Website whimsy 1 – the UK Government (surprisingly)!
If you’re reading this post today (Monday 26th August 2024) it’s a Bank Holiday in England & Wales and in Northern Ireland. The UK Government’s website has a page https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays which lists all the upcoming dates for the next two years’ worth of bank holidays (so people can put them in the diaries). But… if you visit the page on a Bank Holiday then you’ll be met with some bunting, which isn’t there on the other days. If you’re reading this post tomorrow then you’ll have to wait until the next Bank Holidays, which are Christmas, Boxing Day then New Year’s Day. On those days the bunting changes to tinsel!
Website whimsy 2 – Wikipedia
Throughout history people have tried to make money and sometimes they do so rather dishonestly. Occasionally people claim that they have a qualification in a subject – in the hope that this will make people trust them, and give them money.
Normally it takes time and effort to get a genuine qualification (and for some qualifications it costs money too). A qualification that is suspiciously easy to get (just make a payment and then get a certificate) raises red flags and if someone thinks someone else’s qualification might be fraudulent there’s a fun way they can draw attention to this.
There’s a page on Wikipedia currently called “List of animals awarded human credentials” (but it used to have the even better name “List of animals with fraudulent diplomas” (and before that it was “List of cats with fraudulent diplomas” until people started adding more animals!)). It’s full of examples where people filled in an online form and paid a fee, using their pet’s name as the ‘person’ to be awarded. If someone claims a particular credential but someone else was able to get the same credential for their dog by paying $50 and filling in a form… well, don’t give them any money!
Try your hand at making 3D pictures with stereoscopy
Bank Holiday weather is famous for being inconveniently changeable but if the rain holds off and you’re out and about with a smartphone camera (or any camera) then you can quite easily create some 3D images with them (you can do this indoors too of course). We’ve put together some basic instructions (below) and some more detailed information, in case teachers might also like to try this in class some time. (If the weather is off-putting there are also some ready-to-use images in that link).
Basic instructions: take two photos a few inches apart, line them up, gaze between them and adjust your focus until a third image appears between them which combines the two images into one that has depth perception. This is just recreating what your eyes do naturally every day – combining what your left eye and your right eye see separately into one view of the world around you.
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This page is funded by EPSRC on research agreement EP/W033615/1.
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