If you're looking for some Great Links you've come to the right place.

Don’t let the somewhat-depressing title put you off, this is a really excellent feature put together by The New York Times covering the highlights of Opportunity’s mission.

Opportunity survived 5,111 Martian days and drove over 28 miles — a distance record for wheeled vehicles beyond Earth.

This rover made some truly incredible accomplishments over 15 years, which is quite remarkable for a piece of equipment designed to last only 90 days.

Alexander Rose did some digging to uncover the details of a very interesting installation at the hoover Dam:

On the western flank of the Hoover Dam stands a little-understood monument, commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation when construction of the dam began in 01931 [sic]. The most noticeable parts of this corner of the dam, now known as Monument Plaza, are the massive winged bronze sculptures and central flagpole which are often photographed by visitors. The most amazing feature of this plaza, however, is under their feet as they take those pictures.

The plaza’s terrazzo floor is actually a celestial map that marks the time of the dam’s creation based on the 25,772-year axial precession of the earth.

Reddit can be problematic, but there’s nothing problematic about Cookie Monster doing an Ask Me Anything. Here are a few of the questions and answers to whet your appetite:

How big is your cookie collection?

Not very big. Me constantly run into problem of eating me collection!

My 7-year-old daughter is about to start selling cookies for Girl Scouts. Do you have any advice for her?

Don’t eat the product!

We know cookies are your favourite food. What is your second favourite food?

Can me say more cookies…?

(Then, in the next message, again from Cookie Monster…)

Me thought it over. Definitely “more cookies.”

The Atlantic selected some really good photos to encapsulate an incredible year.

A half century ago, humans first set foot on the moon, hundreds of thousands of young people gathered in New York’s Catskill Mountains for a music festival that became a cultural milestone, and the war in Vietnam dragged on while protest and resistance grew. It was the year that Sesame Street premiered on Public TV, British troops were first sent into Northern Ireland, the Manson Family murders took place, that Richard Nixon became the 37th President of the United States, and much more.

This short video (under two minutes!) showcases a very interesting piece of very old technology that was way ahead of its time. The Casio AT-552 Janus wristwatch contained a fully-functional calculator you controlled with gestures, all in a normal-sized, normal-looking package.

A great short film (just under nine minutes) from Pixar:

Purl, directed by Kristen Lester and produced by Gillian Libbert-Duncan, features an earnest ball of yarn named Purl who gets a job in a fast-paced, high energy, bro-tastic start-up. Yarny hijinks ensue as she tries to fit in, but how far is she willing to go to get the acceptance she yearns for, and in the end, is it worth it?

The title speaks for itself with this one. There are some interesting details in the article if you’re curious, like this one:

One of the arguments against pre-rinsing is that certain detergents are designed to cling to food particles […]. Without a surface to stick to, your dishes won’t get as squeaky clean.

Hey, whatever makes dishes easier to deal with!

Wolves are famously territorial, but this project shows just how territorial they really are by mapping tens of thousands of coordinates recorded using GPS collars.

“‘We made a discovery,’” he remembered her saying. On the other end of the phone, Mr. Bolen cringed. The last time he received a call like that about a store, their plans to move a wall had to be scrapped because of fears the building would collapse. He asked what, exactly, the discovery was.

“You have to come and see,” she told him.

So, gritting his teeth, he got on a plane from New York. Ms. Ryan took him to the second floor of what would be the shop, where workers were busily clearing out detritus, and gestured toward the end of the space. Mr. Bolen, she said, blinked. Then he said: “No, it’s not possible.”

Something had been hidden behind a wall, and it wasn’t asbestos. It was a 10-by-20-foot oil painting of an elaborately coifed and dressed 17th-century marquis and assorted courtiers entering the city of Jerusalem.

Sometimes a 10-by-20-foot oil painting just, you know, turns up.

Someone once said:

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.

Regular expressions are incredibly powerful, but can also be extremely confusing and hard to use. This free online tool is, by far, the best thing I’ve ever found to build, refine, debug, and understand them. It will even help you generate code to use them in various languages. If you find it helpful you can donate using the “$” icon at the bottom to help keep the lights on.

The Vasa was the greatest warship to never go to war. Named after the Swedish royal family—the House of Vasa—the vessel was commissioned by King Gustavus II Adolphus in 1625 and was earmarked to become his navy’s flagship. Gustavus had big dreams for the Vasa: He wanted the most lethal warship in the Baltic Sea, one that was as beautiful as it was deadly.

For three years carpenters, sailmakers, painters, woodcarvers, ropemakers, and hundreds of other artisans and craftsmen rushed to build the king’s vessel. The Vasa would be a floridly crafted masterpiece with at least 700 delicately carved sculptures, figurines, and ornaments: Angels, devils, lions, emperors, warriors, musicians, mermaids, ghastly faces, heavenly facades—all painstakingly crafted from oak, pine, and lime wood.

A great story about the recovery of the vessel spanning hundreds of years.

James Ball worked with several museums and other organizations to produce some stunning images of various devices from the early era of computing. The results are quite amazing.

Without realizing it, we’re fluent in the language of pictures, says illustrator Christoph Niemann. In a charming talk packed with witty, whimsical drawings, Niemann takes us on a hilarious visual tour that shows how artists tap into our emotions and minds – all without words.

This is a great piece about glitter. I know, it sounds odd, but trust me; it’s worth a read.

Most of the glitter that adorns America’s name brand products is made in one of two places: The first is in New Jersey, but the second, however, is also in New Jersey. The first, the rumored farm site of glitter’s invention, refused to answer any of my questions. “We are a very private company,” a representative said via email. The second is Glitterex.

Apple offers free sessions at their stores that cover photography, art, coding, music, and more. Ryan Christoffel of MacStories decided to attend one and write about his experience:

At several points throughout the session, I found myself smiling just looking around the table as I considered how seemingly random a group of people this was. There were participants ranging from, by my best guess, age 13 up to those in their sixties. Two people were friends who just got new phones, and they were constantly delighted and awed by all the things they learned in the session. A mom was attending with her daughter, who was taking notes for a school report. The rest of us, by outward appearance at least, had little in common. But there we sat, around a table, learning and experimenting with the technology we share.

These days, when most of the tech industry is trying to replace real human interaction with profiles, posts, likes, and follows, it’s refreshing to see a program like Today at Apple that brings people together in-person. Technology should be used to enhance and enrich the time we spend with other people, not exploit our connections to each other. That’s why I created What a Great Link, and that’s why I love to see other companies do things like this.

Anna Brisbin taught her adorable puppy (aptly named Remus) to respond to spells from Harry Potter instead of traditional dog commands. The results are incredibly adorable and amusing.

Brian Enigma:

The weekend before Halloween in 2018, my partner Christine Rose and I hosted a Harry Potter potions party. It was just under 3 months in the making — from prototyping a magnetically-activated animated lock to having professionally laid-out spellbooks and handcrafted “magic” cabinets dispensing test tubes of alcohol. This website is an attempt to catalog the various regions of the party and document each of the magic elements we designed for the area.

There’s some truly incredible work here, from the handmade wands to the basilisk cinnamon rolls there’s something here for just about everyone.

And if you want to throw your own potions party, almost all of the source material is available on GitHub.

Procedur.al is an art store where every piece of artwork is one of a kind.

This concept is called generative art, which means that the designs are generated by an algorithm with some random parameters. Every time you order, you can generate a unique version of any of the posters based on a what’s called a “seed”. This seed determines how the random parameters of the design will behave, and you can use it to generate the exact same design at any point in the future.

Such a neat idea. If you want to see the full version of the image I used for this piece, go to [the Warp Drive product] and enter seed 4028434532482.

The New Horizons probe, which previously provided us with a stunning view of Pluto, recently gave us our first real glimpse of the most distant object we’ve ever visited: 2014 MU69, which has been given the nickname Ultima Thule.

Ultima Thule is 30 kilometers (18 miles) in diameter, and is thought to be an undisturbed fragment from when the solar system was first formed. Scientists hope to learn what conditions were like at that time by studying the object.

Austin Kleon:

My son Jules woke up on Christmas last year and started drawing. He was 2. (His birthday is in March.)

Inspired by Sylvia Fein’s book Heidi’s Horse, which collects her daughters drawings from toddler to teenage years, I thought it’d be interesting to see how his drawings developed over the next 12 months.

There are some delightful and adorable images and commentary here. I especially love the part where he drew some skeletons on their outdoor couch cushions:

They were so good we couldn’t bear to clean them off, so my wife got out her sewing machine and embroidered them.

Tata&Friends was asked to rebrand whatever they wanted for a section of Icon Magazine. They selected to reimagine the look and feel of the European Space Agency, and the result is magnificent.

Seth Gould spent two years crafting an intricate puzzle box called Coffer.

The Coffer was made primarily through handwork at the forge and at the bench. The majority of pieces, including the bolts, levers, and staples, are made from wrought iron, a material I use primarily for its working properties (enjoyable to forge and file). Wrought iron is no longer manufactured, so each piece needed to be forged from salvaged material. The forging is done using a coal forge, hammer, anvil, and power hammer. Once the pieces are forged as close to their finished shape as possible, I move to the bench to refine the surface and shape with a file. The final touch is a bit of file embellishment.

Jesse Beecher documented Seth’s project in Forged and Filed, an expectational five-minute video with sounds from Seth’s workshop weaved into an incredible soundtrack.

You can read more about this project on Seth’s site.

Peter Merholz shares his observations:

It’s been surprisingly delightful flipping through this little bit of computer history. The pace, and deliberateness, with which the system and its interface are explained are quite impressive.

I love the diagram that shows how scrolling in a window works.

From cake in a mug for one to shucking corn, your microwave might be able to do more than you thought. You can even measure the speed of light:

With a relatively simple science experiment, you can measure the speed of light for yourself using a microwave and some chocolate. You’ll need to remove the tray from your microwave so that the chocolate doesn’t cook evenly. Put a long piece of chocolate in the now-empty microwave, and cook it until it begins to become misshapen, around 40 seconds. Then you can measure the distance between the hot spots where the chocolate began to melt and pool.

Marc Edwards:

It’s common to have to draw the same kinds of icons over and over — many different apps and websites use similar glyphs, but each instance typically needs to be tweaked for size and style, so they need to be redrawn.

Due to this repetition, I’ve always been interested in trying to work out optimal ways to create them. This is to save time, but also as a fun challenge.

If you’re a designer you’ll likely find these short animations informative. If you’re not a designer you’ll likely find them to be interesting, with a hint of magic.