Want to stay at some truly unique places around the world? How about an abandoned island fort off the coast of England, underwater rooms in the middle of a lake, drawbridge towers in Amsterdam, an oil rig turned into a dive center, an ice hotel, a harbor crane, a palace in Morocco, or over river bungalows in southeast Asia?
Go Unusual offers really unique stays and experiences all over the world.
Motion designer Chris Lavelle created this short fractal animation Creation 1. It has a disturbing quality, especially for those who suffer from trypophobia
Though, personally, I think it looks more like a close-up of the iris of the average human eye…
One way of making curved and round surfaces out of steel is to use hydroforming. By welding different shapes completely closed and filling them up with high pressure water – the incompressibility of water pushes on all the surfaces to bend them in unique ways.
But if water isn’t cool enough, one can always try explosives…
I come to these vending machines every time I get to Tokyo and buy at least one thing from them.
In the past, I have gotten a written story (in Japanese and I still need help translating it), a wind up giant stag beetle, and numerous other trinkets I keep on my desk to remind me of better days of travel.
Here’s are two pretty good write-ups on what to experience if you decide to go yourself. But do be aware of the uncharacteristic graphic warning signs posted there.
If these items aren’t your fare, maybe find some of the exclusive vending machines that sell one of a kind and delicious, products.
One of my favorite pastimes is reading and listening to classic spooky stories. There’s no better time for curling up with a spooky story than a cold, fall evening in front of the fire.
Here’s a collection of my all-time favorite scary stories by the best readers I could find:
Scary-comedy
This is a unique group – and old stories of this genre are very heavy on dry British/deadpan humor and often require a little bit of understanding of the times in 1800’s England. I highly recommend.
Plays/Dramatizations
Good general scary classics channels on YouTube:
Books
Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories – Michael Cox, R.A. Gilbert
Playlists:
Honorable mentions/others:
Links:
Poor person’s Burning Man? Check out some of the strange creations made by these creative folks at Urban Campsite Amsterdam
https://www.urbancampsiteamsterdam.com/en/2017/installations/
Want to set up your super-secret Eye’s Wide Shut influencer event? Try Agency WATO. Facebook here.
You can also check out folks that attend these sorts of events – get tours from them.
While expensive at $799, it’s a cool little design. Flyte developed a clock that has a hovering steel ball that circles the face.
If you’re interested in learning intermediate level shader programming, The Art of Code YouTube channel has some really awesome videos to get you going.
As a good example, here’s a really great introduction to programming a shader for a ray marching renderer:
Whenever I have free time and am looking for some inspiration, I love going over to the GDC Vault and watching the countless amazing presentations. Back in the day, one had to pay hundreds of dollars to see videos in the vault, but now they have their own free youtube channel.
In doing some research into visual styles, I ran the game Tengami from Nyamyam. I then found Jennifer Schneidereit’s GDC presentation describing how she created a engine that uses geometry to mimic the mechanical folding of pop-up books.
