Duvet-Dayz » Fun

Weekend Activity: Build your own Zen Garden

By fpp ⋅ 7-December-2008 at 9:16 (UTC) ⋅ Post a comment

Japanese Zen Gardens are known for their calming effects and for centuries gardeners in Japan have cultivated, groomed and maintained Zen rock gardens and their dry landscape style called Karesansui (”withered landscape”).

Scientist analyzing one of the World most famous Zen gardens, the Zen rock garden of the Ryoanji Temple (Temple of the Peaceful Dragon) in Kyoto revealed that the calming effect is due to subliminal messages created by the arrangement of rocks and gravel. If they would have also asked the gardeners maintaining the beauty of that place, they would have learned that - as known to many practicing Zen - that maintaining or arranging such a garden has a calming effect of its own.

While you might not be able to feel the gravel passing through the teeth of your rake within one of these old gardens, you could create yourself a miniature version of a Zen rock garden and enjoy peace and quietness that way.

There are ready made miniature Zen garden sets available, but we put together a few links demonstrating how to create one yourself with parts you might…

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Humor: Shatner on the true meaning of Xmas

By fpp ⋅ 6-December-2008 at 17:38 (UTC) ⋅ Post a comment

This clip is from last year’s CC’s X-Mas special but still a good reminder how much some people “really care“.

Has its moments.

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Weekend Activity: Create an Origami Christmas tree

By fpp ⋅ 5-December-2008 at 18:15 (UTC) ⋅ Post a comment

With the holidays almost around the corner maybe its a good time to practice some new skills. How about creating some Origami Christmas Trees.

The Origami Resource Center has a series of example folding instruction for you to begin with.

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Music: NYC Kermit

By fpp ⋅ 5-December-2008 at 0:47 (UTC) ⋅ Post a comment

One for the night.

Kermit sings LCD Soundsystems New York I love you

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Skiing: New snow in Utah

By fpp ⋅ 4-December-2008 at 15:35 (UTC) ⋅ Post a comment

As you can see from this great Telemark extreme skiing video by J.T. Robinson it has started to snow over in Utah.

Great filming, great sound, great snow, we are sooooo jealous.

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Street Art: Graffiti stencils from Helsinki

By fpp ⋅ 3-December-2008 at 17:36 (UTC) ⋅ Post a comment

A brilliant stencil spotted in Helsinki, Finland.

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Augmented Reality: A monster on your desk

By fpp ⋅ 3-December-2008 at 17:18 (UTC) ⋅ One comment

If you want to try out augmented reality effects for yourself all you need is Flash and a web cam connected to your computer.

Uses the Papervision and the FLARToolkit flash components. You’ll find some more examples at the FLARToolkit web site (link below). The Boffswana page (link below) has step by step instructions and the PDF with the marker. Source code is available.

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