“The Sp!n spinning top creates an optical illusion of levitation. When spinning the top, an exclamation mark appears. More than a simple toy, Sp!n is a tool that can be used to relieve stress or reduce anxiety.”
It spins for a super long time too. In some cases as long as five minutes. (!)
Unclear where they can ship this but you can buy one here for 972 Yen (~$9 USD.)
“Enjoy an epic 360-degree play experience—and prepare for an alien invasion—with THE LEGO® MOVIE 2™ 70840 Welcome to Apocalypseburg! construction toy. An advanced building set, it has over 3,000 pieces and presents an awesome challenge even for master builders.”
“In 2016 sketch artist Carl Lavia joined forces with photographer Lorna Le Bredonchel and together they formed the ambitious ’69 cities of the UK’ project. Which aims to create a portrait of the whole United Kingdom through large-scale sketches of its 69 cities.”
1959 was, of course, 60 years ago this year. This website documents a lot of predominantly Jazz Music happenings that year, and of any year in Jazz 1959 is a pretty excellent one to dig into.
It’s updated daily and lovingly curated. Recommended.
“When a person stands still close to a lamp, it shines brightly and emits a color that resonates out. The light of this lamp becomes the starting point, and it spreads to the two nearest lamps.”
This is a permanent installation at the Mifuneyama Rakuen Hotel in Kyushu, Japan. It consists of numerous lights which have been modified to sense when new visitors arrive.
Mr. Reinhard combines vintage maps of US terrain with contemporary land elevation data to produce these super original map views of several states and the US overall. Some of them are quite abstract.
You can purchase gorgeous prints of these works too.
“I wanted to create an algorithm that would allow me to produce different random geometric patterns based on a rectangle.
“The inspiration came from the type of diagrams called ‘treemaps’. I implemented a procedure in Houdini, that takes a rectangle and splits it vertically and then horizontally.”
“Chronas is a history map application with over 50 million data points which every registered user can curate and contribute to (just like Wikipedia).”
There is a tutorial video as the site has a variety of indepth features.
A crazy amount of detailed historical data here. This definitely took some effort to achieve!
“Amber Cowan is an artist and educator living in Philadelphia. She is a faculty member of the glass department of Tyler School of Art, where she received her MFA in 2011 in Glass/Ceramics.”
Her glass work is incredible.
Her newest works are on display at the Toledo Museum. Simply lovely.
“I wondered, then, if flipping the Grand Canyon into a Grand Mountain might in some way help me make sense of its scale. I’m much more accustomed to seeing the mass of something rather than the massive void of something. So, here’s what that looks like.”
Of course now the web is inundated with “2018 best of” lists, so I’ll include just a few. There’s a huge rabbit hole you can go down if you search for them obviously.
“The illustrated and interactive Dante’s Inferno, an alternative learning tool for the Divine Comedy first Cantica, made for aiding visual memory.”
This is a pretty interesting installation. If you’re a fan, it clarifies and organizes concepts of the novel, if you’re new, it’s a pretty great deep-dive / first look at the depths of this work.
Give this app a link to a YouTube video and click “Run.”
Using a neural network with reinforcement learning, the app will select “the most interesting frames” from the video, and generate a sort of comic book / storyboard output.
It reminds me very much of A Scanner Darkly. Just beautiful.
Hello again, and welcome to your December Friday Links!
It’s time for the Friday Links Xmas Gift and Giving Guide for 2018! As such, this is a longer than usual email.
As with every December, I can’t believe it’s already here. The year felt like it went by super quickly. Maybe not for you, in which case: congratulations.
ThinkGeek has a pretty good list of overall “gifts” but otherwise has everything broken into categories like “techies”, “Her universe”, etc., which they define as “interests”. Worth a look. Definitely some unique items there.
Now Magazine: Toronto’s best holiday markets, street fairs and fleas 2018
Now Magazine has a list of the best Christmas markets, flea markets and street fairs in Toronto.
And of course there are a lot of good lists of charities to give to, as there are every year.
I’d personally like to highlight the ongoing crisis in Syria, which has for many years required financial support to protect their citizens from further strife during what appears to be an endless war there.
The UN Refugee Agency
The UN Refugee Agency has a donation page which I recommend.
Canada took in a large number of Syrian refugees over the past year, and they also need our help. You can donate to the Canadian Council for Refugees. That organization does important work to help these people settle and survive.
And then besides that there are these charitable efforts:
Or maybe you know a family that needs some help this holiday season. Or maybe you don’t, but want to help in any way you can.
In Toronto, Holiday Helpers has a goal this year of “delivering Christmas to 600 GTA families”. That’s a tall order, and they could used our help.
Similar “adopt a family” efforts are available for Hamilton, Calgary, and Vancouver. Guaranteed you can find one in your own community no matter where you live.
And of course I wish you a happy holiday, a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a wonderful Kwanzaa. However you celebrate this season, I hope it’s awesome.
“Some organic lines and waves, thought on computer, then patiently drawn by a hand-made drawing machine. Here, the computer and the machine do not involve any generative process, but are used only as performing tools in the creative process.”
“In this post-apocalyptic hellscape, feeding citizens to giant robots is the only way to generate electricity for the rich.”
I mean… yeah, duh!
This is a challenging little game. You drag individual things on to the screen in order to guide the “citizens” into the chomping jaws of the giant robot. It definitely takes some trial and error.
“Ryan L Foote has set out to create chocolates that are both visually engaging and are reflective of contemporary design, while also discussing our multicultural world.”
I mean I’ve never bought or eaten a chocolate so I can “discuss” anything before. But these look amazing. Extremely intricately designed.
There is a shop of course, and (just a warning) they are quite, quite expensive.
And this concludes this week’s Friday Links!
Only 17 shopping days left until feasting day everybody.
