Daily Archives: April 7, 2013


A visit to Dresden in October 2009 1

In album

When I went to Germany in October 2009 for the media launch of the 6th generation +Volkswagen USA Golf, we had a chance to stroll around central Dresden for a while after our tour of the Glass Factory. 

Just two months before the European part of World War II came to a close in 1945, Allied air forces firebombed the city of Dresden killing as many as 25,000 people. Among the many buildings destroyed was the 18th century Dresden Frauenkirche. The rubble of the Lutheran church remained in place for the next 49 years as an anti-war memorial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_Frauenkirche#Reconstruction

In 1994, following the reunification of Germany, the huge pile of stones was finally cleared so that the church could be rebuilt. Thousands of the fire-blackened original stones can be seen in the reconstructed shell in contrast to the newer blocks. Elsewhere in central Dresden many other buildings still bear the scorch marks of those fiery days in February 1945. 

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The Jurassic Park T-Rex was a full-size animatronic model!

When Jurassic Park first hit the cinema screens 20 years ago, Pixar was still two years away from releasing Toy Story and Fellowship of the Ring was eight years away. The state of the art for computer generated imaging wasn't yet up to the task of creating the high-resolution digital models needed for such a movie. 

Stan Winston Studios created a full scale animatronic model of the T-Rex using a steel armature actuated by hydraulic systems to achieve the speed and range of motion required for the film.

Watch ‘Jurassic Park’ engineers build the movie’s giant mechanical T. rex
Jurassic Park may have helped revolutionize modern CG animation in movie-making, but out of the 14 minutes of dinosaurs in the movie, only four were completely generated by computers. Practical…

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