Cool Stuff

I’m off to Windycon. Have some cool stuff!

• This 4-Year-Old has the Best Lucy Skywalker/Tauntaun Halloween Costume. (Link from The Mary Sue)
• How to Toothpaste. Toothpaste art and random surreality. (Link from Foz Meadows)
• “A 10-year-old boy in Nova Scotia has become the youngest person to discover a supernova, trumping his sister’s record.” (Emphasis added, because of awesomeness)
• Astronaut Luca Parmitano’s Halloween Costume. (Hint: You will believe a man in space can fly.)
• The LEGO Movie has a trailer. And Wonder Woman. And Abraham Lincoln in a rocket chair.
• Finally, Riccardo Zangelmi built a LEGO interpretation of Escher’s “Relativity.”

Happy 50% off candy day!

Now have some cool stuff.

• A 3-D Printed Dalek Transformer, by Ellindsey. Yes. More, please. (Link provided by temporus.)
  • Oh look – he made a 3-D Printed TARDIS Transformer, too!!
• Princess Dalek!!!!!
• I’m rather happy with how my own Halloween costume turned out.
• I’m told most things that live in Australia want to make you dead. Then there’s the quokka, aka the Kangaroo Rat. It’s just ridiculously happy to see you. (Warning: Potential cuteness overload.)
• Animals with pumpkins, from the annual Pumpkin Bash at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. (Link from Seanan McGuire’s Tumblr.)
• Internet. In SPACE!!!
• Paint War Engagement Photos.
• Coma Niddy University presents: How Microorganisms Move.

Happy Friday, all! I’m really, really hoping to have a draft of Unbound I can submit to my editor by the end of this weekend. If I do, I may reward myself by trying to put a costume together for Windycon. Don’t know if I’ll be able to pull it off, but there’s an idea that’s taken hold of my brain…

• Amazing and wonderful costumes of New York Comic Con, from Tor.com. I particularly loved the service dog dressed as Captain America.
• 13 pictures of goats on cliffs. (As usual, don’t read the comments.) I was a little skeptical about this, but I did some digging and verified that at least some–possibly all–of these photos are genuine. And now I’ll be singing “Spider-Goat, Spider-Goat, does whatever a Spider-Goat can” for the rest of the day.
• Model maker and photographer Michael Paul Smith’s forced perspective photographs.
• Maria Keller, 13-Year-Old Minnesota Girl, Donates 1 Million Books.
• This one is totally self-serving, but still cool! Graphic Audio is offering a talking (chirping, really) Smudge with purchase of the goblin trilogy for the rest of October. Or you can order Smudge directly.
• 100,000 Stars. Basically, a Google Map of the galaxy. Though it won’t give me driving directions to Gamma Draconis 🙁
• From a few years back: Botanists in Israel grew a tree that’s been extinct for 1500 years, using seeds from 2000 years ago.
• Finally, from the Mary Sue, check out this Labyrinth family cosplay:

Happy Friday, all! Have some cool stuff!

• 29 Cats That Forgot How To Cat. (Since people seemed to appreciate the last set of cat pics and gifs.)
• Polar bear playing with sled dogs. (Link from hilleviw.)
• 16-Year-Old Egyptian Scientist Finds Way to Turn Plastic Waste Into $78 Million of Biofuel.
• 50 people share the most intellectual jokes they know.
• 10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class.
• Finally, tonight I’ll be running my son’s very first D&D game. Behold, his character and brand new dice! (I’m jealous. His dice are SO MUCH COOLER than my first dice, which were pale blue, and I had to use a white crayon to fill in the numbers.)

Another Friday, another collection of links that will hopefully make your day a little better.

• Dog drinks from water fountain. Wonderful canine facial expressions ensue.
• I loved Charlie Jane Anders’ Hugo award-winning story Six Months, Three Days. So I’m thrilled to see that NBC is putting together a procedural based on her story. I admit, I’m a little nervous about what they might do with it, but I’m so happy and excited for Charlie Jane.
• Video of a red panda playing with a pumpkin.
• The cover for Jaime Lee Moyer’s next book just showed up online, and guess who has a blurb on the front cover! (Also, the cover looks great, and I liked the first book a lot, but I have a front-cover blurb!)
• Zac Vawter, who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident, is now the “test pilot” for what’s being called the world’s first fully bionic, mind-controlled leg.
• Finally, the LEGO Black Box, by Jason Allemann:

Welcome to week two of Cool Stuff Friday.

• Sir Patrick Stewart, Leonard Nimoy, and Sir Ian McKellan, all in one photograph.
• A life-size Dalek, made out of LEGO.
• Scientists at Harvard and MIT are one step closer to creating the light saber. “Lukin also suggested that the system might one day even be used to create complex three-dimensional structures – such as crystals – wholly out of light.”
• The Curiosity Rover found that Martian soil is about two percent water, by weight, which could be a very good thing for future colonists. (Though there’s also perchlorate in the soil, which is harmful to humans and would need to be dealt with.)
• For Banned Books Week, MediaBistro linked to excerpts from the ten most frequently challenged library books in the U.S. (Captain Underpants leads the list.)
• 28 Cats Having a Way Worse Day Than You. It’s a Buzzfeed page and takes a little while to load, but it made both me and my wife laugh.
• I may need to pick up one of these Girl Cooties Warning T-shirts that author Jaime Lee Moyer just put up on Zazzle.
• Photos from Socotra Island – About a third of the plant life here exists nowhere else on the planet. It’s described as the most alien-looking place on Earth, though I’m not sure I agree. Maybe the most alien-looking land on Earth. Deep-ocean life can get pretty unusual…

I’m thinking about trying to make this a recurring thing, because the world needs more positive. So here, have some random goodness…

• My wife’s surgery went well, and she should be coming home from the hospital today is home now! Thank you all for your good wishes.
• Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. starts Tuesday!
• Author Harry Connolly started a Kickstarter campaign for The Great Way, an epic fantasy trilogy. He reached his funding goal in 8 hours, which is mind-bogglingly sweet.
• Jodi Meadows got to see a rocket launch from a NASA facility. I am jealous, but at least I got to read her great write-up and see the pictures 🙂
• Did you know the Curiosity Rover is on Twitter? Its latest advice: “Always look both ways before autonomously navigating yourself across the crater.”
• Finally, a walking, fire-breathing robot dragon. I want one!