You don't exist here on earth in the present moment of the 17th of February 2019. I am not sure if you ever will exist on this earthly plane either. Who knows what the future will bring or if the planet will still be harbouring Homo sapiens 100 years from now.
When it comes to design - the Victorians did it better. Nothing quite matches these 19th Century comparative river and mountain maps for exquisite hand-drawn detail, meticulous scale and luminous beauty. It makes me wonder, how can anyone not love old maps? A New Cartographic Convention One of the forerunners for this kind of map…
Continue reading ➞ Five rare and awe-inspiring mountain and river maps
Blue dusk in St Heliers © Content Catnip 2018 www.contentcatnip.com We have lived in Auckland for the past four years and every other day, I walk the length of Tamaki drive, a long 8 km sea-skimming road that is bike and pedestrian friendly. Although the city itself can be a pretty bland and tiresome, the…
Continue reading ➞ A photo of the day: Dusk in St Heliers, Auckland
In the past I've showcased Scorpion Dagger's Renaissance era GIFs. This takes the classical art mash-up one step further with hilarious results. B4 XVI (Before Sixteen) explores the often overlooked visual and cultural similarities between hip hop poseurs and medieval aristocrats. Hey it's all got to be referenced from somewhere, right? One from the deep…
Lammas, also known by its gaelic name Lughnasadh is a time for remembering gratitude, and how abundance has come into your life. It's a time for giving thanks to the universe for all that has come to fruition and all that is still to come. Lammas
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.David Foster Wallace Dusk at Okahu Bay Copyright © Content Catnip 2018 www.contentcatnip.com I love this quote from David Foster Wallace. In…
When the ancient blue-walled city falls into the dusk the city turns from azure to deep purple. I took this photo in 2009 as the surrounding hills were burning with marijuana and the calls to prayer were echoing over the walls.
I recently began a course with one of the most famed writers in the world teaching creative writing. I already know things, having studied creative writing years ago, however at the time I had zero confidence in my abilities. So I languished for a while in a corpo doing finance admin after my degree -…
This is one for all the history nerds out and anybody who likes cooking and eating, which probably means you. When you try to recreate an ancient recipe, you may end up with a stinking cesspool of inedible muck or a culinary wonder. Two very famous US universities Harvard and Yale collaborated together to cook…
Continue reading ➞ Cooking 4,000 year old Babylonian recipes, how do they taste?
This amazing explanation of narrative arcs by Kurt Vonnegut had me laughing out loud. To actually be present at this lecture would have been totally awesome. This video is great starting point for narrative structures and point of view, although really only the tip of the iceberg of a very gigantic topic. I hope other…
Continue reading ➞ Narrative arcs: a funny and simple explanation by Kurt Vonnegut
“One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Women Who Run with the Wolves.
Have a look at the exquisite pages in Mira calligraphiae monumenta or the Model Book of Calligraphy, which was crafted by Croatian-born mastercraftsman Georg Bocskay, and Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel. This is a real work of art and shows beautiful attention to detail with the gold leaf writing and sublime illustrations of flowers, insects and…
Continue reading ➞ An Exquisite Model Book of Calligraphy, 1560
Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a Jungian analyst and a Doctor of Ethno-clinical psychology. Her book Women Who Run with the Wolves is a dense and fascinating foray into the myths and wonders of oral storytelling throughout history. It's a book that makes you more playful, affectionate, joyful and more authentically joyful in every way. Pinkola-Estes…
Guido Zimmermann is a German graffiti artist who recently created Cuckoo Blocks, a remix on the traditional Germanic wooden cookoo clock of olden times. Forget about cutesy animals and people popping out of a wooden clock on the hour, this remake of a cuckoo clock takes inspiration from Brutalist architecture of tower blocks build in the…
Continue reading ➞ Would you buy this kooky modernist cuckoo clock?
Litha, also known as midsummer, is the longest day of the year in the southern hemisphere.And it's also a great date for planning and transition, a good day to ponder the year ahead. Litha
After much pussy-footing around and oscillating around the place like a pinball, trying just about every aspect of marketing and comms in the commercial world I realised finally what I knew all along....that I need to just simply do what I lose myself in deeply and conclusively. By that I mean I can simply dissapear…
Continue reading ➞ Find the thing that you lose yourself in…and do that for the rest of your life
Thanks Tish for your wonderful reminder the other day of the legendary writer Clarissa Pinkola-Estes. In case you don't know of her, Clarissa wrote the book Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype, This book calls upon the eternal feminine qualities in each of us and asks us…
On a recent trip to Japan I took mountains of footage. Advertising is totally out of this world and so I created this homage to Japanese ads, on trains, JR stations, the streets and so on. I created these gifs with colour distortion to properly convey the feelings you have in situ. Initially, after a…
In case you have been living under a rock, Robohands is a UK jazz musician whose real name is Andy Baxter. His debut album Green which came out in mid-2018 is superb. With almost zero effort to promote the album, Robohands has grown in underground popularity getting over a million views on his album and…
Shadow boxes are glass-front display cases that contain salvaged and created beautiful objects placed artfully at various heights to generate a depth of field. Some shadow boxes include mood lighting for added dramatic effect and can be used as a night light or as a piece of art in the lounge room. Others are contain nostalgic…
Continue reading ➞ Shadow Boxes: Beautiful Christmas Gift Ideas from Etsy Part 1
