unique and interesting: November 2007

Friday, November 30, 2007

30 Brilliantly Timed Sports Photos

Sporting events garner so much media attention these days that you can be certain that anytime something goes wrong, someone will catch it on film.

This is a list of 30 of the most brilliant (and often hilarious) sporting photos caught on film.

Project Cartoon

You're probably familiar with the above cartoon 'How Projects Really Work.' Now you can create your own version of the cartoon by drag-and-dropping the cells, than editing the captions. You can save your cartoon and get a unique URL that you can bookmark and email.

A List Of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff

There are a large number of very helpful sites that teach you how to do things. These are do-it-yourself sites, but we're not talking about building a deck or baking a cake - the web is full of more general interest sites that give quality instruction on all sorts of fun and useful projects. Including, sometimes, how to build a deck or bake a cake.

In this useful round-up by Read/WriteWeb the focus is on such general purpose sites that include some sort of rich media instruction.

A Calorie Counter went through the nutrition facts of literally every single item from the menus of 25 popular fast food restaurants to put together a list of what ended up being the 272 Fast Food Items Highest In Calories.

Christopher Knight For School Board

This is the now-infamous 'Star Wars' commercial that was made for Christopher Knight's campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education in 2006.

It wound up being featured in The New York Times, on the Fox News Channel, every major newspaper in the state, and it was screened at the Pixelodeon Independent Video Festival at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles in June of 2007.

Top 10 Food And Drink Hacks

Do you know how to close chip bags without the clip?
Turn a CD spindle into a bagel tote?
Clean anything with vinegar?
Build a fire with chocolate and Coke?
Avoid crying while chopping onions?
Open a beer bottle with a piece of paper?

Here are 10 food and drinks hacks.

Every parent hopes their baby will attract admiring glances. But adorable as she is, Katie-Lee Webster receives attention for only one reason - her spectacular shock of ginger hair.

At only ten weeks old she already has the flowing locks of a child several times her age.

Weird doodles from British artist David Shrigley.

Outrageously Politically Incorrect Adverts

In a politically correct age, they seem like outrageous anachronisms. And there is no doubt these adverts - many taken from the first half of the last century - reveal just how much women used to be caricatured as downtrodden housewives or hair-brained office girls.

If these adverts were released today, they would surely cause a howl of protest.

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

According to the Webby Awards this is one of the most influential online videos of all time. The band 'OK GO' on the threadmill.

How It Sucks

HowItSucks.com rates products based on recent reviews from other users. The rating system is simple: the longer the red bar, the more it sucks.

From individuals to countries, we often want to persuade others to perceive things a certain way or to think a certain way. There are many standard techniques for doing this.

You can use these techniques to do your own persuading, and you can also use this knowledge to keep yourself from being fooled.

All photos in this gallery were taken within a radius of about 3 miles of our home in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, mostly one handed while hanging on to an impatient dog with the other hand.

Linkdump

The Blogger's Guide to SEO

17 Ways to Get Free Books

Bent Objects

Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas

Dada Dolls by Californian artist Elaine Benjamin. Created almost entirely of recycled elements. Click on a Dada Doll to read its own story.

Strictly No Photography is a photo-sharing site for photographs taken where you are not allowed to take them. From the inside of the Kremlin to Kensington palace, from art galleries to war zones. Here you can see everything you've ever wanted to see that you're not supposed to.

(via A Welsh View)

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Morality refers to ethical issues - principles of right and wrong conduct - as well as instances of real behaviour - the manner in which individuals comply more or less fully with such standards.

Time has a Morality Quiz which offers some of the dilemmas used to study human morality. Here's an example:

It's war time, and you're hiding in a basement with a group of other people. Enemy soldiers are approaching outside and will be drawn to any sound. If you're found, you'll all be killed immediately.

A baby hiding with you starts to cry loudly and cannot be stopped. Smothering it to death is the only way to silence it, saving the lives of everyone in the room. Could you be the one who smothered it if no one else would?

55% Said they could!

Take the Morality Quiz to see how you compare to others.

(via Neatorama)

New Way 2 Live, Grow Food, 4 Earth Citizens, All Around OUR Planet. Working 2, End All War - Clean Up OUR Earth - Create Earth Ball Homes. OUR Young Earth Citizens - Around OUR Planet Can Now Look Forward 2 the "volkswagen" of Earth Ball - Homes.

Over 20,000 Teddy Bears On The Ice

I don't know if this is a tradition with the Portland Winter Hawks, but their fans threw what was reportedly a world record 20,372 stuffed animals on the ice after what they thought was their team's first goal of the season - a goal which officials later disallowed.

(via Arbroath)

Awake to your next fire calm and refreshed with DigiPliance's Peaceful Progression Smoke Alarm. Choose the perfect way for your family to wake up - from the peaceful sounds of the rainforest, to the celebration of Dixieland jazz, or the hot pulse of the Caribbean - because a fire doesn't have to be a disaster.

No, the products aren't real. But the empty boxes are. Wrap your otherwise forgettable gift in an Onion gift box, and watch as they struggle to feign enthusiasm for a smoke detector that would probably kill them. Or take joy as their faces fall upon realizing there is no such thing as a smoke alarm that awakes them with ambient light and soothing odors - just a crappy bric-a-brac inside you waited until the last moment to buy.

(via Karlson & McKenzie)

FoodTube is like YouTube, but for food and drinks. Enter your food or drink in a search box and find a video recipe, or add your own.

The woman known as 'the voice of the Tube' on London's underground has been sacked after criticising the network and making spoof announcements including making fun of US tourists.

Emma Clarke has for the last eight years been famous as the voice warning travellers to 'Mind the Gap' between the train and the platform, and to 'stand clear of the closing doors.'

But the 36-year-old, a professional voice-over artist, annoyed her employers with a series of light-hearted spoof announcements posted on her own website, which at the moment is overwhelmed by the sheer number of people wanting to download MP3s of her spoof Tube announcements.

Dedicated to our best friends... in cone collars.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Jellyfish Aquarium

The Aquapict Jellyfish aquarium shows beautiful color-changing jellyfish swimming as they do in the deep sea, but none of them are real.

Made with highly-realistic silicone, the jellyfish swim and change color subtly with the five-color LED lighting system. They move by a slow current created in the tank that does not have an obvious flow or bubbles that make it look fake.

Lingro

Lingro is a very cool dictionary. When you enter a website's URL into the box on Lingro, a page will be created of that same website where every word is clickable.

Here's a example of The Presurfer. Click on any word to get an explanation of that word.

At the moment Lingro is available for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish.

Outrageous and Funny Signs.

Death By Booze

Find out how many of your favorite alcoholic beverages it would take to send you to a drunken grave. Look for your beverage of choice, enter your weight, select your gender, and see how much you have to drink before the alcohol kills you.

I don't drink any alcohol but if I did - let's say beer - it would take 19 bottles of good old Heineken to kill me.

How much alcohol would it take to kill you?

The Most Beautiful Periodic Table Poster.

(via Grow-A-Brain)

The Top 10 IT Disasters Of All Time

From faulty satellites nearly causing World War III to the Millennium Bug, poorly executed IT has had a lot to answer for over the years. There are plenty of recorded examples where faulty hardware and software have cost the organisations concerned dearly, both financially and in terms of reputation - and resulted in some near misses for the public.

Here's a list of some of the worst IT-related disasters and failures.

Strandbeest

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who creates what he calls 'Kinetic Sculptures,' where nature and technology meet. Essentially these sculptures are robots powered by the wind only.

The robots are made from plastic yellow tubes. One of his most famous kinetic sculptures is 'Strandbeest,' which means Beach Animal.

(thanks Stanley)

Old photographs with some paint added.
Some look nice, but a lot don't.

(via J-Walk Blog)

Every Image We Have

Over many years, a guy collected rolls of undeveloped film from cameras he found in antique stores. He finally had them developed and ended up with several hundred images that he's placed online.

It Could Be Lupus

What Makes 100%?

While 'Hard work' and 'Knowledge' will get you close, and 'Attitude' will get you there, it's the 'Bullshit' and 'Ass kissing' that will put you over the top.

What Makes 100%?

Always Green Grass Painting Company, Inc. will paint your grass a lush and beautiful natural green color during the dormant fall and winter months and during the summer months due to lack of rain, drought, over fertilization and fungus.

This means no more brown grass, no more over- seeding with winter rye, no more mowing and almost no lawn maintenance. The non-toxic grass paint can be applied to all warm weather grasses and can last up to 90 days depending on traffic.

A hairdryer shaped as an antique pistol.
Just pull the trigget to switch it on.

(via Boing Boing)

Wooden Car

Vasily Lazarenko, an Ukrainian man, gave up his job, sold his two other vehicles and spent one and a half years in his garage to create his dream vehicle. His literally half-modern, half-retro car has a wooden body made of thousands of oak parts.

Think of your favorite teddy bear. Now imagine it's been ripped open, gutted, and turned inside-out.

That's what Kent Rogowski's Bears series has done to the iconic stuffed animals of our childhoods.

(thanks Stanley)

Home Schooled

Home Schooled is a comics series by American artist Ash Jackson.
Co-writing by Silas Jackson.
The Presurfer will feature a Home Schooled cartoon every Monday. This is an absolute exclusive cooperation between The Presurfer and Ash Jackson.

Home Schooled is more or less a reflection of the wacky and occasionally interesting adventures of the artist, Ash Jackson, himself, with the aid of his friends, family, and other cohorts.

Title: There Must Have Been Some Magic In That Old Silk Hat They Found.

click on the picture for real size

721 Claps Per Minute

Happy clapper Kent French, record holder for most claps per minute.

Mayor Ken Williams of Centerton, Arkansas, resigned last week claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.

He said he has been living under an assumed name for nearly 30 years. He had been mayor since 2001.

Williams told authorities he was born Don LaRose and that in the mid-1970s, he was a preacher in Indiana.
He said he was abducted and brainwashed into forgetting all about his life as Don LaRose.

Read all about this 'weird and amazing' story at Don LaRose's home page.

Fake magazine covers with your picture.
Upload any picture to create your own cover.

(via Ursi's Blog)

Nerd Scholarship

The only online, micropayment-based scholarship for all lower middle class white males named David who are right-handed, hold a B-average, aren't handicapped, have parents with some college, are proficient at video games, are or were at some point Mormon, use Linux, were born in Mississippi, have no athletic ability, have a fear of public speaking, graduated from Cyprus High, have brown eyes, worked at some point for Cox Communications, and are now currently studying computer science at Georgia Tech.

Nerd Scholarship.

How To Change Scarlett Johansson Into A Zombie

Chinese master potter Wu Ruishen has created a mini functional teapot weighing just 1.4 grams.

(via Neatorama)

Professional Farters

A flatulist, fartist, or professional farter is a performer who receives payment for farting in an amusing and/or musical manner. A Damn Interesting article on Joseph Pujol, better known as Le Petomane.

Note: the picture above is not of a professional farter.

Super Parking Skill

Can you park your 457 cm long car in a 480 cm tight spot?
This Korean guy can. He does it every day.

(via UniqueDaily)

From the realization of powered flight by an obscure Bavarian emigrant to the weapons of aerial destruction used by Richthofen's flying circus, the Early Aviation Image Archive attempts to archive vintage photographs of flying machines flown before and during the first two decades of the 20th century.

An Angry-Gram is the perfect way to let someone know they totally do your head in. Tell the Angry-Gram who they are and why they wind you up. A screaming 3-Pepper Angus, the Angry Whopper, will be send to them and really let them have it.

Here's an example of an Angry-Gram.

Make your own Angry-Gram.

(via Ursi's Blog)

Linkdump

Interesting Web Browsers

Sunrise and Sunset Scenes of the World

Dollars In Context

Turning Apples into Art

Scattered throughout the world, there are a small handful of castles made by non-architects, constructed without a team of workers, and with very little money. These castles were built by a single person, with occasional help from family members or friends.

Raised rock by rock from the ground, these castles are the result of unfaltering vision, pure will, and a lifetime effort to make literal the phrase 'a man's home is his castle.'

Here are the 15 best self built castles in the world.

The Expandable Table

Can You Grow Cress In A Keyboard?

Yes, you can!

The Worst Studio Session Ever

Spence Peppard's dream has always been to become a 'Hardcore Country' singer.

Jester, The Online Joke Recommender

Jester uses a collaborative filtering algorithm called Eigentaste to recommend jokes to you based on your ratings of previous jokes. You'll be given a set of 8 jokes to rate. After that, Jester will begin recommending jokes that have been personalized to your tastes.

Note: Some of the jokes in the database may be considered by some to be offensive. If you are likely to be offended by mild ethnic, sexist, or religious jokes, please do not continue.

Food combines with each other when they have major flavour components in common. A list was made of 250 food products each with their major flavour components. By comparing the flavour of each food product eg strawberry with the rest of the food and their flavours, new combinations like strawberry with peas can be made.

The way to use it, is just to select a food product like strawberries. You will get a plot where you have strawberry in the middle surrounded by other food products. Take one of those other food products and try to make a new recipe by combining those two. The more flavours food products have in common the shorter the distance between the food products.

A 'What If...'picture.
New York City Decay.

Wowio

Wowio is a new kind of online bookstore that enables readers to download ebooks for free, using commercial sponsorships to compensate authors and publishers. Readers get free ebooks. Sponsors get a powerful new channel to communicate their message to precisely the people they want to reach.

Readers have access to a wide range of offerings, including works of classic literature, college textbooks, comic books, and popular fiction and non-fiction titles. You have to create an account to download the ebooks for free. For now, Wowio is only available to people living in the United States.

(thanks RJ)

Highest Fountain In The World

With 312 meters, the King Fahd's fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is the highest fountain in the world. As an extra in the video, you also get to see the world's smallest Qur'an.

When you know what something looks like but not what it's called, or when you know the word but can't picture the object, The Visual Dictionary has the answer. In a quick look, you can match the word to the image.

The Visual Dictionary is designed to help you find the right word at a glance. Filled with stunning illustrations labeled with accurate terminology in up to six languages, it is the ideal language-learning and vocabulary dictionary for use at school, at home or at work.

Angeling Around is a clock.
But a very special one.

The Knitting Drummer

Corey Fogel is The Knitting Drummer.

Color Changing Paint?

Scientists have developed a new form of auto paint that changes color with the touch of a button. This revolutionary new paramagnetic paint is a technical wonder and is viewed by Nissan and other auto companies as an amazing innovation that would draw huge traffic to dealerships and will make it easier for consumers to get the exact option level they want on a car without the sacrifice of their favorite color.

This article appeared on NextEnergyNews.com around November 6. Turns out Nissan has no idea where this current web urban legend originated from and they confirmed that they aren't developing color changing paint.

Read the whole story at Young Go Getter.

(via Optical Poptitude)

Archaeologists unveiled an underground grotto believed to have been revered by ancient Romans as the place where a wolf nursed the city's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.

Decorated with seashells and colored marble, the vaulted sanctuary is buried 52 feet inside the Palatine hill, the palatial center of power in imperial Rome.

The archaeologists are convinced that they have found the place of worship where Romans believed a she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god of war Mars who were abandoned in a basket and left adrift on the Tiber.

A Flickr photoset of 'The End' scenes in different languages taken from television.

(via Doobybrain)

List Of Oxymora

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two usually contradictory terms in a compressed paradox, as in the word 'bittersweet' or the phrase 'living death.'

Other examples are: clearly misunderstood, random pattern, true fiction, deliberate mistake, and harmless crime.

A List of Oxymora.

The world's steepest, shortest, narrowest streets and strange road names.

Peculiar Streets Around the World.

The Los Angeles Auto Show usually brings some of the most amazing designs in the auto industry.
This year the Design Challenge competition was centered around the theme 'Robocar 2057.' Of course, with a theme like that, a lot of imagination was used.

(via InventorSpot)

Virtual Reality In A Shoe

A panoramic image from inside a shoe.

Did you have to look twice at the picture above before you knew what you were looking at? I did.

They are geese, crowded together in their open-air enclosure on a farm in Kuhhorst, Germany. The animals will be the centerpieces at the dinner table for the upcoming Christmas holidays.

Imagine a tree that will meet all your nutritional needs, take care of you medicinally, and purify your water for you. This tree actually exists.

For centuries indigenous people in northern India and many parts of Africa have known the many benefits of Moringa oleifera. Its uses are as unique as the many names it is known by, such as clarifier tree, horseradish tree, drumstick tree and in East Africa it has the alias 'mother's best friend.'

I/O Brush

I/O Brush is a drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by 'picking up' and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside.

Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special 'ink' they just picked up from their immediate environment.

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

John Lytle Wilson's paintings stem from his interest in the power of images. He chooses animal and robot imagery as stand-ins for traditional human subject matter.

The art of John Lytle Wilson.

(thanks David)

Butter it's Not!, Could it be Butter?,
What, not butter!, Unbelievable, this is not butter,
Move Over Butter, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

(via Grow-A-Brain)

Europe United

Europe United is a new music video for Samsung Mobile. SX Media went to 10 different European cities; London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Prague, Ibiza, Barcelona, Moscow, Edinburgh and Galway and got regular people to dancing in the street.

Crossing the desert on the back of a dog, or searching for lost treasures on the bottom of the ocean. Jan von Holleben's photographs allow children to make their dreams come true.

Inspired by classic childhood books as well as modern superheroes, he produces 'Dreams of Flying' with children from his local neighbourhood in Germany.

Condition 1 Weather

McMurdo Station in Antartica is a science research center operated by the United States. The weather at McMurdo Station is classified as being Condition 3 (nice weather), Condition 2 (not so nice), or Condition 1.
Take a look at the video to see what Condition 1 is.

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

Strap the Chewbacca Plush Backpack to your back and he'll be carrying your books in style. His arms wrap around you to let you know he's secure - even his legs will secure around your abdomen, for some extra cuddly fun.

Pages - Menu

Friday, November 30, 2007

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Monday, November 26, 2007

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Monday, November 19, 2007