I assure you. Most definitely not a robot. I am a human, who does the human things.
These, on the other hand, are some fairly iconic robot faces from the past century, gathered together and illustrated by Daniel Nyari. I don't recognize all of them, but I know most of them.
It's kind of great to see Rosie, Voltron, WALL-E, and a Cyberman all hanging out, ya know?
(OK, maybe that's terrifying, if you really think about it. But great, too.)
"Everybody" knows that a more symmetrical face is more attractive, right?
Julian Wolkenstein created a series of carefully neutral portraits, which he then made into two photos each, using the mirror half of each side to complete the face. The results show just how uneven even the most "symmetrical" of face really is, and how odd and off-putting true symmetry can be in a face.
As a continuing project, people are invited to take phone or webcam photos of themselves, mirror them lie Wolkenstein did, and submit the results to echoism. The results are both delightful and bizarre.
I am now kind of in love the with the University of Wisconsin Archives' Flickr photostream. It is a treasure trove of great historical images.
In particular, I am quite taken with the Campus Area and Madison Walks (1900-1970s) set:
blasts from the past, cool internet projects, elseweb, lovely places, wonderful oddness
Kirby Ferguson, a New York-based filmmaker, created an interesting and engaging 4-part short video series called Everything is a Remix, in which he discusses the process of creativity in which we build on the work of others to make something new, and in turn have our work built upon by others. He also talks about the original intentions of both copyright and patent, and the effect that the modern ideas of intellectual property are having on the process of creativity.
It is well worth a watch. He also has a new project in the works, called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, which is going to be about politics. I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes with it.
Not practical. Not practical at all. And yet, how fun would it be to have a lovely wall display of your CSA bounty? Perhaps if you were also making sure to eat what you have very regularly. After all, refrigeration is a fairly new concept.
Jihyun Ryou doesn't seem to actually be trying to replace the fridge, so much as to get us to think about the role of technology in our lives, and how we interact with the world around us through that technology. In what ways does it help us, and in what ways does it keep us from connecting with that world.
Non-refrigerated food for thought, as it were.
Pascal Witaszek has made a charming and delightful assortment of movie posters for movies that don't exist, but maybe should.
I guess the poster for Walt made a bit of a stir around the net, as people thought perhaps it was real. I'd certainly go see it, if it slipped out of that alternate universe into ours.
Spell with Flickr is a nifty little script by Erik Kastner. Type in a word and it puts it together for you using letters in photographs on Flickr. I've been spelling things all night.
As you may have already heard, Wired.com has done a wonderful thing:
Beginning today, we're releasing all Wired.com staff-produced photos under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC) license and making them available in high-res format on a newly launched public Flickr stream.
Wired has some really excellent photography, so this is quite a trove. I wonder if any other companies might follow suit?
Whale Fall is a beautiful, cut-paper animation illustrating what happens to the body of a whale when it dies. Sound morbid? It's not.
Whale Fall (after life of a whale) from Sharon Shattuck on Vimeo.
5:46 am is a hauntingly lovely imagination of an empty, flooded Paris.
5:46 am from ArtefactoryLab on Vimeo.
Courtesy of the New York Times Magazine, excellent pre- and post-makeup shots of runway models, with a Flash-based slider to transition between them. The effect is really nifty.
Rion Sabean put together this excellent series of men doing some of the typical "pin-up girl" cheesecake poses. The guy with the shovel is probably my favorite.
The Colors of Good vs. Evil: Comic Book Color Palettes [infographic] By COLOURlover
"Blue: the ultimate hero. Bright Red: Also used by the ultimate hero," as a Brewers and Badge fan, I can get behind that.
And the close-up photography quizzes on the back page. If you loved those, you will probably also dig Caren Alpert's magnified photography. The surfaces of ordinary objects look like alien worlds.
I remember it well, that feeling of light-headed "Oh my, I may have to keel over and die now." post-run euphoria/exhaustion. And no, it isn't pretty.
Dear Photograph is a charming photoblog that puts a cool spin on the "rephotographing" trend. Rather than just recreating an old photograph, "Dear Photograph" inserts the old photograph into the scene as it is today, lining up the shot as closely as possible, along with a bit of commentary (in the form of an apostrophe to the photo itself). So far, I am finding it utterly charming.
art, blasts from the past, cool internet projects, elseweb, wonderful oddness
Ed Piskor of Wizzywig Comics has put together this nifty color chart of old 64 color comic colors translated into Photoshop values.
A Cosby sweater! (This is a charming project.)
blasts from the past, cool internet projects, fashion, video
You do not want to miss this amazing panoramic, high-resolution photographic image of the library at Strahov Monastery in Prague, taken by Jeffrey Martin. It took him five days to shoot. The image is 40 gigapixels, and is composed of 2,947 separate photos, which have been joined together into one incredible, enormous 360-degree panorama.
If you have Javascript active for the site, you can pan around the room, including up and down. You can also zoom in onto small details with startling clarity. The tremendous size means that you can spend quite a while examining things and still not see it all.
...is what you will often find wafting through Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg's "cinemagraphs.
As they explain to John Pavlus at Fast Company's Co.Design:
You really want to take a look at these. Aside from being great photos, they are also quite clever and elegant.
Solar System Scope can show you where we are in the solar system with a beautiful, interactive modal. You can set it so that the sun is at the center and watch things spin. You can set the Earth or any of the other planets as your perspective and see what it all looks like from there, or you can view the whole sky as though through a telescope. It is both fun and stunning.
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
There are some excellent photos in the archives of the New South Wales, Australia police department. Of particular interest are the mugshots, which are so different in so many ways from the mugshots of today. And yet... so very similar. (I could very much see the young woman in this photo in combat boots, a band t-shirt, and ripped jeans.)
A tip of the hat to Very Short List for bringing this to my attention.
art, blasts from the past, cool internet projects, elseweb, wonderful oddness
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Of Another Fashion is a fashion blog that describes itself thusly: "An alternative archive of the not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of U.S. women of color."
Using wonderful historical photos, often out of personal photo albums, along with any relevant information or stories, the site is building a record of fashion and style that has been neglected by the mainstream and made invisible: minority women in the United States.
It's a great read and could be a great resource for costumers, as well.
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Need an icon? Check out The Noun Project: "The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world's visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way." All of the symbols on the site can be downloaded and used for free with a Creative Commons license.
Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
I have always had a major sweet tooth. I have been cutting way back in the past couple of years, but candy is still a huge temptation for me.
So it is with both pleasure and pain that I have been reading Candy Blog, a website with lovingly photographed candy and gorgeously descriptive reviews. Even the silliest, technicolored chunks of HFCS get fair and wonderfully worded write-ups:
Blue Raspberry (blue) is very woodsy and strangely chemical at the same time. There's a floral raspberry flavor but also something kind of like artificial watermelon in there.
(I was clued to the website by Gail Ambrosius Chocolates, which I expect will be getting a glowing review soon.)
It is a wonderful read, both for the mouthwatering pictures and the delightful text. I don't know whether, overall, this will help me with taming my sweet tooth, but for now it is a vicarious pleasure.
Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Etsy, Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Author Michael Swanwick has written a short story aout autumn, and put it together in a Flickr set using photographs of fallen leaves with words of the story written on in marker.
The story is pretty simple and some of the photos are out of focus, but the project itself is fun and clever.
Check out the set. It works especially well if you view it as a slide show.
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb, wonderful oddness
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, elseweb
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, wonderful oddness
My "Red Gym" photo has a nice inclusion on the Photogrunt blog. There are some other very nice pictures included. Why not take a look?
Irving Place, Miss Match, art, cool internet projects, wonderful oddness
Everyone ponder what Metallica would sound like as a swing band? Wonder no more! Let The Swinger demonstrate. This is pretty darn cool.
Go take a look! Week 10 is coming soon!
Go take a look! The other diptychs are pretty sweet, too.
Irving Place, art, cool internet projects, wonderful oddness
My first treasury in Etsy's new Treasury East beta. It features buttony selections from the Etsy Recyclers Guild, the Etsy Trashion Team, and the Etsy Wisconsin Street Team.
A very cool Flickr set: Passport Photos - Famous Artists
I found this series of post apocalyptic 80's toys by Tom Kyzivat/Murderous Automaton to be quite nifty. Kind of along the same lines as Eric Poulton's Steampunk Star Wars.
For my work-work-job (the one that lets me pay my bills and gives me insurance), I work with URLs a lot. Some of them are normal and some are completely off the chain, like this:
http://www.exampleurl.com/BC3/dirmod.asp?sid=5A1714C7275342D19D6D1B4015944C55&nm=categorys&type=subcategory&mod=Subscribe&tier=1&id=E51F5E447D7B44C0B91253A8CA15CED1
And then there are services like TinyURL to shorten things like that.
http://irvingplace.net then becomes http://tinyurl.com/ycntk8o
But you all knew that, right? How about kicking it up a notch? For that, let's start with ShadyURL, which will take a regular URL and make it long and suspicious.
http://irvingplace.net then becomes http://5z8.info/-?php-deactivate_phishing_filter-48-_e0t3j_refugee-murder
Looooovely. Who wouldn't click on that? Scary not your thing? Maybe SoCuteURL is more your speed. It takes a regular URL and makes it a bit more kawaii, like so:
http://irvingplace.net then becomes http://www.socuteurl.com/pixiedust
Ta-da! Have fun, but be responsible kids.
So it should come as no surprise that I love Picture Book Report. Illustrators getting together (on the internet) and making pictures for the stories they love. I'm charmed.
Check out this online kaleidoscope. Is fun!
How about some snow-bowling or pig stacking to celebrate the day?
This is delightful!
"Six drawings per movie, in sequence, no movie stars" is the simple caption that accompanies a series of eye-catching black and white line drawings that recreate scenes from classic movies. The game is to guess what they are.
I probably guess correctly about a third of the time, but it is always fun trying.
Murmur is photographer Richard Barnes' fantastic series of photos of swarms of starlings. The clouds and shapes formed by the millions of small birds flying together are astounding. Some resemble spaceships or storms.
I think this is the sort of thing that would be neat to see in person, but only from a reasonable distance. Or with an umbrella.
I have been following The Uniform Project for a few months now. This is a very neat internet project that would be cool even if it was just for it's own sake. The fact that it is raising funds for The Akanjsha Foundation makes it particularly good.
What is the Uniform Project? To quote from the site: "Here's how it works: There are 7 identical dresses, one for each day of the week. Every day I will reinvent the dress with layers, accessories and all kinds of accouterments, the majority of which will be vintage, hand-made, or hand-me-down goodies." She then takes and posts self-portraits in these outfits. Readers will comment and rate the outfits, and people make donations as they see fit. As of today, the site has raised $52,621 to send kids to school in India.
Hurray for awesome internet projects!
The internet is really such a mix of "oh god, my eyes!" and "Wow, you have to see this!" (Sometimes simultaneously.) I love how the net has enabled so many really cool projects. I'd like to highlight some of my favorites from time to time.
Shadow Unit is one such cool project. It is a collaborative fiction project started by Emma Bull (one of the folks who also started the whole "urban fantasy" thing) and involving a roster of really cool authors. It is often described as "fan-fiction for a show that doesn't exist"...at least, that doesn't exist in our universe. However, in an alternate reality it airs on the WTF Network ("The Platypus"). A little bit X-Files, a little bit Criminal Minds and a whole lot of its own thing.
Not only does the "show" feature some amazing writing, but an active and engaging fan community. Furthermore, in an almost ARG-like move, some of the characters have Live Journals and interact readily with readers who comment—provided you don't break the Fourth Wall.
There is a whole lot of entertainment to be had with Shadow Unit, all for free on the internet (donations are appreciated). How can you beat that? Season three starts in just a few weeks. Check it out!
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
My Etsy Stores:
Quality Blogs:
The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century
Gigantic! The Plus-Sized Adventures of Lauryl Sulfate
Webcomics I'm reading:
