There's a fine line between kitschy mall art and ridiculously impressive fine art. Name on a grain of rice? Kitschy. Intricate sculptures made with the graphite of a pencil? Absolutely ridiculous. In the best of ways. Even if you somehow aren't into the end results, the craftsmanship alone is an impressive feat.

Not to get all "art critique-y" but I really enjoy this project from Kim Asendorf in which she takes the diametrically opposed ideas of nature / mountain photography and blends it with the unnatural technique of pixel manipulation. It comes across as a well curated JPEG error.

Via It's Not What I Thought.

You can now watch the crowd sourced Star Wars Uncut in its entirety. When the project first first launched a little over a year ago I always assumed that the lack of continuity between scenes would make it jarringly difficult to watch. If it were done with almost any other movie, that would be true but since Star Wars is so deeply entrenched in the nerd mind it never seems too jump too much to keep up.

Congrats to all involved - though after receiving an Interactive Emmy Nomination I'm not sure how much more recognition or validation you need to know that you executed a brilliant idea.

This Sunday the new season of Delocated begins. They've expanded the show to a full half hour and I am confident it will be every bit as absurdly enjoyable as the first season. You can watch a special message from "Jon" right here but I mostly suggest you just catch up on Season One and the production blog if you have not already.

Also, this interview with Anderson Cooper is pretty priceless... as is his love of Sub Sandwiches.

• Vimeo launches Universal Player - yesterday, Vimeo launched several new features; including a Universal Player that allows you to embed their HTML5 player. This is fairly huge news in my opinion, as Vimeo is very much in the public eye these days and they're now forging new ground by allowing HTML5 style embeddable markup.. leading the pack you might say.
  
  They also launched a "Watch Later" feature that lets you queue up videos to partake in at a more convenient time. Good thinking guys!
• CSS3 Generator - extremely handy reference tool for your CSS3 markup. Via Jamie.
• Adobe partners with Typekit - lots of classic typefaces are now being provided by Adobe to Typekit.. while I'm happy to see a lot of these I'm absolutely going to cringe when I start encountering full sites displayed in Cooper Black or Rosewood. How long until this feature spirals out of control and people start blocking it? I bet it happens sooner than later.

So WIRED's cover story is all about how The Web is Dead - complete with the above chart showing the decline in web usage. Despite not having had a chance to read the entire article yet I can safely say that chart is quite inaccurate. Fortunately, I'm not the only one who got that feeling either. Maybe the article goes into more depth about their usage statistics but it's going to take some hefty rationalization to get me on board with any notion that the Web is dying in any way.

Not to put much added pressure on him or anything but it appears that CMikesell has returned to the world of blogs. If you were not aware, he is Awesome. It's been a year since he's put much out there but I am fully confident in the notion that we'll get plenty of great content from him - starting with this.

While I'm stoked for Chris to start blogging again I really just wanted a valid reason to post that image again.

So, VIRB is back. The 3.0 incarnation has done away entirely with the social network aspect and is billing themselves as an elegant and easy to use website builder. There are other sites that offer such services - like Cargo Collective or Carbon Made - but the new VIRB seems to be more robust than that. Or, at least it will be. It's a bit of a bummer that they have so much planned but you can't even preview themes in their main feature list.

But I'm not trying to overly hate on the service.. particularly given that I haven't even given it a spin yet. They are quite smart for ditching the social network aspect and I have full confidence that the team of developers there can make some great tools. At $10 a month I probably won't be giving it a test drive anytime soon but I can see it being hugely useful to loads of people I know that are in need of a site.

I'm loving this Round Birds series from Sam Harris.. such a simple setup but with endless possibilities of variation. Looks great.

Via JXNBLK.

If there's one thing I know about cats it's that they love to be dressed up in different outfits and forced to sit still while doing so. This Cat Fashion Show just makes perfect sense with that in mind.

Absolutely ridiculous. Thank you JAson.

Apparently the first trailer for the Casey Affleck / Joaquin Phoenix documentary has hit the Internets. I'd love to say that it adds some clarity to the purpose of Joaquin's transition from successful actor to baffling rapper but it doesn't.. it's just a glimpse of how the film aesthetic will look. The trailer really should have just been this Letterman clip because there is no more intriguing piece than that appearance.

If you've been reading this site for any amount of time you know the following two things almost always appeal to my visual sensibilities: 1) Fog 2) Long Night Exposures. So, when Courtney sent me a heads up on the photography work of Todd Hido - containing both long night exposures and a healthy amount of fog - I was sold immediately. His full portfolio has plenty of other great styles of work but I'm still poring over the "Homes At Night" set.

I've been trying my hand at the new Big Bucket game that was just recently released - The Incident. The visual style and complimenting chiptunes audio is superb. The gameplay takes a tiny little bit to get used to but once you're brain is attuned to looking for the flashing warnings of impending doom at the top of the screen you're off and running (and jumping). I love how simple the concept is but how the game is kept fresh by having a non-stop onslaught of new items fall from the sky. If you need a little sample of gameplay, check out the trailer. The game is in the iTunes store now.. $2 well spent.

The other day I posted a link to a new music campaign I was emailed called I Buy Music - a site that exists to give people a means to express their dedication to buying music, supporting artists and showing their legitimate appreciation for music. I was quite suspect of said campaign and my comments were a bit on the snarky side - it initially struck me as a 'viral movement' put together by the big labels to try and appeal to peoples guilt sensibilities. It turns out that the campaign is put together by Cory Brown; proprietor of Absolutely Kosher and his intentions are nothing short of pure. I've read through a few interviews and you can tell his heart is in the right place.

I hope to make our message and its meaning commonplace. I hope our culture can grasp the value of music to our society and consequently, the value of of the people who make and promote it. At the very least, if we can create that sense of pride and identity in people who buy music, we will have accomplished what many still think is impossible, that we as citizens are responsible for the things and people we value.

I think the movement could stand to have a little visual sprucing up (no offense Cory) but I stand behind the message within. Buying music does cultivate a support system to have more music created - a cycle I think everyone gains from.

This article declares that scientists have found a portion of Earth that is part of the original material.

The evidence comes in the form of lava rocks that, themselves, are a mere 60 million years old. But these rocks contain an early Earth mixture of helium, lead and neodymium isotopes which suggest the mantle rock beneath the crust that yielded them is a virgin pocket of Earth's original material.

That pocket had survived for 4.5 billion years under Baffin Island without being mixed by plate tectonics or erupted onto the surface.

I won't even begin to claim that I know how you determine the age of something to be 4.5 billion years old (finding helium-3 / helium-4 apparently) but I think it's fascinating that we're making inroads to finding out more about the true makeup of our planet.

via Ryan.

Dump.fm is a new online chat service that pretty much focuses on providing an onslaught of random images. Surprisingly, most of the content within is within a Safe For Work range but, be warned, some of it does cross that line. It's completely ADD style random and mostly ridiculous - certainly not for everyone but there are a lot of gems in there. I suggest starting with the Hall of Fame to get an idea of what you'll be dealing with - just to see if you'll be able to handle it.

Infographics have really come into their own the past few years but a quality flow chart is pretty rare amongst the masses because it takes so much more work to create one. The Can We Date flow chart is pretty amusing and certainly worth taking some serious time to follow a number of potential paths to their destinations.. though if you make it down to the Thought Crime solution you may have a problem.

via Paige.

So, I'm staying in San Francisco for the next few weeks just for a basic change of pace. With that in mind, I was told about this social topography map set that takes different crime data and maps it onto the city. Prostitution doesn't run rampant throughout the city but it certainly peaks in two areas.. the same goes for Narcotics. It's a really great way to get an overall view of the neighborhoods and certainly something I'd love to see done with more cities - possibly a good implementation for Open San Diego to undertake?

Happy Friday the 13th! Here's your playlist. Enjoy!

• Conan TBS promo - if Terry Gilliam wasn't involved in this someone owes some royalties for copping his Monty Python animation style to a T.
• Senhorinha do Ra! - do I have any idea what's happening here? Absolutely not. Do I love it regardless? You betcha.
• Bed Intruder Song (Marching Band Version) - the meme keeps rolling.. now into a respectable marching band format. via Paige.
• Break Dancing Grandma Tracy - this is over four minutes and you certainly don't need to see it all but a good healthy minute of viewing will improve your day. I love the "This is not happening" at the very beginning.. it's the best start you could ask for.
• Reading Rainbow Slo-Mo - it's like a Black Moth Super Rainbow song from your childhood. via Zach.
• What Puppy? - WHAT PUPPY‽
• Video Rehab - chalk full of insanity.. I commend you if you make it through the whole thing. Via Renaud.
• HALKa Trailer - I love the CG in this.. I sorta wish they'd just make a real Hulk movie that was this intentionally crappy looking.
• An Otter Plays With A Rock - it's the simple things in life that please me the most.

BONUS

• Theatre of War - Richard Mosse - while technically video this is more like a long form photograph. Slow paced, beautiful and a bit heavy in subject matter. I'm going to make time to watch everything Mr. Mosse has to offer. Via Kate.
• Graboids Educational Video - commonly known as Landshark or Tremor Monster.
• World's Longest Yardsale - in all honesty, I haven't even watched through this yet but the concept looks amusing.. it's just a matter of the hosts being completely annoying or not (high possibility that they may be).

Have a great weekend!

I had no idea that there was experimental Fade to Black Polaroid film - in which the exposed image goes through a number of color shifts until, eventually, it becomes all black (the process can be stopped, its not just for taking photos that quickly disappear). In poking around for more information about the stuff I ran across this tutorial but it's unclear if that experimental film is required for the techniques explained to actually work. Either way, it's a great concept with some great applications.