This was on Make. If you are impatient, skip ahead to 1:00 to watch it dribble and then to 2:30 and watch the tweezer thing and the cell phone thing

Why not make it so you always see your loved one out of the corner of your eye watching you? This is an urn by the way.

Only $2,600.
[via digg]

Whoops, I mean Moscow sewer formations

Sunday time is pancake time. More graphs at
http://neoformix.com/2009/TweetWordsByWeekDay.html

Sometimes when browsing sites like Yahoo Answers, I want to just post links to Let Me Google That For you, a site that takes someone's question and puts it in a sarcastic little animation before directing them to their answer.

See it in action: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+is+the+website+for+DTE+electricity%3F+

Have you seen these shows (Toddlers and Tiaras, Little Miss Perfect)? Have you? Here's let me cut the video to some of the worst parts for you:


By far this is one of the worst videos (image links to video in new window):


I agree with you, creeped-out announcer lady. I agree with you.

From the wonderful land of passive-aggressive notes, we have a guy that just doesn't think people wish him happy birthday enough and has an itemized list to prove it:





The guy gets 53 birthday wishes (some through guilt I'm sure, but still) on facebook and isn't happy?

Also I like how he specifies that the wishes have to be on time to count.

I liked my RA.

1) Gross
2) Did he really say "install on your dog"
3) Why

That's an actual quote from this real estate listing featured on It's Lovely I'll Take It. The listing describes itself as "not for the faint of heart or respiratory system" thanks to the "black mold of Biblical proportions" but hey at least they're honest.

Secret passageways! Hide your secret passways and guns and valuables and stuff
There's a full gallery of options. In other news, MAKEblog has been awesome these days.

Karen and I just bought tickets to go see Paramore at the Fillmore. Each ticket had a twelve dollar convience fee. That's not for the whole transaction: that's per ticket.

This, by the way, is why people have blogs: so they can complain to the void of the open internet.

I'd like to make a prediction right now. Internet Wayback machine, make a note of this time so that we can return to it 15 years from now.

We are going to have a huge economic problem 15 years from now when people are trying to retire but don't have the money. I'm surprised by how many people come into my office that are in their 40's and 50's and can't even get $100 together for a refundable application fee over the course of a few months. If people can't do that, how in the world are they saving for retirement?

Amber posted this on google reader writing, "what... is... this?" and I have to agree.



It seems to be an actual video that someone spliced down to the best parts?

[via Consumerist]

Full story:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_13032102

[source]

I would introduce this video, but I don't want to give too much away


[via CriticalGamers]

You can read the whole story, but that's really all there is to it.

I have a habit of keeping a lot of tabs open in Firefox. Usually it's things that I mean to read or that I'm considering sharing on here: things that I'm not sure are cool enough to blog about (or things that have already made their way 'round the internet), but things that I can't quite close the tab on. Here are two such things, both from MAKE

Pictured below in that glass hourglass is some pitch aka bitumen aka the stuff that used to go on the end of torches. The pitch flows so slowly that it took the first drop (in 1930) eight years to fall. Eight years. It should run for another hundred years or so they say. [MAKE post]


In the already-saw-it-elsewhere-before-I-could-post-it-boy-I-sure-do-like-hyphens-today category, we have the story of a glass blower that made glass shells for hermit crabs so that he could see everything they do inside their house. [MAKE post]

Last Suppers is a project that visually recreates the last meal requests of prisoners.

who turns out to be Bob Dylan

"She radioed her older colleagues at the police station to ask if anyone knew who Bob Dylan was.

'I'm afraid we all fell about laughing,' said Craig Spencer, a senior officer in Long Branch, New Jersey. 'If it was me, I'd have been demanding his autograph, not his ID.

'The poor woman has taken rather a lot of abuse from us. I offered to bring in some of my Dylan albums. Unfortunately, she doesn't know what vinyl is either.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/bigbrother/article-1206617/Like-complete-unknown-Bob-Dylan-frogmarched-collect-ID-rookie-policewoman-fails-recognise-scruffy-music-legend.html

1) Guy asks me yesterday if he could pay with cash or a personal check

2) I tell him, no, the move in balance needs to be paid with a cashier's check or money order

3) Guy comes in to get the keys and pulls out his personal checkbook and asks who he should make the check out to.

Yes, for $125 you can get your own at Rick's Custom Squirrels. While you're waiting for your order to ship, read the recent news story about his hobby.

[via]

Here is Star Wars inserted into history

Check out all the photos over on the WSJ website. Good Magazine also has their own photo story

Val forwarded me an email that had a whole slew of those balloon outfits. The original emailer had only written "Beautiful - Look how far twisting balloons has come..." so I'm not sure where these photos are from but:

1) I wasn't aware that balloons aspired to become clothing
2) When you walk around, doesn't the whole dress make weird balloons-rubbing-together noises?
3) What happens if you bump into something sharp? I'm hoping that these aren't made of one continuous balloon.



T-Rex!

The weird thing about seeing these things in color is it completely messes with your sense of how long ago something was. Go check out all of the 1615 images on the Library of Congress flickr pool

Really took a while to get this trial going, huh? How do you prosecute a trial where you're trying to get down to specific details of things when all the events happened more than 50 years ago?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/world/europe/12nazi.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

My friend Matt told me this story and game me permission to spread its awesomeness across the internet.

Matt and his wife Rachel are soon closing on a house and they've got to lock in their mortgage rate, so they've been watching fluctuations in their mortgage company's rates pretty diligently waiting for just the right moment where rates are low.

That right moment came and Matt quickly shot an email off to his mortgage broker.

And then didn't hear back.

So later that day, the rates still low, he emailed again. Nothing. The next morning he emailed again. No response.

So he called them and asked what the deal was. The broker said that he hadn't actually received Matt's emails and got in touch with the IT department.

As it turns out Matt's emails were caught by the mortgage company's server's spam filter for using spam words. Those words? "Mortgage" and "interest"

[luckily they still honored the first email's rate]

I wish that I could see a from-the-side view so that I could really understand what is happening here.


[more info] [source]

[source]

[via]

The Twilight series is set in Forks, Washington. Apparently with the series over, no comic-con to overrun, and no movies coming out all that soon, Twilight fans are itching to feed their obsession and deciding to visit Forks as reported over on Yahoo. Forks is getting more visitors coming in in a month than they typically do in a full year.

This news story also gives me opportunity to post this blog post about a Twilight fan that has basically given her life to being obsessed with he books. A few quotes.

"I have a real, permanent Twilight tattoo that I got on my ankle in January 2008. It says "Twilight" in the official book script, and has a little flowery-star scroll encompassing it. Yes, I am THAT dedicated to Twilight that I wanted it eternally on my flesh for all to see."
[...]
"I RELIGIOUSLY check about six or seven Twilight websites two or three times every day. I spend at least three or four hours on the Internet each day doing Twilight stuff."
[...]
"Okay, every TRUE Twilight fan needs to make their pilgrimage to Mecca, aka Forks, Washington, and visit the place where all the magic happened. During the summer of 2007, when I had just discovered Twilight, I decided I had to go to Forks, no matter what. I MapQuested the directions and discovered it was 359.85 miles away from my town (so it would take seven hours to get there…no problem!) I got two days off work, specifically September 12th and 13th because I wanted to be up in Forks for Bella's birthday celebration"

Don't let the haterz say you aren't a true fan: drive to Forks, WA

At work I see a lot of weird email addresses. For example: greenmirrorbymyshadow@email.com
angellover4u@email.com

Today I got an email from ccretmason@email.com which I thought was supposed to mean "Secret Mason" but I was disappointed to find it was the email address of someone named named Charles Cretmason.

[actual names/emails changed]

[Via Tim] Best viewed full screen.


Reminds me of the aquarium in Animal Crossing. Except, you know, real.

[I haven't played in a while, hence the bed head]

Today at work there was a couple that couldn't decide which one bedroom apartment they liked even though the two were pretty drastically different. Guy went into it liking Apt A but now liked B better. Girl went into it liking B better but now liked A.

So I joked that they should just flip a coin.

And now, thanks to a penny coming up tails, their apartment is chosen. I've had people choose apartments by very complicated spreadsheets, but never by the flip of a coin. It was kind of awesome.

The awesome goons over at Something Awful made another round of up weird D&D 1st edition stuff (NSFW). They're from a book of magical items that serve mostly mundane tasks. Some of them I can see being useful like the monster that is repurposed (unadvisedly so) to sterilize dishes since it's so good at dissolving all organic matter: You could write an adventure where the monster gets out, wreaks havoc, etc etc etc.

This invention, however, is just weird.



Did they really have to draw the skeleton holding up a bra? Did they? And check out the goofy grin on the skeleton at right.

Other inventions include such anachronisms as ATMs and boom boxes (accomplished via magic instead of electronics). Not sure who would approve this book or decide it belonged in D&D.

[more]

So they just did this with Pizza Hut becoming The Hut, but apparently the word on the street is that Radio Shack is becoming The Shack.

If you didn't like my Loveshack joke, feel free to write you own secondary joke in which you compare it to this best selling book.

Some Michigan credit unions came up with a clever way to get people to save: a lottery! But rather than taking all your money like a normal lottery, you enter this lottery by buying a Certificate of Deposity (i.e. saving money) for a chance at earning more money. It's already lead to $3.1 million in new deposits

More info over on The Consumerist article

In checking out the Sunday Sweets (i.e. good cakes) section on Cake Wrecks today, I have to say that I'm really impressed that someone could take a 2d drawing and turn it into a 3d cake.

Last week I played magic and went 0-4 in matches with my old deck. I retired that deck and tried to make a deck from cards I had that was cheap to build yet good and so I made a Monowhite/Blackwhite deck. Today I played in the Magic Tournament at the game store, went 3-1 and qualified for the top 4. We split the prize pool and each walked away with $16.25. It was nice to play a fun deck (that I didn't just steal off the internet) that also could win for a change.

AND THERE IS ONLY ONE LEFT IN STOCK! Info straight from the amazon listing:

"This story is about a young African American boy named AJ McCater, who is struggling with the horrible stories his grandmother has been telling him about "The White Man". She consistently tells him that the "white man" is the cause of all struggles in life, because white people had stolen people's land for years. Since AJ's father has left him and his mother, the young boy and his mother have to move in with Grandma Eddie Mae, who lives in a bad neighborhood. The boy becomes distraught seeing that he has no last name, no house, no father, and is in a bad neighborhood with his grandmother and mother. The plot thickens when his mother gets pregnant and moves her white boyfriend in the home. The boyfriend wants to marry the mother, and this brings joy to the African American boy, who now sees he will have a last name, a house, a father, and a new baby sister. Unfortunately, his new dad is shot in a drive-by, and needs a heart transplant. Will he get it? If so, from whom? The donor will shock you. You'll have to read the book to find out! "

All this in a children's book that is just 26 short pages. Even a drive by!

And in books-that-aren't-on-amazon news we have dragons with guns


All book finding credits go to Judge a Book by its Cover.

[more]

Karen and I went and saw 500 Days of Summer and they played this trailer before it. Even if I wanted to see The Time Traveler's Wife, I now wouldn't have to because I have seen the entire movie in 2 minutes 28 seconds


There are certain things that movie trailers need to stop doing [Cracked Article], and I think the thing that's the worst is giving the whole movie away. As the linked article points out, the trailer for cast away includes a scene showing
1) The plane crash
2) The things he accomplishes on the island
3) Someone on the rescue plaen later saying "You've been lost for four years"
4) The reunion with the woman he left
5) The last shot of the entire move


Given this trailer you would think that this movie is about what happens when you're gone for four years and then how you deal with everything that has changed. If that's what you were there for, you'd be sitting there in your seat saying "Alright! Here we go! Here comes the conflict I've been waiting for!" and instead, here would come the credits.

Runway at the Gibraltar Airport