Happy Friday! Find your getaway inspiration from this week’s roundup from NotVentures, which includes adventures in the South of France, Caribbean beaches and tips for a grizzly encounter! Find out more about each post by clicking on its individual image.

Green tea cream puffs, delectable pho bo and ‘The Duck Fat Sazera’ are all part of this week’s roundup from Tasteologie and Liqurious. Find out more about each delectable post by clicking on its individual image.

Our Tasteologie editor, Jackson, took on the challenge of shaking the usual up to mix and match unexpected tastes for a surprisingly delicious experiment this weekend! Here are his results!

My favorite thing about food, apart from its uncanny ability to keep me alive, is its flexibility. Flavors, textures, ingredients, regions… can all swivel about and inject new life or old comfort into just about anything. Growing up, some of my favorite meals came from visiting relatives down in North Carolina. The flavors of soul food and bbq just make me smile. Other friends have some of the same warm fuzzy feelings of family and home associated with Jewish food during the holidays. Combining the two together seemed like something we had to do.

We’d been playing around with smokers lately and I was keen to put one back to work. Inspiration came in the form of the wonderful smoked applesauce from The Gorbals in downtown LA. On a lazy Sunday afternoon the course became clear… sweet potato latkes with a smoked apple sauce. See the process on the next page…

Bulletproof skin, solar flares and the vision of jumping spiders are all part of this week’s roundup from NOTCOT.org. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

Anyhow ~ now we have 15 amazing vintage wooden soda crates ~ Pepsi, Squirt, Crush, Dr. Pepper, 7up and more ~ and after some clean up, perhaps some awesome shelving in NOTlabs… but for now, take a peek at some of the details on the next page!

A Linne’s two-toed sloth (Choloepus didactylus) at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo.

National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore is on a mission to capture our incredible biodiversity before it disappears. Using zoo animals to create stunning portraits of amazing creatures. The project began with amphibians (and the gallery includes some real gems), but now includes all sorts of creatures, totaling over 1,800 already. Find out more about the ambitious and stunningly beautiful The Biodiversity Project and see a selection of photos from the project on the next page.

I love grilled cheese. It is the combination of two of humankind’s oldest food products. As it is about ten thousand years old… we’ve had lots of practice in eating and making this comfort food staple. Little Bear, a new bar in downtown L.A., offers a quartet of interesting grilled cheeses to go along with its amazingly well curated selection of Belgian Beer. It is a fantastic addition to Los Angeles’s Arts District and fits into the growing local network of lofts, artists, artisans, film shoots, factories, and restaurants. Little Bear brings nuance and great attention to detail raising otherwise straight forward food and beer into a warm comforting embrace. I couldn’t resist sampling their entire grilled cheese lineup! See more pics on the next page!

A zoo and aquarium regular, I love discovering new creatures and one of my favorite aquarium specimens in the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences was the Flamboyant Cuttlefish (Metasepia pfefferi), a colorful species native to the tropical Indo-Pacific. True to their common name, these cuttlefish are incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing to see in action. See more photos and videos on the next page!

Shark-filled water slides, cherry blossoms and craft cafes are all a part of this week’s roundup from NotVentures. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

I finally made it to the California Academy of Sciences in its new Golden Gate Park home! I have been looking forward to checking the new facilities out in person, ever since Jean visited (and posted about) it a few years back (see previous posts here, here and here). As expected, the facilities are incredible and the animals it houses are phenomenal. I can’t recommend visiting strongly enough. With a walkthrough rainforest filled with terarria and aquaria as well as the dedicated Steinhart aquarium, the Cal Academy is a real treat to visit and proved to be the perfect playground for a macro lens! Here are just a few of the academy’s incredible creatures. More pictures on the next page!

This week’s roundup from NOTCOT.org includes carnivorous caterpillars, cartographic illustrations, solar flares and more. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

It’s no surprise that many of our favorite lighting designs are heavily inspired by nature and geometric patterns. With their modular structures, many of these designs are even compact flat packed lighting systems that can be assembled easily (without tools or glue even!) by the end consumer into gorgeous large chandelier/pendant lamps. On the next page take a look at a roundup of geometric lighting we love from design classics to modern designs to futuristic living concepts!

Ok ~ so the awesome folks at TBWA\Chiat\Day have given us limited edition (of 250) Pacific Standard Time/Ice Cube/Eames posters to giveaway to you guys! For a chance to win ~ leave a comment OR tweet us (@NOTCOT) with YOUR unexpected passion (you know ~ the one besides your obvious dayjob/primary passion.) And we will email or D tweet the winners on Weds Jan 25th, 2012. (Please follow @NOTCOT so i can D you if you win!)

… and for now see more pics of the poster as well as the video of Ice Cube on Eames on the next page!

Shrink wrapped couples, LEGO proposals and mesmerizing fluid dynamics are all a part of this week’s roundup from NOTCOT.org. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

p.s. should be no surprise that the UI is by Bould Design (of roku and a lot of the logitech squeezebox goodness)…

Anyhow, these fun robotic cubes have been getting written up everywhere ~ but are you ready to take a peek INSIDE? When popping by the booth the next day, the Modular Robotics team broke out the leatherman and let us take a peek inside an inverse block ~ granted it’s one of the less filled cubes ~ but I love the design of how it opens (and is held together with two little screws!)… also if you ever want to hide things in your robotic cubes……… see more pics on the next page!