Fugdale’s Funhouse

This nifty site will really put you in your relative place. In a smooth scrolling gray and black grid, you can compare the relative sizes of various objects. Start at the largest scale reaching to the vast expanses of the Universe. And float your way on down through planets, then to monuments, buildings, people, animals. Then grow smaller to the size of a flea, an aomeba, a quark.

Instantly zoom to any of these sizes by using the tiny buttons at the bottom of the screen. The slick interface really gives you a sense of your size in the scheme of things. Bravo to Nikon for providing this tool.

Zoom Quilt is an amazing collection of artwork. You view this collection by moving into it or out of it. The artwork seems to grow as you pass through it, filling up your peripheral vision. It changes constantly. From the center point come new images and characters and wild paintings. It ultimately comes back around to the beginning in the same fashion as a Mobius strip.

You can view the Zoom Quilt on many different hosting sites. The links above take you to one of those sites, as I was having a bit of difficulty with the original source, zoomquilt.org. If you can connect there, you can download the screen saver version of the quilt.

This newly released sequel to Zoom Quilt is even longer than the original. With the same twisted creativity which led to the original making its rounds all over the web, Zoom Quilt 2, still delivers. Choose to view it online or download the screensaver version.

The previous 3 sites remind me of a wonderful documentary film from the 70’s called “Powers of Ten”. The film was created by inventors Charles & Ray Eames who interestingly enough created a lot of mod furniture at the time. The movie shows a couple lying on the grass in the park. The camera starts zooming out by a power of ten (ten feet above). Each time it zooms out it multiplies the distance by 10. When they get to the edges of the Universe (like the Nikon app above) they zoom back down to the couple and the the movie zooms into the man’s hand by the Power of Ten exploring the world of the tiny.

It’s a fascinating film. Check out reviews on Amazon to the left. For a good interactive site on the same subject, check out Powers of Ten or if you aren’t into all this science crap and just want to have mindless fun try this Power of Ten instead.