For your full visual and audio pleasure, please watch 'Cosmic Excerpts' photo set from Dark Lord Disco (in my opinion one of the finest sets on Flickr) whilst listening to the ambient sounds of Sam

Intervista
 
Ice Field (demo)
 
Cherry Blossom

Kawaii...
http://www.spoonflower.com/tags/kawaii

Geek...
http://www.spoonflower.com/tags/geek via http://prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/
Space Invader pillows by http://www.flickr.com/photos/voodoo_rabbit/sets/72157622336189343/ 

& Finally...
One for design geeks, Pantone Fabric http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/234992
Fabric pic from http://www.flickr.com/photos/38367146@N05/4640589836/ 

 http://www.psfk.com/future-of-real-time
 http://www.psfk.com/future-of-mobile-tagging
 http://www.psfk.com/future-of-retail

The Philosophy

Mast Brothers Chocolate | American Craft Chocolate
I've been effected by the vision and craft of the New York Artizan Chocolate makers, The Mast Brothers. They're small scale and expertly crafted chocolate business, part of a growing craft movement which values the hand-made and personal, has it's roots in an almost sub-conscious crafting history while still being very innovative and progressive in it's design process. They also instinctively know their niche audience's desires and values, placing beauty and integrity at the heart of their business and delivering what looks to be amazing chocolate in the deal.

If only more businesses stuck to ideals like this...
Small-scale, Artizan, Personal, Craft = Desirable, Beautiful, Valuable, Loved Products

Sailing the beans

"...the sailboat carries the whole story of what we're looking to do...it's about  the adventure and curiosity of how chocolate is made and how we're showing everybody this, that when they taste our chocolate it is like old Mark Twain stories - adventure & childlike curiosity and a sort of independance and freedom - a fiercely independant almost Emmersionian spirit is something that we love and we hope relates and shows in our chocolate and process." Rick Mast

The Packaging

"...the paper itself is the thickness of an old butchers paper simply, carefully and originally hand-wrapped with just a sticker on it - restoring an old printing press and doing all in-house printing so that our community can craft new designs. As oppose to the goal being consistency and mass distribution, we're looking for in a way for an inconsistent product so your tastebuds are not only enjoying the sensuality of it but they're also learning. The brain is learning something while you eat it." Rick Mast

The Videos

Cool Hunting Video (the shorter one)

"...we visit Brooklyn to tour the Mast Brothers' bean-to-bar chocolate factory—one of just a handful in the U.S. The chocolatiers, Rick and Michael Mast, walk us through their uniquely intensive process, DIY machines, and a little of their food philosophy."

The Scout Magazine Video (the longer one)
 
"The life of a mariner is one given over to wanderlust—the quest for adventure, crossing unseen horizons to secure precious goods—only to bring them back to their home port. This same love of adventure and curiosity defines the brotherhood of Rick and Michael Mast. They share a fiercely independent spirit, leaping into the unknown and trusting that they’ll find the answer through endurance and dedication to their craft.  They began their voyage in their apartment, using a homemade machine to process cacao beans. Over time they cultivated their creation, sourcing beans from family farms in Madagascar, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. Each bar is handmade with incredible reverence for the process and history of chocolate. They are bound in ornamental papers and golden foil like a collection of rare books. Each bar offers its own story of flavors, and no two are exactly alike.  The Mast Brothers are now planning to navigate the mighty Atlantic, sailing to the Dominican Republic in search of beans and a deeper connection with the folks who grow them. Before they begin the next chapter, The Scout spent time with Rick and Michael documenting their story." http://thescoutmag.com/videos/food/857/the_mast_brothers

The Links

http://www.mastbrotherschocolate.com/
http://www.mastbrothers.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mast-Brothers-Chocolate/18960496604

The Book Covers
Sourced from the remarkable collection of H.G Wells 'War of the World' covers and ephemera, with items stretching back over 100 years http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/wotw.html

Also, check out this chart mapping the comparative use of cover subjects, namely Tripods, Planets, Words, Martians and reference to the 1953 movie, all used as graphical subjects in the covers. Tripods=Win. http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/graphics.html

The Orson Welles Broadcast
Get a warm milky drink, close your curtains, then your eyes, and immersive yourself into the genuinely scary original 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Welles "War of the Worlds"...
 Source: http://www.archive.org/details/OrsonWellesMrBruns

"The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds. The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated "news bulletins", which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a 'sustaining show', meaning it ran without commercial breaks, thus adding to the program's quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles' fame." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)

And finally...

A test reel by stop-motion guru Ray Harryhausen, created for a pitch to RKO in 1949. This footage is from the documentary, 'The Harryhausen Chronicles', on almost every Harryhausen DVD.

This post has taken me a long time to make - every time I visited a site to play with the drawing tool I lost most of the night to it's charms. I wanted to talk about some of the coolest tools I've found, namely Scrbtle, Psykopaint, Mr. Doob's Harmony, Rot.Sketch, Weave Silk, Bomomo, Odosketch and Pixelatr  

Scrbtle
http://www.scrbtle.com/scrbtle.php
"Scrbtle is a generative drawing tool that consists of a scripting language with a simple set of commands and predefined variables. The idea behind it is to create nice graphics and to learn how to code in a playful way." This is a lovely opportunity to edit code in the manner of http://processing.org and http://nodebox.net but in your browser, and is simple to use as either a novice or a more experienced coder. It has infinite potential in generating artwork and allows code tinkering that you can view instantly.

Psykopaint
http://www.psykopaint.com
Convert your photos into paintings as well as being a pretty cool drawing canvas - this Flash app shows that Flash is still very much in the game for immersive web experiences. There's some nice features: being able to sample from the photos below and paint and manipulate the photo in the style of assorted artists brush strokes, which always holds the potential of being a little cheesy, but is just a way of naming an array of brush styles. I almost preferred using the canvas without the photo due to the variety you can achieve through the brushes, colours and layering.

Rot.Sketch
http://www.jeanhelfenstein.com/rotsketch/app/
This is an HTML5 experiment by Jean Helfenstein and is really fun to play with. It's a bit like a digital spirograph, and once you set up the points, you can let it draw on it's own, or you can speed up the process with holding down the space bar, make up new points and generally faff about until you create something gorgeous which you can then save. 

Weave Silk
http://www.weavesilk.com
This is lovely to watch, and you can share your 'silk' which shows the viewer the animation you instigated.

via http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663537/a-symphony-played-by-200-old-household-ap...

Other references:
http://www.kontorkontur.se/
http://sushipot.blogspot.com/2011/02/bits-bobs.html
http://ginwallpaper.tumblr.com/archive
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Found/749159
http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/hong_hao_cv.htm
http://buckets-and-spades.blogspot.com/2011/03/need-to-get-organised.html

Fantastic video by BoingBoing of all the final deaths in old computer games - found via http://www.andykinsella.com/
BoingBoings video collection http://www.youtube.com/user/boingboingvideo#p/u/7/gJ6APKIjFQY

via http://percussionlab.com/posts/95

A month ago I posted 'Beautiful 3D Fractals by SubBlue' - http://kathykavan.com/3d-fractals-by-subblue - I mentioned that Tom Beddard was working on a WebGL 3D fractal renderer that lets you explore fractal structures in real time, well it's here. You'll need a WebGL enabled browser (best with Google Chrome or Firefox 4beta) and then head over to www.fractal.io and get playing!

More articles on the web app:
http://www.creativeapplications.net/webapp/fractal-lab-webapp/
http://createdigitalmotion.com/2011/03/joys-of-opengl-in-a-browser-webgl-1-0-... 
http://www.fractalforums.com/3d-fractal-generation/revenge-of-the-half-eaten-...