EyeSpark Weekly – May 8, 2025

Another week, another update! I've done quite a few new things, returned to some old stuff, and have quite a lot of fun stuff to share!

First of all, like last week, I wanna explain the header image. This week I spent a while in Punta Cana with my sister to help her with a work project. We stayed at an AirBNB, and next to my bed there was this very cool sort of impressionist painting of a person playing the cello. However, when I turned off the lights in my room I got a bit Pareidolia and wanted to take a photo of it, but my phone's exposure was on and so it ended up looking very different from how I thought it would, but it looked amazing!

I'll share the original painting and a larger version of the header image at the bottom of this post. I wish I could find the original painter, but not even reverse image searching helped, so yeah. Anyways, onto the regularly(-ish) scheduled update of media I've enjoyed!

I brought it up on my recent post about my map of currency names, but I will again since it was so cool. I highly recommend you watch RobWords's video on currency symbols and names! It goes into a good amount of detail on a lot of their origins, and really inspired me to research more on the topic.

I was already familiar with these as a cuber of over 8 years, but I really enjoyed Richard Elwes's Numberphile video about how many combinations twisty puzzles have (aside from the standard 3x3). He went over the maths of why each puzzle has the amount of permutations it has, which I find very interesting!

Earlier today I found a video from the Alaska Film Archivesof a chaotic cat who wandered into KFRB radio station in 1975. I found this quite randomly, but I love finding sort of "time capsule" videos like this one! Hopefully RB made it back home safely.

Lastly, literally while writing this, a video came out by CMDR RileySV about Valve's Car003a car model used in Half-Life 2 and CS: Source. It goes into detail about where it originates, and how it's somehow remained persistent even into Source 2 games. I have no idea why videos about minute details in games interest me so much, but I eat this type of stuff up.

Oh also, here's the recommendations of things I watch regularly. "The usuals", if you will.

• I finally got to Taskmaster Series 20, plus the double episode 2026 New Year Treat, and they were both amazing. Every series is great, of course, but these are definitely my new favourite series and special respectively. Also, that means I have finally reached the current series! (I'm rooting for Joanna btw)
• LoadingReadyRun released the season finale of The Panalysts on Saturday! Molly also shared some cool BTS photos, along with Ben Soileau.
• Yahtzee released a new Semi Ramblomatic about hacking mechanics in games. I actually really like Bioshock 1's hacking, by the way (though I don't like how puzzles can be literally impossible sometimes).
• No Rolls Barred played Herd Mentality in this week's episode of Board Game League S4. This game works very well with this type of video in my opinion, specifically with the players' confessionals!
• Archenlander keeps making videos on the goo in Valve games, with him tackling Half-Life: Alyx's this week. It's the game I'm least familiar with in the series, given I haven't/can't currently play it, but I still knew enough for it to be interesting nonetheless!

I've kept playing Geometry Dash and Office Chair Curling, but I've also gone back to playing Mini Metro! This was a game that I played for a while years ago, and I got a random urge to play it again. I don't know how I didn't play them sooner, but I finally played the daily challenges for the first time ever, and they were super fun! I've been logging into the game every day for the last few days, and it's been a lot of fun.

I'm also getting into a bit of a Magic: The Gathering mood again… I haven't logged into Arena again or gone to my LGS, but I'll try to.

Poor Hank Green. After making his super cool Artemis II Photo Timeline tool, NASA decided to drop over 12,000 previously-unseen photos. I highly suggest helping Hank out by voting on what your favourite photos are, so he can decide which ones to add to the site. He's added a few batches already, but I'm pretty sure he will add more. Regardless, it's actually a pretty fun way to look at the photos!

Speaking of, all of this has made me check out NASA's Astronomy Photos of the Day again, and I really liked Saturday's picture of Saturn's moon, Titan! I love seeing photos of Titan, as it's one of my favourite objects in the Solar System, and I'm fascinated by how it has earth-like oceans and continents. Also fitting for Saturn's day.

And that's it for this week! Surprisingly had quite a lot to share despite being a relatively busy week. Honestly my brain has been quite overwhelmed lately, but I've still been able to make and write about a very fun map, rediscover and write about an old school project while cleaning my room, and, of course, still be able to watch and find so many cool things. I feel lucky I get to do so.

Also here's the images of the painting I promised! For some reason I only took regular photos of it from an angle instead of straight on, so I warped one of the images to look as straight as possible. It's a bit off of course, but oh well, lol