Link sausage

[magid]

Disconcerting confluence today: Yom haShoah and Ben & Jerry's free cone day.

A real time World Wide Lightning Location Network.

Scary: coral reefs may dissolve if CO2 levels get high enough. And coral bleaching is already an issue.

Via Lifecollage, a TED talk on hyperbolic crochet coral reef, which also includes discussion on the ecology of coral reefs.

From a math paper on hyperbolic surfaces, directions for crocheting hyperbolic planes.

1. Make your beginning chain stitches. (Topologists may recognize that as the stitches in the Fox-Artin wild arc!) About 20 chain stitches for the beginning will be enough.
   
2. For the first stitch in each row insert the hook into the 2nd chain from the hook. Take yarn over and pull through chain, leaving 2 loops on hook. Take yarn over and pull through both loops. One single crochet stitch has been completed.
   
3. For the next N stitches proceed exactly like the first stitch except insert the hook into the next chain (instead of the 2nd).
   
4. For the (N+1)st stitch proceed as before except insert the hook into the same loop as the Nth stitch.
   
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until you reach the end of the row.
   
6. At the end of the row before going to the next row do one extra chain stitch.
   
7. When you have the model as big as you want, you can stop by just pulling the yarn through the last loop.

Be sure to crochet fairly tight and even. That's all you need from crochet basics. Now you can go ahead and make your own hyperbolic plane. You have to increase (by the above procedure) the number of stitches from one row to the next in a constant ratio, N to N+1 the ratio determines the radius (the r in the annular hyperbolic plane) of the hyperbolic plane. You can experiment with different ratios BUT not in the same model. You will get a hyperbolic plane ONLY if you will be increasing the number of stitches in the same ratio all the time.

Via Cellio, the 15 strangest buildings (number 13 made me laugh).

Or another option, living in a treehouse.

And then there's buildings made of food.

And drink: now you (well, only those with tickets, which I assume doesn't happen to include anyone reading this, but hey) can breathe your G and T.

Comments

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

I loved the strangest buildings link. 13 is definitely the funniest, but I think the library may be the coolest. (Except that ever since I saw Habitat as a kid I wanted to live there.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

The library is very cool. Is the inside of Habitat as interesting as the outside?

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I only saw it in pictures, and all I can remember are walkways and balconies with lots of greenery.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Lots of greenery is good. I was just reading a list of houseplants that will help clean the air. Not as necessary in homes where the windows open, but in office buildings, they can help tons.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

What is the N in your hyperbolic crotcheting algorithm? Same as number of chain stitches you started with?

[magid.livejournal.com]

N needs to be less than the number of chain stitches, otherwise it will stay flat, or even start to cup, if you don't increase enough.

I do most of my hyperbolic crochet starting from a circle of chain stitches, rather than a line segment, so that's what's easiest for me to describe. If you don't increase at all after the first row of single crochet, you get a cylinder. If you increase some, you can crochet a flat circle. And if you increase a lot (I sometimes do two stitches into each one), you get curved surfaces like this (or this, likely done with a line segment base).

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

LOL at #13 indeed :) I -love- the basket building! It's so very, very silly, and yet it almost looks like a normal building (esp. if you took the handles away). I've been to the cubical houses in Rotterdam; one of them is open to public tours (and it is still this guy's house! he has a crazy collection of action figures, too), so I got to see the inside. It's kind of a tight space, but not so bad if you don't have a lot of, say, bookcases.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I had the same thought about the basket building! I wonder if it's the headquarters of a company that makes baskets or hosts picnics or something, or whether the architect saw some of the usual dreary office building designs and riffed to this.

A home without a lot of bookcases? That would be challenging indeed!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Your Ben & Jerry's link is to their UK website. Is there something you're not telling us? :-)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I wasn't paying attention this morning? I wanted my UK readers to have the chance to get ice cream too? I'm a subversive Anglophile trying to subtly promote the goodness of the Isles using a USian company?

US link here :-)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I knew it!

(I'm trying to decide if a free cone is really worth the shlep.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

There's a few shops near your workplace:

Ben & Jerry's Park Plaza
20 Park Plaza
Boston, MA 02116
617-426-0890

Ben & Jerry's Newbury
174 Newbury Street
Boston , MA 02116
617-536-5456

Ben & Jerry's Prudential Center
800 Boylston St.
Mall Building - Terrace Food Court
Boston, MA 02116
617-266-0767

Not that I'm enabling or anything... *whistles innocently*

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I succumbed to the dark side and went to Newbury Street for my ice cream.

[shirtlifterbear.livejournal.com]

I love the Lightning Strike site!

I grew up in Florida, home of 50% of the lightning strikes in the world!

It's a place that teaches you how to stay low during a storm, not as a lesson, but as a survival technique!

[magid.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize Florida was that electrifying! I remember storms sometimes when visiting my grandmother over February break, but I never thought it was noticeably more than home. Small sample size, though :-)

I wish there were some way of capturing that energy and feeding it safely into the grid.

[(Anonymous)]

I wish there were some way of capturing that energy and feeding it safely into the grid.

1.21 jigowatts!

[magid.livejournal.com]

*grin*