Mandelbulbs

The geekier (or artistic) amongst you will no doubt have seen the mathematically generated beauty of Mandelbrot sets such as the below:



From a simple equation this wonderful pattern emerges again and again, no matter how far one zooms in to the image.

That's not the cool bit.

The cool bit is that a few fractal fanatics have recently been experimenting with 3D Mandelbrot sets - nicknamed Mandelbulbs. They haven't quite got the true three dimensional formula worked out yet, but the various approximations in use are already producing some fantastic graphics.

On with the pretty pictures, click for super-size (and I do mean super-size, one of these is 7000x7000px):

The basic form


Gateaux


Honeycomb Heaven


Lost Ruins


Cool or what? For those of you interested in the maths - using hypercomplex numbers - there's a bit more detail here and some pseudo-code is provided here.

One Million Giraffes

Following a (presumably) drunken bet, someone on the Internet is looking to collect 1,000,000 hand-drawn giraffes by 2011. I really can't think of any more noble aim for the future - and it'll be one hell of a puzzle for digital archaeologists in a few hundred years when they find all these pictures without any context.

You can see the (pitiful) 600 or so he's collected here and you can submit your own drawing in myriad ways; the most obvious being simply to email it to him.

For reasons I really can't explain, here's my favourite so far:



For reasons anyone who has ever seen me draw anything will perfectly well understand, I won't post my effort up here. And I think I might even submit it under a pseudonym.

Get drawing :)
Xx

In My Bathroom...

People don't read blogs to find out about world news, your latest achievements or your company's latest releases. They want to know the little things, the real things.

So, here's what my housemate Terra does with our loo rolls when their paper has been used for whatever things students do with toilet paper. Mostly cleaning out piercings, mopping up blood and wrapping up potatoes for baking as far as I can see.

<sub>This guy's great. Needs a hat though.

I think this one's a work in progress...so I've shown it from both sides.

Grammar fail :( - the wrench was my addition.

Raaawr! I hope the eyes were intentional add-ons.</sub>

In the spirit of realism, I've also tried to give an indication of how long it's been since one of us remembered to clean the bathroom. The problem, you see, is that the cleaning rota is on the fridge, and we like eating takeaway.

Another quote I've also liked recently (and seen attributed to too many people to have any idea who it came from):

"Facebook is for people you used to know, Twitter is for people you'd like to know better".

PS: Yes, in case you were wondering, I do have a Microsoft rubber duck, amongst all the other strange and wonderful branded things of theirs surrounding me:

Adventuring

Drumming on Rock Band is a tiring ordeal, so Julie-oh and I decided to pop over to London yesterday for a fun day out. We started off in a psychadelic little square hidden away just off Covent Garden known as Neal's Yard.

Apparently very popular amongst the vegan community, Neal's Yard is precisely what would happen if a bunch of hippies got hold of the square Monty Python used to live on at the same time that Dulux were trying to shift some of their more unusual shades of paint. I'm told this is exactly the case.


_{Python's old house, and some of the hippy shops}

I was a fan of the unorthodox decor and atmosphere leant by the kind of people who sit around such decor, and surprisngly also of the food there, which was the reason we went. Julie-oh found lots of gluten-free goodness there to eat (pies, bread, lots more) and I'm sure she'll blog about that, but for now I'll just say that it was better than normal, fully glutenated food. Sweet.


<sub>The 'restaurant'


The deli serves meat based food too, if you don't mind a dirty look or two</sub>

We decided to pop over to Camden Town after this for some shopping, and across the way stumbled over some graffiti that Will had been showing us in a book just the night before. It's a piece by Banksy, drawn straight onto a standard brick wall. Apparently he'd painted it white the week before the actual drawing by dressing up as a workman and putting some signs up - smooth.


_{Masterful - click to embiggen}

In Camden I managed to add to my pretentious look by buying a great beret, along with some other tie-dye oddities, of the ilk normally found in Camden market stalls.


_{I think the sour look and neck-tie set it off well, if only I had a moustache...}

Finally, it was off to the Museum of London - one of the lesser known London museums, but still really cool. They had skeletons from 200,000BC found in what is now London, along with the usual (but well done) whipthrough of the evolution of man, from bits of stone through to rough axes through to sharp swords - all the ways of killing things you could want. Women, on the other hand, invented nice pottery in about 2,000BC and didn't move on much, from what I can see.

There's also a tacky piece around the Great Fire there (apparently it was quite hot) and a fairly interesting Roman section too. Worth a visit if you've done the other museums.

Beautiful

Turn the lights off and the volume up, then watch this:



This is Manu Delago playing the Hang, a relatively new instrument created in Switzerland in January 2000. It's melodic, percussive and beautifully unique and I really, really want one. Unfortunately, there's only two people in the world making Hanghang, and demand has become so high that you have to personally apply to have one made. Also - they're simply not to be found for resale, for obvious reasons :(


_{Three Hanghang - what a cool pluralisation}

As such, I've contented myself with buying all three of of Manu Delago's albums, which should be arriving fairly soon. I'm also really hoping to go and see him either in London on Thursday the 15th of May, or Glastonbury on Saturday the 17th of May. If you can make either of these dates - then please please let me know, though I'll probably just go on my own if not.

Finally, if I'm feeling particularly upset that I can't purchase my own Hang, then I can play with the fairly crude E-Hang that some kind soul has created. Here's hoping it's still a work in progress :)

Lille - Day 2

We decided to be nice and touristy on our second day in France and wandered around Lille taking photos of anything that was large and had been carved in some way. Here, for example, is a picture of a man on a statue of a horse on top of a large block of stone. Thrilling eh?


_{This chap is called 'Foch'. Hehe, 'Foch'.}

I much preferred the little things in doorways and side-streets though, of which there were many - sometimes very cool. Take this little angel doorknocker on a building of no importance whatsoever:



Likewise, here's a kitty in someone's window:


_{Hehe, kitty}

After quite some wandering, I dragged Julie - a confirmed heathen (Methodist) into a proper, Catholic Palm Sunday mass. In French no less too. I love French Churches and services - and there was naturally a great organ in the Cathedral too.

We then headed to the Museum of Beautiful Art to look at some...well you get the idea. That was all lovely, but it was the impromptu renaissance music group playing amongst the paintings that I really loved. That and the fact that there were two harpsichords just lying around the place...and being played. So, so beautiful:


<sub>The first, beautifully simply harpsichord


The second, fancier, modern harpsichord


Inside the second one...</sub>

After some more wanderings and the like it was off out for our meal in a brothel.

I must stop typing the word 'brothel' on my blog.

IWOOT

One of the other interns over at Microsoft UK, Onwah Tsang, runs the TechCast Network - a review site for various cool gadgets and bits of geekery.

As I was over at his desk last week for a prizegiving ceremony (I won half a can of Coke - 30 photos were clearly needed to commemorate this) he showed me a few treats from a box of gadgets he was busy reviewing.

One of these was the L Version wristwatch (the link's to his December review of that) and it's just one of many unbelievably cool LED watches made by Tokyoflash Japan. Here's how it looks:



Hours on the right, tens of minutes on the top left, singles of minutes on the bottom left. It's pretty easy to tell the time with after a little practise, and looks simply beautiful - elegant and stylish, yet ultimately modern. It also does a great job on the 'pub test' - simple enough to be shown off to all your mates after a couple of pints, different enough to keep their attention and sturdy enough to cope with being dropped in a small pool of beer.

Obviously, for sheer geek value, you still can't beat the Binary Watch - which is a little more difficult to use, and not as well made...but really does give you that edge of superiority over the technophobes out there.


_{The Binary Watch}

Hours along the top (8-4-2-1) and minutes along the bottom (32-16-8-4-2-1), with only 5 seconds to read the time, mean that you need to be pretty sharp on your binary and maths if you don't want to be constantly late or early everywhere you go.

Still though, it looks damn cool, and "is water resistant to 90 feet - just in case you wanted to show off your binary proficiency to a halibut."

I Hate America

Lots of people make this claim, but mostly they're just basing it on some trivial little thing, like wars, foreign policy or unbounded capitalism. They probably don't even care too much - I mean, look at this chap:



He just forgot to bring his jacket along for a day of standing on the street corner, and wanted a bit of warmth. Then the media got involved and suddenly he had to start pretending he had some problem with the USA. Then you've got these fellows:



This was originally reported as an 'anti-America rally', but if you look closely, you'll notice that the guy in the foreground is actually making a 'scissors' motion. He's about to stage the grand opening of a much needed Gilette shop.

--

Back to the topic I, on the other hand, have a perfectly valid and, quite honestly, shocking reason to hate the Americans. I took the novel approach of 'walking' (walking, noun: the act of travelling by foot - I got that definition from an online, American dictionary. They'd spelt 'travelling' wrong) from place to place in Seattle.

I soon noticed, as I 'walked' about the place, that they were big fans of traffic crossings. Well, you'd have to be really when it's impossible to walk more than 50 metres or so in any direction without encountering a road. Such big fans, in fact, that they had three different variations on images for the 'stop' and 'go' paradigm, which as far as I can discern, all meant exactly the same thing.

One of these types was the familiar 'red hand' and 'white man':


_{Colour's a bit off in this pic, you'll have to trust me that the man at the bottom is really 'white'}

This is quite an interesting picture if you actually analyse it a bit. You'll notice the hand is designed very clearly to convey a message of 'stop'. You may think the colour red is designed to do the same, but if you think carefully, you'll realise that what Americans really associate the colour red with is...communism. So, the top of this sign is really saying "STOP COMMUNISM" every time you cross the road.

I hardly think I need to point out the implications of 'progress for the white man' to anyone with a brain either. Shameless subliminal messaging from the American government there.

That's not why I hate America though.

The reason I hate America, is another type of pedestrian crossing sign you'll see over there:


_Bastards.

Yes, the infamous "Don't Walk" sign. Or, actually, if you take a good look at it, the "Dont Walk" sign. What the hell is a Dont? Every single day, every single American (well, those that go outside...so probably more like 50%) is being exposed to a horrific violation of the English language - it's little wonder that in a word association survey 'stupid' recently came pretty high when people were asked to associate something with 'American'. British people, that is, obviously - not American ones. Can't find the source for that survey at the moment, I believe it was on BBC News, let me know if you have a link.

Finally, two more pictures of something from my little Paris trip that never made it up:



Something that classy makes it hard to hate France, doesn't it? I still manage that feat though, fortunately for all.

Puttin' on the ritz

T'other night, for my sins I was sitting alone, watching television when a brilliant concert came on Channel 4 of all places, the elaborately titled - Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! does Judy! Judy! Judy! - Rufus Wainwright recreating Judy Garland's 1961 Carnegie Hall concert.

Amongst many great hits, he sang one I haven't heard for an age - "Puttin' on the ritz". Here's Rufus' performance on Youtube, if you're interested, but what I found whilst looking for it was even better:


_{Fred Astaire, king of the world. Watch 'till the end - or at least skip to the middle.}

Unbelievably good. I'm off to watch my old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films for the rest of the night.

Xx

Sawse - Design and Art

Sawse is a blog I've recently stumbled upon that offers A Healthy Blend of Design Inspiration, New Technologies and Offbeat News. As well as offering some of their own stuff, they do a great job of compiling some of the best bits of funky art from around the web too.



The above's from one of my favourite posts on the site - 20 photographs taken at the exact right angle, which is absolutely kickass, and well worth a look.



25 Photographs Taken at the Exact Right Time is another great post along the same lines.

One final link before I leave you to go and discover their site myself is going to have to be a recent post, Stop motion animation, which has some absolutely brilliant videos on there. I particularly like the ones from damnfunnypictures, like this one:

Spacedust

A chap by the name of John recently left yet another comment on my timeless anti-BT post, and, interested to see if he'd blogged in more detail about his experience, I had a click on his profile.

Well, I can't find a blog, but I did find his brilliant website, Spacedust, which does something I've always vaguely wanted to but never had the time for.

You know all those signs you see dotted around that are just hilarious? Well, he's gathered a bunch of photographs of them together - go take a look, there's some corkers :)

The 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project

I recently stumbled across a little something that really made me smile. Nothing like the power of the human spirit and a little sense of community - and it's even better when there's no real point past the sense of achievement and a bit of brightness in the day.


_{Click to enlarge}

The 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project was a neighbourhood effort by some folks in San Francisco and has led to 163 steps in their area becoming absolutely beautifully tiled with mosaics. Visit their site for some more pictures and the full story.

Contact Juggling

I was on Wikipedia last night, browsing around things related to M.C. Escher to confirm whether or not he did actually enjoy torturing fish. The answer, by the way, is that he didn't, but a quick Wikipedia edit from myself could quickly change that bit of history. Oh how I love the internet..

Anyhow, I got onto looking at Henderson, Lucas & Bowie's film The Labyrinth, which I've still never gotten around to seeing. Anyone got a copy I can borrow? I learned that during that film, Bowie appears to be 'contact juggling' a lot. Now, I'd never heard of contact juggling, let alone seen it, before then, so naturally I popped along to YouTube.

Wow. Contact juggling is far, far cooler than 'toss juggling', just see:



That being said, a man by the name of Greg Kennedy certainly had a good go at restoring the balance not too long ago with his conical juggling routine:

Drawings on Tie-Dye Heart

Today's update on Tie-Dye Heart is a little different to what we've done so far, but if it proves popular I'll be putting up a few similar things from time to time - so let me know what you think about the whole idea of having some drawings up there alongside the cheap jokes and comics.

Chased/chaste is just a little drawing Lucie gave me one day, but for some reason I find it oddly compelling. There's something about her hidden face that really makes me wonder about what's going to happen next. Lu says it's a girl behind chased, who's just fallen/stopped to rest, but I tend to imagine otherwise...

It's been up on my living room wall for awhile now, just thought I'd share it with you. Even better - as this is just a pilot to find out if you like/don't like this sort of thing, the post's out of sync with the Sunday/Thursday updates, so you're getting a freebie this week. Enjoy :)

Xx

Pepe Deluxé - Go For Blue

This is just...unbelievably awesome:



Lots of drugs anyone?

The Does Nothing-o-matic

Anyone remember this great Honda advert?



Well, someone who's clearly played too many games of Mouse Trap, and probably seen that advert above, has constructed the absolutely spectacular...'Does Nothing-o-matic' using only items found in his house. Enjoy:



Pity he forgot to include a song by The Sugar Hill Gang at the end :(

Beauty in the breaks

I love art, in its many, many forms, and it always lifts my 気 to see someone, anyone, create something with love which expresses that which they find beautiful. When I too, however, find it beautiful, then it stays in my thoughts for quite some time, and I always try and find a way to share it with others. Often it's a piece of music, a very simple sketch or a lovingly constructed sculpture, but just sometimes, it's something you'd normally think of as far less soul-less, paid for by a corporate giant:



Now, TV adverts for large corporations may not seem a likely art-form to move me so, but when an advert is this good, one barely even notices the product being sold (though I'm sure the viral effect is superb for business). Often the high budget can lead to something even better than the short indie films - which are invariably too pretentious to enjoy anyway.

Commercials of this quality aren't a new concept, with a few companies having a very good history in this department, possibly most notable amongst them Volkswagen of all people. Then again, these guys did start with one of the best propoganda teams of the century behind them - so you would expect some top notch stuff. Did anyone else love The Pretender advert below?



I was also trying to find, amongst the vast archives of utter rubbish on Youtube, a Twix advert that's currently on the TV which I quite liked. It's not normally the type of thing I'd have posted up, but I guess this Vodafone ad has just got me in the mood to appreciate adverts. Regardless, I couldn't find it, but I did find the following cool Lego construction:



What I love, a lot more than the actual video, is (currently) the most recent comment on there (which you can see by clicking here or simply clicking on the video above once it's started playing) - which quite simply states:

Why don't you just pull it out for free?

I can't remember the last time I heard someone so simply sum up the ignorance of the masses to art - but the problem is, I can't quite figure out whether this guy is a genius, or is just actually that much of a pickled egg sandwich. Guess it all comes back to that which the mouseover in XKCD comic 301 says:

Fun game: Try to post a Youtube comment so stupid that people realise you must be joking

Randall's right, it's nigh on impossible.

Wooden computing

Whilst browsing through Youtube, I was unlucky enough to stumble across this fairly awful video, which has been extremely popular on there recently. I'll leave it to you to work out why - or to simply enjoy it if you get whatever it is I'm missing:



From here my train of thought dawdled, until I decided to plug the phrase 'wooden computers' into a search engine to see what came up.

Wow.



Above is the Wooden iPod by ZapWizard - if Apple don't put that into their next-gen range then I think they're really missing out on an opportunity.


_{“To be honest we do not have the cheapest masters in Moscow...”}

This one's a piece of Russian brilliance, with everything hand-carved, and you can even buy your own, though take note of the quote in the subline above, I imagine it'll cost more for the outsides than for the gaming rig you put inside. Update: I actually went away and asked them how much the above would cost - US$15,000. Ouch. However, if you want to see the product of some really hardcore time, effort and love...



Wow.

This one took over 300 hours of effort and is completely hand-built by Nicholas Falzone, nothing I say could be worth of it.

Guitars and girls and art

This mannequin-turned guitar, found on Amy Crehore's Blog (quite a talented artiste) was recently linked to me, and although I can see the artistic value, I'm quite disturbed by the man playing it. It probably doesn't help that he looks a lot like Hyde from That 70's Show...does anyone else find that picture a bit creepy?

--



This one however, really does appeal to me. You can really see the love, care and attention that's gone into it - it took three years to make. The creator's not just a great sculptor and luthier either - he can really play the thing. So, turn the lights down low, get comfortable, and be entranced by the beauty of the music and the art - so rare we get to see the two combined.



As if that's not enough, he's even donating the money he makes from the sale of the mer-tar to charity. Top bloke.

Four Galaxy Pileup Caught On Cosmic Camera

Four Galaxy Pileup Caught On Cosmic Camera

Seriously, Best. Headline. Ever.


_{This remind anyone else of Xenon II: Megablast?}

The story's not half bad too, you can probably guess the gist of it from the headline, but this lot are apparently behaving a little strangely, and not creating any new stars.

I'm not entirely sure about the tenses they've used too, I think maybe Dr Dan Streetmentioner may need calling in to clarify things, but surely the phrase 'Eventually, they will create' shouldn't be being used when talking about something 5 billion light years away, which, if I'm not mistaken, therefore means it happened 5 billion years ago if we're just seeing it now?