Why have I never heard about ferrofluid before? I’m in love and now I want one of these sculptures. “A magnetic liquid or ferrofluid is a colloidal mixture of magnetic particles (~10 nm in diameter) in a liquid carrier. Ferrofluids can be suspended in water or in an organic fluid. When no external magnetic field is present the fluid is not magnetic and the orientation of the magnetite particles is random. However, when an external magnetic field is applied, the magnetic moments of the particles align with the magnetic field lines. When the magnetic field is removed, the particles return to random alignment. These properties can be used to make a liquid that changes its density depending on the strength of the magnetic field and that can form fantastic shapes.”

I know I should have gone to bed when I either go on random Wikipedia-binges or find very amusing, but somewhat pointless home-science-experiment-videos on youtube. I don’t have milk nor food coloring in my house, but if I did, I would probably ruin a gallon of milk in pure excitement. Maybe it would be possible to photograph everything from above and create some nice textures for backgrounds.

You guys have to see this amazing water clock at Osaka station! It is absolutely gorgeous. I want to go there and see it myself after new years, absolutely wonderful!

Another link list with internet goodies that I have discovered lately:

1. A cool way to figure out how old your globe is! 
2. Lina Ekstrand creates amazing illustrations. I first saw one of her illustrations on a freebie libresse-box, and the rest of her illustrations are equally wonderful! I love the pencil details, go look!
3. 10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists, Debunked
4. Google is hit by a sudden gravity. Especially fun if you actually move stuff around and search for stuff.
5. I did not know about the problem with alcoholic meese (moose?) in Sweden. Now I do. One of them stole a swing set. Another one got stuck in a tree.
6. If you have a lot of time left over, and just feel like getting smarter, you can read about linguistic relativity. Are our thoughts shaping our language, or the opposite way around? I came across Lera Boroditsky‘s papers, and especially this and this paper is super-interesting, it gives a lot of fancy examples about how different languages seem to shape our thoughts differently.
7. The Oatmeal has a new wonderful comic about what we should be taught in our senior year of high school.
8. Binka had a nice little entry about doodling a week or so ago I wanted to share further. TED-video in English is embedded.
9. Needless to say, I am not exstatic about my philosophy classes, but these three minute philosophy lectures on Youtube made my week a tiny bit easier.
10. My great Japanese teacher was on TV, talking about Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. (In Norwegian.)
11. What is lacking in modern medicine is human touch. A nice TED-talk.
12. Last, but not least, this documentary! (It is a couple of years old, but I just found it again.) It is about a woman who was born with a rare condition and have ended up with legs four times larger than those of the average person. This woman’s attitude towards life is just pure inspiration. She is so positive and such a go-getter (and really pretty too, but that is beyond the point), and I am just thinking – if she can have this sort of attitude towards life, then god damn – other people (including myself) should suck it up and be a bit more like her, the world would be a better place. Really inspiring lady!

How Much Should I Charge: ep 207: DIgital Photography 1 on 1 from snapfactory™ on Vimeo.

I found this great video about how much you should charge for photography via the lovely Sara Lando)

Oh dear lord, buckyballs was so addicting, and now there is buckycubes? Do want! I have no idea why these things are so fun to fidget with for hours.

Time for a little link list again, here are some goodies I have found on the internet this week:

1. Look at this gorgeous folding-in origami. A great great idea, to fold the pages of the books so they create new and gorgeous designs.
2. I am pretty sure all Norwegians who read blogs have already read this, but I have to mention it again, hjartesmil has the best post ever (in Norwegian) about moving. Just do it. 
3. Museum of Obsolete Objects. The title says it all. I smiled when I saw the floppy disk.
4. A facinating little video about how to board a plane more efficiently. I have always wondered about this.
5. These photographs have so much personality. The wonderful Julia Galdo. I have no idea what she does, but it is all just pure magic.
6. I have to mention these pictures as well by Tommaso Nervegna.
7. Here is a collection I have put together with moleskine notebooks made by the talented people posting their work over at Behance. I always love looking in other peoples sketchbooks, but I have a hard time finding the really inspiring ones. So far Behance has been the best place to look.
8. I don’t really have time to enter myself these days, but I think that if you like doodling, drawing and illustration, head over to illustrationfriday.com and join the fun. They post a new challenge for you to draw every Friday. No real price involved, just for fun and exercise.
9. Beautiful papercrafts by essimar.
10. Finishing with a bit of a whacky link, a gorgeous and detailed collection over the people who were involved in freakshow back in the days + + +. A really extensive archive, I lost a couple of hours reading and looking at the pictures. I love what you can find in the corners of the internet.

Have a good week everyone! I am hitting the books again now!

Masaaki Hiromura is just pure genius! I love this project, where he has replaced certain parts of the kanji with what it means. I absolutely loved this. I also love what he has done with various spaces around Tokyo, you can see more of his amazing projects over at his website.

A slightly nerdy post: I really love Vihart, she explains so much complicated stuff in a fun way which makes it possible to understand. I do have to listen to her videos two-three times because she talks so damn fast, but I always feel like I learn amazing stuff from watching her videos. Watch, enjoy and get smarter!

I have already fallen in love with both Hipstamatic and Instagram, but I think I have found another camera for the iPhone to fall in love with. Plastic Bullet is very simple, in fact, the results you get are totally random, just like with a real toy camera. Above is a couple of random test shots. It was absolute worth the price. Not sure how much it is in USD or NOK, but it was just a couple of hundred yen from the Apple store. (Funny thing – my iPhone is set to Japanese, and all text in the app also showed up in Japanese. Really cute. I think it shows up in English if you have your phone set to English, though!)

Some great things I have found on the internet lately. Yes, I still read, I have just been a bit preoccupied and busy, but I am trying to get into a good rhythm of blogging again. We’ll see how it goes. These past weeks I have been really passive, reading and reading, but not posting that much myself. Here are some of the things I have read:

1. The Skill of Trying Your Best by Scott H. Young. Are you really trying your best, or are just making excuses for yourself?
2. The Learning Secrets of Polyglots and Savants – basically how smart people think and learn.
3. Don’t fear the internet! A great collection of videos explaining web design to designers who know nothing about webdesign.
4. Not sure how to describe this one with one line – but basically – it is average faces from countries around the world. If you add up a lot of full frontal pictures of say, a Japanese, in a stack, and you make one pictures from all the pictures, you will end up with a very “typical” face for that country or region, and basically, that is what this webpage is about. Make sure to click “read the rest of this entry” to see all the faces.
5. I never ever get tired of Hubble Wallpapers.
   

Have a wonderful Tuesday!