A4 Paper Art

Click for video




[via SA]

I miss what it was like two semesters ago when having a lot of homework meant I had papers to critique and short stories and essays to write. Sure, if I had a story due it would be a fourteen pager, but at least I had a lot of fun writing it.

/goes back to cranking out a psychopathology paper

Word on the street is some people haven't seen this:

As Bill Couch posted on facebook, the new Harry Potter cover has been released. (larger version)

The Consumerist did a March Madness style bracket where over 100,000 voted for what they thought was the worst company in the US. The RIAA beat out Halliburton in the championship.

[via Phil]

Kerblewie

Karen and I saw 'Blood Diamond' Saturday at the dollar theater. One woman brought her four year old daughter. Did they go see 'Happy Feet'? No. Did they go see 'Charlotte's Web'? No. The mom decided she was going to take her daughter to a movie with scenes like this:

Rebels with guns drive into a city shooting people all around and we see people being struck (blood spurts and they fall to the ground), cars exploding, a woman holding a child is shot (we see blood on the woman's shirt), and many people run toward a line of government troops that open fire on them and we see many cut down as they run. Two men and a boy are shot as they run away. A man is shot in the chest, and he falls back dead. Several men are lined up against a wall and shot (we see one struck and he falls to the ground).

And this:

Several young boys are beaten and whipped and brainwashed into believing that they are unloved by their parents and unwanted in order to be made into ruthless and bloodthirsty warriors (we see blood on their faces and chests).

Good parenting!

[quotes taken from Kids in Mind]

I just went to go get some food: everyone's out and about right now: bikers trying to do tricks on the rock, people sitting out on their porch, and half of everyone I saw was out running. Everyone's in a say-hi-even-though-I've-never-seen-you-before kind of mood.

And no joke, I saw a guy skipping down my street.

Can be watched, here, at the Showtime website

Here's a promo

From lenshoods.co.uk:

This site contains PDF documents that can be printed and cut out to make lens hoods for a variety of 35mm and digital SLR camera lenses. Lens hoods give better quality photographs by reducing flare caused by nonimageforming light.

[via Allie]

The Boston Globe ran one of my photos today. Seen here on the globe website, they used a cropped down version of this photo I took in 2004.

What can I say? It's weird but Harry Potter's part won't leave my head.

They have the same expression.

This video by Ashley Dinges shows what the newly renovated Michigan Daily offices are going to look like. Pretty neat (if you knew what it used to look like).

Click To Play

The cat's named Agui. At the very least it makes weird noises.

Around the Net brings us this:

A conversation with Amber:

Apparently, the LG15 people have found someone to advertise in their show and have a thirty second advertisement (by the characters) at the end of the most recently posted video.

From The Next Net

"[A creator of the show] says that Loneygirl15 gets 1.5 million views per week, or 300,000 to 400,000 per episode. While he wouldn't say exactly how much Hershey's is dishing out for the product placement, he confirmed that it was in the same range as what Diggnation gets from its sponsors (which is as much at $10,000 per show per sponsor).

Transcript from the LG15 wiki:
(Cut to car stopped)
Daniel: Hey, what is that?
Bree: What? Ice Breakers Sours Gum.
Daniel: Can I have a piece?
Jonas: I would-I would love a piece.
Bree: Um... I only have four left.
Daniel: What do you mean, you...There's only three of us in the car!
Jonas: Come on...
Bree: I know, but I...
Daniel: Come on. We came all the way out here to pick you up. That's exactly right, so, uh...
Jonas: So what? That's it?
Bree: Okay.
Daniel: Besides, my mouth right now feels like...
Bree: Okay, okay, okay.
(Bree pours out the four pieces of gum in her hand and holds it out.)
Daniel: Alright, thank you!
(Jonas and Daniel reach out their hands to get some, but Bree puts them all in her mouth instead.)
Jonas: Oh, that's so messed up.
Daniel: Oh...my...God.
Bree: Whoa, it's sour.
Jonas: You give us this big buildup and no delivery.
Bree: Okay, lets go. Why are we sitting here?

Video (scan ahead to 3:30)


They're getting pretty popular so I guess they can do these kinda things now. A couple months ago they had Katherine McPhee (of American Idol) on a pretty pointless episode. As seen here:


^^Stuff like this doesn't do anything to move the plot along. Unlike this one:



Completely lost? See the LGPedia entry on "the story so far"

Thisis what it looks like <--link

In case you need to slay an intruder or monster under the bed.

Aerial photos of Africa

I had this great idea about six hours ago: What if someone made something called Wikinews that was an editable news source? I thought all about all the safeguards and stuff that would need to be in place but that would still allow ordinary people to tell their story. I thought I had a pretty good idea on my hands. Then I told Bill Couch about my idea and turns out it already exists. Pwned.

I just found out I got third place nationally for best photostory. PDF file of my photos and story.

I'm doing research about gender biases when assigning somatoform disorder diagnoses to patients. So I searched on Proquest

"somatoform disorders" women

and it gives me back this study:

"Why do women complain of vaginal discharge? A population survey of infectious and pyschosocial risk factors in a South Asian community"

Not helpful.

I shot my first wedding of the year up at Addison Oaks. It's worth mentioning that I've still got open dates this summer. Click for more images.

There was a pillowfight on the diag. See above video and this girl's flickr album

There's certainly nothing wrong with being sad when a beloved pet passes on. It's kinda weird, however, to make an animated gif to commemorate that.

[Via SomethingAwful's Weekend Web]

This video is from July 28, 2006


Today Eston sent me this video. Looks like they have a ways to go still. Can't say I would reccomend watching all ten minutes of this, but at least scroll through it.


(btw, PCs are better than Macs still)

Boingboing, who linked my post the other day, now points out this interview with Tim O'Brien, the guy that did the Photoshop work for Time's most recent cover. According to boingboing, this interview is running in the next Time. It would seem that my post may have had an effect on the content of the issue. Groovy.

Let's have a look at kind of "questions" O'Brien is getting asked:

-Some people say that it doesn’t look fake enough, but I think it’s obvious.

-Isn’t it an accepted fact that photo-illustrations are a normal part of the language of magazine covers these days?

They couldn't ask the guy any questions that were easier or more leading than this. Except maybe "So, as everyone who's not an idiot surely knows, this happens all the time, doesn't it?"

Seriously though, I'm glad that Time is running this interview. I think that this signals to the readers what's going on and let's them know what to look for in the future.

On another note, O'Brien says, "I’ve been reading the media blogs all day and it’s funny that people think it’s [the cover’s] pulling the wool over people’s eyes. I think it has more to do with people being afraid of seeing a man cry."

And I think it has absolutely nothing to do with that. (Though that may be the case for Reagan's son [he said that his dad would never cry]) It has to do with people possibly thinking that this moment happened as pictured on Time's cover. I guess it's just the photojournalist in me.

Again, I'm glad Time's running the interview to set the tone for this and future issues.

Also, nice cover Tim.

You pick a color, it outputs a bunch of flickr photos of that color.

I'd never seen these or anything like 'em. Seventeen more photos on the site.

According to this, crane games have a yellow box inside that that controls how often it pays out, and, if you win, it's because of the machine, not your own skill.


[via Stumbleupon]

...are a bunch of little AAA batteries. Who knew.





[via Makeblog]

This listing has 10 ideas--from selling pixels to monks that refill your ink cartridgers--that made someone on the net rich.

As recently reported by the Times, Viacom brought a lawsuit against Youtube for $1 billion dollars. They say, among other things, that Youtube is violating copyright, that Viacom's clips helped Youtube build a brand, and that Viacom has to spend unnecessary amounts of time finding their content to earmark it for removal by site moderators.

“Every day we have to scour the entirety of what is available on YouTube, so we have to look for our stuff,” Mr. Dauman [of Viacom] said. “It is very difficult for us and places an enormous burden on us.”

If Youtube really wants to fix its problems, it needs to go the route of Wikipedia, whose articles are policed by an army of volunteer moderators. Youtube currently has restrictions on the quality, size, and length of content that can be hosted on their site. If it offered certain Youtubers benefits that superceded these restrictions, they too could have an army of mods keeping their site out of trouble. And for free.

No way are people going to know this is photoshopped.

"The first new-look issue, on newsstands tomorrow, features what appears to be a photo of Ronald Reagan with a fat tear sliding down his cheek, illustrating the cover story, "How the Right Went Wrong." A somewhat cryptic credit in small type on the (revamped!) table of contents describes the image this way: "Photograph by David Hume Kennerly. Tear by Tim O'Brien." Nowhere does it specifically state that the cover is a photo illustration—in other words, that it's Photoshopped."

Read more

According to this article, guys stare at crotches. Whether it the crotch of a woman or another man. And on top of this:

"Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site."

The purpose, however, of this article is to look at good news article design and watch how people interpret information. But of course, the blogosphere (like boingboing where I saw this article, and kottke where they got it from) goes for the crotch sell. Got you to read it though. And me to link it.

SFGate: Correct Me If I'm Wrong. The San Francisco Chronicle plays all the dumb voicemails they get, usually asking for a refund because, for example, the TV section is wrong. And people get pretty angry about their TV section.

[via]

[via Around the Net]

This is probably one of the best photoshop contests in the history of SomethingAwful. The SA Forums Goons took this postal service notice at right and created comic gold. Best image is on pg7. Some entries contain NSFW language. See also part 2

Google Blogoscoped found a way to zoom into Google maps ridiculously close.

For my Comm439 class, we've gotta listen to a podcast and write a review of it. Given the fact that I subscribe to quite a few podcasts, I figured this would be a good opportunity to write reviews of all my favorite podcasts (and some that I'm giving a shot). All podcasts below are available on iTunes, but for those of you without it, I'll try linking each podcast's website.

Knitwit
Given the fact that I'm a 22-yr-old male college student, it might be surprising that one of my favorite podcasts is about knitting, but I really like this podcast.
I don't know a thing about knitting, but Carry's stories are what make this interesting. Sometime she gets too in-depth in the knitting stuff, but that's what makes the ffwd button on my mp3 player worthwhile.
There's something nice about walking around campus hearing about whats new with this woman's sheep, dog, rabbits, and cat and hearing stories from now to when she was a kid. Plus I learn some random stuff about sheep (e.g. feeding a spinner's flock grain is important).
[website link]






CoffeeBreak Spanish

Soy learning Spanish for free! 20 minute Spanish lessons.

[website link]






NYT: The Ethicist

I always like reading advice columns in newspapers, and this weekly ethics column is as close at it comes in the NYTimes. Covers topics like "Is it alright if I sublet my company's second parking space away and keep the profits?" The podcast doesn't have any extra content beyond what's written in the New York Times magazine, but it's still good if I for whatever reason miss the column.

[website link]


The Bitterest Pill

I actually haven't listened to more than about 5 minutes of this. It seems really interesting, but I don't want to start over from the beginning. Sometime when I've got a bunch of time I'll burn a few of these to a CD and see what I think.



[website link]

This American Life

Full episodes of NPR's best show. Each week, the people of Chicago Public Radio pick a theme and then have a lot of people tell interesting stories about that theme. Recently had stories by David Sedaris and Ann Arbor's own Davy Rothbart. Best story in recent weeks: guys getting stranded on an island well in view of New York's skyline

[website link]


Around the Net
While the main Attack of the Show podcast feed sucks pretty bad, the individual segment feeds are good. This one is by far the best. The hosts go through four funny/interesting videos from video sites every weekday. Sometimes I've already seen em, sometimes they're not funny, but they're always worth checking out.
[website link]


AOTS: Hardware
Attack of the Show Hardware reviews. Laptop reviews are boring. Airsoft gun reviews are interesting.

[website link]





Car Talk
Car Talk is a great show. But it costs 99 cents if you want to download a full episode. I'll take a free weekly call as a consolation.

[website link]





Marketplace
NPR's business and money show is interesting for all its random inside business stories. Last week I learned that some work-at-home postings on Craiglist are money laundering jobs, where your criminal bosses don't care about you and you're likely to get arrested in about a week.

[website link]




AOTS: In Your Pants
G4's video advice column. The title makes it sound like something skeezy, but its not. Mostly it answers questions from the G4 demographic. What's a gamer to do when his internet girlfriend breaks up with him? More typical questions too.
[website link]





Board Games with Scott

Twice a month or so, Scott gets out a new nerdy board game and shows you how to play it. Given my love for nerdy board games, this is my kinda podcast.

[website link]





Fear the Boot

While we're talking about gamer podcasts, I should talk about Fear the Boot, which seems pretty well listened to in the tabletop RPG community. I just burned this to a CD to give it a chance. So far they've talked about Settlers and how much they love it. Not surprising for a gaming podcast.


[website link]





Wasting Time at Work

Another podcast I'm giving a shot: two guys take 10 minutes out of their workday to talk and make jokes. I've listened to about an hour of content thus far. Sometimes they're really funny. Sometimes they just need to get on with the podcast and stop making up stories. I wish they encoded to mp3 format so I could load this onto my mp3 player instead of having to burn it to CDs

[website link]




CrashIntoLove
A pastor's podcast about marriage. Good because there aren't maybe decent Christian podcasts out there. Meh because he's only done 4 podcasts so far.
[website link]







dotBoom
Not sure how I feel about this yet. A puppet show about a webdesign firm. The net needs more webdesign humor.
[website link]








Best Week Ever
A Daily podcast making fun of the going-ons on people's favorite TV shows. Better than the TV version because I can fast forward through boring crap
[website link]






Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!

NPR's News Quiz Show. The question writers must browse some of the same sites I do, because sometimes the questions will be about stuff I read on the net a few days earlier.

[website link]




That's it for now. If there's any podcasts out there that you think I'd like, please shoot me an email or leave a comment.

A sorority at Depauw recently got rid of two-thirds of its members that it deemed uncool or unattractive. It's a horrible, ridiculous thing to do, but at the same time I think this'll turn out a positive for the booted girls: now they're not going to waste 4 years of their life with people like that.

The ironic image are right was taken from a sorority member's website (it was the first thing that came up on a google image search).

In other news, the New York Times news service is always really behind on stories like these. I think I first read about this at least three days ago. If only I could turn "being on top of internet news" into a job somewhere.

Rumor has it that stamps count as legal tender. I have no idea if this is true, but people have said that technically, if you went to the store, you could pay in stamps. Yet everything I search for on the internet seems to suggest that stamps don't count as useable money.

Anyhow, this guy wanted to see if he could mail a letter using change instead of stamps. Read the full story to see what happened.

If you've yet to experience the magic of lolcats (that is, cat image macros), check out I Can Has Cheezburger, the definitive source for daily new images. These three happen to be my own; I submitted them today. The hedonism cat is Zooey.

Device for bird feeders that throws squirrels off by spinning in place. They claim the squirrel is "gently thrown off" yet spend a good 20 seconds showing the squirrel writhing on the ground from sheer dizziness.


[via]

Let's get this blog started out with its first link to this page of dollar bill origami. Beats those dollar bill rings people made in middle school.

This is my new blog (like I needed another). It's gonna be a link dump for all the great stuff I come across while browsing the net along with random thoughts of mine that don't really have a place on my photography website. Bookmark this and come back often

Labels: serialbus news