John Farrier's Blog Posts

The Entrance to a Parkour Gym

According to redditor Ferroxen, this door is the entrance to a parkour gym in Malmö, Sweden. It's for beginners. A real parkour gym is entered only through a ventilation duct on the roof.

-via Super Punch


This Tiny Book Summarizes All of History

Evan Lorenzen, an artist and graduate of the quirky Marlboro College, made a miniature book that condenses all of history into a few pages. It doesn't go into detail, but it will give you a thumbnail sketch of the past few billion years. You can find more pages from the book on his Tumblr blog.

Er, wait. Has this last one happened yet?

-via Colossal


Amazing Photo: A Bat-Eating Spider


(Photo: Martin Nyffeler and Mirjam Knörnschild)

Were you planning on going outside tonight? Well, it doesn't matter. Wherever you are, spiders can get to you. And a whole bat is just an appetizer. Martin Nyffeler of Basel University and Mirjam Knörnschild of Ulm University published a paper last year titled "Bat Predation by Spiders." That means spiders that eat bats.

They found 52 reports of spiders eating bats across every continent except Antarctica.* Many of the attacks were by giant golden orb silk-weavers (Nephilidae), who presumably accept bat flesh when human is not easily attainable. You can see more photos of them here.

-via Dave Barry

*So go to Antarctica to be safe.


Teenager Invents Early-Stage HIV Test for High School Science Project


(Photo: Simon Fraser University)

15-year old Nicole Ticea is a student at the York House School in Vancouver, Canada. Her contribution to a science fair won her first place at the regional Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge. But more importantly, she’s invented something that could saves lives.

It’s a simple test that examines a drop of blood for signs of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Simon Fraser University officials described it as “nearly as simple as a pregnancy test.” The success of her project has encouraged Ticea to continue her work as a health scientist:

Ticea said the project took hours of scientific research and lab experiments, which she juggled along with schoolwork, sports and extracurricular activities.

But she said all the hard work, and even giving up her social life, was well worth it.

“Being in the lab really reinforced what I already knew,” Ticea said. “That scientific research involves dedication, determination, long hours and a deep-rooted love for the field that makes sacrifices worthwhile.”

-via Huffington Post


A Risk Board Carved into a Coffee Table

The father of redditor fightingcrime carved and painted a Risk game board onto a coffee table, thus providing fun and frustration for his family for years to come. It appears to be a variant of the game with more routes and territories, including Svalbard, the Philippines, and the Falkland Islands. I’ve played this variant many times and agree: it makes the game more challenging and more fun.

The best take on Risk that I’ve played is Succession Wars, a board game set within the BattleTech universe. Although Risk often ends up becoming a political struggle, Succession Wars has intrigue and treachery built in.

-via Geekologie


This Cafe in Japan Makes Parfaits That Are 4 Feet High


(Photo: rcp_1nn)

Parfait construction is becoming very competitive in Japan. Some are made with raw tuna and others come with entire slices of cake on top. I don’t know which restaurant makes the most extreme parfaits, but the Cafe Olympic in Nagasaki is surely a contender. It specializes in huge parfaits, the largest of which, named the “Nagasaki Dream Tower” is nearly 4 feet tall. It’s a combination of ice cream, ice cream cones, cakes, cheese cakes, jello, whipped cream, corn flakes, and more. It’s so huge that eating one (or more, I suppose, if you’re still hungry) requires the use of a special spoon, which is pictured below.


(Photo: piyopicco)


Pull the Pin and This Music Box Will Detonate with a Tune--But Only Once

Canadian artist Maskull Lasserre is known for his inventive approaches to exploring the morbid, such as placing human bone models in ordinary structures and making a stringed musical instrument out of a handgun.

One of his most recent projects is called Beautiful Dreamer. These are music boxes shaped like grenades. Pull the pin on one, and it’ll will play once and only once. Some of the grenades play “America the Beautiful” and others play “Beautiful Dreamer.”


Although he does not say so, I wonder if this project grew out of Lasserre’s experience as an artist embedded with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. He describes his time in Afghanistan in an interview:

I went there without the expectation of making anything there or anything specific to it. I don’t work reflectively or even reflexively. I don’t just have an experience or see something and make something that’s derivative of that. There’s a strange third phase in the middle where I have to internalize everything and then forget about it. Eventually it comes out by itself. For better or worse, that’s just how I work.

That being said, I didn’t anticipate the huge gulf between my so-called work and the “work” that was happening over there. If I didn’t know it before, then I knew it when I arrived; there is no common ground between art and war. They are just so far apart.

So to approach it—never mind personally, but professionally—was intimidating. What I did was to work very hard to forget about making work for as long as I could. I took a whole bunch of photographs and made a bunch of drawings, but nothing captured more than the superficial colour and shape of what was there; nothing of the essence.

To me, that experience had to become fictionalized in order for me to make anything remotely related, and the work that came out is probably equally removed from war as it is from art. If it’s true that there’s no middle ground between those two modes of being, then I think that the work that I made is squarely in the middle of that.

It’s interesting, on an intellectual level, to put these things out there that don’t have a precedent—certainly in the connections that I can make between them and my previous work. They really are new facts in my understanding of the world. They’re kind of out there in that no man’s land, and they’re interesting to think about for that reason.

-via Colossal


How to Make a Jello Shot Cake

Wine is fine, but cake is quicker. Or something like that. My point is that if jello shots are fun at a party, think about the potential for an entire cake made of them. Pixy of Offbeat Home presents the recipe for this eye-catching cake composed of intoxicating colors. It uses gelatin packs, yogurt, and 3 cups of either vodka or rum.


It takes a long time to make, since each layer must congeal one at a time. Pixy says that she gave each layer 10-15 minutes in her refrigerator, which adds up. But the result is lovely.


The Ooops! Cabinet

For 25 years, Judson Beaumont and his team of craftspeople have made amazing pieces of furniture from their workshop in Vancouver. We’ve previously seen his eccentric designs, such as a dresser that looks like a dress and a hollow easychair. Here’s another fun piece from his portfolio. Beaumont calls it the Oops! Cabinet. It’s inspirational for woodworkers everywhere who have found the need to occasionally say, “I meant to do that.”

-via Woodworking TAO


World's Most Honest Janitor Will Get to Keep the $80,000 He Found in a Toilet Stall


(Photo: Herald Sun)

It was a lot of money. But Chamindu Amarsinghe knew that the money didn't belong to him, so he didn't keep it.

Amarsinghe works as a custodian at a television station in Melbourne, Australia. While cleaning a toilet, he found a lot of money in large denominations in a trash bin. He immediately told his supervisor, who then called the police and a plumber. They pulled out from the toilet more than $100,000 (Australian).

No one stepped forward to claim it. After the government took a cut, it handed over to Amarsinghe $81,597. He plans to donate some to charity. But as he's a college student, so he'll use a lot of it to advance his career.

-via Huffington Post


The International Zip Line between Spain and Portugal

(Photo: Limite Zero)

The Spanish town of Sanlúcar de Guadiana and the Portuguese town of Alcoutim are separated by the Guadiana River. You can take a boat across the border. But if you want to move really quickly, then zip line is the way to go.

David Jarman’s Limite Zero is the private company responsible for this fun project. For 15 euros, you can travel at 45 miles per hour down the 0.44-mile long zip line at a 12.47% slope. You can then take a ferry back, which is helpful, because you’d surely want to do it again and again.

The ride lasts about a minute. But since you travel across a time zone boundary, you could also say that it takes one hour and one minute.


(Video Link)


Calamityware Is Porcelain That Depicts the End of the World

Whether you prefer an alien invasion, giant robot attacks, flying monkeys, or ravenous monsters, Don Moyer knows how to set the right mood for a pleasant dinner.

Moyer is an artist in Pittsburgh who likes to draw funny cartoons. A few years ago, he acquired a blue porcelain plate. He thought that the image on it was inadequate, so he doodled a dinosaur on it. This led to the development of what he calls Calamityware: dinner plates that show supernatural disasters.

-via Colossal


Backwards

(Lunarbaboon)

My wife tells me that if we have any more children, carrying and giving birth to them will be my job.

I've seen what's involved. Twice.

I'll pass.


Bacon-Wrapped Whole Alligator with a Chicken Stuffed in Its Mouth

The caption is simple: "Australia." That's all you need to know.

You might object, saying, "Wait, I need to know where in Australia I must go to acquire this culinary wonder." That's because you misunderstand. In Australia, these things are as common as hamburgers are in the United States. Every restaurant has them. You can buy them from street vendors and vending machines. Parents make them for the lunches of their preschool children. Because Australia.

-via That's Nerdalicious!


Scientifically Accurate Anatomical Diagrams of Animals

These anatomical diagrams of animals circulating the internet are helpful, but I do wish that they went into a bit more detail. A rabbit's poof loof, like a human's, has four distinct swoophs.

Ideally, give your pet rabbits a rough surface to walk on, like a carpet. Slick floors don't give traction for their thumping puffers and fuzz scrubbers.


Email This Post to a Friend
""

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window

Page 499 of 1,280     first | prev | next | last

Profile for John Farrier

  • Member Since 2012/08/04


Statistics

Blog Posts

  • Posts Written 19,187
  • Comments Received 51,820
  • Post Views 30,906,431
  • Unique Visitors 25,239,952
  • Likes Received 29,128

Comments

  • Threads Started 3,739
  • Replies Posted 2,175
  • Likes Received 1,598
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More