Interactive maps of history’s greatest journeys, with details. Some fictional; others not.
There’s Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, Kerouac’s Sal Paradise traversing the US, Livingstone’s explorations in Africa, and many more.
via Kottke
Tag Archives: interesting
A List of How-To Sites
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Last month an article appeared in The New York Times Magazine praising how-to websites. Now it’s acting as my personal list of how-to websites, helping teach me everything from Chinese dining etiquette to surviving zombie attacks and plating fettuccine Alfredo.
- Howcast
- eHow
- WonderHowTo
- Instructables
- SuTree
- VideoJug
- ExpertVillage
- Get Rid of Things
- How to Clean Things
- How to Write Good.
That reminds me, I need to learn how to do the robot.
20 Things Everyone Needs to Know
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I’m usually quite sceptical about similar lists, but The Independent’s 20 Things Everyone Needs to Know struck me as actually useful as each list item is authored by a professional who works in that field.
And when you’ve got an article co-authored by the likes of Donald Trump, Jennifer Capriati and Larry King, how can you possibly resist?
- How to change a tyre
- How to sleep
- How to build a fire
- How to shine shoes
- How to make a Martini
- How to apply lipstick
- How to negotiate
- How to scramble eggs
- How to hang a picture
- How to ask for a rise or promotion
- How to use chopsticks
- How to iron a shirt
- How to shave
- How to hit a tennis ball
- How to listen
- How to ask someone out
- How to learn a foreign language
- How to shake hands
- How to buy a diamond
- How to conduct a background investigation
Visualising Four Dimensions
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Need help in visualising four dimensions? Étienne Ghys has now created a series of videos for ‘teaching’ others how to visualise objects in the fourth dimension (the spatial, not temporal, fourth dimension).
How on earth can we visualize such a thing? [The] challenge in visualizing four dimensions is very similar to the one that would be faced by a perfectly flat creature who lived in two dimensions and tried to visualize three, like the inhabitants of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland or the lizards in the page in Escher’s Reptiles. A cube or a sphere would be nearly unimaginable for the two-dimensional lizards, since they are unable to rise out of the plane.
Last Place and the Changing Olympic Spirit
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The DFL blog rounds up the Beijing Olympics with some great data visualisations on last place finishes and some wise words on how the Olympic spirit has changed.
It’s part of a larger problem: media coverage can be so overwhelmingly focused on the home team that the big picture is missed. Events in which your country has no chance are ignored. Gold medallists from other countries are only shown to explain why your country’s competitor came in 12th. And you’ll almost never hear someone else’s anthem played at the podium.
I was surprised to spend so much time blogging about the ugly nationalistic side of the Olympics in this round of DFL. The 2008 version of this blog has been the angry DFL, wherein I fulminate against the media, national Olympic committees, the IOC, and the general public for their obsession with medals and their tendency to blame athletes for failing to bring back the shiny knick-knacks and making their whole country look bad.