quotable holmes

The name says pretty much all there is to know: many a quote (600+) directly from Sherlock Holmes' sleuthing adventures, all under one tome.

From an effort of Gerard Van der Leun.

2015 • 02 • 17  permalink

"Extracted" from the analysis of many an attractive face, a model emerged that enables a quantitative attribution of "attractiveness" to any other face.

Depicted below, the modeled mask for female beauty (repose frontal).

 beauty by numbers

More after the jumps.

2015 • 02 • 16  permalink
 talk like yoda, you will

Converts English text into Yoda-speak.

:)

2015 • 02 • 05  permalink
 the keaton music typing machine

Patented in 1953 by Robert Keaton, it's an improved version from an earlier model (also patented in 1936).

Its name says it all: it allowed typing music notation in a mechanized (and with higher quality) way.

2015 • 02 • 04  permalink
 femme fractale

AKA, Lady in Red, illustrates (and is a product of) what Prof. Jürgen Schmidhuber dubbed Low-Complexity Art. The image/form/pattern can be computed from a simple/short program, without being obvious to the beholder, and this, is surmised, has an effect in its perceived beauty.

In some way, relating (equating?) Occam's razor with/to beauty.

2015 • 01 • 30  permalink
 yobi3d

A specialized search engine. Yobi3D allows specific searches for 3D models.

2015 • 01 • 28  permalink

Opened in 2008, the Svalbard Vault (in full: Svalbard Global Seed Vault) is a Noah's Ark, of sorts, for plant life. The idea is to preserve, in safe and optimal conditions, for generations to come, the biological diversity we enjoy today (at least in the plant life domain). A proactive (and welcome) effort that aims to preempt any potential damage done by natural (or not so natural) catastrophes in the planet's seed banks.

 backing up life
2015 • 01 • 27  permalink
 the technicolor landform

The Zhangye Danxia (landform), located near the city of Zhangye in China's northwestern Gansu province, seems more like Nature's attempt in painting a masterpiece than a "naturally" occurring geological formation. And yet... The latter, rather than the former, seems to be the true qualification of what caused such a rainbow-like effect. Surprisingly...

2015 • 01 • 21  permalink
 computing with dna

An "oldie" (so to speak) but goldie: Wired's article recounting the pioneering efforts/attempts of Leonard Adleman to materialize the world's first DNA computer/computations.

From the article itself:

[...]
Thanks to learning algorithms and other evolutionary tools being incorporated into computers, the machines around us are becoming more lifelike. But Adleman wanted to tackle the question from the opposite direction. What if life itself, already susceptible to genetic engineering, could be used to solve problems? What if DNA could be shifted from reproducing life to thinking about it? Adleman imagined a future in which organic and inorganic computers link up; he wanted to witness this momentous occasion in his lifetime.

Inspired, he hopped out of bed and started to build the world's first DNA computer.
[...]

2015 • 01 • 19  permalink
 the moon hotel: day
 the moon hotel: night

A striking design, for the aptly named (Sheraton) Moon Hotel, in Huzhou, China.

2015 • 01 • 15  permalink
 steve thomas' star wars travel posters

Beautiful, evocative, nostalgic alternate-alternate-reality posters, advertising many a "tourist attraction" of the Star Wars universe.

2015 • 01 • 13  permalink
 who framed bill posters?
2015 • 01 • 02  permalink
 ptable

An online, interactive/dynamic, version of the Periodic Table.

2014 • 12 • 23  permalink

For the "Let's Move" program/campaign, Stephen Mesko designed a series of posters, one for each the 7 deadly sins.

Paradoxically, and interestingly, it uses a 8-bit/digital/RGB visual style in order to draw people away from... technology.

Here is "Lust" (full poster):

 stephen mesko's_digital sins: full

Detail of "Lust":

 stephen mesko's_digital sins: detail
2014 • 12 • 22  permalink
 graph tv

Graph TV is a web visualization tool that plots/graphs TV show ratings, per episode/season/series.

This allows for a global quality assessment over time, with just a glance.

The example, above, "Northern Exposure": started strong but slowly, and steadily, declined over time.

2014 • 12 • 18  permalink
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