#Cool

And make glorious and interesting mistakes. Some great advice from the ever-wise Neil Gaiman.

Cool kinetic typography from Nanna Påskesen

via the Farnam Street Weekly newsletter

This clip is just amazing. I have to admit swimming with wild dolphins at Kaikoura was perhaps one of the most amazingly enjoyable things I have ever done, but I would have lost it seeing this video footage.

Even more amazingly, the whole thing was captured with a simple GoPro camera (a Hero2 with the dive casing and a home-built “torpedo”, apparently.). In any case, just watching this puts you in a better mood. Dolphin amazingness starts just after 1m30.

Stunning spoken word video with some great imagery and music mixed in by Jason Silva on The Biological Advantage of Being Awestruck .

Definitely one of those full screen, dim the lights and turn the volume way up kinda of things. Some very cool sentiment on what it means to be human and awestruck.

(though personally don’t know if I would have gone for the Hubble as the penultimate written expression of awe, though “mainlining the whole of time through the optic nerve” is definitely something I’m filing away for future conversational use at a swanky cocktail party… =] ).

OK, kinda love this to scale comparison of the various planets of the solar system. Kinda cool to remember how much bigger some of the other planets in the neighbourhood are than good old Earth. Despite me starting off in astrophysics, it’s never top of mind how big Uranus and Neptune are.

I am so glad ZeFrank is back on air (ok, yeah… disclaimer: I backed his Kickstarter for “A Show” so evened the odds a little… Ahem…).

Still, it leads to awesomeness like this so worth all the pennies. Enjoy.

Make yours a good self.

Cool little short about office life and the powers that rule it. Very accurate in my experience.

Even more impressively, all effects done on camera, no post sfx! And they won the Reed film competition Grand Prix.

via Geeks Are Sexy

In the vein of Dancing Matt , 5000 miles of hitchhiking the US and 930 people in 162 seconds. Dedicated to the people everywhere who will help out a “stranger.” Lurv.

Mythbusters’ Adam Savage talks about how simple ideas yield amazing revelations and how we’re all capable of them. Most discoverers “just thought a little bit harder and were a bit more curious.” Some great examples. From TEDEd.

(via FlowingData )

You may not know it, but the last decade (or so) has seen this quiet revolution of innovation in origami going on while you’ve been doing other things. All these impressive paper folders doing incredible things with humble sheets of papyrus and turning a classic art on its head and pushing the envelope (pun intended ;-p). So, you gotta love this short, stop action animation of an origami rhino being unfolded. Lovely and very zen.

Really impressive post-apocalyptic animated short from Oddball Animation that the authors want to make into something feature length.

Not sure what might be holding them back, but if they’d Kickstarter this I’d absolutely fund it based on the strength of this short. Quite amazed at the quality of some of the shorts I’ve seen earlier, just hope it’s not isolated from a larger story they need to tell.