Walk Like a Man…

Many gorillas can walk, and even run, for a short distance on two legs. A bachelor Western lowland gorilla named Ambam seems to be rather more fond of bipedal locomotion than other gorillas. Ambam’s father frequently walked upright when his hands were full, and his siblings also displayed the behavior more frequently than other gorillas.

Ambam lives at the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent, England. I’d definitely add it it to my itinerary if I were visiting the area.

The following video of him has gone viral, with over 1 million views in two days, so it’s old news by now. I just wanted to document it here, in case any of you haven’t yet seen it. The soundtrack is a little loud, so you may want to mute it or turn down your volume before you watch the vid.

New Roof! Oh…joy… and First YouTube upload!

They’re reroofing my condo. Lots of scraping and pounding and dropping many pounds of tar paper heavy enough to make my building shudder. I can actually feel the compression and expansion when they drop the rolls of tar paper into position on the roof. It sounds and feels like the end of the world. Just ask my cats. And the smell! Hot, smokey, burning tires. Blekh! But, hey! No more leaks when it rains!

So, I’m uploading my first ever video to YouTube as I type this. It’s a test animation of fractal renderings. I don’t think it’s spectacular, but it does document a successful test. It’s cool, if you like watching animations, especially animations created from mathematical abstractions. This one is of a series of Julia set equations.

It’s 15 seconds long. Now that I know what to expect, I’ll make my next one longer, and also more interesting.

If you like math visualizations, or if you just wanna see a cool colorful animation, check it out.

Toddler Television, pre Tele-Tubbies

Vision On bug logo

Vision On logo

I was browsing YouTube the other night and I finally– finally– remembered the name of one of my favorite programs when I was a weeling. And, not only did I find the name, I also found some footage, some of which I actually remember watching. What a blast! Watching the clips brought back so many of the cool feelings of my first years of life.

The Program was called “Vision On,” and it was put out by the BBC from 1964 to 1976. It was the brain child of the great English artist, Tony Hart (linked page has sound), and, according to the comments on the various YouTube clips, it has been the inspiration for many artists of my generation.

Remembering “Vision On” was remembering the joy of being three years old again, and the unbridled desire to do all the cool things they did on the show, before I was pressed into perusing my more intellectual and potentially fiscally rewarding interests.

Anyway, “Vision On” was all about art and painting and visual perception, with Pat Keysall helping to bridge the gap between hearing and non-hearing viewers “by addressing the television camera and using sign language as she spoke (Wikipedia).”

So, I was three years old, and “Vision On” was more interesting than Sesame Street. The show was meant for a slightly older audience, I think, but I was a little ahead of the curve, back then. We young “Vision On” fans didn’t need Pat Robertson’s pal, Tinky-Winky, to take us by the hand and entertain us. We had Tony and Pat, and the Prof to entertain us and teach us about art and being creative.

Anyway, do you remember “Vision On?” Or was there another television program you liked to watch when you were three or four years old?


Links:

“Vision On” YouTube Playlist
“Vision On” Website
Tony Hart (linked page has sound)
Pat Keysall

I claim Fair Use of the Vision On logo and the screen capture from the programme’s intro. So there.