Showing posts with label cool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cool. Show all posts

February 02, 2008

Yay for Yoono!

Yoono was exactly what I was looking for in an Internet media sharing site. I love it so far. Almost every day I see an interesting article or blog post that I want to share, but the extra step of creating a blog post to do so was enough to deter me. Yoono makes it very easy to impulsively share media on the web. You right-click or select what you want to share, select "Buzz it", type in a descriptive note if you want to, and that's pretty much it.

Here is my Yoono blog. I will add it to my sidebar soon, and likely post most of my links on here from now on. I already added a few if you want to check it out.

This is the first time in a while that I thought, "I wish there a program that did X" and found out that Program X actually exists.

November 06, 2007

These Things Exist?

And you can buy them online?

It's a cell phone jammer that you can get for $50. Who knew spy technology was so cheap?

(They are illegal to use in some countries, including the U.S.)

October 19, 2007

Let's Waste Some Time

Check out Boomshine. It's an elegant and simple game. The object is to detonate as many of the multi-colored balls bouncing around the screen as you can in one shot.

This game made me wonder if it was also the perfect test of intuition, the ability to process vast amounts of information in a blink and come up with a course of action that is right without knowing why. Is this game blind luck, or is intuition at work, calculating hundreds of trajectories at once and sensing the right moment and place to to click to destroy as many balls at once? You'll understand what I mean when you play.

I felt I did worse when I let my analytical side take over and started thinking about where to click rather than clicking at the first spot that came into my head.

October 18, 2007

Back from the past: Strip Creator

I posted a link to this site a few years ago and forgot about it until now. It's Strip Creator, a web site that allows the creative and artistically untalented to create their own comics. This one is mine:

Wanting to stay single


This one isn't mine, but it's funny.

July 30, 2007

Four Stages of Pop Culture Savviness; Turtles

Four Levels of Pop Culture Savviness
An arbitrary list, although nowhere near as arbitrary as most of the lists, or anchors, on VH1 shows.

1. You find out about the latest trends directly.

2. You find out about the latest trends from your hipster friends. Not that anyone in this stage uses the word hipster.

3. You read about the latest trends from television shows or newspaper articles.

4. You see headlines about the latest trends from newspaper articles or your kids, and don't care enough to pay attention.


I have sunk to level 3. I was never cool enough to be at level 1. Level 2 used to be my home, but now my friends have adult lives and must not have time to keep up. For how else to explain the lack of notice about the "I Love Turtles" kid?

I heard of him from my new source of coolness, The Washington Post Style section (article link). The story is one of the WP's semi-annual "What hath the Internet wrought?"pieces.

I fear though that I am on the beginning of spiral to level 4, a abysmal pit sheltered and disconnected from anything cool. I don't get the I Love Turtles kid. The only thing humorous about it is that it vaguely echoes the "I Didn't Do It" episode of the Simpsons.

If that doesn't sound cranky enough (level 3 people have gobs of self-awareness, clinging to it as our way of staying the irreversable descent into uncoolness), here is why I don't think the clip is funny, at least on the first viewing: it's too fast.

There isn't enough time to let the mind process the absurdity of the situation and laugh. It's a 20-second joke compressed into 17-seconds. Watch it first, then imagine the clip with a pause after the reporter asks him the question, and another pause after the boy answers. Old Man Walther would find that funnier.

That's why I enjoyed the description in the article more than the video. The article teases and extends the funny details of the video that fly by upon the first viewings. The timing of the video may also be why it became a viral video. The details fly by so fast that one may have to watch it several times to find it funny, incorporating another detail into the jokework after each viewing until they gain a familiarly in the mind so we can process everything all in one moment and laugh.

If you watch the video once and didn't think much of it, watch it a dozen times and let me know if/when it becomes funny.

There are a few mashups of the video, which I find funnier than the original, partially because the timing is expanded. The Bill O'Reilly interview is one of the funny ones.

February 20, 2007

How To Write Your Name on a Building with a Laser

And not get into trouble.

The latest project from the Graffiti Research Lab: a laser pointer synchronized with a projector that lets people write in real-time on any large, flat surface.

November 01, 2005

Part I of the First Part of the First Day in Ireland

No exaggeration. I took a lot of pictures the first day. It was sunny and everything was new. (on Flickr)

By the way, Google's Picasa is an absolutely awesome photo editing and organization program. It does 80% of what I use Photoshop for, it's much quicker and easier to use, and it's free. It doesn't have the fine-tuning available in Photoshop, but it's good enough for most photos.

August 03, 2005

NASA TV

Every now and then, I marvel at what technology has brought us. Like being able to watch, live, an astronaut prepare for a spacewalk (NASA TV).

March 18, 2005

Superman Is a Dick

Writing for "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen" in the 60s must have been the best job in the world (link from LYD).

January 03, 2005

Lord of the Rings Special Edition Easter Eggs

This isn't new news, but I just found out about them today. In the scene selection of any of the disks, highlight the last chapter and press down. A ring icon will appear, which you can select to see an Easter Egg. The mock interview with Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood on the Return of the King Extended DVD is pretty funny.

December 09, 2004

Adventures in Typography

Those of you in the design community may have heard of the multimedia artist and visual fusion DJ Evangelical Ro. He does interesting work, usually melding disparate areas such as music, graffiti, and computer animation to create presentations that gently expand our notion of what multimedia is, a notion that has shrunk severely in face of the marketplace definition of the word, such as interactive CD-ROMS and DVDs with computer-only content.

He recently posted a few of his new projects on his web page. How can you get a typographical tribute to Biggie Smalls?

October 07, 2004

Reason #23 Why The British Rock

The producers of a British children's television show in the 70s made a hilarious, innuendo-filled video using the puppets and characters in the show. Background info and link to the clip at Boing Boing.

September 24, 2004

Postal Project Update

The wonderful USPS label hack you saw weeks ago on Pancake City has been picked up by Boing Boing. Although it is technically a felony, and his new popularity may bring him some unwanted attention by the authorities, you should still watch the short video that my friend, Carlos Guinerra, made at the post office in Jugtown, PA, if you haven't seen it already.

September 03, 2004

Creative Ways To Protest

A friend of mine did this yesterday. The second half of the video is shot with a hidden camera.

April 03, 2004

March 31, 2004

The Modestly-Titled "Newsmap"

Newsmap is a media watcher's dream. Using Google News, the program tallies the number of news outlets reporting on one story, like Condoleeza Rice's decision to testify to the 9-11 commission. It then displays the headlines of the most popular stories in boxes whose sizes are determined by each story's relative popularity to other stories.

My explanation doesn't justify its elegance. It's a wonderful mix of content and design.

February 23, 2004

I Drew a Bottle of Whiskey

Draw Your Boss. The drawings on this site are uniformly excellent. Not necessarily in artistic quality or humor, but--well, you'll see. Just a few of the great ones: #41, 61, 69. (link from LYD)

November 26, 2003

Here Comes the Sun

Doo doo doo doo...

Top 10 images of the sun. They are amazing.

September 19, 2003

Newstoday

Newstoday is kind of like FARK for graphic artists. They have a public broadcast section where you can usually find links to sites of talented computer artists and Internet randomness, like this Halloween costume.

It's the type of site that's good because not a whole lot of people know about it. Go ahead. Fill in the joke. (Hint: It has something to do with my five visitors a day.)