Friday, January 30, 2015

Friday! Thanks to everyone who sent links!

From Julie: Divers discover an underwater prehistoric forest, part of what’s called Doggerland.

From Cassandra: Scary, wicked babies in fiction! Eeep!

Also from Cassandra: Being “ungifted” and how to make everything okay. (The two aren’t related, although I guess they could be…)

Swiped from Warren Ellis’s Orbital Operations: The fascinating world of ghost stations.

 Swiped from Dan Lewis’s “Now I Know” newsletter: If you’re not interested in the Super Bowl, perhaps you’d like to join the Last Man Challenge, where the goal is to avoid finding out the score for as long as possible. The “Causes of Death” (i.e. finding out the score) are pretty hilarious.

And finally, Amos Chapple’s photographs encompass the world in all its beauty and strangeness. His site is definitely worth a look.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

So I am hanging out on Twitter more often these days (I’m @jinnet, if you want to say hi) and most of today’s links are swiped from there. We have many resources for links here at SpookyLibrariansHQ!

Yesterday, I talked about a cheesemaking monk in Manitoba. Today’s Manitoba news features a talking crow. I had no idea Manitoba was so interesting.

Also from Canada, allegedly in Toronto: some truly excellent graffiti. 

In Phoenix, a weather map goes kablooey, and the weatherman just goes along with it. Boiling steel!

From XKCD’s What If? series, a grisly summary of casualties from tug-of-war incidents. Yikes.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

This week, we’re just posting a grab-bag of links in lieu of themed days. So! Onward!

What do ‘80s songs look like? A five-year-old has some ideas. (I love the interpretation of “Rapper’s Delight.”)

Longtime readers will remember I am a fan of the Puppy Bowl, but now there’s apparently a Kitten Bowl. There’s also a livecam of adoptable cats which is addictive – I spent some time watching an adolescent tabby with an incredibly short attention span.

On the other end of the attention span spectrum, here’s a story about a cheesemaking Trappist monk in Manitoba.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

You can customize your own action figure, but unfortunately they have no superpowers. Yet, anyway.

WNYC is running a “Bored and Brilliant” series which looks really interesting. They’re looking for participants, too. 

A journalism degree can put you on the runaway goat beat. A library degree can be just as useful!

Related to the goat beat: Here is a map of every goat in the United States, supposedly.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Happy Friday! Chances are high that Monday’s post will be skipped, but fear not – our intrepid readers have contributed a bonanza of links.

From Cassandra:

From Julie:

Swiped from Stacey:
  • Can an apprentice librarian save her town from The Crumbling? Come to the production and find out! 

From Zazoo:

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! Back on Tuesday, most likely.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

My steampunk/librarian worlds are colliding: My local library is opening a MakerSpace!

Elegy For a Dead World is a computer game which encourages creative writing. I can’t tell you how excited I would have been by this when I was younger. I’m still excited by it now!

Did you know FEMA measures disasters via Waffle Houses? It’s true! There’s a Waffle House Index! 

One of Shakespeare’s First Folios has been (re)discovered in a French library. I love that we’re still discovering things.

What were the words/phrases/hastags of 2014? Here’s a summary. 

Digg has dug through the digitized documents (whee, alliteration!) of Project Blue Book, and has found the most interesting photos of possible UFOs.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

If you’re online: Haunted Scotland beckons! Also, there's Welcome to Businesstown, the Silicon Valley version of Richard Scarry’s “What Do People Do All Day?”

If you’re offline, don’t worry – Google Chrome has a game for you.With dinosaurs!

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Well, this is a sobering start to the day. I was trying to calculate how many times I’ve driven over that bridge in the past, before the new construction made it obsolete. The number's somewhere in the thousands.

Newly digitized photos of NYC’s Chinatown in the 1980s are beautiful.

An essay on Edgar Allan Poe, written by Marilynne Robinson? How can I resist?

PrintSnap brings back the uncertainty and fascination of instant print photos.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Happy Friday! It’s also my birthday, and for a Spooky Librarians present to you, the readers, I give you these amazing (and somewhat terrifying) reimaginings of astrological creatures. For once, I really like the image of Capricorns!

From Nicole: What does it mean when Mercury goes into retrograde? Well… 

From Cassandra: The history of American dogs and how they've interacted with humans.

From Julie: All about maniacs! Not included: Animaniacs.

From someone on Facebook (sorry, I forgot who): the amazing black light murals of Bogi Fabian.  I sort of want an entire house with these designs.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! We’ll be back on Tuesday.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Hello. Meet Jordan the Cat. Jordan has become the Library Cat of Edinburgh University. He has also received his own library card (although I’m not sure where he keeps it). Hooray for library cats!

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows now has its own YouTube channel. (Disclosure: I sometimes suffer from anemoia.)

Baseball players are gearing up for spring training. But, before their salaries rocketed into the stratosphere, they worked some odd winter jobs. Bill Lucey has the scoop.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

First off: Here, have a penguin parade to start the day. (One of them is named King Cobra. Hee.)

Next up, the big questions, like…how historically accurate is Skyrim, really? 

Could someone create a Choose Your Own Adventure game from Twitter? The answer is yes, and it’s great…although I died instantly.

The Occult Detective is a new discovery for me, and it’s a wonderful place, full of new authors and shows for me to find!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Psst! Have you seen a fairy? The Fairy Investigation Society wants to know. (Found via the excellent New England Folklore weblog.) I've never seen one myself, but am also interested in knowing.

If fairies get violent, you could try defending yourself with a bicycle. Maybe. This would probably work better against other humans.

Want a cool t-shirt/mug/poster/web graphic, but can’t find the perfect style? The Pulp-O-Mizer is here to help you design something wonderful!

Monday, January 12, 2015

Hi there. Rough weekend, rough Monday, so here is some loveliness from the Moonshine Lamp Company. More soon!

Friday, January 09, 2015

I’m watching the news from France unfold and hoping for the best outcome possible. France holds a special place in my heart.

Friday means links from others. Thanks to all!

From Julie:
  • Writers have some weird food preferences. I like Emily Dickinson’s the best; I bet Bunny would prefer H.P. Lovecraft’s breakfast.

From Cassandra: The Galapagos Affair looks absolutely fascinating.

XKCD’s latest “What If?” question talks about swimming on the moon. It sounds lovely, and much more fun than what’s going on at the moment on Earth.

Have a spiffy, safe, and warm weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Right, then. It is still very cold and I may or not be in a meeting (see this link which a coworker may or may not have sent to me before said meeting), so let’s look at lovely NASA exoplanet travel posters, shall we?

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

It’s super cold here and it’s awfully difficult to get motivated about anything, so here are 2,300 MS-DOS games you can play, courtesy of the Internet Archive!

For those interested in earlier history, take a look at the 1795 time capsule unearthed in Boston. So cool.

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Failed Architecture examines buildings through the years, as well as new projects underway.

Watch a century’s worth of style in just over a minute!

Speaking of time, there’s a theory which posits that we’re living in the past of a parallel universe. I think.

Meanwhile, Antarctica doesn’t believe in time, because time zones are meaningless there!

Monday, January 05, 2015

Happy New Year! According to Pantone, it’s the year of Marsala – the color, not the wine, although you could probably make an argument for the wine, too.

If you’d like to watch time pass according to the color spectrum, there’s a website for that now. 

If you’re looking for inspiration, I recommend Sue Kreitzman, outsider artist extraordinaire, and her thoughts on the color of life via Advanced Style. 

And in non-color news, please view these lovely black and white portraits of goats.