Web Log

By MARIE BORAN

Weird But True (iOS)

I might not be a kid anymore but my inner child loves this app from National Geographic. It caters perfectly to natural curiosity while ensuring that these fun facts are weird enough to be interesting. And your child can use the “weird-o-meter” to rate just how strange and bizarre these fantastic facts are, with the option to share them with friends on Facebook and Twitter. Did you know that messages from the human brain move along nerves at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour? Or that cats communicate using about 16 distinct “cat words”? Weird but true.

[ iti.ms/SuuXsB ]

Scratch

Gaming is popular and fun, so why not encourage your kids to create their own? Scratch is a programming language developed by MIT Media Lab which is created specially for children to use. It can be downloaded for free from this website (runs on Mac, Windows and Linux) and there are plenty of video tutorials to get started. It uses drag and drop coding to create whole games by adding chunks of code that moves a character around, prompts it to interact and so on. Wonderful.

[ scratch.mit.edu ]

Phillip Toledanos Gamers

Have you got a game face? We all do and perhaps it says more about us than we had previously considered. Social-political photographer Phillip Toledano’s gallery of “Gamers” captures faces of intense concentration, effort, enjoyment, frustration and all of the emotions that wash across the faces of those fighting themselves, others and digital demons. On first glance, these faces could be from those locked in battle or expressing genuine love.

[ mrtoledano.com/gamers/01-Gamers ]

Your Boss Is Insane

The bank holiday has come and gone and the week seems to be dragging on forever. Take comfort from the fact that your boss is probably insane. A fun infographic by learnstuff.comtells us that organisation heads are four times more likely to be psychopathic than the average person. And these stats claims that one in six people quit their job because of their boss, while the rest of us are likely to spend 19 hours a week worrying about what our boss says or does. Cheered up now?

learnstuff.com/your-boss-is-insane/