Anamorphic Sculpture

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An anamorphic image is an image that appears distorted until viewed a particular way. Below is Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors with a Memento Mori, a well know example from classical painting (the odd looking blob at the bottom is a skull when viewed from an oblique angle).

The London based artist Jonty Hurwitz has created anamorphic sculptures (above) which reveal their images in reflective cylinders. You can see more of his work at his gallery of recent work.

Via: Colossal Art & Design, which includes a video of his work showing how it appears as you move around the sculpture.

Holbeins painting with the anamorphic image

The skull seen from the correct angle

Fixing a Flat

The above video shows how to apply a patch to a large $30,000 tire from an earth moving machine.

Glass Viruses

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 Luke Jerram is something called an 'installation artist'. His installations have featured such things as Hot Air balloons floating around playing music, pianos scattered around cities folks could play on, little gold figurines scattered about that people could find and keep, and so forth.

This post is about his Glass Microbiology series of sculptures. Working with scientists and glassblowers, he has created glass sculptures of various diseases. There are more examples of them after the jump and at at the link.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen

A great version of the spiritual by the Dixie Hummingbirds. 

    

LEGO Egg Decorating Machine and More!!!

If you haven't decorated your Easter eggs yet you can always build one of these handy devices to assist you with the job. From JK Brickworks, which has information about the egg decorator, as well as the Hatching LEGO Eggs (below), and many more LEGO projects.

Sugary Cereals With Prizes Inside

Brigid at Borepatch's put up the post When Your Cereal Selection is Based on the Prize in the Box - Growing up in the 60's. She looks back at the sugary cereals of her youth and the little toy prizes that came in them. It is a nice trip down memory lane.

My brother and I were raised on the sugar-sweetened joy of the 60's.   My favorite Western RanchHands were Twinkie the Kid and the Hostess Cupcake. We drank Koolaid (Soda Pop was an expense that was only the rarest of treats in my house), or better yet, cold water from the garden hose. We watched TV when we could, but mostly we ran, we jumped, we covered miles of ground on our bikes. TV was a treat, not a weekend-long marathon and the backyard was our empire, one of constant motion. None of us had an ounce of spare flesh on us, we were lean and healthy from all the outdoor playtime.

And our cereal came with prizes in the box. 

Follow the link above and read the whole thing. By the way, speaking of prizes inside, here is a link to an old post of mine about Cracker Jack.
  

Vintage Farm Magazine Covers

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 After following the adventures of Farmer Bill and his New Tractor, I decided to look up some old farmer's magazine covers to see what he read. So I went to MagazineArt to see what they were like.

From the titles of the articles, while a few were concentrated mainly on the business of farming, others were more focused on the rural/outdoors lifestyle. Those types had a heavy dose of old style Americana about them. Some also had romance stories, so some must have been aimed primarily at the farm wives. 

There are more samples after the jump, and of course many more at MagazineArt.

The Sounds of Venus

While the U.S. concentrated on landing probes on Mars, the Soviet Union sent a number of probes to Venus. One of them, Venera 14, had a microphone aboard. Above is a video with a soundtrack from Venera 14.

Not surprisingly the sound isn't all that interesting -- sadly, no outer-space monsters roaring in the background. However, the accompanying images from the surface of Venus are well worth a look.
 

Horseless Farming With Ford Tractors - 1917 Film

Little Billy Todd leaves the farm and discovers Ford tractors and true love. The Ford tractor plant seems to be from before assembly lines. And the tractor sure spews a lot of smoke.
 

Old Slot Machines

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I am not a gambler, so I have no nostalgia for slot machines. Still, I've seen them here and there in my travels and they're always fascinating in their own way. Gaudy and loud as they try to suck coins and/or tokens out of your pockets.