Will's Bookmarks

The Nine Eyes of Google

2011-05-05T06:05:00.001-06:00

Artist Jon Rafman created this compelling collection of images from Google Map's massive Street View project to photograph the world's highways and streets. Scroll through the fascinating photos or click the 9-camera image on top to read Rafman's essay about the project.

The artist explains: "Google sent out an army of hybrid electric automobiles, each one bearing nine cameras on a single pole. Armed with a GPS and three laser range scanners, this fleet of cars began an endless quest to photograph every highway and byway in the free world. Every ten to twenty meters, the nine cameras automatically capture whatever moves through their frame. Computer software stitches the photos together to create panoramic images. To prevent identification of individuals and vehicles, faces and license plates are blurred."

View Jon Rafman's Project

Inventables - the Innovator’s Hardware Store

2011-03-08T15:41:00.000-06:00

At Inventables, designers, artists, and inventors will find aluminum foam, bendable wood, and other materials that push the boundaries of what's possible.

“We believe that it is currently too difficult for designers, artists, and inventors to source materials. To solve this problem, we are building an online store that will streamline the process of innovation and inspire everyone—regardless of profession—to explore what’s possible.”

Go get creative...

View the Innovator's Store

Amazing Brick Machine Rolls Out Roads Like Carpet

2011-03-06T14:36:00.002-06:00

"Brick roads are beautiful and durable, but we don’t see them too often due to the effort it takes to produce them. What once was a labor-intensive, back-breaking job has now become a snap with this automatic Dutch paver laying machine, called the Tiger-Stone. The device rolls out a beautiful and sustainable hardscape, creating an instant road anywhere it travels. While the process may look magical, the secret lies in a smartly designed gravity-based system."

View the Amazing Brick Machine

Oath of Allegiance

2011-01-20T13:30:00.001-06:00

The United States Oath of Allegiance is an oath that must be taken by all immigrants who wish to become United States citizens. The first officially recorded Oaths of Allegiance were made on May 30th, 1778 at Valley Forge, during the Revolutionary War.

The current oath is as follows:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

Try reading the oath aloud without messing up...it's hard.

View Wikipedia Source

Tilt Shift Van Gogh

2011-01-14T11:51:00.002-06:00

Serena Malyon took several of Van Gogh’s paintings and edited them using photoshop to create a tilt shift effect. If you dont know what tilt shift is, its a kind of photography that uses a short range of focus to create photographs that look minature.

View More Tilt Shift Van Gogh

Google Books Ngram Viewer

2010-12-22T10:18:00.002-06:00

Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs and compares the historical usage of phrases based on the datasets comprised of more than 500 billion words and their associated volumes over time in about 5.2 million books. It consists of words contained in books published between 1500 and 2008 in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Russian. Although intended for a scholarly audience, this simple online tool allows anyone with a computer to plug in a string of up to five words and see a graph that charts the phrase's use over time. Type in "men,women" without the quotes and find the date that both are quoted equally.

Ngrams

List of common misconceptions

2010-12-12T20:57:00.001-06:00

This list of common or popular misconceptions describes documented ideas and beliefs which are fallacious, misleading, or otherwise flawed; however, these ideas have been commonly repeated as though they are true.

View Source

How to contact the Queen

2010-12-12T20:51:00.002-06:00

You can write to Her Majesty at the following address:
Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA

If you wish to write a formal letter, you can open with 'Madam' and close the letter with the form 'I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty's humble and obedient servant'.

This traditional approach is by no means obligatory. You should feel free to write in whatever style you feel comfortable.

Send Her a Letter

Artwork: Single Sheet of Paper

2010-08-16T20:27:00.002-06:00

Each artwork in this collection is made of a single sheet of paper.

View Source

My Food Looks Funny

2010-06-01T12:46:00.003-06:00

If your food ever looks funny, take a picture and send it to this website.

Funny Foods

San Francisco Film - 1906

2010-05-14T11:12:00.004-06:00

A film taken from a streetcar traveling down Market Street in San Francisco in 1906, a few days before the earthquake/fire destroyed the area.

This film, originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!).. It was filmed only four days before the quake and shipped by train to NY for processing. Amazing but true! Music: "La Femme D'Argent " from the "Moon Safari" album by Air

View Original Source

Pencil Talk

2010-04-27T21:09:00.003-06:00

"Pencil Talk is a blog devoted to exploring woodcase pencils and related topics. Of course, it is also more than just that – it is a meditation on the basic tools used by writers, artists, students, and office workers, and how these tools influence us."

View Pencil Talk

This blog has moved

2010-04-27T15:04:00.001-06:00

This blog is now located at http://blog.willdonovan.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://blog.willdonovan.com/feeds/posts/default.

Codeorgan

2010-04-27T14:36:00.003-06:00

The Codeorgan analyses the 'body' content of any web page and translates that content into music. The Codeorgan uses a complex algorithm to define the key, synth style and drum pattern most appropriate to the page content. It firsts scans the page contents and removes all characters not found in the musical scale (A to G), and then analyses the remaining characters to find the most commonly used note. If this is an even number the page is translated into the major pentatonic scale of that particular note. It becomes minor if there is an uneven number. Second, it defines which synthesizer to use. This is based upon the total number characters used on the webpage - there are 10 synthesizer effects and the one chosen is picked based upon the percentage of content. Finally, it selects a drum loop based upon the ratio of characters on the page versus the number of characters that are actually musical notes - there are 10 different drum loops to pick from.

Go to the mechanical codeorgan and make music.

How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves

2010-01-12T09:51:00.002-06:00

Bagels and Möbius strips have way more in common than you thought. Here's the proof and how to make a mathematically correct breakfast.

View the Mathematically Correct Breakfast

60 Second Recap

2009-11-03T20:32:00.003-06:00

"The 60second Recap wants to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today's teens. Through our 60second Recap video albums, we seek to help teens engage with the best books out there ... not just to help them get better grades, but to help them build better lives."

Check out these books in 60 seconds:

Animal Farm
Fahrenheit 451
Frankenstein
Great Expectations
Hamlet
Jane Eyre
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Pride and Prejudice
Romeo and Juliet

Learn about these books in sixty seconds.

Trademark Search

2009-10-30T14:33:00.002-06:00

Trademarkia claims to be the "largest, most accurate, and most complete free search engine for U.S. federally registered trademarks... ...[with] contextual information about the current use of interesting business names, slogans, and logos through pictures, commercials, and conversations from Flickr, Google, Youtube, and Twitter for each U.S. trademark filed in with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) since the year 1870."

View Trademarkia site

10 Ways to Look Good in Photos

2009-08-31T16:07:00.002-06:00

How to put your best face forward and pose like a model.

By Karen Lee, former model handler at the Elite modeling agency and head of the Karen Lee Group.

From Reader's Digest

1. Focus your eyes just slightly above the camera lens, move your face forward a bit, and tip down your chin.

2. Put your tongue behind your teeth and smile, which will relax your face.

3. Keep your arms by your side—but not glued there. To look natural, they should be a little away from your body.

4. Test-drive clothing against a white wall, with an indirect, natural light source (under a tree, indoors near a window)—it will show whether blue really is your best color.

5. As a rule, avoid patterns.

6. Photos exaggerate everything, so go easy on the makeup. For women under 30, a little mascara and lip gloss; over 30, add a touch of concealer.

7. Practice the classic model pose: Turn your body three quarters of the way toward the camera, with one foot in front of the other and one shoulder closer to the photographer. When you face forward, your body tends to look wider.

8. For standing photos, belly in, buttocks tight, shoulders back, spine straight.

9. Study photogenic people as well as photos in which you think you looked best. Look at your best angle. You’ll probably see that you were laughing or having a good time. Capturing someone when they’re relaxed or most animated usually makes for the best results.

10. To feel at ease, try closing your eyes, then opening them slowly just before the photo is taken.

View Source

Shadow Art Created From Junk

2009-06-30T11:30:00.002-06:00

"British-born and -based artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster skilfully skirt the boundaries between beauty and the shadowier aspects of humanity, playing with our perceptions as well as our notions of taste. Many of their most notable pieces are made from piles of rubbish, with light projected against them to create a shadow image entirely different to that seen when looking directly at the deliberately disguised pile."

View more junk shadows.

Your Logo Makes Me Barf

2009-06-17T19:24:00.002-06:00

"YourLogoMakesMeBarf.com is intended to be a humorous look at what can go wrong when an unskilled person (your neighbor’s brother’s uncle’s friend anyone?!) designs a logo. Good logos require time and involve great forethought. A good logo should be a financial investment but also something that will benefit the long term growth of a company.

So leave the designing to the designers and browse through some of these fine examples of what not to look for in a logo. Barf bags recommended."

View more barf here...

Best Airplane Seats

2009-06-11T11:16:00.002-06:00

The best seat on the plane is what you'll find here. Seat Guru has a database of thousands of seat reviews submitted by flyers like you. They also conduct independent research.

Please Take a Seat

Convert Files - free online file converter

2009-05-20T08:44:00.002-06:00

"... free and easy to use online file converter that supports a wide range of file types. It can convert almost any type of documents, archives, spreadsheets, audio and video files from one format to another. This service is absolutely free, and there's no need to download any software! Just click on BROWSE then select your file and upload it. When the file has been converted, you'll receive an e-mail message in the mailbox address, provided by you in the conversion request form."

Try it out.

Indexed

2009-05-18T15:36:00.002-06:00

Caption: “I’m not here to make friends.”

"Started in August of 2006, Indexed has been noted around the web—much to my continued shock. Thank you to everyone who has shared the link and joined the party.

Originally, I described this site this way: “This is a little project that allows me to make fun of some things and sense of others without resorting to doing actual math.”

Today, I’d have to take the word ‘little’ out of that line."

Get Indexed!

The Sticky Note Experiments

2009-05-06T20:23:00.002-06:00

"Fritz & Stephen, the madmen behind the Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments, now cause chaos in the office with over a quarter of a million sticky notes! From waterfalls to wheels, all this craziness is made out of nothing but sticky notes -- the zigzag pads made from pop-up dispensers."

View The Extreme Sticky Note Experiments

Wordle for generating "word clouds"

2009-04-04T13:41:00.001-06:00

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

View Wordle