How did the snail?

Look at this first picture:


And now look at this second picture:


Now, how did that snail get all the way across that gap? It did it on its own and if you want to see exactly how it did it, look here for pictures of the in between bits.

Post #100

This is my one-hundreth post on Daily Departures. Maybe there will be a hundred more.

Yessssssss

Another friend of mine just started blogging. Go check out her blog, Life Itself.

Anna tells me that she's going to be sharing all of her deep dark secrets on her blog, so watch out, this will be good! (jk)

Could you possibly...

...like anything more than Star Trek action figures?

Of course! How about Star Trek action figures singing karaokee?



Or what about Star Trek action figures sitting poolside?



Or what about Spock and Kirk in a coffee house?



Or, how'd you like to check out Spock's crib in an episode of Cribs?

Interactive photographs

We're all familiar with the collage. Some of us have even put one together. There is a far more complicated variety of collage by which a new image appears via the arrangement of the smaller (sub-) photographs. I found a very interesting site that plays with this concept in a very interesting way. Observe:

You begin with a photograph like this. Notice the white box in the upper right corner? That box is your cursor and when you select a portion of the image you zoom in and get something like the next image.

Now you can begin to see what is composing the image. Once again, you select a portion of the image and zoom in.

And again, you zoom in further. (On each of these pictures, you should see if you can follow my clicks.

Finally, select your favourite photo.

Then, begin all over again.

There are, thousands of photos that make up this site and exponentially more ways that you can sift through them.

Click HERE to go to the site.

You know...

Despite all of the bad things that go on here on earth, this planet makes for some pretty stunning photographs. If these photos aren't evidence enough for the claim that we have a gorgeous panet, then I'm not sure if you could ever be convinced.

This is Iceland.

Sand storm anybody?

These are the Swiss and French Alps. Geneva is on the bottom corner of the curved lake--which is Lake Geneva.

Finally, despite its incredibly destructive power, that hurricane has a certain aesthetic charm, don't ya think? [All of these photos, and more, can be found here.

Speaking of pictures, Jennifer has completed her cycle tour and has started a Flickr Photo Stream. Go check it out.

New to blogging

My friend Angela has started a blog.

There are lots of pretty pictures and she promises to have some soapbox-style rants soon. This should be fun.

Achtung Baby

Go check it out!

Cool new link

If you've never checked out the links that I have on my sidebar, I suggest that you do it now. If you have, then very good I'm pleased. Every once in a while I'll add a new link to a fun blog; today is one of those days.

The link for today is The Cool Hunter. The Cool Hunter finds "cool" things online and blogs them. The VW post from a few days ago was a Cool Hunter find.

Mr. Rogers vs. The Senator

Keeping the Mr. Rogers references alive, here's a video of Mr. Roger's speaking to a US senator--Senator Pastore--about twenty million dollars of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1969. The video speaks for itself, so click here and watch.

Artist, just for pretend

Here's me pretending to be an artist:

By the way, that's Jennifer's face.

Architecturally creative

Even if you don't own a VW, I suspect that you'll find this interesting.

Recently at The Cool Hunter there was a post on a new kind of parking garage that VW has built. From The Cool Hunter:

The actual space that the facility occupies is approximately only 20% of a comparable facility with the traditional design that is used primarily in the US. Not only is the German structure less expensive to build, but vehicles are also "retrieved" in less time and without the potential of being damaged by an attendant. Collecting your new car is an event in itself. "In a fully automated procedure, your new car is brought down to you from one of the 20-story Car Towers. Large signboards in the Customer Center show you when your turn has come. Then, you're handed the keys, your picture is taken, the glass doors open and your brand-new car appears. You're all set to go."

If you want to see a number of photos of this structure as well as the plant that it is attached to, check here.

Face of a story

Flickr, for those of you who don't know is a place to upload your pictures and store them online. There are many other neat features. For example you can tag photos with keywords. Doing this then allows people to browse all of the photos on Flickr with those keywords. There are lots of other neat features, but I'll let you go and see for yourself.

One of the interesting things to browse on Flickr are the Groups. These groups are populated by user submitted photos. One interesting group that I came across lately is titled: Face of a Story. The group is self described as:

The life of a person seems to be very much reflected in their face. Though a picture may be worth a thousand words an interesting face may often be worth much more.

This is a group about life and about the people we chance to encounter. I would like for this group to collect portraits of interesting faces, those faces creased with the wrinkles of age, faces of age and wisdom, beauty and youth, but most especially faces which seem to tell a story.

Go, look at the photos in this group, they are worth your while.

References per second

Oftentimes comedies like, The Simpsons and Futurama are rated on a joke per second basis (often on these shows the jokes are references to pop-culture in some form or other).

Well, if a high joke per second ratio is a sign of funniness, then the video below takes the cake.

Challenge: Try to identify every character in the video.



If the lyrics are too fast, you can read them here.

SNL Gore

I'm in the middle of writing papers and my free time can't be spent writing long introductions to blog posts. So, that means that I'm posting another video; a video that really needs no introduction. It's just hilarious!



[UPDATE: It looks like the video got taken off of YouTube. Go here to watch the video.]

Mark Seliger's new book

I suspect that few of you could tell me who Mark Seliger was if I only told you his name; however, I suspect that most of you have seen some of his work. Mark Seliger is a brilliant photographer who specializes in portraiture.

Seliger's new book In My Stairwell features numerous celebrities over various shots all taken in the same brick stairwell. Seliger has a gift for capturing attitude and emotion. Instead of saying more, I think that I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Two Parkinson's sufferers.

Oh, Mel Brooks is funny.

Everyone knows who this is.

And finally, good ol' Tom Waits.

[NOTE: Not all of Seliger's work is suitable for everyone. There is nothing tasteless, but if you have one of those bosses with an incredibly undeveloped sense of what is good art... well you get the idea.]

Learning to dance?

There are online manuals for just about everything these days, including How-To-Dance.

Probably my favourite is by zeFrank. He calls it his "How to Dance Educational Video. He truly is a pioneer in dance education.

Recently however, a new instructor appeared on the scene; he is Judson Laipply. His instructional video is very comprehensive and although not in strict chronological order, it will give you a good idea of just how you will need to dance if you stumble across a time machine and, for some unknown reason, decide to go back to the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, or even nineties. So, without further adieu, click the play button below--the one in the center of the video--and enjoy.

(I should note that this video is six minutes long and isn't really worth watching unless you can hear the sound, so wait for that special time when you both have time and a computer with sound.)



[Thanks Cathy for the video tip.]

Wood and computers

It's been awhile since I've had an evangelical rant on here about Macs; I'm not going to subject you to one here either. However, I thought that I'd show you a really nice way of displaying one of Macs really nice iMacs.

What you see pictured above is the iWoodKiosk. I suspect that it was designed for businesses and museums and other such places, but if you like the idea of sitting on a bar-like stool while working on your computer, then the iWoodKiosk might be for you--it also helps to have a good deal of disposable income laying around.


While we're talking about wood and computers, check out this computer.

[UPDATE: Here is the link that I couldn't find when i originally wrote this post. There are a whole bunch more really fun wodden cases.]

"Lovescape"

This week I found a very nice piece of furniture on Moco Loco.

This piece is called Lovescape and is produced by Henny van Nistelrooy--I know, that's a mouthful.

It looks like the lounger--for lack of a better term--is malleable and can easily accommodate four people. Not only does this look comfortable, it looks like a great discussion piece. I recommend checking out the other things on the Henny van Nistelrooy.

Heard of eating frogs legs?

Well, that's nothing!

Check out this video for a new and exciting taste sensation or three: Frog sashimi and two other delightful tasty treats. I don't really want to spoil it, but I also don't want anyone who is uber-anti-meat-eating to watch the video. So, without further adieu, click the play button below.



[UPDATE: If you liked that, then you might want to see what Anthony Bourdain will eat. Thanks Liz.]

Drace and The Attics on MySpace

If you aren't familiar with MySpace, it is an online friends network. So, you sign up for a MySpace account and you can add a picture and other information about yourself. Once that step is complete, you can add friends who also have MySpace accounts.

That said, my friend Matt has a band called Drace that has a MySpace profile. The link has now been added to the 'listen' section of the sidebar.

While I'm mentioning friends in bands. Another band that I am friends with and that is on MySpace is The Attics who's band website can be found here while their MySpace profile can be found here.

Both Drace and The Attics--both Winnipeg based, I might add--have their music on their sites. Go listen!

What do you get when...

You mix: Two very large focaccia type breads,


Fifteen (or so) pounds of ground beef,


A block of cheese, a very large onion, four portabella mushrooms, five avocados, five large tomatoes, a machete


and a mini-keg of Heineken?


You get the biggest hamburger that I've ever seen.



Enough said.

[UPDATE: This post is dedicated to Jordan who I know is salavating at the site of this post. Eat on buddy, eat on.]

HOW?!

I promise I'll stop with the videos soon, but this was too unbelievable to not share.

Ronaldhino, who has recently become the worlds highest paid soccer player--or, so my friend Jonathan tells me--made this video for Nike.

When you watch this, count how many times he manages to bounce the ball off the crossbar.



Well?

If you still aren't impressed, then watch Ronaldhino make all of these other professionals look like mediocre amateurs.



[UPDATE: I replaced the video that was above with the one that is now above--the new video above is long, but well worth the watch if you've got 7 minutes to spare. The link to the old video is here.]

Monkeys are funny

I had a friend who lived by the title of this post.

In keeping with that spirit, I give you a video from YouTube. This video is of an interview with a "top" researcher in the field of animal languages. This "Professor Timothy Fielding" has been working with a gorilla named Gerald. More specifically, he has been teaching Gerald to speak. Click the play button and observe:



I noted at the bottom of the Singhsons post that I'd added Language Log to my sidebar and Language Log is where I came across this video.

Language Log is a fantastic blog that is run by 19 top linguists. The topics of discussion range from language acquisition to idiomatic language to formal grammar. The posts are always well written and very frequently entertaining. I suspect that you only need a minimal interest in language to be interested in this blog and given that we all use language, we all have a minimal interest in language. So, we should all be interested in this blog. Ok, I know that's not a sound argument, but Language Log really is worth checking out. (Really, click here now.)