Tag: Holiday

Hike the Web

~ mehopper

Sunday, November 17th is National Hiking Day, and it’s one of my favorite “made up” holidays!

Here’s an inspirational video about it that includes a bit of nice history.

On This Day (YouTube Channel)
On This Day (Official Website)

Celebrating is easy — just take a hike, or a walk, if that’s more your speed.

The U.S. National Park Service maintains this handy map to help you find a place near you.

Find a Park Map (U.S. National Park Service)

Now, perhaps you are someone who needs a bit more inspiration than watching a video and clicking a link to find a park, or maybe you’re not in a position to take a hike or walk at all.

In that case, perhaps a “virtual” hike might help you celebrate. There are actually a surprising number of ways to take those on the Web.

For example, the U.S. National Park Service maintains a page for that, too.

Find Your “Virtual” Park (US National Park Service)

In addition, many of the parks’ websites have “Photos and Multimedia” pages that include “virtual” experiences. Here is an example from the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon Virtual Tours (US National Park Service)

There are also many 360° videos on YouTube that provide virtual visits to National Parks.

For example, Air Pano has made quite a few of them. Here are links to pages on their website for three of them. Their home page has a map where you can find more.

Grand Canyon National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park

Here’s another YouTube Channel with a long playlist of great videos.

National Parks Virtual Tours — 360° Immersive Travel Experiences (Odyssey Visual Media)

Of course, Google doesn’t just make it so that you can immerse yourself in YouTube videos — they are also behind Google Earth. Here’s their “virtual visit” to the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon (Google Earth)

There are also some neat custom made “virtual” experiences. Virtual Yosemite is an example. There is also a Virtual Yosemite Directory.

Finally, writing this post inspired me to create this 360° experience called Hiking Trails Hall.

Click the “doors” to enter 360° virtual parks and “i”s for information about them.

If you can’t see it, or it isn’t working, you can also see it directly on Kuula.

All of this nudged me to update the “nature” pages on Cosma. One thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, I was inspired to create this entire Nature Center with three other spaces to explore in addition to Hiking Trails Hall. Again, click “doors” to enter 360° experiences, “i”s for information about them, and arrows to go to other areas of the Nature Center. Some objects also link to fun 360° experiences.

If you can’t see it, or it isn’t working, you can also see it directly on Kuula.

Enjoy & Happy Hiking!

Learn more about Nature …

Polar Party Toy World

~ mehopper

About five years ago I created a series of what I called Toy Worlds to be 3D interfaces to Cosma.

You can see all of my Toy Worlds on my page on the Kuula service that I use to post them.

That was a phase that I thought was over   —   I moved on to exploring other technologies for making 3D websites (more about that in the spring). However, I got nostalgic for Toy Worlds while I was pulling out holiday decorations this year, so here is a brand new Toy World.

Click and drag to look around and click on objects to learn more about them.

Enjoy & Happy Holidays!
Mary

Easter Tidings & Tidbits

~ mehopper

I’ve been immersed in working on updating Cosma pages about technical subjects like computers and the internet lately.

Make that TOO immersed, I needed a break.

Given it’s Easter weekend, make that a bunny break!

First, I dug up my old Bunny Fix post from 2020. That was fun, but those bunny clips were only a few minutes long. I wanted more, so I headed to YouTube in search of some more bunnies.

However, I didn’t find any because I got distracted by a video about Easter traditions.

The Adventure Buddies (YouTube Channel)

Some of the traditions were fun and familiar, but others not-so-much. The Scandinavian Witches, Czech Switches and Cold Water in Hungary weren’t so enviable.

Of course, that cute Australian Easter Bilby caught my eye. I set off on a YouTube safari in search of them. Here’s one of the better videos I found.

Behind the News (YouTube Channel)
Behind the News (Official Website)

Those bunnies and foreign traditions were fun distractions, but my favorite Easter thing to do remains coloring Easter eggs. That is why I was a sucker for this video about ways to dye them. It is a bit long, but each time you think the ideas won’t get any more creative, they do.

Cleverly (YouTube Channel)
Cleverly (Official Website)

Finally, one last fun traditional distraction is the Easter Egg hunt.

In case you can’t do a real one, here’s a 360° video with a quick virtual version.

ABC11-WTVD (YouTube Channel)
ABC11-WTVD (Official Website)

There you have it. That’s the end of my break — I hope you enjoyed coming along for my unexpectedly meandering (de)tour through Easter tidbits =:)

Find out more about bunnies and celebrations in general …

Pi = Spring

~ mehopper

Did you know that Tuesday, March 14 is Pi Day?

I’m both a geek and a softy for cool numbers, so I’ve known of Pi Day since not long after Larry Shaw made news about it with his escapades at the Exploratorium in the 1980s.

Although, I’m more aware of it than “usual” because I’ve been working on the Mathematics page on Cosma — it just naturally came up 🙂

If you don’t know what Pi Day is, then there are lots of ways to find out about it.

In fact, when you Google Pi Day, you’ll get around a whopping 1,290,000,000 results. Ironically, if you Google Pi Day Facts you’ll get a slightly more overwhelming 1,300,000,000 results (Hummmm, that’s “interesting”).

A simple way to cut through all that would be to search out the Wikipedia page about it.

However, I prefer going to the source, so I’m partial to the Exploratorium’s Pi Page.

There’s also a dedicated “Pi Day” site that has a page with the Top 25 Most Interesting Pi Facts. My favorite fact is that March 14th also happens to be Albert Einstein birthday!

One thing they fail to mention is the whole “Pi Day Food” thing. If you Google Pi Day Deals 2023, you will see that sources ranging from CNET to Good Housekeeping will give you advice on where to get deals on Pies and Pizza.

Now I personally prefer to learn about things using YouTube videos.

Alas, searching YouTube for Pi Day is only a bit less overwhelming than searching the Web. There are thousands of videos, and many of them are, non-coincidentally, 3.14 minutes long.

I spent awhile rummaging through them and think this minute long video is one of the best.

cleveland.com (YouTube Channel)
Cleveland.com (Official Website)

Now, for a bit o’ fun, it turns out that searching YouTube for Pi Day Song turns up slightly fewer videos. Here’s one of the cuter ones.

Tiny Tunes (YouTube Channel)
Tiny Tunes (Facebook)

Here’s another fun video from one of my favorite YouTube channels.

FlippyCat (YouTube Channel)
FlippyCat (Facebook)

I must confess that frequenting the FlippyCat YouTube Channel is akin to watching cat videos.

In fact, one of my favorite Flippy Cat videos features a cat!

FlippyCat (YouTube Channel)
FlippyCat (Facebook)

Ahhh, but I digress, a lot.

Onward, one of the reasons that Pi Day is so near and dear to my heart is that it is also one of a triad of holidays that serve as a prelude to the official start of Spring on March 20th (the other two were St. Pat’s and the Holi Festival of Colors).

So this post is also a salutation to Spring!

Happy Pi Day + Spring!

Find out more about Mathematics and Holidays …

Bunny Fix!

~ mehopper

Easter is here, and it’s time for a bunny fix!

I decided to go rummage around YouTube for some bunnies.

My quest began with searching for a random cute bunny that I could just watch for a awhile. Instead, I found a 360° video about the Japanese island Okunoshima.

Jackpot!

This video from NowThis explains why Okunoshima’s nickname is “Rabbit Island.”

Now This News (YouTube Channel)
Now This News (Official Website)

In addition, the site Gateway to Rabbit Island was basically a virtual vacation.

Next up I found a video entitled INVASION! from Baobab Studios narrated by Ethan Hawke and is a bit out of this world.

Note, as is usually the case with 360° YouTube videos, it makes sense if you watch it in the regular way, but it’s more fun if you interact with it and look around.

Baobab Studios (YouTube Channel)
Baobab Studios (Official Website)

After all of that, I was starting to feel better, but I still didn’t quite feel like I had gotten the “Easter bunny” vibe that I was looking for, yet.

Onward!

Happily, the next thing that I stumbled upon was exactly the medicine that I needed.

You’ve heard of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, right?

Well, it turns out that there’s a rendition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, narrated by none other than Dame Judi Dench, posted on the Beatrix Potter YouTube Channel. Better yet, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and many others are posted there too.

Beatrix Potter (YouTube Channel)

Now that’s the kind of bunny fix that I needed, and I hope you enjoyed it too =:-)

Find out more about bunnies …

St. Paddy’s Day Jaunt

~ mehopper

Yeah, it’s finally time to see some green around here — the official start of Spring is next week, and today is St. Patrick’s Day!

Brace yourself — you’re getting a whirlwind virtual visit to Dublin for St. Paddy’s Day!

We’ll start the excursion off with a quick 360° tour of some well known places in Dublin.

360 Video Ireland (YouTube Channel)

It’s early, so for the art lovers, we’ll take a quick trip over for a three minute 360° tour of the National Gallery of Ireland.

The Journal (YouTube Channel)
The Journal (Official Website)

It’s still early, and there’s a place called Knockdrin Castle that might still be for sale. I’m pretty sure we can’t afford it, but it will be a hoot to take a quick 360° tour. We do have those lovely lottery tickets for sale in the US, so you never know 🙂

Bloomberg Originals (YouTube Channel)
Bloomberg Originals (Official Website)

Knockdrin Castle is on sale for the first time in half a century. Here’s what it’s like to be inside (James Tarmy, Bloomberg)
Knockdrin Castle (Wikipedia)

Okay, the festivities will be starting, so it’s time to get back to Dublin and take in the parade. Thanks to SEDA College, we have a three minute preview taken last year.

SEDA College (YouTube Channel)
SEDA College (Official Website)

This adventure wouldn’t be complete without some traditional Irish music, so let’s stop into Hogans and get a close-up, 360° view.

Communications Concepts, Inc. (YouTube Channel)
Communications Concepts, Inc. (Official Website)

There you have it. I hope you enjoyed this brief virtual vacation, and the good news is that you still have plenty of time to head out and celebrate St. Paddy’s Day in your own way.

If you do decide to make a real Visit to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, then there are a few things that you should know, though.

Jameson Irish Whiskey (YouTube Channel)
Jameson Irish Whiskey (Official Website)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day Weekend!

Find out more about holidays …