It's hard to get a good screenshot of but Patatap is a delightful undertaking. Describing it's functionality - animations and sound controlled by your keyboard - does it no justice. The style aurally and visually is amazingly engaging.

I recently got pretty jazzed on the Facebook prototyping tool Origami for sketching out animations and interactions for iOS but quickly deflated once I realized that the learning curve was steep. Fortunately, I was clued in to FramerJS just yesterday and am now equally excited at the prospect of being able to prototype apps simply from a PSD without Quartz Composer, Flash, or any of their ilk. I've not immersed myself in it yet but the recommendations I've received and the examples are enough to keep it in the Exciting Potential realm for me.

I've seen a handful of these Unbelievable Places before but having such a convenient gallery to marvel at so many surreal destinations is quite the treat. The Mauritius Island Underwater Waterfall or Mount Roraima are prime examples of great destinations to daydream of.

via Black Cat Belle.

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music."
— Bertrand Russell

Take the above quote, add some lovely formulas, expressions and real world examples to exemplify their existence and you got yourself a delightful, thoughtful piece from Parachutes.

AirBNB recently launched these stats to show their positive economic impact on the cities that it is active in. It's certainly got an edge to it to let local governments know that what they are doing isn't so much undermining the hotel / motel industries as it is giving a leg up for their actual residents. Beyond helping those that put up their places it also benefits local restaurants and other businesses that may not be benefitted otherwise. Oh, and the stat rundown looks rather nice. Lovely!

I haven't immersed myself in using it yet but I'm loving the presentation and idea behind Sitedrop - drop your files into a Dropbox folder and Sitedrop creates a beautiful presentation of it. Taking the legwork out of getting the files from your design environment into the clients eyeballs.

after six years, finally, a new album. quite excited for this.

I've been listening to, and enjoying, the Maximum Fun podcast series Song Exploder but the latest episode featuring Daedelus really solidified my love of it. Hearing any musician talk about their process (and play the individual tracks that a song is comprised of) is fascinating but to hear the history of the song and how it took on new life beyond his expectations was a serious treat. I can't recommend the podcast enough but if you need a taste test, start with the Daedelus episode.

Really loving this New Orleans by Streetlight series from Frank Relle. There's something inherently spooky about New Orleans - the building types, the dilapidation, etc - and adding the ethereal lighting just boosts things 300%.

Loving this series of Night Fog images from Neil Warburton. Minimalist photography at its finest.

https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000074458143-ljbdtl-large.jpg?e76cf77

John Leigh, aka Karborn, has a very compelling portfolio and blog. There's a heavy mixture of collage, glitch and animated GIF - though all through the lens of more traditional art, nothing emerging from the overly kitschy realm. I'm loving the series Evidence of Time Travel ( parts II, III and IV should be seen as well) and the technique used to create them:

'Created & manipulated on Amiga 1200's and fed through a series of scan converters, VHS formats and Wobulators to Sony Trinitron broadcast monitors. The output is then photographed with film & digital cameras'.

I'm really at a loss for words on how great the entirety of this body of work is. Please take some time to dive in.

It will, obviously, never really catch on but I love the idea behind this tag, a huge power-up to the standard img tag that allows for animation enhancements via the embed tag. A "sync to audio" option? Yes please.

Everyone has their own #1 annoyances with the differences in web browser rendering but I, personally, feel a particularly heavy sigh when I look at the antialiasing between them all. Firefox doesn't do a great job and Chrome / Safari need some extra love to make it real nice. Granted, it's a very picky hangup but I'm loving that this Type Rendering Mix attempts to solve the issue a little bit. It's maybe not necessary for every single project but for those times that you're looking to really drill down into the typeface antialiasing, this seems like it's worth some exploration.

Feels good to be back to normal. Enjoy your playlist.

• Fit's Link Gum - god bless foreign commercials and their giant cats.
• DJ Snake & Lil Jon - Turn Down For What - incredibly NSFW but this Daniels directed video is unreal. The first minute is one of the best things I've seen in awhile. Certainly crass in its own way but we're talking about a Lil Jon video. Just Enjoy.
• Neil Degrasse Tyson Slow Motion - a cheap trick that works effectively well here.
• Tiny Worlds - Submarine - just a delightful little animation showing how garbage gets cleaned. There are more if you like.
• Busby Berkeley - I Only Have Eyes For You - a seemingly straightforward love ballad until about the 4 minute mark, when it goes into full-on craziness. What a production!
• Fargo - FX - When I heard about this series I assumed it would be an unnecessary reworking of a fine film but having seen the trailer, I am honestly anticipating its release. Great looking cast to say the least.
• My Mother The Car - did you know there was a 1965 Jerry Van Dyke show in which his mother is reincarnated as a car? The Synopsis makes it sound like a real hoot... or unwatchable. I can't tell.
• Ballad of a WiFi Hero - an animation adapted from a McSweeney's piece entitled In Which I Fix My Girlfriend's Grandparents' WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero. It's got a little slower pace but it's narrated by H. Jon Benjamin, animated by Jesse Benjamin and has music by Paul Sprangers. So, yea, stick with it.

There are other entertaining videos making the rounds but I didn't want to over clutter. Dive in and have a great weekend.

The story of Ponychase is an endearing one. Jordan Caress had a handful of demos that didn't quite fit her current band and fell outside what she had done under her own name. At the same time, Beth Cameron of Forget Cassettes had just moved back to Nashville from Chicago and was looking for a little rejuvenation in her own musical undertakings. The two paired up and fleshed out what is now Ponychase and their full-length record Parade of Youth.

Nautilus has no end of interesting articles but I was particularly entertained by this piece on How Animals See The World. I had no idea that feline daylight vision is six times blurrier than our own or that a large eagle can see 2.5 times the resolution. Science! Facts!

listen and enjoy

Pretty fascinating article in WIRED about the Facebook Paper app, namely how it was developed using Quartz Composer and Facebook's own Origami - a set of tools for rapid prototyping. I'm sure there's a decent learning curve with getting involved with it but if the results can be as compelling as Paper, it seems worth checking out!

via Chris.

I've previously declared my fandom for Hong Kong Dragon Boat piece for Lufthanasa. Aside from being an impressive thing to behold in itself, it's also a Where's Waldo style hunt - look gor the Lufthanasa passenger hiding out somewhere in the crowd (hint, he's got a logo on his bag). Great stuff.