Falling Georgie

No plans this weekend? Fear not, I've got you covered. This here link will provide you with ample entertainment with which to fill the hours between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. Falling Georgie is a Flash piece that lets you watch George W. as he falls from the sky all ragdoll-like and bounces off some big bubbles. Want to get in on the action? Of course you do! Grab Georgie by the head (or feet or hands or ass) with your cursor and fling him around at will. Send him flying! Drag him through the bubbles! Have him do the splits! Make him perform obscene sexual acts on himself! I'm telling you, hours of quality entertainment here folks. Happy weekend!

Thanks Sash!


Via Planet Dan.

The Million Dollar Building

From not the same people who brought you the Million Dollar Homepage comes the Million Dollar Building! Actually that's not what it's called. The building belongs to the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and they've launched a project called Artvertising. Much like the Million Dollar Homepage, the Sandberg Institute is selling off chunks of its building's facade to advertisers in tiles of 29 x 35 cm at 19,99 euros a piece. Current advertisers already include Google, Apple, Nike, Ikea, Pepsi and a bunch of others. Not sure how much of this "artvertising" is actually art, but I know it's a whole lotta advertising.


Via The Cool Hunter.

Flashtastic

Lots of crazy stuff going on at deviantART where people can (and do) post their artistic creation of any kind. Dave has pointed me in the direction of this little Flash ditty that had me playing for a little longer than I care to admit. It's called LineTo experimental and it was posted by deviantART member Volcamic-Penguin. It's got crazy squigly lines and colours and shit flying all over the place. It was a bitch to get these screen caps so the least you could do is pay it a visit.

Thanks Dave!

Fairy Interesting

When I first started reading Jonathan Wright's site Urban Fairies I thought he really believed in fairies and their magical little doors that randomly appeared in houses and stores all over his home town of Ann Arbour, Michigan. But we've already established that I'm a wee bit gullible so that's to be expected. However I'm better at blogging than being not gullible so I did do my research and realized that (duh) Mr. Wright has been building these little curiosities himself in an effort to bolster tourism in the area. Either way I still kind of like these little doors. They are finely crafted and appear on both the inside and outside of buildings. Lots of pictures on the site as well as bunch of crap about how fairies like to eat candy and drink coffee or something.




Via BoingBoing.

Fits Right In My Pocket

Have a look at the first ever iPod unveiling at the Apple Music Event in 2001. I think it's funny how Steve Jobs refers to it as "iPod" instead of "an iPod". 5 gigs, 1000 songs. How quaint. Sigh.



Via GeekLikeMe.

A History of Wikipedia

Taking a page out of Kottke's book (or rather a meme out of his blog), this is my Wikipedia contrail (ie: Wikipedia search history). I'm sure my search history is more extensive than this but I work from different computers so I don't have the complete list. I love Wikipedia so this was a fun exercise for me but I'm not so sure will be very interesting to all of you. But then again this is my blog. So here goes it:

• Battle Royale - a great novel that I was reading (and then movie that I saw) by Koushun Takami
• Coffee (history) - I was discussing the etymology of the word with my brother (incidentally I was right, comes from the Turkish/Farsi word kahve)
• Dominoes - just looking up a bit of history on the game for a documentary my friend is working on
  
• Julian Beever - for a blog post about his street art
  
• Kingdom Hearts - a video game my friend had told me about
  
• La Linea - reminiscing about one of the best shows I watched when I was a kid (and for a blog post)
  
• MacGyver - also for a recent blog post
• Monopoly - just out of sheer curiosity (which then turned into a blog post)
  
• Nintendo DS - before the release date was announced I was desperate for any information I could find!
  
• Persian Jews - wanted to know a little more about myself
  
• Rube Goldberg - I had recently read about Rube Goldberg machines and wanted to know a little about the man
  
• Serge Gainsbourg - I had read an article about him that my brother sent me and I wanted to know a little more
• Teh - call me dense but I started to realize that people were writing it like this on purpose and I wanted to know why
  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - the fantastic book I'm reading right now by Michael Chabon
  
• Union Station (Toronto)- I don't remember why I was looking this up - I live in Toronto, maybe I wanted some history?
  
• Utada Hikaru - Japanese pop singer that has a really great song on the Kingdom Hearts videogame soundtrack
  
• W00t - I wanted to know the origin of this word, wonderful loot? We Owned the Other Team? Who knows?

OK so now that we've established that I'm a big nerd, I will tag a few people to see if they're big nerds too:

• Zigtai
• Vin
• Techbee (pardon, je ne connais pas votre nom!)
  
• Bibi
• Anyone else who wants to play
  

Balancing Act

For all of you who like games that aren't really games and don't have much of a point but nonetheless have the uncanny ability to suck you in (see Elektroplankton for the Nintendo DS), you might be interested in Levers (at least that's what I think it's called based on the URL). Wait for random objects to fall from the sky into the water and carefully add them to your mobile to balance it out. That's it. At least I think that's it.


Via BoingBoing.

Like Is The New Crack Cocaine

I'm pretty sure these posters are fake but they've been floating around the blogosphere today and either way, they're pretty funny. Something called Acadamy of Linguistic Awarness [sic] (no website) wants to warn you against the dangers of compulsively using the word "like." As Cathy and Paul from California have discovered, you could risk losing the respect of your peers, your opportunity to graduate for college or even your lover. Anyone know what the fine print says?



Via BoingBoing, The Presurfer and Miss Cellania.

Richard Dean Anderson To The Rescue

From the ever-so-useful annals of Wikipedia comes a fairly comprehensive List of Problems solved by MacGyver. Remember how he would get himself out of the craziest situations with the most common of household items all the while expounding the intricate details of his plan for the benefit of all us laymen watching at home? Well now you can relive those glorious moments with an episodic breakdown of MacGyver's endeavors. Read all about how he "builds an incubator with padding from a chair and vegetable oil" or the time he "breaks a padlock with magnesium alloy fragments, an iron pipe, some cloth, and a match" or even when he "patches up the Jeep's radiator...with nothing but water and egg whites." Maybe he could try using "scissors" to fix up his "mullet."


Via GeekLikeMe.

Soda Geyser

OK I think pretty much everyone knew about this except for me but I want to share with you just in case there's some other poor soul out there who is just as unaware as me. Apparently if you mix Mentos candy and any kind of soda you get a soda geyser of sorts. Many poor fools have taken it upon themselves to a) try the experiment b) record the entire thing and c) post it on YouTube for the collective benefit of the citizens of the internet. There are quite a few of these videos out there . A YouTube search for coke + mentos or pepsi + mentos should pull up most of them. As for what causes the reaction, you can find a pretty decent explanation on Steve Spangler Science. And in case you're too lazy to read the whole thing, here's the gist of it:

As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy...When all this gas is released, it literally pushes all of the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast.

See, I do all the work for you.

Thanks Joy!

The Ad Fad: Addendum Part II

Looks like this is going to be an on-going feature cause I keep coming across these post-worthy new forms of advertising. Further to this post and this follow-up post, advertising agency BBDO Toronto has created interactive (kind of) PepsiAccess subway posters. These ads invite users to unplug their headphones from whatever it is they're listening to and plug them directly into the jack in the ad where they will get to hear part of exclusive music tracks and other such promotional banter urging them to visit the PepsiAccess website. The ads are currently running on subway cars in Toronto and Vancouver. I haven't seen them yet but next time I ride the TTC I'll be sure to try it out.


Via Advertising/Design Goodness.

Mario Magic

Wow, two Super Mario-related posts in a row. Must be the imminent Nintendo DS Lite launch fever creeping up on me. The good people at TASVideos have collected a whole bunch of tips and tricks for various Super Mario Bros games, but these aren't your run of the mill, you-can-find-this-in-the-official-guide type tricks. Oh no my friends, do you really think I'd turn your attention to something so simple and mundane? You know me better than that. These tricks rely on glitches (not really glitches, but I can't think of a more appropriate word) in the game's programming to get Mario to accomplish all sorts of amazing feats such as bouncing off walls, "stomping" enemies from underneath, jumping on thin air and walking through walls. Not only does the site give you a looped gif demonstration of all the tricks, but they also tell you how to do it and why you can do it. Here's an example:

Walljump happens because the game does a floor check (a simple "is position divided by 16 even? Is there a solid block below him?" test) even during a wall-ejection. Wall-ejection is SMB's mechanism to adjust Mario's horizontal position properly when his left side and right side have a different inside-wall status. The game ejects Mario towards the opposite of his steering.

Got that? Good. Now you try.


Via Kotaku.

Silent But Funny

Watch Mario rescue the Princess from the evil grasp of Bowser as Luigi goads him on in the silent movie, uh, Mario's Silent Movie. Complete with Ragtime tunes and intertitles from Psy City.


Via Old Man Musings.

Webograph

Who knew that my blog would be so much more interesting in graph form than in its natural state?


Check out what some well-known sites look like as graphs or test out your own site.

Via GeekLikeMe.

The Ad Fad: Addendum

As an addition to my recent post about the wave of clever advertising we've been seeing lately, I'd like to draw your attention to this Amnesty International campaign. The ads appear primarily on bus shelters and depict scenes of various human rights violations integrated into the background of the bus shelter itself. The slogan reads "Cela existe. Pas ici, mais maintenant" which means "This exists. Not here, but now."



Via Farpas & Bitaites.

Super Condiments

Check out these sweet creations from Sket One created for the SubCultures Design toy show. Talk about playing with your food and various household cleaning products.


Via Notcot.

Happy Blogoversary To Me

One year old and still kicking. Thanks to everyone who's been reading since the first post and any one else who has stopped by along the way. Weeee!

Seen Not Heard

We've all seen the pewter cassette belt buckles that all the cool kids are wearing.

But now your can take your eighties fashion irony one step further with actual cassette belt buckle from Sveet Couture.

Comes in a variety of flavours including New Kids on the Block, Milli Vanilli, Village People and more!

Via Chip Chick.

Hold Me Closer Tiny Sculptor

Willard Wigan makes tiny sculptures. No, like, tiny. Like, so small you can't even see them. But they're there alright. I mean smaller than a match head. Like small enough to fit into the eye of a needle. Small enough to stand on an eyelash! I just used italics people, that's how small. And they aren't just sculptures of you know, a rock or something. I'm talking serious detail here. Like Snow-White-and-all-seven-of-them-dwarves-in-the-eye-of-one-needle detail. The Micro Sculptor, as he is known, uses materials like dust, eyelashes and spiderwebs to create his mini masterpieces. When his work is exhibited it is shown through microscopes with 100x magnification. When he paints his little works, Willard says he tries to slow his breathing and his pulse and only paints between heartbeats to ensure that his hand will remain steady. Willard attributes his incredible ability to God and stuff but I think he should keep all the glory for himself.



That little girl is standing on an eyelash. For rizzle.

See, I told you so.


This might give you a better idea of just how small we're talking here.

Via BoingBoing.