Category: Featured

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Science & Technology Video Clips

Majestic Night Sky Time-Lapse

No matter how many times we’ve marvelled at the Photopic Sky Survey panorama or at the numerous time-lapse videos of the night sky, we’re still drawn to the ever-changing heavens above.

Astrophotographers Stephane Guisard and Jose Francisco Salgado travelled to the Paranal Observatory on a 2,635m-high mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert and took all the images in this most wonderous time-lapse video. Not only does it show the stars, but also the four separate optical telescopes – the Very Large Telescope ( or VLT) – that monitor the movement of the celestial bodies. Have a look at the video below.

According to Wikipedia’s article on adaptive optics, the laser beam you see emanating from one of the telescopes is in a bid to correct the distortions or blurry effects created by atmospheric turbulence.

[via Popular Science]

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Arty Awesomeness Cartoons & Comics Featured Gaming News Movies Music Video Clips Weirdness

Goldfish’s “We Come Together” Celebrates Retro Games

Popular South African band Goldfish shows love for all things retro in the music video for the single, We Come Together taken off their album, Get Busy Living.

We Come Together was created by Mike Scott with contributions by some 20+ artists from every continent in the world (except for Antarctica, because who the hell would willingly live there?) The music video features lovable characters and scenes from your favourite retro arcade games. It has Angry Birds, Darth Vader, Hello Kitty, and Keyboard Cat. It has fatalities, giblets, and katamaris. It’s got voxel art, claymation, and chiptunes. All in all, it is made of WIN.

If you’re interested, find the “making of” video after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

Beautiful Bird Photography by John&Fish

Ornithology…it’s for the birds. John&Fish are a brother and sister team from Taipei City, Taiwan and since 2005, the duo have been keen bird photographers. They travel together, snapping photos of the wonderfully colourful birds that inhabit different areas of their home island. They hope that their photographs look like paintings that inspire people to see the world and nature in a different way. Have a look at their beautiful bird photography after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured

Surreal Photo of the Day

“This has to be ‘shopped!” I said. Digital sorcery, computer jiggery-pokery. But according to Frans Lanting and National Geographic, this is not a painting of camel thorns in the Namib-Naukluft Park, but an actual photograph of camel thorns in the Namib-Naukluft Park, where the backdrop is a dune that happens to be tinted orange by the morning sun. Well played Mr. Lanting, well played.

This image forms part of the feature story “Africa’s Super Park” that will appear in the June issue of National Geographic. See the full image after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Science & Technology Video Clips

Flottille: Micro-Origamis That Unfold in Water

In a charming little video called Flottille, French artist Etienne Cliquet creates origami that is a few centimetres long, and then places them onto the surface of water.

Likely due to capillary action, the micro-origami as he calls it, slowly expands and opens up to reveal the shapes hidden underneath the main piece. It’s a wonderful, meditative piece – have a look at Flottille below.

[via New Scientist]

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: De Blob 2

De-Blob-2-bringing-colour-to-the-world

Famed cubist artist Pablo Picasso once said: “The world does not make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?” He had a point. These days it seems that everything needs to be more and more realistic, and video games are no exception. Modern games push the boundaries of realism, and this may not always be a good thing. Consider that it may be our obsession with realism that has led to the rise of ‘reality television’, the horrors of which I need not delve into. Cast your mind back to a time before ultra realism, where game-play and having fun were the order of the day. Let’s see if De Blob 2 can take us back to those days where fun was paramount, after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Cartoons & Comics Featured

Dark TMNT Fan Art

Dave Rapoza sees the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise in a whole new light. Applying his considerable skills to a new series of illustrations, Rapoza shows the ghastly side of the villainous creatures that the heroes in the half shell go up against. Have a look at his life-like character portraits after the jump.

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Featured Flash Games

Play This: Angry Birds

Angry Birds is old news to some, but for the people who don’t have iPhones and Android devices and felt like pariahs, it’s a good day. You may still be a pariah, but at least you get to waste your life away by hurling bird munitions at pigs, all in the comfort of your web browser. However, there is a caveat – Rovio’s insanely popular puzzle game is currently only playable on Google Chrome.

If you’re using Firefox, don’t worry Chrome looks just like it, except it works faster. Download it from www.google.com/chrome and then get Angry Birds from the Chrome Web Store. And then formulate some good excuses as to why you did no work today.

UPDATE #1: If you’d prefer not to use Google Chrome, then head to http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ in Firefox 4 or Internet Explorer 9.

UPDATE #2: It appears not even a gang of Angry Birds are safe. The Next Web reports that a cheat (Javascript hack) enables you to access all the levels from the beginning.

UPDATE 3: Oh, in case you missed it yesterday, here is the catchy Angry Birds theme as covered by indie music duo, Pomplamoose.

[via 6000]

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

The Most Amazing Night Sky Panorama Ever!

We wager this is the most impressive view of the night sky you’re likely to see today. In an effort to capture a 360-degree panorama of the heavens above, amateur photographer Nick Risinger set about a year-long project that he called Photopic Sky Survey, travelling the western United States and even hopping across the seas to our fair country.

60,000 miles later and having taken an astounding 37,440 exposures, Risinger has created the largest-ever photograph of the night sky. The whopping 5,000 megapixel composite image shows the Milky Way, the planets, and tens of millions of stars. In this image, Risinger says we’re taking a look back in time.

Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity. When we look upon this image, we are in fact peering back in time, as much of the light—having traveled such vast distances—predates civilization itself.

There is even an interactive, zoom-able view of the night sky where you can scan across the panorama and identify the various constellations, planets, and nebulae. See this most amazing image and more information about it at Photopic Sky Survey.

[via PetaPixel]

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Animal Kingdom Awesomeness Cautionary Tales Featured Video Clips Weirdness

How to Stop Cats Pissing on Everything

Craig Turner from Perth, Australia is not only a video producer but also a resourceful chap. When a set of nine neighbourhood cats would continually roam into his property and piss all over the place, Turner used his considerable “DIY” skills to create a humane solution to the problem.

By cannibalising his car, a home alarm sensor, and other bits and bobs, Turner produced a deterrent which he dubbed the “Really super awesome cat get awayer thing”. Have a look at the crafty device in action against cats called Ear Off, Blackie Bung Eye, Fatty Fatty Two by Four, Stoopid Cat, and Blackie McLaser Eyes.

[via simondingle on Twitter]