetris was stretching it, but this one takes the cake! A documentary on a typeface? You have got to be kidding me, right? Well, I had heard from a web designer friend of mine, that this is a really good watch. And it surely is! It's amazing how this typeface, with its humble Swiss beginnings, has made such an amazing impact on our modern society. Helvetica is everywhere, in most of the logo brands I've seen growing up. I'll never look at typesetting the same way again.

Thought Provoking Videos

While still videos, the items listed below don't really count as documentaries, but still videos worth watching.

• TED - Technology, Entertainment, Design
  TED is actually an annual conference that "brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives". These are 18 minute speeches given on a huge variety of topics. Some that interest me are the Technology and Design videos. I will eventually shortlist a few of my favourites below.
• Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"
  A touching video of Randy Pausch, a PhD computer science professor at Carnegie Melon, who is dying of liver and spleen cancer. In the video, he gives a 'last lecture' - where a professor talks about one thing he has to say to his pupils before perishing.
• Human Computation
  This is a Google TechTalk, given on July 26, 2006 by Luis von Ahn - an assistant Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. It's an interesting lecture that talks about using human's ability to solve problems computers can't on a large scale - such as intelligent image indexing.

© 2007-2009 Karan Bhangui