Mighty Optical Illusions » News

Wallace and Gromit: 20th Anniversary

Vurdlak — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:05:05 +0000

I did something extremely important yesterday. It took more than 6 hours of tempering with Mighty Optical Illusions source code, but the results have already proven themselves. You might ask “What was it? The website still looks perfectly identical!”. Well, in order to fully load the page previously, you had to wait for all the ads to load first, and only then the whole page was constructed in your browsers. This took some time, and many of you argued how the website is too slow. I made big changes yesterday, and now the website loads MUCH faster. Have you noticed this? I managed to place all the adds at the end of our HTML code, so now ads load separately only after the complete website is shown to you.

This means you get the content immediately, and you can proceed reading articles instantly, while the ads are still loading themselves in the sidebar. Hope some of you appreciate this. At least the impression count in my stats states so. With this move I have reduced my income significantly, but your satisfaction is still primary to me. I would just appreciate any kind of feedback, and please report any problems/glitches you might have noticed.

For the illusion of the day, this picture was spotted by Syed Ali (cool name dude!) on a major internet homepage. It was released in honor of Wallace and Gromit 20th anniversary. Except from showing two of the main characters, this picture contains additional subliminal message. If you “decipher” the message, you’ll quickly realize which major website used the pic. Happy hunting!

A Fun Coincidence on iGoogle

Vurdlak — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:00:29 +0000

What I share with you today isn’t strictly an optical illusion, but still an interesting coincidence that happened to one of our friends – Benjamin Bowmer. I thought it was worth sharing. As you all know by now, some of our great assets include “Optical Illusion of The Day” widgets. People download these free little applications, put them on their computer desktops, Facebook or MySpace profiles, iPhone etc… and then each day get new optical illusions from us. If you missed it, be sure to download one for yourself. Anyway, as Ben stated in his email (quotes included beneath the screenshot) he had iGoogle gadget for years now, but one day when he opened his Google Homepage he was in for a surprise. If you remember, back in September we posted Summer Stockings illusion, and this is the one Ben saw, except there was a little more to it then others of us had access to…

Benjamin got a nice surprise when he opened his iGoogle homepage.

Good day mate, I’ve had your iGoogle gadget on my home page for a couple of years now, but never have I gotten such a nice surprise when I opened the internet. Nothing heaps fancy, but still a nice coincidence I think, and I figured you’d appreciate it. Keep up the good work. – Ben

Illusion of Shrinking Munchkins

Vurdlak — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:45:50 +0000

Check out this twisted picture above! I have no clue whatsoever, what should these little figures stand for. They are probably munchkins of kind, or some strange fertility symbols of once great civilization. But the best part is that this doesn’t concern us at all! The strange illusion that comes into play, has much to do with relative sizes. Apparently, if you look at the above photo from left to right, you’ll get impression that the slimmest figure on the left is taller in size than the fattest figure on the right. I hope this will work for you, as it has worked for me!

Those of you who got to know me by time, probably noticed how great deal of my concentration is orientated towards graphic design of this blog. It takes more struggle than you think to keep the visual minimalism, while in the same time staying in race with internet trends, providing more and more additional features for you to play with (rating widgets, share buttons, comments, links, etc.). Often I rule out some hefty features that could help push our traffic sky-high, just because they would hurt our graphical zen. I’m talking about “Digg this” and “Retweet” counters. Somehow I find blogs cluttered with share widgets – annoying at best.

But yesterday, though, I have found acceptable and non-intrusive solution to implement “Share on Facebook” option. I’m sure you’ll agree with me how discreet this new button really is. In fact, if I didn’t point it to you, I’m certain you wouldn’t even notice it. It’s located just beneath the title of each article, and if you click it, a new pop-up window appears where you can easily share the current optical illusion with your Facebook friends. I hope you’ll get accustomed to this new feature, and I would maximally appreciate if you tested it for me, and then shared your experience.

Ultimate NEW Chalk Drawings Gallery

Vurdlak — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:20:00 +0000

Probably you are already familiar with the news break of Michael Jackson’s death. I give it to him, he was truly one of the biggest music contributors in our history, yet I feel somehow divided about the atmosphere floating around his name currently. Things he was accused for while living, are the most disturbing ones human being can digest. He was never a positive individual in my opinion, yet millions of people talk about him like he was a saint. I would like to ask them would they every let Michael babysit their kids? Am not sure whether all this is inappropriate to say at the current moment, and this is why I started this topic with the fact I still have divided thoughts on this. Still, it puzzled me so had to share it with you guys. If you wish to comment my standings, please do so without flaming. Brainstorming, discussions and reflections are more than welcome, though. Now when I spilled my guts, we can continue with optical illusion of the day.

Few days ago I have my Ultimate Mural Gallery with you. I’m happy to inform you this was only an intro to much more expected post (at least by your emails) containing NEW SIDEWALK DRAWINGS. There are just too many of them (laying on my disk that were never before published) to tease you by posting one at the time. This way I give you a complete gallery of never before seen 3D Chalk Drawings. If this is still not enough, I dare you to check all of our archived ones inside this category. Don’t forget to rate history posts you are seeing, since when all the posts on this site receive enough of the ratings, I will release most comprehend list of the TOP OPTICAL ILLUSIONS ever! As our website has the most concentrated audience of optical illusion lovers, I believe this list will truly represent top optical illusion, the internet has witnessed.

Have no fear, Mr. 3D Chalk Drawing Superman is here!

Check our newest 3D Chalk Drawings gallery below:

Maybe There is Hope for us Afterall

Vurdlak — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:55:37 +0000

Impossible Nuts Illusion

Many of you probably saw this video already. Today I watched it once again, and after all that violence, corruption and shit happening in the world, I was really touched. Somehow it put a smile on my face, and gave me some hope that there is still a chance for us, inhabitants of this wonderful planet. By seeing what is happening in our everyday life, watching news, seeing violent movies, I really started looking at us humans as a virus ruining this amazing planet. Only way mother nature could fight back against us, was by inventing some new “weapons” like: Ebola, Aids, other diseases, nature disasters, growing male impotence, homosexuality (today higher number of individuals are born with same sex affinities, which results in lower reproduction – this wasn’t meant to be offensive in any way), and god knows what else… “Luckily” we are a resistant breed. In my opinion everyone should see this video. At least you’ll feel much better after seeing it. Maybe there is still some hope left for us… and yes, I know its offtopic.

This why I’ve also included impossible object above to keep you occupied, and show something illusion-related inside your widgets. If you find it familiar, its because Janek submitted something simmilar two years ago. Btw, I’ve embedded the video in HD quality. You should really see it like it is (in high res), but if you have trouble sitting behind slow internet connection, you can turn the little red “HD button” off – should be much faster. My advice is that you press play, then pause and wait for it to load and then play it.

Cleverest Stupid-Girl Arround

Vurdlak — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:51:24 +0000

Update - I just learned that the artist behind this is Nagfa, you can find another interesting photo on his blog that works in a simmilar fashion.

Wait a minute... What?

I forgot to post the newest optical illusion yesterday, which I hope you shall forgive me. What I was doing instead, I was playing with some universal widget creating tools. I’ve added my result at the bottom of my sidebar, so you may check what I managed to compile. Nothing revolutionary really, just something you can easily add to your website, blog, etc. If you wish, you may try it. You can see the separate page here. Now let me dig up something illusionary for today. Ah! Found it. The idea behind today’s optical illusion is very similar to the Love & Hate illusion from 2006. The shirt this girl is wearing has the ambigram printed, which can be understood in two different ways. I’m still not exactly sure whether ambigram shows the different meanings, or an anagram does this (one of them shows the same word from each direction). Still, the result is cute. But the question remains: would you ever wear a t-shirt that claims you are stupid?

Want this universal widget? Get it!

As I explained before, this new widget brings nothing revolutionary to this site. Still, it may serve as a nice addition to your website or blog. It will serve newest optical illusions to your visitors. Even if you have no inspiration on a particular day, and miss posting new content – your readers will remain occupied with some fresh content on our your site. Use it freely as you wish, its free.

I would also like to inform you that I’ll be leaving for my summer vacation at the beginning of July. Rest assured though, I will continue to publish new stuff daily, only from different location (same each summer). In times when broadband internet is available in almost each corner of the world, running a website remotely is becoming pretty easy.

Remove the Glass from The Tray

Vurdlak — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:29:14 +0000

Move the Glass from the Tray

Author of this optical illusion is G. Sarcone from Archimedes Lab. Can you find a way to completely remove one of the glasses from this blue tray, while minimizing your effort? Before I show you the solution (after the jump), I’d like to share some site news with you. Am not sure what is happening, but there are some strange circulations present this week. First thing I noticed is that our RSS subscriber number started to go up rather insanely. You can see this in my sidebar.

On Tuesday it showed 51,000, on Wednesday it averaged 66,000, and today we already have more than 80,000 subscribers! Is this awesome or what! Just hope this ain’t no glitch happening on Feedburner’s side. Would ruin my excitement ;) Apart from this good news, some bad things started happening as well. Last few days spammers really put their eye on our community. There were more than 200 spam comments posted per day. It became really painful dealing with them. In my opinion they started flowing via some automated script. Since our site doesn’t use CAPTCHA letters for protection, they were easily entered. This may as well serve as an explanation why your comments need to pass moderation before they are approved.

Simply rotate The Image!

As I’m not the biggest fond of captcha, I decided to install Akismet spam protection plugin, and all should be in balance once again. If my calculations turn correctly, and Akismet truly does its job, who knows – maybe I’ll even disable comment moderation, and your comments may start to appear momentarily (very soon). I’ll keep you informed, in the mean time lets try and solve today’s puzzle.

You can open the pictures in full size by clicking on them. Same goes for yesterday’s Empire game, forgot to mention it. It’s great to receive so many legit comments in just one post (300 valid comments at this moment), but what you should know is that beneath first 50 comments there is “more comments” link which will bring you to the rest of the entires. This is probably why I see all the same movies repetedly posted. Hope this gets sorted when you get used to “more comments” feature, and when I ditch the comment moderation rule. Btw. I’m testing something with facebook comments, to allow those appear immediately. Logging off…

1+1=3 Art Installation

Vurdlak — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:59:44 +0000

Ok, bare with me: I’m testing some new gallery function inside Wodrpress. If you “continue reading” this article (supposedly you are on the homepage), and jump inside thi article, you will see some small thumbnails below this first photo. Each thumbnail represents a photo from this art installation photo set. Now here is the cool part – by clicking each image, you will see this image in full size, but on its very own separate page! There you will be able to easily scroll to “next” and “previous” photo, till the end of the collection. Please test this for me, and report all your findings and errors you may experience. In the mean time I have updated all the video illusions, which may now be found inside this section. Additionally, I have started assigning categories to all my archived posts. This can be done very quickly in wordpress, so expect all posts to be categorized by the end of this week! I have few more ideas for the near future; like implementing pools, tests and all sort of goodies. Stay tuned! Now let’s explain today’s post which was submitted by Francois Buhagiar via email (thank you).

This year, the final-year students of Beckmans College of Design have created an art installation at the Stockholm furniture fair. The students have created a space where they wish to inspire informal gatherings of people, in the same way as you would meet spontaneously about town – sitting at the edge of a monument, on a front porch or a flight of stairs. The furniture in the showcase is based on an individual briefs, to create a specific type of furniture. In contrast to what is usually the case in the fair, where many prototypes are for view only, students have encouraged the visitors to interact with the furniture and the space. You can view this exhibit from different angles, by clicking on the gallery thumbnails below. Enjoy!

Here are some more photos from this art installation:

News and Les Alpes Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:26:00 +0000

Before we proceed, I need those of you using Vista to download our new Vista gadget. Previous one had some problems getting new images and was often left blank, but this new version (7.1) should work flawlessly. However, before I make it featured article, and spread the news more widely, I need you to place it in your Vista sidebar and see how it behaves in the following days. You can get it from the current link in the sidebar (”Vista gadget”). This new version is 7.1 After few days I’ll be checking in with you to hear your impressions. My belief is that there will be no glitches this time.

I find myself really completed when I finish an in-depth article like yesterday one was. The results are obvious, and can be seen in the comments section. When the topic is heavily researched, and provided images match the text perfectly, comments become more serious and interesting as well. I have enjoyed reading them all, and to answer Y-Man: off course I’d be interested to post your opposite images that only color blind people can read. It would be awesome to see how we are blind to them, and would probably put a smile on a color blind person’s face!

Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about migrating this website to Wordpress platform. I think I manged to solve all the problems that could arise, so that the change is transparent to you. I have already contacted very good hosting company, and found out how to transfer all the links and content so I don’t loose any SEO juice or visitors. I just need to find some good designer who can make recognizable and unique Wordpress theme for this site. If you know someone that would like to do it as a fan, or for money – email me. Before I conclude this post, here is another awesome illusion sent by Marcel Lafortune. I can’t believe this wasn’t photoshoped (probably was…). Oh, I will probably be minimizing the number of links in the future articles, and place only important ones. Starting today. Let’s hope that pageview count doesn’t drop.

Breaking News: Vurdlak Catches a Giant Squid!

Vurdlak — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:56:00 +0000

As my auto-post explained earlier this week, I was away with my woman on a visit to her parents. We took a 4 day vacation on island of Korcula, where we both originate from. While on a fishing trip one evening, I managed to catch this giant squid (formally called Architeuthis). Can you believe the size of it? I for one was amazed, but only after seeing it on this photo taken with my iPhone, which luckily I had with me. Hehe, by now you probably realized that the squid was nothing special in size, and that this post has very little with true optical illusions. But Hey! I took the pic, I caught the squid, and MOI gave me opportunity to widely brag with my catch. Please don’t judge me, any true fisherman would do the same… So what do you think? How could we squeeze this as an illusion, any chance of you closing an eye on it, and considering this as a part of Relative Sizes category? Help me get out of this mess :) I can already hear you flaming… BTW broswe YouTube for “Giant Squid”, you’ll be mazed what comes out.