Here’s a fascinating short documentary (about 11 min.) on the Hong Kong neon sign industry, which was at its peak in the ’80s and ’90s but is now in serious decline with businesses installing LED signs now.

And here’s a crazy fact I bet you didn’t know: when a glassworker is designing the a neon sign, the tube’s start and stop points are determined not so much by the letter form but by where he’ll be able to most easily bend the glass without burning his hands.

(via Hoefler and Rands)

This 60-year-old video made by Hamilton is so fascinating. It shows the ingenious mechanics and principles of how a mechanical watch stores and releases energy to keep near-perfect time. This is the sort of “smart” watch I find interesting, useful, and attractive.

“You’re one of the great quarterbacks playing the game today; you’ve had a lot of success. And yet you’ve done it all without a mustache.”

It started with a Kickstarter campaign earlier this spring. The Planet Money team sold 25,000 t-shirts (just plain ‘ole shirts made by Jockey) and then tracked the creation of that shirt all around the world — from the cotton seed to the end product.

The reporting, the short videos, the writing — the whole website — is extremely well done. This is definitely worth reading through and watching all the videos. I’d start with the Kickstarter video, since that sets the stage for the final product.

Very cute and clever video:

‘Skew’ turns the idea of skeuomorphism on it’s head: we re-made some well known skeuomorphic interface designs in the materials and objects they were trying to imitate; as well as subtly commenting on the mundane cycle of the digital day-to-day.

If you can, watch it from your iPhone.

Also: here’s the making of that shows how they shot the video and what the apps are made of.

I’ve watched this video half-a-dozen times, and it’s funny every time.

Beautiful short video by Stephen Kenn. From the description:

The Encounter Collection by Stephen Kenn explores the significant act of passing an object on from one generation to the next. It is in this exchange, accompanied by words of wisdom, that a boy is often called to a life of courage. While aware that everyone’s life experience is unique, and often painful, this film focuses on the experience of a boy losing his father and yet retaining the love and passion that was intended for him.

XOXO is about people who use technology to build thing they’re proud of and do the work that they love. Though I’m bummed I wasn’t able to be at XOXO this year, I’m not that bummed because I had very good reason: my wife’s and my 2nd son, Giovanni, was born just a few days before the festival.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to attend vicariously thanks to the event videos of each speaker. So far I’ve watched Marco Arment’s talk on fear and competition, Cable Sasser’s talk on stress and pressure, and Maciej Cegłowski on simplicity and other things.

Each of these talks were incredibly inspiring and encouraging to me.

John Mayer, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and guitar player is also a watch collector.

There’s a year-long wait list if you want John Willhoit and his shop to restore your classic Porsche. (Via Panzarino.)

Beautiful.

Vassilis Lazarides has been hand-building musical interments for almost 25 years. It takes him 299 hours to make a single acoustic guitar (at 8 hours a day, that’s more than 37 days of work).

This is incredible to watch. What starts out as a single roll of Aluminum gets transformed into a Tesla Model S thanks to the help of 160 robots and several factory workers.

This video is a collection of over 200,000 pictures taken around Saturn’s Rings over the past 8 years set. And it’s set to a waltz. Half the time I’m not even sure what I’m looking at, but it sure is gorgeous.