Life Remembered – The Vicon Revue

This gadget is pretty interesting. It just sits around your neck and takes photos all by itself. Either on timer or in response to sensing things happening by changes of location, heat, movement and more. There is no screen or viewfinder. It costs £500 ex VAT. Why?? Well, for people with Alzheimers who want to remember events in their lives. But also for research and arty stuff.

Developed by Microsoft Research Cambridge, via Infostethics ... Reminds me of Jean Luc Godard's latest flick 'Film Socialisme'. The trailer makes my mind spin.

Ramachandran – What you see is what you feel

Alex Ostrowski – Look Up

www.alexostrowski.com

A Daily Practice

Google: 'a drawing a day' and you'll come to the site of Lauren Nassef. Beautiful drawings, the kind that people look at and decide they want to be able to draw too. Like watching Whitney back in the day and deciding you'll be a singer. That kind of amazingness of technique and pizz-azz.

So what else comes up online under daily sketching? Well, not as as many swirly notes (but let me know what you find). The exhaustive A Drawing a Day has been going like clockwork since 2004 and is mind boggling for its tenacity. A professional illustrator's blog, with countless faces drawn on the subway, is impressive for its doggedness. Photographer Thomas Hawk is aiming to take a million photos. The image below is from his $2 Portraits project.

Where does daily discipline end and OCD begin?

Stephen Gardner – Niagara Falls

Tripping across the site Urban Sketchers, I spotted a beautiful pair of sketches of that legendary Canadian destination by Brooklyn illustrator Stephen Gardner (who has a serious habit of sketching). Niagara: So many stories! So many visits! I always imagine kids screaming in the back seat on the long drive flinging ice-cream at each other. The documented memory is more often held onto while the grisly reality forgotten.

A Ransacked Country House - Co. Tipperary

A distant relative had lived here for 86 years before reluctantly giving into the nursing home. Sure enough the property has been continuously raided by burglars (my parents use a different word). It's so sad to see a grand house crumble; a life plundered. Check out David Creedon's shots of similar houses around Ireland.

Baedeker – the first travel guides?

Victorian era guides by Karl Baedeker were characterised by their famous red covers. Exquisite maps and intense details for the discerning tourist.

Prior to World War I, Baedeker's guides were famous enough that baedekering became an English-language term for the process of travelling a country for the purpose of writing a travel guide or travelogue about it (Wiki)

Map Envelope

Remember that great idea for a google maps envelope from Beste Miray? Well I'm delighted to see a site built around that very idea – you can now generate your own map envelope by simply inputting any location that google maps generates, and a template is generated for you to make your own li'l envelope. Now isn't that very neat?! Check out mapenvelope.com, built by tweevio.

Transport China Part V – Stationary

Daniel Kahneman - The riddle of experience vs. memory

Video on TED.com

Jody Barton – Illustrations

Strangely pleasing, witty, to the point, poetic...
Main website
Blog

Transport China Part IV – Four Wheeling

Mary Oliver – The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world, determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Via The Art of Non-Conformity

Transport China Part III – Walking

Lehel Kovács – Google Street View Illustrations

Full A-Z Flickr Album
Via Coolhunter

How to Feed the World?

How to feed the world ? from Denis van Waerebeke on Vimeo.

Via Infosthetics

Transport China Part II – Two Wheeling