Now that spring has sprung, the grass has riz (almost) and all that good stuff, it’s time to emerge from our down-comforter-filled caverns and start doing things outside again! If you’re looking for a new outdoor project, here’s a cheap, easy and awfully weird one: Wacky Archives shows you how to make your own ethereal apparition. No ectoplasm required — just chicken wire and a slightly twisted sense of whimsy. [Via Make]

^{[photo courtesy Wacky Archives]}

Actually, this reminds me of Nightshirts, one of the installations in the Forest Hill Cemetery. (New Englanders, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you check this place out. Makes for superb picknicking.)

*Title of this post inspired my favorite IMDB find of all time.

Belly up to the Kunstbar, a cozy little watering hole where the White Russians are Chagall and Kandinsky. The brainchild of animation collective The Petrie Lounge, this short is a surreal(ist) love letter to Art History 101. [Via Neatorama]

Sorry for the lack of posts/erratic site behavior — we’ve run into a few technical difficulties this week. (Looks like I’m well on my way to filling out my “newbie blogger” bingo card!) Anyway, thanks for your patience, folks; things should be getting back to normal very soon now.

At this point, everyone knows what a powerful tool Google can be if you’re looking to dig up information on other people. Well, recently, I stumbled across a couple websites that allow you to use Google to spy on pretty much the entire world, all at once. But not in the way you’d expect.

I’m referring to two flashy mashups of Google Maps and Flickr: Flickrvision and Earth Album.

Earth Album harvests Flickr’s most interesting photos, then displays the results for a given country when you click on the map.

Flickrvision is something a little more startling: It shows you a satellite’s-eye view of photos being uploaded in real time, sending that little digital globe spinning with every new submission. (For an extra dose of voyeurism, you can also check out Twittervision — although in this case, I think a picture really is worth a thousand words.)

Happy gawking!

Other nifty map-related sites:
breathingearth.net | Watch the population rise and fall in real time! See the carbon emissions of countries around the world! This is how the planet “breathes.”
opentopia.com/sunlightmaprect.html | Shows what parts of the earth are currently goth-friendly, and which parts are subjected to the sun’s burny rays (or, if you live in Seattle, coated in a light gray drizzlemist).
google.com/sky | No longer do you have to download Google Earth to mess around with the digital heavens — you can do it right in your browser!

Now, I know I’m barely scratching the surface of this topic here (and intentionally so, since I could easily spend the rest of my life researching this). Got your own favorite map sites? We’d love to hear about them!

^{[photo courtesy Spanish-Living.com]}

Meet L’Hemisfèric, one of the five attractions that make up the dazzling, ultramodern City of Arts and Sciences (known as Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències in Catalan, or Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in Spanish) in Valencia, Spain. This “city,” completed in 2004 by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, includes an opera house, a garden, a science museum and an oceanographic park. The cherry on top of this sensory overload sundae is, of course, L’Hemisfèric: an entertainment complex boasting the trifecta of IMAX theater, laserium and planetarium. And if you’re into creepy nicknames, feel free to call it the “Eye of Knowledge.” (According to Spanish-Living.com, “The eye even blinks with the aid of a steel and glass shutter operated by hydraulic lifts.”)

^{[photos courtesy Hipocondriaca, . Bambo]}

As it turns out, right now would be an excellent time to make a trip to Valencia, as the whole town is gearing up for Las Fallas. Held on March 15-19, this annual celebration welcomes spring in the very best way: with FIRE and NOISE. During the festivities, celebrants construct enormous firecracker-stuffed puppets (called ninots), usually grotesque or satirical figures, which get paraded around the streets and placed in tableaus (fallas). Every day at 2pm, pyrotechnicians try to out-muscle each other in La Mascletá, a fireworks competition that focuses on sheer bone-rattling percussive power instead of sparkly lights. (They refer to the finale as the terremoto, meaning “earthquake.”) As you might expect, the whole thing culminates in an epic conflagration: Nit del Foc (“The Night of Fire”). According to Valencia City Guide:

All Fallas burn all over the city the following night (including the winner of the competition) in a tremendous spectacle of fire and joy. Valencia is at that moment like Nero’s Rome, a city in flames.

And indeed, so it would seem:

^{[photos courtesy vanguardista, Fabio Gava]}

For more dazzling Las Fallas snapshots from Flickr, go here. [Thanks to Neatorama for inspiring for this post!]

Looking like something straight out of a Barbarella DVD extra, this swingin’ cephalapad (oof) belongs to some lucky design-minded couple in Mexico City. Conceived by Arquitectura Organica‘s Javier Senosiain (the mastermind behind such jaw-dropping works of organic design as the Quetzalcoatl Nest ), the house boasts spiral staircases, indoor gardens and a knockout mountain view. Its shell is made of ferrocement, an earthquake-resistant material consisting of cement, sand and water slathered on a wire frame. If you crave more Nautilus eye candy, check out Senosiain’s site. [via BoingBoing; photo courtesy DVICE.com]