The Improv Everywhere gang has been on another mission.
This time they’ve set up an orchestra outside Carnegie Hall and asked people to “Conduct Us”.
The joy on people’s faces as they feel the power of the control of the baton and put the musicians into action is wonderful.
Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to fly like an eagle?
Have you watched nature programmes and thought how great it would be to be up there soaring and swooping?
Well this is what it looks like soaring over Chamonix on the back of an eagle:
How are you with heights?
Ever imagined what it might feel like to travel across the top of buildings, jumping across walls, sliding down roof-lines?
That’s exactly what this video shows:
I love optical illusions. We put so much value in what we see being what is real, but these videos show how easily our eyes can be deceived.
They’re all from the ILLUSION exhibition at the Science Gallery:
View more videos from this exhibition here.
Following on from my post about the paradox of business mobile technology here’s a video about unplugging from Tiffany Slain and her husband Ken Goldberg.
Anyone recognise themselves in this?
Some beatbox fun from TEDxSydney by Tom Thum.
I know a number of people who beatbox and it always fascinates me how they get the sounds that they do.
When I was younger I had a paper-round. One winter I managed to completely mangle my bike, so borrowed my Mum’s old Raleigh Shopper from the back of the garage.
I wasn’t any more careful with my Mum’s bike than with my own. There is still a scare in my side from when I came flying off it one day, because my shoelace had got stuck in the front wheel and the pointed brake lever embedded itself in my torso.
But, I never did anything quite as mad as this:
Chances are that you spent at least part of your childhood with a piece of string in your hand either skipping or doing yo-yo. But how many of you managed to get to levels of skill anything close to these two?
(In the USA they call skipping – jump rope. I suppose it’s more descriptive, but I like the feel of skipping.)
Confession: I’m not a qualified designer, but I’d like to be one. The nearest I get to design is creating documents, presentations, blogs and yes, even spreadsheets.
One of the primary roles of my job is reviewing other people’s documents, presentations and spreadsheets.
I see so many things that claw at my eyes with poor design that I already have a pretty good idea of what doesn’t work.
Please no more yellow text on red backgrounds.
Please no more slides with twenty differently sized fonts in them.
Please no more documents that are endless pages of words without form or structure.
Please no more of this font switching through the document.
I could go on.
But, I’m not as clear about what makes good design.
I know some people think that it’s not important, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong, it does make a difference. David Kadavy tells us why it’s important:
David is also making a free Summer of Design available online – if you’re quick you can still enroll. I’ve enrolled, because I’d like to learn a bit more about how-to rather than how-not-to.
A TED talk to think about this weekend.
In this short (7 min) video Juan Enriquez asks the question:
What happens if Facebook, Twitter, Google, Linkedin, cell phone, GPS, Foursquare, Yelp, Travel Advisor, all these things you deal with ever day, turn out to be electronic tattoos? And what if they provide as much information about who and what you are as any tattoo would?
We spend our lives looking at typography whether it’s on the page or on the screen.
In the modern world we have access to thousands of different typefaces some of them wonderful, some of them plain awful.
But where did they all come from:
Today’s video is described on YouTube like this:
In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.
The speech has, therefore, been around for some time, being highlighted in The Guardian on David Foster Wallace’s death, but the video is new.
Speaking as a resident of the United Kingdom where we, to our shame, often look down on education this is fabulous call to see knowledge in a new way:
Graham Chastney 