Recently, I discovered Atlas Obscura, “a compendium of this age’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica.” It speaks to my heart:

The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you’re looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.

 
This guide is simply full of some of the most incredible stuff. For example, one of the entries in Pennsylvania, mere miles from where I went to high school, was totally unknown to me until now. How had I never heard of this place before!? It’s called The Sonorous Stones of Ringing Rocks Park, basically a field of musical, ringing boulders in the middle of the woods. Incredible.

[photo: David Hanauer]

Here in Philadelphia, you’ll find a number of odd spots, including the Shrine of Saint John Neuman. I’m going to have fun exploring (and contributing to!) this outstanding project. Lord Whimsy, you must be all over this already, yes?

So right this moment I’m listening to Last.fm wirelessly connected to my living room stereo system. How? By buying this nifty lil’ app called Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba, telling it to grab the audio from the Last.fm App, streaming it to my Apple AirPort Express wireless router which is connected via RCA cables to my living room stereo. Bing.

A couple weeks ago, my buddy Julia invited me to make a video for the Fiesta Movement program she was helping put together. I was a bit reticent at first, being the busy fella that I am. But after she told me that they’d hook me up with the totally sweet 2011 Ford Fiesta for 6 months in exchange for sending me on little adventures that’d I’d twitter and vlog about, I came around to the idea. Fun!

Today I found myself with an empty Sunday afternoon I thought, “what the hell?” So here it is, in all it’s nerdy glory. I know I’m rather shameless y’all. Please forgive in advance.

The Wend Magazine Blog pointed out a pretty radical new project called the Lost Coast Bike Expedition. It’s a couple of guys, Eric and Dylan, who are off to explore the fringes of rugged coastline from Alaska by… bike? And boat. And foot. But as most of your know, whatever the method of transportation, this type of adventure is right up my alley. I love this coastline. It’s incredible. One of the great Wild places on earth. Plus, they’re blogging about it. Yes! Here’s a photo from one of their first days:

Speaking of cool adventures, BoingBoing today wrote about a cool interactive map feature on Good Magazine’s website showing some of the great adventures of history. Click the image to see more:

First: via Geekadelphia, via Man in Blue:

Next, via Liza, via xkcd:

Second, my friend Dorothy posted these consecutive lil’ rants on Facebook (exhibit B) that made me laugh out loud (ie: LOL). She really is a funny girl, though. You should read her blog, too.

[click img to see it full sized]

Marc’s been churning out some amazing shows all year, and his new project is sure to entertain. He is quite a character. I think the Philly Weekly put it best when they said, “Interviewing Marc Brodzik of Scrapple.TV is like wrestling a Tasmanian devil covered in baby oil.”

Here’s the first episode of one their new series called Back2Basics:

Up there, top floor. My loft. Good or bad, this sure looks like the future to me.