Antarctic Fox

March 23, 2009 8:47 PM

Antarctica travel blog, done Big Picture style. Kevin Fox, formerly a designer at Yahoo and Google (who wrote a great response to Doug Bowman's design-by-metrics post) took a trip to Antarctica a couple months back and has been slowly updating a mini-site, exhaustively describing and showing photos from each part of each day he was down there. There are icebergs. There are penguins. There is swimming. There is drinking. It's all done in a wonderful large image Big Picture style that makes me drop everything whenever the feed updates. Start at the top and read the whole way through.
posted by mathowie (23 comments total)

Related:
Is Antarctica Getting Too Popular? (NYT, 3/22/09)
Antarctic cruise: Extremes at the ends of the earth (Telegraph, 3/18/09)
Is Antarctica a Galapagos in the making? (Guardian, 5/1/07)
posted by ornate insect at 8:58 PM on March 23, 2009

Fascinating stuff. The big picture format works very well for this. Antarctica seems like the kind of place you'd love to visit to see its natural beauty (but not for long because it's just to darn cold). The Planet Earth DVD is good for this kind of stuff too.

Great post, thanks Matt.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:00 PM on March 23, 2009

Just what I needed - another giant timesuck. Thanks!
posted by rtha at 9:12 PM on March 23, 2009

this bow made out of a ski is bad ass.
posted by pwally at 9:22 PM on March 23, 2009

I just got back from a month in Grand Canyon. The Colorado is 46 degrees and the air temp could be in the 80s. I thought I was hardcore by staying submerged to my neck for 90 seconds. I can only imagine what 27 deg feels like. Though Fox is right, as soon as you get out of the water it stops hurting.

Man, I want to go South. I'll even learn how to drive a Hägglund.
posted by now i'm piste at 9:43 PM on March 23, 2009

Is Antarctica Getting Too Popular? (NYT, 3/22/09)

Part of the series Places You've Never Been To That Are No Longer Cool To Visit.

The awesome thing is that they will never run out of places to discuss!
posted by GuyZero at 9:57 PM on March 23, 2009

We've been talking around my house about whether we should go to Antarctica for the past year or so. One side of the argument is that we should - it'd be awesome, and on the other it feels that making such a place a tourist destination is wrong somehow - just because you can doesn't mean you should. I suppose it should be possible to go without causing any negative impact on the local environment, but its hard to know.

And thanks Matt for the link to Kevin's big picture photos... they're stellar!
posted by pkingdesign at 10:06 PM on March 23, 2009

I love that the Ukranians built a bar instead of a dock. Thanks so much for posting this.
posted by now i'm piste at 10:07 PM on March 23, 2009

Yeah? Well check out THIS iceberg!

But seriously, nice pictures
posted by Artw at 10:10 PM on March 23, 2009

Also, since I can't stop looking at these pages: The layout is beautiful and seems nicely integrated with Flickr. The layout, like Big Picture, really lends itself to sequential story telling much more than a basic slideshow. I'm really enthralled. Anyone know how I can make something like this?
posted by now i'm piste at 10:14 PM on March 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is brilliant. Thanks!
posted by archagon at 10:22 PM on March 23, 2009

Hey Mat, thanks for the links! I have to repent for being absent from MeFi for so long. I'm back!!!
posted by kfury at 11:30 PM on March 23, 2009

Hey, he had a camera!
posted by carsonb at 12:23 AM on March 24, 2009

I love that the Ukranians built a bar instead of a dock. Thanks so much for posting this.

That was the British, who owned the station before the Ukrainians, but the Ukrainians probably are the ones who started distilling their own vodka.
posted by !Jim at 1:34 AM on March 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

From the "drinking" link: I have to start by pointing out that I really don't like vodka. There are very few vodka drinks I can tolerate.

Wha? You must leave sovereign territory of the Ukraine now!

Awesome links, thanks for the post.
posted by IvoShandor at 1:42 AM on March 24, 2009

One side of the argument is that we should - it'd be awesome, and on the other it feels that making such a place a tourist destination is wrong somehow - just because you can doesn't mean you should.

My feeling is it is wrong wrong wrong unless you are a scientist.
posted by dydecker at 5:10 AM on March 24, 2009

If you have really crappy bosses, the drinking link is probably technically NSFW. Well, if a photo of photos of naked women is NSFW...
posted by twine42 at 5:27 AM on March 24, 2009

This is just excellent on many levels.
posted by -t at 5:31 AM on March 24, 2009

Just finished the ice camping page. I am really, really cold now.

Thanks, Matt (and Kevin and Rachel), that was great.
posted by mediareport at 5:50 AM on March 24, 2009

I've been finding the Antarctic Conservation Blog fascinating. The expedition out to treat artifacts at Capes Evans and Royds was amazing. Not every day you make a train car out of an upturned refrigerator and trek across a frozen sea to fix some old junk in a hut.
posted by ikahime at 6:23 AM on March 24, 2009

See, why does flickr not display photos at this size by default? This and the Big Picture are enough for me to start putting photos up on a website of my own (something I have no idea how to go about doing) just so my crappy vacation snaps look nice...
posted by roombythelake at 7:34 AM on March 24, 2009

I love that the Ukranians built a bar instead of a dock.
>That was the British.....

Yup, reading comprehension FTW. PINEAPPLES!
posted by now i'm piste at 7:47 AM on March 24, 2009

For further viewing... point your Netflix queue to Encounters at the End of the World which is a pretty spectacular look at the work people are doing down below and the surreal nature of the place itself.

In fact, this pops up on the Google search, (Google Vid appearance of the entir thing) although it's certainly not kosher and probably doesn't do the visuals justice.
posted by pokermonk at 8:17 AM on March 24, 2009