Google Doodles

[odeon]

Those 3D graphics would look awesome in the next Star Wars.

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is Day of the Dead 2015



Día de los Muertos. Day of the Dead. Its name is decidedly somber, but Mexico’s celebration of its departed souls overflows with color, music, and the unmistakable fragrances of its wonderful cuisine. To honor this holiday of mourning and remembrance, artist Kevin Laughlin has reimagined our logo as a string of papel picado, the vibrant, artfully perforated tissue paper that will drape windowsills and doorways all over Mexico tonight. Here’s to lively festivals and fond memories. ¡Salud y felicidad! 

[Gopher Gary]

For most of the world outside of the US and Mexico, today's Google Doodle is George Boole’s 200th Birthday



Here’s an easy, yes-or-no question:

Is the universe complex?

YES, of course, you could say; it would be crazy to think otherwise! But on the other hand, British mathematician George Boole taught us that NO, things can be seen as relatively simple; any values can be pared down to yes or no, true or false, or 0 or 1 (which, here at Google, is our personal favorite).

In 1849, Boole was appointed as the first Professor of Mathematics at University College Cork, where he pioneered developments in logic and mathematics. His beautiful binary “Boolean” system was detailed in An Investigation of the Laws of Thought in 1854, which inevitably enabled revolutionary thinking in not just logic and math, but also engineering and computer science.

As one of the most important scientists to have ever worked in Ireland, Boole effectively laid the foundations of the entire Information Age while working from UCC. So it’s fair to say that without George Boole, there’d be no Google! So, as a tribute to Boole’s contributions, artist Leon Hong created today’s doodle, which cycles through all the ANDs, ORs, NOTs, and even XORs of the Boolean states for two discrete variables.

A very happy 11001000th birthday to genius George Boole!

[odeon]

Boolean logic is the basis of a lot of my daily work.

[odeon]

Speaking of which, back in high school, a friend built a drum machine using a compressor, pistons and an extremely clever application of Boolean logic.

[Gopher Gary]

Speaking of which, back in high school, a friend built a drum machine using a compressor, pistons and an extremely clever application of Boolean logic.

That made me think of a video someone recently shared with me. 

[odeon]

[Gopher Gary]

There's a bunch of videos of them out there. 

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is Adolphe Sax’s 201st Birthday



If you were alive in the mid-nineteenth century and had a particularly keen ear for music, you might have noticed a void somewhere between the brass and woodwind sections. Adolphe Sax certainly did, and being both a talented musician and the enterprising man that he was, he started tinkering and endeavored to fill it. The result was the iconic, honey-toned instrument still bearing his name: the saxophone.

The son of an instrument-maker, Sax was highly creative and had a deep understanding of brass and woodwinds. He started tinkering with instruments of his own, and upon bringing together the body of a brass and the mechanics of a woodwind created a hybrid that would revolutionize music. His eponymous saxophone had a sound all its own, a wonderfully smoky middle ground between the two.

The Saxophones that were popularized by the likes of John Coltrane, Lisa Simpson, and Kenny G constitute only a fraction of his impressive body of work. From the whimsical looking 7-bell trombone to the large and swooping saxtuba, Sax never tired of exploring, experimenting, and creating new—and sometimes unusual—instruments. To properly highlight his inventiveness we couldn’t possibly make just one Doodle. Which is why you can find five unique Doodles today, each celebrating a different instrument created at the hands of Mr. Sax. There is one notable exception—what we affectionately call The Googlehorn. Inspired by the intricate tubing Sax employed to alter and manipulate sound, this is Doodler Lydia Nichols' attempt to fashion an instrument as unique and quirky as both Adolphe Sax and Google.

['andersom']

Hedy Lamarr's 101st birthday

We love highlighting the many good stories about women’s achievements in science and technology. When the story involves a 1940s Hollywood star-turned-inventor who helped develop technologies we all use with our smartphones today… well, we just have to share it with the world.

Today on Google’s homepage we’re celebrating Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-born actress  Hollywood once dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world.”  Lamarr’s own story reads like a movie script: bored by the film industry and feeling typecast,  Lamarr was more interested in helping the Allied war effort as World War II broke out than in the roles she was being offered.  She had some background in military munitions (yes, really), and together with a composer friend, George Antheil, used the principles of how pianos worked (yep, pianos) to identify a way to prevent German submarines from jamming Ally radio signals. The patent for “frequency hopping” Lamarr co-authored laid the groundwork for widely-used technologies like Bluetooth, GPS and wifi that we rely upon daily.

It’s no wonder, then, that Lamarr has kind of a mythical status at Google, and I was pretty excited at the chance to tell her story in Doodle form. This took some tinkering of my own—after deciding on the movie format as a nod to her Hollywood career, I dug through old fashion illustrations and movie posters to try to capture the look and feel of the 1940’s. Sketching storyboards on a yellow notepad helped me figure out how to show Lamarr in very different scenarios—movie star by day, inventor by night—which we then animated and set to the awesome soundtrack created by composer Adam Ever-Hadani.

Jennifer Hom, Doodler

[Gopher Gary]

 

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is Veterans Day 2015.



Join us this Veterans Day in saluting the contributions and sacrifices of service members and their families.

You can also check out the virtual Veterans Day march.
https://www.google.org/impactchallenge/disabilities/veterans.html

[Gopher Gary]

In other parts of the world, today's Google Doodle is also:

Poland Independence Day 2015

Every year, as winter sets in throughout the southern hemisphere, the world’s White Storks take off for the north. Their flight is monumental. They cover thousands of miles, over wild seas, chasing the warm sun of summer. And in the end, a quarter of them arrive in one specific place: the country of Poland.

Poland, whose independence we remember each November, plays host annually to 40,000 pairs of stork. That’s more than anywhere else in the world! Today, we celebrate the diversity, freedom, and natural richness of Poland with a doodle by Robinson Wood.


Angola Independence Day 2015

Forty years ago today, Angola became an independent nation. Known for its stunning rock formations, long stretches of temperate coastline and rich biodiversity, today’s Doodle honors the beauty of this flourishing West African country and the fine people who will celebrate its National Day.

[odeon]

I wonder if they had anything on Remembrance Day in the UK.

[Gopher Gary]

I don't see that they did.