Goodbyes are always hard and this one is no exception.

This blog has served me well over the past 2.5 years to be exact. It started off as its own little drum beat in the corner of the internet and it’s grown a lot since then.

But the thing is, so have I and I’d rather not tarnish this too much. There’s still around 4,000 posts here waiting for some love if you haven’t seen them all.

From heartbroken at the start of college, to having shirts of our very own, to people sending in lovely letters, to a giant comments page/thread where people have shared anything from rants, raves, links, and missed connections.

I’m so glad I did this and I really, really enjoyed all the expected and (especially) the unexpected experiences I had out of this and I hope that for any of you who were inspired here, to keep on being amazing.

If you’re reading this, thank you. Really. I appreciate it.

And as coined by the Writer’s Almanac,

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

The artist behind this amusing curiosity is Swedish artist Christian Partos. The piece, titled E.L.O. (I am assuming a clever reference to, and/or appropriation of the name, the Electric Light Orchestra) consists of a roomful of light bulbs essentially dancing in the gallery. This is a permanent installation at the Borusan Music House (that’s the translation).

-Via Collabcubed

A Swedish company called Rotundus has developed this wicked-looking self-balancing mobile camera-bot, which noiselessly cruises around at up to 6 miles per hour. It can be remote-controlled or preprogrammed to navigate via GPS. Even cooler, it comes in both smooth-surface and rough-terrain versions (pictured above and below, respectively).

-Via Core77

-Via Casayellow

-Via Tacnstudio

How to Go Home is more-or-less a witty (and handsomely-designed) handbook to surviving family holidays at home. Issues addressed include “How to use Internet Explorer,” “How to talk to your 13-year-old cousin about Justin Bieber,” and “How to explain social networking to your grandpa.”

Read more about it at 1000 Memories’ blog post.

-Via Howtogohome

Saint-Nicolas-de-la-Grave, France

Utsira, Norway

Posada de Valdeón, Spain

Viviens, France

Sao Joao Del Rei, Brazil

-Via Notcot

The E-Volo Multicopter, which made its first human-piloted test flight just a few days ago, has a brilliant design that paradoxically seems complex but is in fact more simple than current helicopter designs. At first, having sixteen rotor blades seems needlessly complicated, but that’s where the brilliance comes in: Each is powered by a motor with one range of motion and one job, which is to rotate in place. A traditional helicopter’s large rotor spins but also needs to pitch in order to move the craft in a particular direction; that adds a degree of mechanical complexity and an extra potential failure point.

The E-Volo, on the other hand, can pitch by varying the speeds of its various rotors to create differing degrees of lift. Software and onboard computers translate the pilot’s motion of the joystick into the required adjustments, vastly simplifying demands on the pilot. Indeed the controls look less like a fighter jock’s cockpit and more like the controls to Ms. Pac Man.

-Via Core77

A striking curved walkway cuts through the middle of this beautiful old barn home, dropping a spiral staircase along its way into the center of an otherwise linear space.

With over a century of experience and studios in Surrey and Switzerland, Stedman Blower Architects has a good deal of experience with regional and historic farm architecture – in particular, big barns in need of tasteful conversion for use as homes.

-Via Dornob

-Via Notcot