Weekend Links

A bit of a snowstorm is passing through. It’s not leaving as much snow as predicted, but the winds are strong and some of what is falling feels like baby chunks of ice. So, I’m staying inside for the rest of the day. I bought myself a book of puzzles and a magazine of storage tips and ideas. I’ve decided it’s pancakes tonight for supper and I may change into my pj’s because it’s a snow day. But, before I get off the computer for a while, I’ve put together some links you can check out this weekend for when you want or need to take a break.

If you feel like reading something historical, 5 of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been digitalized.

Maybe The British Library has something that would interest you, such as the original version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

If you enjoyed Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Russian animator Aleksandr Petrov has composed over 29,000 images of unique pastels-on-glass with his son Dimitri and created an animation adaptation.

Museums and galleries are creating virtual tours for those who would like to visit from the comfort of their home. Here’s a link to an Open Culture article that highlights a panoramic virtual tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

If you would like to travel to Venice for a few minutes, Open Culture also has a couple of short videos of A Day in Venezia.

Pictures, we’re told, are worth a thousand words. These Natural World photos from Boston.com show that sometimes 1,000 words are not enough.

(Image via Boston.com)

Saturday Links

(image from the UpbeaT student life blog)

The weather here has been on a roller coaster ride of change.   Cold, then a warm front blew through one day and then the cold returned.  Of course, that means that I’ve stayed in the house because the changing weather affected my ears, balance, brain fog, I was groggy…you know the drill if weather affects you.

So, I wandered the internet and here’s some stuff that I found interesting.

A short video from a Japanese theatre production of a shadow war fight where the hero battles the shadows that lurk around us.

Do you like to think, question, ponder and philosophize about various things with yourself and with other people?  Check out A Gadzillion Things to Think About where you’ll find over 14,000 things to think about.

After being on the internet for a while, you come to understand (and embrace, because we are talking about cats) that Saturday also becomes Caturday.  In honour of that I give you Cat Laser Bowling.

Science fiction is great!  Especially when scientists create something they’ve seen on tv.  Have you ever watched one of the Star Trek shows and wished we had those medical tricorders to help with our diagnoses.  That day is coming sooner than we thought.  Gizmodo has a post about a scanner that has been developed over a five-year period at the Charité-University Medicine in Berlin and it detects the general health of the person it scans.  It can’t diagnosis specific illnesses, but if something like this has already been developed and is being tested, the tricorder is not to far away.

Do you enjoy Pixar movies such as Finding Nemo and the Toy Story movies?  Open Culture has posted a New York Times video of  a rare look inside the Pixar studios.

And here’s bit of a contrast to the family movies of Pixar.  I rediscovered a video on the website Kuriositas that I had seen before and had fallen in love with the story and the way it was done.  It’s an award-winning short animation that is geared for adults called The Cat Piano. The story is told from the perspective of a poet who tells, in the form of a poem, why the cat singers of a peaceful town are being kidnapped.  Like any good story it has drama, crime and of course, love.

Have a good day everyone.