Vicarious Thoughts

The title pretty much explains this blogpost; a selection of random links I’ve viewed in the past few days.

This is a really beautiful animation of Auckland’s Public Transport Network operating over a day, created by Chris McDowall (I’ve linked to his Vimeo profile because he’s done other great data visualisations!). If you’re interested in all the details as to how the video was created (from a data perspective) then it’s well worth your while clicking through to the Vimeo video page but I’ve embedded it anyway in case you’re just after a taster.

Inflatable Wind Turbines – Looks like a really interesting idea, though I question how durable they’d be under New Zealand’s wind conditions. They’ve got two consumer options and are working on a commercial version which is pretty impressive. Anyway, here’s a graphic simulation of the commercial version in operation. (via Treehugger.com)

This article about a trip to check on the condition of the habitat of the vulnerable Hochsetters Frog, had a sad finding and what I felt was a rather sinister sidestory. Definitely worth a quick read though. And to read more about these unique native frogs here but if you can’t wait a few cool things about them:

They have no visible ear – unlike most species of frogs in the world.

They have round eyes (and look so much cuter for it in my opinion!).

They have no vocal sac and so don’t call or croak, although they’ll squeak when upset.

They’re really small with adults being about 5cm long.

And most amazingly, they hatch from the eggs as froglets with tails and some parents carry them around on their backs.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2011 at 8:05 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.