Cool Stuff

If Friday was a superhero, who would it be?

• Cats about to sneeze.
• Lost, well-loved stuffed bear lion cub has adventures in Newcastle and is eventually reunited with owner. Well done, internet!
• If you’re a fan of Discworld and Terry Pratchett, you should appreciate this gif set. (Link removed – apparently the page got hijacked. I’m so sorry about that!)
• Scientists explain their processes with a little too much honesty. (Link via Catherine Shaffer)
• Star Wars football helmets: American and National Leagues. (Link via SF Signal)
• LEGO Calvin and Hobbes, with snowmen.

Hello, Friday. What took you so long?

• 30 of the Naughtiest Dogs on the Internet.
• Stormtrooper Hip Hop & Twerking.
• Working Star Wars pinball machine, made out of LEGO. There is also video.
• Hubble’s Finest Spirals. Freaking gorgeous space photos. (Link via Diane Duane)
• Academia Explained, Using Muppets.

Hello, Friday.  Nice to see you again. What took you so long?

• Michigan preschooler gets a robotic hand from a high school robotics team.
• Video of peacock spiders dancing to “YMCA.” (Obvious warning – contains spiders.)
• Elves at Starbucks. This cosplay makes me happy.
• Kitty pops a water balloon. Behold the slow-motion horror in kitty’s eyes… (Link from Seanan McGuire)
• Musical Notation as Interpreted by Cats. Gifs for musical cat lovers. Or cat-loving musicians. Something.
• Cat in a field of blue butterflies. Yeah, I’m on a bit of a cat kick. And I don’t imagine this ended well for all of the butterflies. Still cool and pretty, though! (Link from Kat Howard)

Friday again? Didn’t we just have one of these like a week ago?

Oh, and I know it’s last minute, but if you’re in the East Lansing area, I’ll be doing a session tomorrow afternoon at Write on the Red Cedar.

Anyway, have some links, and enjoy the weekend!

• Happy animals!
• The Donald Trump caterpillar.
• Santos the Ocelot Kitten makes friends with Blakely the Dog. (Link from Kat Howard)
• Australian scientists apologize for not having created dragons. And then they go ahead and make one. FOR SCIENCE!
• Indiana Jones/Gingerbread Man crossover. In LEGO. There are no words for this one. Just click and appreciate.
• Ice balls on the shore of Lake Michigan.

In a truly civilized world, temperatures of -16 degrees Fahrenheit would be adequate cause for everyone to go back to bed.

• Dogs and cats playing in the snow.
• LEGO pug, by Marco Bessa. Available with or without bow tie.
• Short video of a soldier’s reunion with his two dogs. Look at those tails wag!
• 10 cats with amusing/cool fur markings. The two-faced kitten is gorgeous, and I love the one with the little top hat.
• Scientists tell the truth. I’d seen this one before, but it made me laugh again. (Link from Jay Lake)
• Snow leopards and their giant nommable tails. (Link from Seanan McGuire)

Welcome to the last Cool Stuff Friday of 2013!

• LEGO Car! As in, an actual, human-sized, working car. Only goes about 12 MPH, but still! (Link from Colleen Reed)
• Speaking of LEGO, Alice Finch and David Frank built LEGO Rivendell. It’s 10′ x 5′ and includes more than 200,000 bricks.
• Cats vs. Physics, part 1.
• Ian McKellan meets puppet Gandalf, courtesy of Sesame Street.
• For my birthday next year, outer space is giving me a total lunar eclipse.
• Big cats in boxes.
• This is what 1.5 million flamingos standing around together looks like.

Dear Santa,

For Christmas this year I want more Fridays and more cool stuff. And also a movie deal.

Love,
Jim

• Animals with Stuffed Animals.
• Animated gifs of various chemical reactions. (Found on Diane Duane’s Tumblr) Because science is awesome!
• Instructions for making TARDIS, Star Wars, Mario, and other Christmas ornaments out of LEGO. (Found via the Mary Sue) Um … if you need me, I’ll be digging through our LEGO supplies, looking for blue bricks.
• The True Shape of Snowflakes. 3-D photos/scans of snowflakes before they hit the ground. Also see MASC’s Snowflake Showcase.
• Cookie Monster in Sesame Street’s Lord of the Rings Parody.
• Back when I was a kid, our paper airplanes — oh, who am I kidding. I WANT TO TURN MY PAPER AIRPLANES INTO SMARTPHONE-CONTROLLED PLANES TOO!
• Photos of dogs taking their first ride to their new homes after being in shelters. (Found via David Wohlreich)
• And finally, a video of a crow using a mayonnaise lid as an impromptu sled.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired and ready for some things to smile about.

• Amateur Photographer Shoots Largest Ever True Color Photo of the Night Sky. Composed of 37,000 photographs, this is “a 360-panoramic view of the sky taken by trekking 60,000 miles across the western United States and South Africa…”
  • High-resolution, zoomable and navigable version is here.
• Best #BisexualFacts. Apparently Bisexual Facts was a thing on Twitter, and resulted in a number of humorous “facts” … which have now been turned into lovely images, suitable for framing or giggling over. Though it’s sad that none of the tweets were attributed in the images. (Context for these comments: http://www.xojane.com/fun/the-sheer-unadulterated-joy-of-bisexualfacts.)
• Best #BisexualFacts, Part 2.
• Australian pigeons team up to use a public water fountain. Because Australia! (Link from Laura Anne Gilman)
• Also in Australia, scientists basically brought a heart back to life without a body. I don’t know whether Australia is the most awesome place in the world, or the most terrifying. (And yes, I know the correct answer is probably “both.”)
• Image gallery from the Hubble telescope. Wow…

If all goes well, I’m still sleeping right now, after getting up to try to see Comet Lovejoy. (Since it sounds like Comet ISON may not have survived its close encounter with the sun 🙁 )

Anyway, here – have some links of fun and niftiness!

• Nadya Vessey’s Prosthetic Mermaid Tail, Courtesy of Weta Workshop.
• Cats vs. Fruit.
• Dogs that Forgot How to Dog. (Because I’ve shared a lot of cat stuff, and figured I should throw the dog-lovers a bone.)
• Check out this photo of Comet ISON, by Damian Peach.
• Fox diving into the snow, from photographer Richard Peters.
• Finally, Shawn Snyder built LEGO Borg.

First off, a self-promo link. For any SFWA members who might be interested, I’ve posted a copy of my story “Stranger vs. the Malevolent Malignancy” in the SFWA Forums. This is the superhero-with-cancer story I’ve spoken about.

Now, on to this week’s links:

• Cats in sinks.
• Glorious Saturn. And You, Too. An amazing high-res photo of Saturn. (Link from Jay Lake.)
• Aurora and Unusual Clouds over Iceland. (Another nifty pic I found on Jay’s blog…)
• More cats!
• Lion cub playing in leaves.
• The Hungry Games: Catching Fur. Sesame Street does a Hunger Games: Catching Fire parody.
• Photos of Comet ISON. I need to haul out my telescope and camera!
• Finally, the folks at Bright Bricks built a giant snowglobe and filled it with a LEGO London. Click for more pics.