roomthily

slavin: “I’ve also thought a lot about the reproduction of...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:32:31 -0600

“I’ve also thought a lot about the reproduction of these animals. Imagine these Strandbeests making copies of themselves simply by feeding them plastic tubes. I’m sure this is possible, but I need a few more million years to make that a reality.

Today, Strandbeests have an ability to multiply that I wasn’t aware of in 2007. Let me explain. The leg system of the beach animals works because of a combination of certain lengths of tubes. Because of the proportion of lengths, the animals walk smoothly. You could say that this range of numbers is their genetic code. I published this genetic code on my website and since then, hundreds of students, especially in the United States, have been able to produce their own Strandbeests. (Search YouTube for “theo jansen mechanism” and you will find them.)

You may argue that humans do this replication, but I see it differently. The Strandbeest is a self-replicating meme, a brain virus. It infects the student’s brain. In fact, the Strandbeest abuse students for their reproduction. For two years, this reproduction fell into a flow acceleration. Now, 3D printers produce walking mini Strandbeests. They are born, not assembled, and walk on the table, which you can see here.”

Nice Theo Jansen piece in HuffPo.

blech: The Welsh Space Campaign at we make money not art (via...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:53:56 -0600

blech:

The Welsh Space Campaign at we make money not art (via iamdanw)

xkcd: Ice Sheets

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:12:41 -0600

xkcd: Ice Sheets

Foursquare Time Machine via Foursquare Blog

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:52:10 -0600

Foursquare Time Machine

via Foursquare Blog

chels: Justin sent me an email this morning with the subject...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:03:03 -0600

chels:

Justin sent me an email this morning with the subject line “CRITICAL INFORMATION” that just contained a link to this story of a pipe-cleaning ferret named Felicia from Fermilab.

Back in the ’70s, the scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory were looking for a way to clear the tubes of their newly built particle accelerator of the bits of dust that could derail a high-energy beam of particles whipping around at the speed of light.

Some ingenious scientist remembered that ferrets were used on English estates to go down rabbit burrows and scare the critters out (hence the phrase “ferret out”) and so, Felicia the ferret was employed by Fermilab to clean out the atom smasher. They tied a piece of string with a cotton swab to her tail, set her in the tubes, and then banked on her natural curiosity to lead her around the four-mile particle collider.

Felicia is now officially my favorite animal in science history.

transitmaps: File Under Awesome: London Tube Map Recreated With...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:33:15 -0600

transitmaps:

File Under Awesome: London Tube Map Recreated With Lego Bricks

Sent my way by just about everyone this morning, this Lego map is one of five located at Tube stations across London as another part of the Tube’s 150th birthday celebrations. Each map shows the Tube at a different stage of development from the 1920s right through to the version shown here: a near-future map for 2020.

Painstakingly assembled from thousands of Lego bricks, the map looks great, although Neil Bennett from Digital Arts notes that its actual usefulness is pretty limited:

“… in the few moments we were there, tourists and travellers attempted to use the map to navigate their way across London and soon wandered off in search of a real map looking confused. Others were more impressed, and joined us in snapping photos of the map.”

Seeing as the maps are more art than information design, I don’t really see this as a huge problem, myself. The maps will remain on display at King’s Cross (this map), South Kensington, Piccadilly Circus, Green Park, and Stratford stations over the summer, and then will be transferred to the London Transport Museum.

(Sources: Design Arts, BuzzFeed UK — with more pictures of the map)

Quattroshapes: A Global Polygon Gazetteer from Foursquare

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 07:47:05 -0600

Quattroshapes: A Global Polygon Gazetteer from Foursquare:

this was a good talk at foss4g-na, too

Experiments in Bicycle Flow Animation (by Jo Wood)

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:33:01 -0600

Experiments in Bicycle Flow Animation (by Jo Wood)

"Is the web the first truly flexible medium? I tried to come up with other fields that need to design..."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:24:11 -0600

“Is the web the first truly flexible medium? I tried to come up with other fields that need to design things for a flexible canvas, in the hope of finding inspiration there. The only media types I could come up with was the art of balloon printing and the art of tattooing.”

- Other flexible media: balloons and tattoos ⚒ Nerd

"There’s a strand of the data viz world that argues that everything could be a bar chart. That’s..."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:43:04 -0600

“There’s a strand of the data viz world that argues that everything could be a bar chart. That’s possibly true but also possibly a world without joy”

- Amanda Cox, 2013 (Read the full article)

Map Stack by Stamen

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:15:47 -0600

Map Stack by Stamen

visual-poetry: »ghostwriter« by rainer kohlberger

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:09:50 -0600

visual-poetry:

»ghostwriter« by rainer kohlberger

For Example

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:32:02 -0600

For Example:

notational:

This is a rough transcript of my talk on June 6, 2013 at Eyeo. Words and examples have been adapted a bit for the web so may differ slightly from the talk. - Mike Bostock