There’s someone who’s job is to create paper props for films and television. People have fascinating jobs and take intriguing journeys to get into those occupations. This is one of those stories:
Sometimes I pick something on a Friday because it is light and funny, other weeks it’s because it’s beautiful, at other time…well, I pick something because it appeals to me in a different way.
This is one of those weeks (for those of you needing one more clue – the title of the video is ironic):
This video has been viewed nearly 6 million time – not bad for something “unsatisfying”.
I’d be interested to know how you respond to it. It made me laugh, but I suspect for some of you the reaction will be very different. Just remember, whatever your reaction it’s likely that millions of other people had a similar reaction:
This TED talk looks at the different metaphors that we use to visualise knowledge.
According to Lima, we used to map knowledge as trees with trunks and branches, but increasingly we are moving towards using the network as the metaphor with many-to-many connections.
Sometimes things are obvious when they are pointed out, and this is one of them. Whilst I love mind-maps, which tend to follow a tree structure, they are so often inadequate for visualising the multitude of connections that exist:
This video is a lovely comic swipe as the change from old school comic super-heros to the darker reboots of the same characters that we get at the cinema today:
Owl Guy, a retro comic book superhero, is suddenly introduced to his rebooted counterpart.
I’ve gone a bit arty this week, but I’m not apologizing for it.
Sue and I love to swim in lakes and rivers and we are very fortunate that some of the best lake swimming in the UK is not very far away. If you follow my Instagram feed you’ll regularly see pictures of lakes just before or just after a swim. People regularly make comments about the madness of this venture, others express a desire to give it a go. Sue recently took seven others out into some open water and they loved it.
In this video from Millican, a Lake District based bag designer, Rachel Agnew explains some of the reason why she goes wild swimming:
24 Hour London is a set of 24, 7.3-gigapixel, photos showing in intricate detail the change in London throughout the day. There are a few images below, but you really need to go to the site to get the full experience.
I prefered the nighttime images, being able to see how the lights changed, but also how much of London was still lit up at 4:00am.
I regularly find myself needing a word to describe something for which there isn’t yet a word. There’s are so many new experiences and life is changing all around us, yet we use the same old words to describe them, and these words are so often inadequate.
As an example, I have a family member who has a chronic illness and people ask me how she is and all I have to respond with is “OK”. I can’t say that she is “fine” because she isn’t, but she’s no worse than she was yesterday so it doesn’t seem right to say “ill” or “poorly” because somehow “poorly” describes a situation where someone is going to get better. So we resort to the inadequate “OK” and a facial expression that tries to indicate “OK Good” or “OK Not Good”.
In the UK we have a saying for people approaching tricky situations, we say:
“Your skating on thin ice”
But what’s it really like to skate on thin ice? That’s what this video demonstrates – skating on 45 mm thick ice to be precise.
This is black ice, or congelation ice which forms without any air bubbles trapped inside, making it transparent and giving it amazing acoustic properties. The audio is a must for this one.
Graham Chastney 