A super-cool robotic bartender inspired by Blade Runner's Voight-Kampff machine? With an ordering menu screen that shows old Japanese whisky ad starring Orson Welles (giving a "dash of Tokyo-dystopian-future-retro weirdness")?

Yes! Enter the VK-01 Off-World Bartender.

Its creator, Donald Bell of Maker Project Lab, explains:

The year is 2040, and you could use a good drink. People say the best drinks are made in the off-world colonies, by robot bartenders programmed only to serve the elite. Lucky for you, one of those robot bartenders never made it off-world. If you can make it past its security system, you’ll be drinking like an outer space aristocrat.

That’s the concept behind the VK-01 off-world bartender, my Blade Runner-inspired cocktail machine. This machine was my second entry into the Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge, an annual event in San Francisco where machines are judged on their ingenuity, popularity, and the quality of their drinks.

It’s one of my favorite events. It’s like a Maker Faire without the kids, where every exhibit dispenses alcohol. Sadly, this year it was canceled for COVID. But by the time I heard about the cancellation, I was too deep into this build to give up. I figured, at least it’ll make a good Instructable! So here we are.

Over at Instructables, he shares how he made it using two Raspberry Pi computers, three Arduino boards, booze, lots of know-how and more. Read the rest

Come November 2, you will have the opportunity to see Orson Welles' final film on Netflix and in select theatres, a work titled The Other Side of the Wind. Netflix purchased the footage in March 2017, nearly 50 years after this "notoriously unfinished" feature began production.

In 1970, legendary director Orson Welles (CITIZEN KANE) began filming what would ultimately be his final cinematic opus with a cast of Hollywood luminaries including John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and Welles’s partner during his later years, Oja Kodar. Beset by financial issues, the production ultimately stretched years and gained notoriety, never to be completed or released. More than a thousand reels of film negatives languished in a Paris vault until March of 2017, when producers Frank Marshall (who served as Welles’s production manager during his initial shooting) and Filip Jan Rymsza spearheaded efforts to have the film completed after over 40 years.

Featuring a new score by Oscar-winning composer Michel Legrand and reassembled by a technical team including Oscar-winning editor Bob Murawski, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND is Orson Welles’s vision fulfilled. It tells the story of grizzled director J.J. “Jake” Hannaford (Huston), who returns to Los Angeles after years in self-exile in Europe with plans to complete work on his own innovative comeback movie. Both a satire of the classic studio system and the New Hollywood that was shaking things up, Welles’s last artistic testament is a fascinating time capsule of a now-distant era in moviemaking as well as the long-awaited “new” work from an indisputable master.

I was expecting this to be a train wreck, but Orson Welles (in an unusually ungrumpy mood) did a terrific job of interviewing Andy Kaufman, who was always a tough nut to crack. Welles basically took over and did most of the talking and was very funny. Read the rest

We Will Sell No Wine Before Its Time! Previously: Orson Welles hates the advertising copy he's been asked to read.

If you enjoyed this video, Publio Delgado's weirdly harmonized guitar backing is an essential accompaniment.

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