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Happy Friday - Nano Snowman, Stuff, and Things

via The National Physical Laboratory

Thought I'd do my best to spread holiday cheer before I'm off for the next 10 days or so on vacation (a long time, I know!) This is a *real* vacation and I'm taking a break from my laptop. So, things might get a little quiet around here. But I'll be back! And since I won't be posting during that time, I'll just straight up spit out a bunch of "cool Internet hyperlinks" to junk that'll keep you entertained for a whole half a minute.

First off, that adorable little molecule of a snowman is the tiniest snowman ever, courtesy of the NPL. The little buddy is the width of a human hair, nano-constructed out of two tin beads. As the daughter of a nanotechnologist, I think [this is pretty swell].

And now, a list of other things that may pertain to your interest on a Friday afternoon:

• n0wak says "Hi"
• The LOST Underground Art Show (Scott C's "LOST Showdowns" are by far the best of the bunch)
• Robot Doppelgangers (Creepy_as_frak)
• Jack Bauer Interrogates Santa Claus
• Rammstein VS Cookie Monster
• Infinite Maru
• Usher feat. Goat yelling like a man

Finally, totally unrelated, and totally cowabunga:

TMNT IV - Big Apple, 3AM

Happy Holidays everyone!

Universal Everything animates AOL's new branding

AOL / Ooze from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

It wasn't hard to wonder about the intention of AOL's (rather, Aol.'s) seemingly scatterbrained rebranding, with the goldfish, pink goo, and whatnot. I still don't think I understand the logos in the context of AOL's site, but in the meantime Universal Everything (the same folks who created those delightful sequences for MTV) have made some terrific animations to showcase some colorful ideas around the new logo. The playful aesthetic is kind of wonderful, don't you think?

Hit for a few more after the jump, or head to Universal Everything for the full spectrum.

Via Brand New

Heaven Can Wait Video - Charlotte Gainsborough feat. Beck

Charlotte Gainsborough's music video for her song "Heaven Can Wait" is simply incredible. Directed by Keith Schofield and featuring Beck, the video is loaded with dinosaurs, bathtubs filled with Fruity Pebbles, colorful families, skateboards on hamburgers, and pancake astronauts (which I'm almost positive was inspired by this image that surfaced on the web about a year ago), to name a few. Watch above (or here, for a better resolution and slightly different sequencing).

Update: According to Buzzfeed, the director cited reddit and ffffound as his inspirations. That explains the Pancake American

Update 2: Looks like a lot of the scenes are highly informed by the work of William Hundley. Debate taking place about it here (via BOOOOOOOM)

via Moneydick

COMPU-HOODIE

Graduate student Joe Malia has conceived what is quite possibly the best solution for all of those portable console-playing, iPhone-putzing, Blackberry-button-pushing folks out in the cold. The Mobile Scarf (shown to the right) provides all the privacy and warmth of computing in the home, with the added benefit of blocking out any major nuisances such as sunlight or people. Of course, for those who require that magnitude of solitude in the workplace, the compu-hoodie (shown above) will suffice, with an added mouth-hole for breathing/eating when necessary. 

These pieces were created for two projects titled Private Public and Design for the Computer Obsessive, intended to explore how design plays into "...guiding...individuals through their turbulent affair with the technology." See more of Malia's work at Design Interactions at the RCA.

via We Make Money Not Art

MATHWRATH.COM

In a a similar vein as Videogramo and Elna Frederick, artist Math Wrath creates animations and illustrations using a retro-tech, animted .gif aesthetic. His work ranges from the comedic (see "How it ends") to the terrifying (see [or don't see] "Pleasurecrusher"), and are all worth checking out. Some of his works have sound, so keep your headphones on.

via blitblit

Videogramo

Spanish group Videogramo displays a series of colorfully mutated animated .gifs on their site. Each image is as unsettling as an animated .gif could possibly get, featuring contorted, dull-faced .gif manikins disected by pixelated tubes, patterned planes, and faceted shapes. Half Kid Pix and half Frankenstein, the whole display is simultaneously fascinating and disturbing.

Via Nullsleep

Keyboard Cat Papercraft Tutorial Video

I'll admit, I was pretty sure I was over and done with posts regarding this year's hottest meme, Keyboard Cat, but frankly this is the cutest and most clever little instructional video for a papercraft I've ever seen.

Download and assemble the papercraft at the Tubbypaws blog (which has a plethora of adorable character designs all over it)!

Thanks Brandonnn!

Visualization of online personas by Aaron Zinman

Aaron Zinman's Personas creates an animated visualization of your online persona, creating in an interesting color-coded DNA strip of traits and topics that associate with your name across the Internet. Part of MIT's  Metropath(ologies) exhibit, the engine "...uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity."

Entering "Tiff Chow" results in a decent summary of what I'd imagine my online persona to be, but "Tiffany Chow" generated a much more edcuated and medicaly oriented persona given my talented Chow doppelgängers out there. That said, apparently the engine creates different results every time, and if you share a name of many on the web you'll get to see "alternate lives flash before you", as @doorknobdude put it. Reardless it's still a pretty neat visualization, though I wish they wouldn't cateorize the tag "game" as a sports-affiliated topic. I'm no jock, Spock. 

via mbf tod@ay

Know Your Meme Tee Shirts

Meme shirts by Know Your Meme are my cup of tea. Not only are they tastefully designed, but they are made of pure win and awesome (and looooooooooong cats, and ORLY Owls, and so on and so forth). Someone want to get me the Loooooooooong Cat shirt? I'll give you a loooooooooong cat hug!

via Waxy

A curious Twitter mystery, solved! - the story behind TopHatProfessor

For many, Twitter serves as the web's hottest way to spread the word, but for some it extends a platform for fun and sometimes mischievous roleplaying. I tend to reserve my follows for real-life folk, but on the occasion that my favorite and most beloved riddle-solving academic, Professor Layton of Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the DS, joined Twitter, I followed without a second of hesitation.

@TopHatProfessor brought the voice of Layton to life on the web, serving up daily riddles to his followers and rewarding the first to answer with a satisfactory @reply of "CORRECT!" As time went on, other players from the Curious Village began to appear on Twitter, and it was the general understanding that Nintedno had developed a clever marketing campaign to rustle folks up for the next Layton game, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. 

But (!), thanks to some investigative work of Kyle Orland at Crispy Gamer, it turns out that the entire Layton ensemble was something that curiously came together with the start of one college student/game journalist, Roger DiLuigi (@RogerBase):

"I figured that if Nintendo wasn't going to make the U.S. release of the second game known, I was going to take matters into my own hands." 

Never once supported by Nintendo, DiLuigi crafted TopHatProfessor into such a convincing character that three other writers joined in on the fun and created @ApprenticeLuke, @DonofScience, other familiar faces from the game. While DiLuigi has since revealed the man behind the Professor, the characters continue to engage in what seems like a fan-fueled dinner-theater atmosphere. A truly neat story, check out the article to get the details!