Simple Simon

Glow in the dark tech doesn’t have to be limited to novelties like glow sticks – it could be used to make the roads safer, provide illumination without the need for electricity, and allow surfers to see each other in dark waters. These 12 applications of luminescence include everything from clothing and pillows to cars and architecture.

Glow in the Dark VW Golf

Bright green luminescence ensures that nobody has any trouble seeing this VW Golf MK7 at night, which has been covered in a special phosphor-foil 3M wrap. Created by the tuners at Low-Car-Scene and Blackbox-Richter, this glow in the dark car looks white and pink during the day, and green and black at night.

Urban Dwelling by Jiri Prihoda

This glow-in-the-dark urban structure is a two-story dwelling with a secret compartment hiding a pull-out bed. The installation, by Czech artist Jiri Prihoda, is built into a reclaimed railway yard and features an outer shell made of Corralit material, a luminescent substance that absorbs daylight and later glows for about eight hours. While this mini dwelling was installed in a very urban location, the idea is that it would make a tranquil place to stay in the woods or by the sea in more private surroundings.

Glow in the Dark Skate Park

This sculptural skate park located on Vassiviere Island in France solves a problem of keeping the surrounding woods natural and free of harsh lighting at night by glowing in the dark. Koo Jeong A and Belgian firm L’Escaut Architecture wanted a ‘dreamlike’ setting for skaters at night that would blend into the environment.

Solar Activated Glowing Bike by Pure Fix Cycles

Riding a bike at night can be a bit unsafe. ‘Kilo’, a light-activated glow in the dark bicycle frame from Pure Fix Cycles, fixes that problem with highly reflective paint that can be applied either to the frame or the wheels. In addition to being more visible to oncoming traffic, the glow illuminates the road a bit.

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Glow In The Dark World 12 Smart Illuminated Inventions

Traditional photography with actual cameras has gone way of the handy camera we all have on our smartphones. It also seems we can’t avoid slapping a filter on it via some photo app and sharing it on every social network out there. Instagram is the leader of the pack when it comes to photos, filters, and sharing and London-based Bruno Ribeiro decided to take the idea into the real world with his series of photos called Real Life Instagram. Because we all know how difficult it is to disconnect the digital world from the every day, mundane analog one.

Last week, the internet was buzzing with Wes Anderson fever as the trailer was released for his newest contribution to cinema, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Sensing that us Wes Anderson-crazed fans might not be able to hold out until the film’s release date in March 2014, the kind folks behind the Wes Anderson Collection book have released a series of short documentaries following the director’s journey from an unknown film graduate to one of the most influential voices of American cinema today. The award-winning film critic, often credited with “discovering” Anderson’s talent, Matt Zoller Seitz gives us all kinds of fascinating anecdotes about the filmmaker, with side by side comparisons of his influences, behind-the-scenes stories about his long-time relationship with the Wilson brothers (a screenwriting team whose talent has been compared to the likes of J.D. Salinger), and oh so much more. If you’re a Wes Anderson fan, settle in, these are a must watch …

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Come back tomorrow and I’ll add the last part of the series, scheduled for release; the double and final feature of “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Moonrise Kingdom”.

In the meantime, head over to Matt Zoller Seits blog on RogerEbert’s blog, for all kinds of Wes Anderson good stuff, including another series on the filmmaker called The Substance of Style ….

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North Korea has long been one of the world’s most isolated places, but Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder has been visiting the country regularly since 2008 and helped establish an AP bureau in Pyongyang in 2012. As Guttenfelder says, “I’ve covered global stories where foreign photographers are everywhere. But in North Korea I’m usually the only one … In a world where nearly everything has already been photographed, it has become my job to reveal what it’s like inside this closed society.”

Since the introduction of 3G network service for mobile devices in North Korea this year, Guttenfelder has been uploading his images on Instagram, later including video on his feed. Click any of the still images or videos below to see details, and keep reading for Guttenfelder’s thoughts on using Instagram as part of his storytelling repertoire.

“Instagram is an immediate way to communicate. Each image may not be iconic, may only be a little detail, but they’re simple pieces of a bigger puzzle—it’s more about the sum of all the parts. When you add it all up, you get a sense of the place and the people. First I had to decide whether to choose Instagram over shooting with a regular camera. Now I have this further distinction, whether to go with stills or video. At 15 seconds, an Instagram video is almost more like a shifting still—in between a still and a video. I can open a window to our other senses. For me it’s the sound even more than the motion. It feels less permanent than a still image but can feel more real.

“The artifacts are funny but serious. They’re little objects that people use or make to represent their country to the outside world. They can say a lot. I’ve been picking them up starting as early as my first trip in 2000, like keepsakes for a scrapbook, and now I’m sharing them [via Instagram]. I feel like an archaeologist.

“For so long, the only glimpses we had of North Korea were from propaganda. This is a country with a preconceived idea of what I should show and even where I should stand. It’s so restrictive that the more tools I can use and the more I can attack a subject from different angles, the better. After 60 years, we finally have the power to see for ourselves.”

View North Korea in widescreen

Follow David Guttenfelder on Instagram and on his website.

Elizabeth Cheng Krist’s favorite kind of excursion is visiting museums and galleries to see more photography, especially in New York. She also loves to take long walks in new cities while traveling overseas. She has visited North Korea, but never saw a city or a museum there, so hopes to return.

Thanks to @agentblythe!

I’d say this is pretty uncanny, down to the Dura Ace 7400 STI on the Motorola team Merckx. Ben Foster is playing Lance Armstrong in the new biopic feature-length film. Personally, I’m pretty into what I’ve seen so far! See more info here.

Parkour isn’t quite the sensation it used to be, but there are plenty of urban athletes all over the world still exploring cities by free running, jumping, flipping and climbing. One of England’s parkour champs is James Kingston, a talented expert who films thrilling point-of-view (or POV) videos of his parkour adventures.

Just in case his incredible videos entice any amateurs to try his death-defying style, we’ll just put this cliche saying out there: if you don’t have proper training, don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else. You can get most of the same thrill by watching Kingston’s heart-stopping POV adventures.

Wearing a helmet camera, Kingston takes his viewers on thrilling rides through rooftops, neighborhoods, and beautiful locations. Although he’s been criticized for glamorizing this dangerous sport, Kingston has also received accolades from people who aren’t able to try it out on their own. He gives his viewers a way to fly through the air and perform daring tricks without ever stepping foot away from their computers.

Started in 1882, the Sagrada Família basilica is one of the most famous buildings in the world, despite still remaining unfinished … at least for now. This amazing one-minute animation shows the final steps toward its near-future completion, officially slated for 2026.

Designed by Antoni Gaudí and set in Barcelona, the structure has been in the works for generations, a process continued long after the death of its architect nearly 100 years ago. The animation itself features real aerial helicopter footage enhanced with dynamic digital modelling.

The plan, in fact, is to celebrate its completion on that one-century anniversary of 1926. The project is scheduled to be finished under its new chief architect Jordi Faulí who is following in the plans and footsteps of Gaudí in finalizing this Gothic-inspired masterpiece.

A mass of tangled cables doesn’t exactly make for a nice-looking space, whether it’s a desk covered in computer equipment or a game system in a prominent corner of the living room. You can either choose to hide and wrangle them with a clever device, or make them an intentional part of your decor with a few DIY cord organization ideas featured here.

DIY Cable Organizer Inspired by AT-ATs

Make your very own DIY AT-AT/Cable Box with a plywood and basswood kit from GeekCook. Just place a power strip inside the body, and use the head for business cards. The kit comes flat-packed with easy-to-follow instructions for assembly.

Make Cables Into Intentional Decor

When you can’t manage to hide the cords to your various electronic devices, show them off instead. This DIY project by Palle Olsen mounts a PS3 and all of its cables to the wall using mounting tape and super glue

Power Lines

This concept from designer Daniel Ballou puts cables on display, turning them into ‘power lines’ with a set of metal towers.

Florafil Decorative Cable Wrap

Sometimes, you just can’t hide cords to lamps, televisions and other electronic items. Florafil by Tanya de Cruz takes a decorative approach, turning them into vines.

More Creatively Displayed Cables

Designer Maisie Maud Broadhead creates these ‘cable drawings‘ to turn what could be an eyesore into a decorative element.

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Clever Cord Organization 14 Solutions To Manage Clutter

It can be hard to explain to someone from Europe or elsewhere just how vast and variegated the United States really is, but this short epic photo series is a great start. It depicts a series of surreal landscapes, carefully chosen to show the amazing range of environments found across the American West.

Photographer Reuben Wu came originally from the United Kingdom and was awed by what he found traveling cross-country in America. On his latest trip from his home in Chicago, he looped through the northern and southern Midwest on his way to the West Coast and back, taking incredible images along the way, dubbing the series Cross Country.

He traveled this route with a plan: capture scenes at night when natural marvels were devoid of human activity and using technology to calculate when peak moonlight would allow for stunning visibility. The result is this set of vivid images that make familiar places seem alien, and speak both to beautiful variety and carefully found settings.

Subjects of the series span from Illinois and Indiana through North Dakota and Nevada, California, New Mexico and Kansas, and featured sites (or sights) include: Yellowstone, Badlands, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and the Grand Prismatic Spring, the Devil’s Tower and the Smith Mansion.

I’ve been spending time with Lauren, walking around Melbourne these past two days and on our way to dinner last night, I saw these logos on an old storefront glass. They were hand-drawn on the backside as well. I’m guessing it was an old bike shop?

Until I start photographing bikes and shops, I’ll be uploading the non-cycling side of this trip to my Flickr, so follow along there!

We've all got reasons to creep around the house from time to time. Whether it's a sleeping baby in the next room or a sick significant other, sometimes you need to move as silently as possible. The Art of Manliness shows off how to walk like a ninja so you can move around swiftly—and silently.

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Big shifts are happening in the world; societies are changing rapidly. But how do we visualize this? It may not be immediately obvious what’s happening in this picture, but something seems unusual. Bruises, zippers, a covered face. This is not everyday life. The picture is not about who she is as an individual, but what she has chosen to do to her body as a part of her culture.

Photographer and artist Ji Yeo’s project Beauty Recovery Room focuses on the ubiquity of plastic surgery in South Korea. The series developed out of her own desire to alter her body. Even before high school, she felt pressure to be someone other than herself.

“As I moved on to high school, plastic surgery had become extremely popular in South Korea. In the entertainment news section of the daily newspaper more than half of the stories were about those who had recently had plastic surgery, where they did it, how successful it was, etc.”

“Surgery dominated conversations, and many of my schoolmates were planning for theirs. ‘Right after I graduate, I’m having my thighs and my cheeks done,’ they would say; but my dreams were much bigger. I was going to have a whole body surgery. I was going to totally transform my looks, become someone else. I truly believed that if I transformed my appearance, my life would transform along with it and I would finally be able to earn people’s respect and admiration.”

Yeo’s Beauty Recovery Room series “uses the wounded faces and bodies of women who have recently undergone plastic surgery to show the physical cost of social pressure in Korea. Going under the knife, enduring bruises, scars, and being under general anesthetic several times are no longer considered risky or extravagant. They have all had multiple procedures and have plans for future augmentation. The photos were taken directly after their operation, while they were resting and waiting to be healed.”

While her work may never affect cultural trends in South Korea, it shares private moments that the rest of the world would be unlikely to encounter. In places where plastic surgery is becoming more popular, perhaps some people will be swayed not to change their whole appearance. In Yeo’s case, after years of consulting with plastic surgeons and researching different looks, “It dawned on me that if I really wanted plastic surgery, I would have already done it. Somehow there was always something holding me back.”

“Even though I had always wished to change various details about my looks, when it came right down to it those were the very details that I was so hesitant to lose. The thought of losing them forever terrified me. I realized that in fact I didn’t need to change everything, rather I needed to change nothing. I needed to accept my whole self and the body that contained it. It was clear that the entire fantasy was built from an imagined outsider’s perspective. It was a societal fantasy of aesthetic perfection, and it didn’t really belong to me at all. It definitely did not bear living out.”

View more of Beauty Recovery Room on Ji Yeo’s website.

Follow Janna Dotschkal on Instagram and Twitter.

Eddy Merckx, 525 victories and style icon. Seriously, that man had such rad sideburns. Classic cycling photography was so good!

*these two photos are from the Merckx 525 book.

Thanks to @chubbyferg!