Firstly, I wouldn’t recommend watching this at work. Unless you or your employer don’t care. It’s not really that bad, but if people can see your screen, you may want to wait til later. Terence found this from somebody’s status message and I heard his reaction from the other room. Needless to say, I ran, started watching, and had the same reaction. I’m sure you will too. Enjoy.
I’ve come across a number of cool things over the past couple weeks. So I’ve decided to share. Most of these things appeal to my design eye/aesthetic/intrigue/geekery. Without further ado:
I came across this book on swissmiss and instantly knew I’d love it. It’s a fully-illustrated book that shows you how to do over 500 useful things. Tina at swissmiss describes the how-to’s as “fascinating and important and sometimes downright bizarre.” I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Anyone looking for a Christmas gift for moi? Look no further. It’s also surprisingly cheap on Amazon.
“WTF” you say? Yeah. Magnetic curtains. Absolutely brilliant. I generally dislike curtains because they're a pain to get in the “proper form” (regardless of type, e.g. straight-valence, balloon-valence, swags, and just plain old curtains) and even harder to keep looking nice. On top of that, they generally look too proper and stuffy. That’s why this brilliant design from Florian Kräutli makes me happy. In her words, it’s “a curtain which you can shape to any form. Through the incorporated structure and magnets, it stays in the shape you push and pull it to.” Possibly the easiest way to change a room with your mood. Where did I find this? Swissmiss, of course.
Poetry of sorts. One short stanza for each month of 2009. I saw this calendar about this time last year for 2008. The text and colors are updated, but the design is almost entirely the same. I can’t say I loved it last year when I saw it for the first time, but I’ve come around. I appreciate it’s quirkiness and fun design. Not sure how I feel about having two weeks on each line in the actual calendar. But, then again, who’s looking at the calendar part?
Last, but certainly not least. This is one of my favorites. If we didn’t have far more prints and posters than we need, I would have bought this within minutes of seeing it. I still may, but I’ll have to come up with a good reason for it. If you haven’t already figured it out, it’s a map of the world made up of lines representing “every single scheduled flight on any given day.” I’ve seen some stuff like this before, but never anything so clean and crisp. I definitely prefer the ones without the land outlines. Tina prefers white; I love the black.
As an aside, you may have noticed that three of the above four items I found on swissmiss. Tina Roth Eisenberg is the curator of that blog and self-described as “a Swiss designer gone NYC.” She has some amazing finds and I’m never bored of her posts, even if they’re not for me. I highly encourage you to check swissmiss regularly or subscribe to her RSS feed. Oh, she was also in this week’s Time Out New York helping find cool things in Boerum Hill.
This commercial totally reminds me of Honda’s “Cog” commercial from a few years ago. This time, it’s another Japanese company: Toshiba. The commercial is far more high-tech, but required just about as much diligence in engineering and setup. Give it a watch and continue reading below:
Aside from being really impressed, part of me writes this off as technology for technology’s sake. But then again, they are selling technology. And it’s just really cool. Here’s the making of:
From Gizmodo:
Toshiba's new “timesculpture” advert takes The Matrix’s Bullet Time film technique one bizarrely cool step forward by animating within the freeze-frame. It was filmed with 200 Gigashot camcorders arranged on a special rig, recording a mahoosive 20 terabytes of data from which the ad was composed…Found on xPlane’s xBlog
The ad was created for Toshiba’s new low-definition to high-definition upscaling tech built into its LCD TVs, DVD machines and laptops. But it’s amazing all by itself: whereas the Wachowski-brothers’ technique used static images in Bullet-Time, this new style uses looped video clips, digitally compiled together for the final result. Apparently the 200-cam 14-meter diameter filming rig used “the highest number of moving image cameras ever used in a film sequence” and took three days to just focus up and align. All 200 cameras were triggered by a single remote, and it took four weeks to process the image data. Four weeks! The $4.7million ad’s showing in Europe currently.
OK kids. I’m a little behind on this whole blogging thing. It’s not that I don’t have anything to post and don’t care about you, I’ve just been too busy to put it up on this here Inter-web (not really, just lazy). You know, putting things in p-tags and a-tags (that’s text and links in HTML-speak for the lay-folk) is hard work. OK, so it’s not. But give me a break…
Anyhow, this is something I should have posted two weeks ago, but I actually only just received it yesterday. It’s one of those dreaded forward emails that my mom sends me far too many of (if you’re reading this, mom, take a hint). But it sums up my pre-election sentiments quite nicely. I’m sure some of you (*cough* Matt) will especially appreciate the closing argument.
Received from my sister-in-law by email. Original source unknown.Dear Red States:
If you manage to steal this election too we’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington,Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast.
We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly:
- You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
- We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
- We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
- We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
- We get 85% of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
- We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country’s fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95% of America’s quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.
Peace out,
--Blue States
This guy solves a Rubik’s Cube while beatboxing. My friend C.J. would (probably will?) have a wet dream over this. Admittedly, he’s not that fast, but both take skill. I’m impressed he can beatbox for so long without a break.
I’d say this is unbelievable, but it isn’t. Among other things, Mrs. Palin apparently didn’t know the members of NAFTA and thought Africa was a country (yes, you read that right—a country). What I can’t believe is that more of this didn’t come out during the campaign. McCain’s staff was full of intelligent, honest people. This must have driven them batty.
I suppose this is what you get when you say “I want a candidate who’s like me; somebody I can relate to.” I imagine most of the people who voted for McCain/Palin because she was on the ticket also don’t know the countries of NAFTA, let alone what it is. (I’m giving people the benefit of the doubt regarding Africa.) Personally, I want the smartest person in the room who’s not an arrogant prick. But that’s just me.
via Joe. My. God.
Assuming you voted in New York, that is. Among others, m@ complained that he didn’t get a sticker. Well, as far as I know, New York has never done stickers. Gothamist looked into this and reported the same. I'm content just knowing I voted—as long as Starbucks still gives me my free coffee, of course (they did). For some reason, I make this strange connection between Election Day stickers and Ash Wednesday, which kind of turns me off to the whole idea of stickers. Plus, New York has to spend that money on WD-40 for the ancient fleet of lever machines.
Oh, and those people who had “I VOTED!” stickers on in NYC today? They’re bridge & tunnel folk. Keep your distance.
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