Various things

[undyingking]

I had a very early start to today, so need to restore some sanity by closing a few tabs on things that have interested me lately.

• Million Dollar Babies -- art made by collaging cut-up dollar bills. But much better than that description sounds -- you can click through the several pieces using the discreet Next button.
  "I love all the process. For some of the collages we track how many scraps of paper are glued down. I see that sort of accounting as an interesting extension of the material. When “Liberty” is complete, for example, we’ll be able give statistics on each of her 13 panels individually, and also say that the whole thing took 1234 bills cut into 54,234 pieces, or whatever, and here’s all the scraps we didn’t use."
• Pokemon Explained -- a terrific article explaining how the majority of the Pokemon TV show makes more sense if one realizes that Ash's bike crash put him into a coma, and the subsequent episodes are a dream. Sadly I suspect this will mean anything only to about one person reading my LJ -- but it really is a work of warped genius, believe me.
  "It also explains how a child can go off on his own into a world full of dangerous and untamed animals, and why town has the same police officer and every Pokemon centre has the exact same nurse. Joy and Jenny he knew from his hometown, and they act as a safety net or anchor, allowing him to feel safe no matter where he goes. Joy and Jenny represent stability. The professors represent Ash’s ideals, which is why Gary became a professor. The fantasy also explains why every time he enters a new region, virtually no one has heard of him, despite his conquests."
• Bible Diagrams is another work of genius, although slightly more mainstream. It's a collection of diagrams showing a wide assortment of data from the Bible. Here's one about the chronology of the books of the Old Testament, for example. The best thing is puzzling out, for each new diagram, what on earth the symbol convention is. More by the same author on other subjects, such as Star Wars.
  "Author's note: It is a major challenge to present material that does not offend one group or another. Not only is there the division between the traditionalist and non-traditionalist, but among the historians there are competing viewpoints as to the dating or historicity of events. This website tries to include as many perspectives as possible so that they can be compared with each other; no viewpoint should be considered to be preferred in the diagrams."
• The League of Movable Type -- at the moment web fonts aren't supported in any significant way, but who knows what the future may bring. Flaminia is quite interesting in its own right as a basis for sign-reading experiments.
  "We're not asking type designers and type foundries to sacrifice profit, we're asking them to contribute to a greater cause, to create a community where we not only have a high design standard for print and web alike, but also a community where we're able to share our creations, knowledge, and expertise with our peers and the world."
• OECD Regional Statistics -- a terrific resource for charting various social and economic indicators across the OECD countries, at a large or small regional level. OK, maybe I'm one of only about ten people in the world who would be excited by this... I could easily waste hours on this site.
  "Regions in OECD countries are classified on two territorial levels to facilitate greater comparability of regions at the same territorial level. The lower level (TL3) consists of 1 681 small regions. All the regions are defined within national borders and in most of the cases correspond to administrative regions."
  

Comments

[theo]

The dollar collages are very interesting although I feel that any one of them would make the artist's point adequately. After that they become decoration.

The masterly psychological analysis of Pokemon entertained and interested me. Curiously, the earliest posting of it that I can find is here on livejournal in March 2008 and that post is an unsourced quotation. Elsewhere, I can find references to it being created by a psychology major who is FOAF but I guess that it originated on a now archived forum.

Sadly the diagrammatic timelines are unfindable on click through beyond the index to which you first link.

I would love to see web fonts supported effectively but until that happens I do not see much market for copyleft fonts.

That OECD site is a monster time stealer. Shame on you for pushing it!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

unfindable on click through

I am no SEO or usability guru, but I think his navigation system (if youc an call it that) is really pretty hopeless.

[thefon.livejournal.com]

Pokemon Explained -- I might be that person! :)

I've enjoyed a few novels or stories along these lines. Haruki Murakami's "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" springs to mind. Very worth a read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard-Boiled_Wonderland_and_the_End_of_the_World

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I love Murakami!