Play Quick Draw

Posted by Jane

Can a neural network learn to recognize doodling?Help teach it by adding your drawings to the world’s largest doodling data set, shared publicly to help with machine learning research.

Over 15 million players have contributed millions of drawings playing Quick, Draw! These doodles are a unique data set that can help developers train new neural networks, help researchers see patterns in how people around the world draw, and help artists create things we haven’t begun to think of. That’s why we’re open-sourcing them, for anyone to play with.

Play Quick Draw

Subscribe to Hackaday

Posted by Jane

Hackaday serves up Fresh Hacks Every Day from around the Internet. Our playful posts are the gold-standard in entertainment for engineers and engineering enthusiasts.

We are taking back the term “Hacking” which has been soured in the public mind. Hacking is an art form that uses something in a way in which it was not originally intended. This highly creative activity can be highly technical, simply clever, or both. Hackers bask in the glory of building it instead of buying it, repairing it rather than trashing it, and raiding their junk bins for new projects every time they can steal a few moments away.

Find out about the history of the British Toy Fair

Posted by Jane

The first British Toy and Hobby Fair was organised by Jack Watkins MBE for the British Toy Manufacturers Association and took place in Brighton from 22nd-26th February 1954.

In 1954, Sooty became a Chad Valley hand puppet, and Painting by Numbers, Scrabble and Matchbox vehicles were big hits at Christmas.

Over the next two years, the fair moved to Olympia and then to Earls Court at the British Industries Fair. Celebrity-linked games came to the fore with Stanley Matthews recommending New Footy Table Soccer.

In 1957, the decision was taken to move back to Brighton.

In 1958, the Hula-Hoop was the toy of the moment, Plasticine celebrated 50 years and Frisbees took off.

Here’s a Pathé newsreel showing what was on offer in the Toy Fair in 1958

Visit The Toy Fair for more about its history from the 50s to present day.

Watch an old black and white movie

Posted by Jane

The free movies which you can watch at BnWMovies.com (Black ‘n’ White Movies.com) are mostly public domain films with expired copyright. Other black and white movies may be outside the public domain but are also legally shared in another way. This is how your favorite classic movies become our popular free movie downloads. Finding an old movie can be hard. Try searching by year, genre or title to find the best old movies online.

You can watch all black and white movies on this site for free, there is no subscription required and there never will be. While not all of the classic movies have download links, you can legally download all movies which have a red download icon and download instructions. Subtitles are currently available for few of these old movies.

Self-Isolation Guide for Golfers

Posted by Jane

With golf clubs shut, golf can still be part of your life in lockdown.

The Golfshake Self-Isolation Guide for Golfers provides some ideas to keep you engaged, starting with Get Golf Fit:

If you aren’t playing golf, then you are losing an invaluable opportunity for exercise, something made more difficult by the closure of public gyms. However, to help you stay active and work on your game, Golfshake has just partnered with Jon Ship of Golf Fit to provide a new, weekly tuition series to improve your fitness and become #FitterStrongerFaster.

 

Read Jason Kottke’s blog

Posted by Jane

Founded in 1998, kottke.org is one of the oldest blogs on the web. It’s written and produced by Jason Kottke and covers the essential people, inventions, performances, and ideas that increase the collective adjacent possible of humanity. Frequent topics of interest among the 26,000+ posts include art, technology, science, visual culture, design, music, cities, food, architecture, sports, endless nonsense, and carefully curated current events, all of it lightly contextualized. Basically, it’s the world’s complete knowledge, relentlessly filtered through my particular worldview, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails.

Read and subscribe to Jason Kottke’s blog at kottke.org or follow him on Twitter at @kottke for daily updates.

Visit Keukenhof virtually

Posted by Jane

Keukenhof, the best day out among the flowers! Over 7 million bulbs will bloom this spring, with a total of 800 varieties of tulips. A unique, unforgettable experience! Besides the spacious 32 hectares of flowers you can enjoy the spectacular flower shows, surprising inspirational gardens, unique art and wonderful events. Do not miss the Tulip mania exhibition at the Juliana Pavilion.

Because you cannot visit Keukenhof right now due to lockdown, they decided to bring Keukenhof to you! Here’s a 360° tour through the beautiful park!🌷

For more videos, here’s the Watch Keukenhof YouTube channel

Here’s the main website

 

Listen to the Freakonomics podcast

Posted by Jane

Freakonomics was originally a book which sold over 1.5 million copies. It has now turned into the number 1 ranked podcast for adults. In this podcast, host Steven Dubner tackles topics like pop culture, economics, politics and headline news. Here are some of the recent podcasts