Shout outs all round? Why it's the Friday links blog, of course

It was unanimously agreed over here at MRM Towers that this little gem should take pride of place in this week’s Friday links blog. So a big thank you to that clever chap Richard ‘Paraplanner’ Allum, if it weren’t for him we would never have clapped eyes on this simple yet brilliant animation which explains the credit crunch in a way that actually makes sense.

Our civic duty duly fulfilled by kicking off with an educational link, it is with a clear conscience that we can now fill the rest of the blog with, well, nonsense…first up an homage to the Oscars and the film industry’s penchant for formulaic plot lines.

Not content with keeping you distracted for nearly 15 minutes with the first two links, we now urge you to kill a bit more time gossiping about numbers. Oh yes, my friend, you read that right, find out just what that pesky 88 does when your back’s turned, and don’t even get us started on that delinquent 66 – we expected better of you as the smallest abundant palindrome, tsk tsk! Get all your number gossip here.

A special MRM shout out goes to The Times’ Mr Andrew Ellson for bringing the love of bacon into MRM’s life – rather embarrassingly, until now we had only ever considered sandwiching its streaky goodness firmly between two extra thick slices of soft white bread and slathering it in brown sauce when clearly we should have been fashioning outfits from the stuff. I mean, bacon suits, what’s not to love about them? (Assuming you’re not a pig, of course.)

A day in the life of New York City, in miniature. What more do you need to know? If miniaturised realism doesn’t do it for you perhaps abstract expressionism is more your thing? In that case, slake your mouse’s artistic thirst here. And in true Blue Peter style, here’s one we made earlier.

Sticking with the children’s TV/Art theme, we play you out with the Vision On theme tune and hope that we leave you inspired to go create something this weekend, go on, do it for Tony!