Pretty Colors This is a tumblr to which people can submit colors they find pretty. Why do they find them pretty? Who picks them? Is there some deeper sociological/anthropological message behind which colors get picked and which don't? I can't say. I don't even know if my computer screen is properly calibrated, maybe I'm not even seeing the same colors. Still, the presentation is good and it does do what it says on the tin. Which is commendable.
posted by From Bklyn
on Aug 30, 2011 -
41 comments
After decades of breeding, the complexity of
cat color genetics is quite well understood. Genes which control
pigmentation,
hair length,
color dilution,
banding (agouti),
white fur (dominant, spotting, or albino, sometimes linked with
deafness),
tabby patterns, and more combine to create a
wide spectrum of possibilities. Specific traits such as
white gloving among Birman cats and the amber color found only in Norwegian Forest Cats (which comes from a single female born in 1981!) have also been isolated and studied, and can be affordably
tested for.
On top of all that, fur color is
epigenetic as well as genetic, and sometimes responds to the cat's environment. If you clone a calico cat, you get a kitten which
doesn't have a similar coat due to
X-inactivation, and pointed cats (such as Burmese, Siamese, and Tonkinese) have
temperature-sensitive coloration.
[more inside]
posted by vorfeed
on Aug 28, 2011 -
90 comments
Over 140,000 people participated in the xkcd Color Survey, naming various colors and
the results are in. Among other cool things, you can see a
nice map of RGB colors to color names and see the
most commonly identified 954 color names. The webcomic is
not the first institution to survey people about color choices and
present pretty results. At the heart of color naming is a deeper debate about language,
whether colors are universal, and
how words shape perception. One
highly influential view suggests that there are 11 universal basic colors, though the number of colors identified in native tongues
varies across the world, but even
the English origins of color words are complex. Perhaps you should
test your own color perception, or just see
a huge chart of color names in different languages.
[also, prev.]
posted by blahblahblah
on May 4, 2010 -
42 comments
About 8% of the male population has some sort of color vision deficiency. The
color blind are unable to clearly distinguish different colors of the spectrum, they tend to see colors in a limited range of hues. Because of this, the color blind have trouble with a lot of websites. The patterns and examples on
We Are Color Blind help developers create websites the color deficient can use with minimal problems. Take a
color vision test to see where you stand.
50 facts about color blindness.
posted by netbros
on Sep 28, 2009 -
93 comments
Chroma Circuit a color matching game for you to enjoy. Each level has you matching facets on squares or triangles, playing against a par move. The rules are simple, but complexity ramps up fast.
posted by boo_radley
on Apr 29, 2009 -
24 comments
Color Is Relative, pretty and interesting eye candy created by Gabriel Mott,
is a website dedicated to showing luminosity achieved through simple color combinations. On the site, the image is interactive. By moving the mouse over a single swatch the background color of the page will change to the same color. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Aug 29, 2008 -
13 comments
Dyeing with Kool-Aid basic how-to. The best thing is the
color chart. A good idea for
a party, maybe? As usual, the folks at Flickr have got the goods: Kool-Aid dyed yarns in the Hand-dyed pool [
1], [
2], and the Yarn Porn pool, [
1], [
2]. And if you're one of those people who just hates to do things the easy way? Multi-colored custom yarn with Kool-Aid tutorial
part 1 and
part 2.
posted by taz
on May 2, 2008 -
29 comments
Surf your music. Audio surfer is a new game that uses .mp3 files to create racetracks of musical goodness. If guitar hero and F-Zero had a love child, this would be it.
posted by JimmyJames
on Feb 29, 2008 -
48 comments
"Being a typical guy, I have no clue what the colors Lavender and Mauve look like. You can show me Indigo and I won't know if it's more like Violet or Purple. So I made this little app,
Name That Color, where you can create a color on the screen (or copy-paste CSS hex# color) and find out the name of the closest matching color." Innovated by MeFite
chime.
posted by nickyskye
on Sep 7, 2007 -
68 comments
Etsy.com A
colorful new way to shop. For those of you who don't know
what you want, but know exactly what color you want it in.
posted by kindle
on Oct 22, 2005 -
14 comments
"Whether it is an impressionist masterpiece, or just wallpaper, if you take the colour juxtapositions and their proportions from nature, you won't go far wrong."
Choosing colours for web pages.
posted by reklaw
on Apr 11, 2004 -
10 comments
"Modern scientists have known about
synesthesia since 1880, when
Francis Galton, a cousin of
Charles Darwin, published a paper in Nature on the phenomenon. But most have brushed it aside as fakery, an artifact of drug use (
LSD and
mescaline can produce similar effects) or a mere curiosity. About four years ago, however, we and others began to uncover brain processes that could account for synesthesia. "
This article from Scientific American seems to be turning heads around the Psychology Department at U of M [Michigan]. It's got me going too.
I've seen real connections between color and sound before, stone sober. Could there be something to all this?
posted by phylum sinter
on Apr 15, 2003 -
23 comments
The new money will be called NexGen™ The Treasury and Federal Reserve make it official: Starting in 2003, U.S. currency will have pretty colors. But they don't say which colors! I say we MeFis oughta lift our voices high with suggestions on what colors our $100, $50, $20 and $10 bills should be.
Is anyone else creeped out that they call the money "NexGen"? It sounds so ... Orwellian.
posted by Holden
on Jun 20, 2002 -
102 comments
Most Valuable Object in the World The Supreme Purple Star - as it is being called - is a deep purple diamond, turning to crimson when rotated in the light. Diamonds come in a
rainbow of colors and are called "
fancies" in the trade. Some are
beautiful, others
less so. This one is the only one of it's kind, and has been pronounced "priceless". The speculation, of course, is that the owner is looking to sell it.
posted by Irontom
on Jun 17, 2002 -
20 comments
Most internet users have monitors that can display more colors than the 216 that are used in the traditional “browser-safe” palette.
moreCrayons is a bigger box of crayons; 4,096 colors for the web. A site by our own
kirkaracha.
[Via Zeldman]
posted by riffola
on Mar 19, 2002 -
14 comments
