Category: Because it’s Friday

I never finish anyth

This could be my motto.

I love to start things, but I’m not very good at keeping them going and finishing things is a real struggle.

I think I should have this on my wall (but that would mean finishing something):

Via Colossal

Because it’s Friday: Portrait of the ghost drummer

I love to watch drummers. I especially love being mesmerised by watching the sticks fly around the drum kit and marvelling as they switch from snare to cymbals, from  low tom to high tom.

Ghost Drummer is a multidisciplinary project that explores graphic qualities in process of playing on a drum kit. Besides being a musician, drummer when playing is unconsciously engaged in an elaborate choreography. The drum sticks are the extensions of drummer’s hands like a brush is an extension of the painter’s hand.

This video shows the dance of the drumsticks:

Portrait of the ghost drummer from odaibe on Vimeo.

Question: “So what is it you are doing with this one wild and precious life of yours?”

Today I’ve been a bit fed up with a sore shoulder and back, but some days it’s good to get a bit of a poke in the side.

This TED video was mine today:

Diana Nyad: Extreme swimming with the world’s most dangerous jellyfish

It reminds me of another question someone asked me to consider: “If you weren’t afraid what would you do?”

Because it’s Friday: Optical Illusions

What we see isn’t always what we see, that’s the great thing about optical illusions:

That’s a bit strange?

(This is a real life illusion which consists of a picture and a large mirror)

Parallel?

optical illusion 

Waving?

Optical Illusion 

Rotating?

Optical Illusion 

3D?

floating circle optical illusion 2 

Distance?

Godfrey Philips Optical Illusions 12 

Circle or square?

Major Drapkin Optical Illusions 12 

Length?

Major Drapkin Optical Illusions 18 

Flat?

Example Of 3D Sidewalk Art: The Artist Reaches For His "Box Of Chalks"! 

How many black dots?

Dots Illusion 

More parallel?

converging argyle-optical-illusions-8 

Rotating?

pink spinning illusion 2 

How many legs?

Impossible Magnet 

Is that possible?

Landscaping Illusion 

How many yellow dots?

shippo02 

Stationary or rotating?

optical illusion

More moving objects?

tairyu 

Don’t get sucked in

clarch01 

Nice curtains?

curtain 

Spiral?

ampan

How many legs this time?

brainteaser 4

Because it’s Friday: Fabulous Stop Motion

I am repeatedly amazed by the time and energy that people will put into the production of stop-motion video. The following are two of my recent favourites:

Every child imagines what inanimate objects do when they are not being watched – The Joy of Books is a wonderful representation of that imagination.

The Joy of Books

It takes real effort and lots of time to get light drawing pictures right, so to make a stop motion movie with light drawing pictures is simply amazing, but that’s what the team at Oh Yeah Wow have done with Rippled:

Rippled from Oh Yeah Wow on Vimeo.

It’s also similar to the project undertaken by Kein Lam (whose photographs are also fabulous):

Speeding around the world in under 5 minutes

Something to brighten everyone up from the UK who has seen more then enough rain this holiday season.

Do you ever feel like you should get out more?

Because it’s Friday: The Scale of the Universe

As a child I loved a video that was produced that showed how things scaled as you zoomed out from the earth.

scaleofuniverse.com is a wonderful interactive site to do a similar thing.

image

Because it's Friday: 2011 in 100 words

Following on from a friend of mine, here’s 100 words for 2011. The idea is that you write out 100 words that characterise your year right off the top of your head, without any editing.

Here’s mine:

Try it, you might be surprised by what comes to mind, I was surprised by how much swimming appeared in mine.

Because it's Friday: Flash-mobs and Absurdity

In a year when social media has been used to coordinate all sorts of national change I thought it would be good to end the year with one of the kings of the flash-mob Charlie Todd at TED:

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

And because it’s Christmas here’s a local flash-mob of the Hallelujah Chorus in Lancaster Market:

Lancaster Hallelujah Chorus
Lancaster Hallelujah Chorus

Because it's Friday: Extreme Freeborders

I’ve always been slightly jealous of people who can skateboard. It was something all of the cool kids could do when I was at school, but I never quite got the hang of it.

So imagine my ire when I came across this group for freeborders who can look so utterly in control while flying down the extreme roads of the Alps:

CHoE Tapes 2011 – BSV 2011 from CHoE on Vimeo.

Southern Alps Session from CHoE on Vimeo.

While we are on the subject of extreme speed, how about this one:

Because it's Friday: All that sitting is killing you!

Did you know that sitting is a dangerous thing to do, especially when you do it as much as those of us who have office jobs do. A wonderfully sobering set of statistics via visual.ly:

via

Because it's Friday: How safe are the roads?

Like most people in the western world I spend a good deal of time on the road. While travelling around in a metal box surrounded by safety features it would be easy to convince yourself that your safe. Cycling around on busy city roads gives you a different perspective.

Recently ito world has mapped out the last 11 years of accidents on British roads and provided a wonderful interactive map. It makes for sobering viewing, but there’s something quite compelling about it.

seeing where all of the deaths have occurred is bad enough, but as you zoom in it’s amazing how much of the British countryside has witness an accident:

http://map.itoworld.com/road-casualties-iframe-uk#lat=53.80951255063189&lon=-2.690543436448307&zoom=12