unique and interesting: January 2008

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The Great Flood Of 1953

Today, 55 years ago, we the Dutch were once again confronted with the power of the sea. The colossal disaster happened on February the 1st 1953. It was to be one of the biggest floods in the history of the Netherlands.

A combination of spring tide and a mighty storm made the water surge over the dikes. 1,835 People drowned, 46,000 houses were damaged and 322,500 acres of land flooded.

What factors influenced the flood, where did the flood damage occur, and what was the scope of the flood?

(via Funnymos)

KesselsKramer

KesselsKramer is a Dutch 'Communication Bureau.' Founded in 1996 by Erik Kessels and Johan Kramer, they are known for the alternative way they make advertisements.

KesselsKramer's home page changes every time you refresh it.

(via AdFreak)

While design of heavy pickup trucks is intended for transporting large objects in construction work, the main appeal of a Hummer is that it looks big and dominant. The Hummer brand is all about strength and capability, but for some reason the smaller and less capable the Hummer, the better it sells.

That's probably why Italian designer Oberdan Bezzi penned the Hummer H2 450 scooter. Although I admire Bezzi's drawing skills, this is just an ugly moped.

Bumllionaire gives you the chance to put a real bum on the next Forbes Richest People List only with a little help of the Internet. According to the Internet World Stats there are 1 billion online users.

If each of them gives 1 single dollar we can see Mr. Guy Ritchie - a real Bum - on next year's Forbes Magazine Billionaires List.

(thanks Angus)

Improve Your 'Hunched Over The PC' Posture

One of the most neglected aspects of our health is our posture. Amongst all the guidelines on healthy eating and workout methods, this essential facet of our well-being is often overlooked.

Posture provides the foundation for a balanced workout, deeper breathing, effective digestion and efficient functioning of organs. Improving your posture will benefit your overall health.

Take a look at six core stretches that will increase your flexibility from head to toe.

Safe And White

From Inventor Spot:

We all know the usual Valentine's Day suspects: roses, chocolates, lingerie. These are the boring basics that will guarantee your special someone will at least be satisfied, but hardly surprised on the most romantic day of the year.

If you are looking for a gift that is a little out there, a gift that is truly unique, take your cue from these Valentine's Day presents that are sure to surprise your mate and at least get your brownie points for creativity. Heres 8 Unusual Valentine's Day Gifts to Get Your Mate Hot... or Bothered.

Restless Mind Syndrome

Do you have trouble paying attention? Can't focus on multiple tasks? You might have Restless Mind Syndrome. But there's a solution to your problem.

Funny marketing video for the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen.

(thanks Karen)

Montage-A-Google

Montage-a-Google is a simple web-based app that uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords entered by the user. Not only an interesting way of browsing the net, it can also be used to create desktop pictures or even posters.

I typed in 'presurfer blog' and this is what I got:

The Number 23 Frequency Enigma

The letter W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet. The symbol for that letter is two points down and three points up (23).

The first landing on the Moon was in the Sea of Tranquility, 23.63 degrees East. Second landing was in the Ocean of Storms, 23.42 degrees West. Notice the names of the picked sights and how they contrast. Note: First two landings were Apollo 11 and 12 (11 + 12= 23). Just exactly what does NASA know?

The first song on Side A of the Beatles first album took 23 takes to record.

In one episode of the X-Files, Agent Mulder goes to the apartment of a recently deceased man and we see the number 23 on the door as he is let in.

More of this nonsense at The Number 23 Frequency Enigma.

Today, high school students want to make the ride to the prom something they - and their friends - will always remember.

Just like today, a bottle of vodka was a very common thing a hundred years ago at a regular Russian party.

(via Grow-A-Brain)

Linkdump

60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites

100 Photoshop Tutorials

Sick Words

Consumer Tips for Salt Use

The Minimalist's Guide to Simple Housework

Puppy Vs. Roboquad

An epic battle for territorial domination.

(via Optical Poptitude)

Casino carpets are usually an exercise in deliberate bad taste that somehow encourages people to gamble. In a strange way, though, they are sublime works of art, rivalling any expressionist canvas of the past century.

Note the regal tones of Caesars Palace, the bountiful bouquet of Mandalay Place, the soft, almost abstract pointilism of Paris, all whispering, 'gamble, gamble' just out of the range of consciousness as people walk to the nearest slot machine.

Google Maps Street View

Google Maps Street View is a fun thing to play around with.
But don't take a turn down the wrong street.

(thanks Barbara)

Take a look inside the brains of mice on drugs. Every drug of abuse has its own unique molecular mechanism. You'll learn how these various drugs disrupt the synapse to make the user feel 'high.'

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

Only in Russia.

We at the Church of Google believe the search engine Google is the closest humankind has ever come to directly experiencing an actual God. We believe there is much more evidence in favor of Google's divinity than there is for the divinity of other more traditional gods.

We reject supernatural gods on the notion they are not scientifically provable. Thus, Googlists believe Google should rightfully be given the title of 'God,' as She exhibits a great many of the characteristics traditionally associated with such Deities in a scientifically provable manner.

Artist Or Ape?

You will see 6 images. Some of the images displayed are masterpieces of abstract art, created by great artists. The rest were painted by an ape.
Can you tell which is which?

I scored 83%.

(via Nag on the Lake)

The History of Visual Communication attempts to walk you through the long and diverse history of a particular aspect of human endeavour: The translation of ideas, stories and concepts that are largely textual and/or word based into a visual format, i.e. visual communication.

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic showed off models of a spaceship it hopes will take spacetravel mainstream. Trips will initially cost about $200,000 but will eventually go down in price.

Virgin Galactic web site.

A pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by blowing air through a series of hollow tubes controlled by keyboards. Pipe organs are distinguished from reed organs, in which air causes thin strips of metal to vibrate.

They are also distinguished from electronic organs that use electrical devices to produce sounds similar to pipe organs. The large pipe organs used in public buildings are by far the biggest and most complicated musical instruments ever built.

(via Ursi's Blog)

Top 20 Things That Look Like Other Things

Is this a picture of an elephant drinking water?
Or is it a rock?

Top 20 Things That Look Like Other Things.

Kolmanskop (or Kolmannskuppe) is a ghost town in southern Namibia, Africa. It developed after the discovery of diamonds in the area in 1908, to provide shelter for workers from the harsh environment of the Namib Desert. The village was built like a German town, with facilities like a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theater and sport-hall, casino, and ice factory.

Kolmanskop declined after World War I as diamond prices crashed. It was abandoned in 1956 but has since been partly restored. The geological forces of the desert mean that tourists can now walk through houses knee-deep in sand.

Take a deep breath before you try swimming a lap in the swimming pool at the San Alfonso del Mar resort in Chile. It is more than 1,000 yards long, covers 20 acres, had a 115ft deep end and holds 66 million gallons of water.

You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web.

Within minutes a small army of bots will get the word out to anyone remotely interested, from fellow bloggers to corporate marketers.

The Model Of A Psychopharmacologist

(via Everlasting Blort)

Beautiful drawings by Zindy Nielsen from Denmark.

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: Stop Having Views!

click on the picture for real size

Postboxes and cheese are two of the most commonly confused items in the world, ever. Can you tell the subtle differences?

Take this Postbox or Cheese test to find out.
I scored 12 out of 16.

This is not about Andy Warhol who, in 1963, said about his way of working: 'I'm painting this way because I want to be a machine.' It is also not about the song 'I Want To Be A Machine' by Ultravox.

This is something made by by Angelo Plessas.
Use your mouse. I think it's art.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Politics And Castles

The online version of The Wall Street Journal has a strange way of discovering related blog posts about their articles.

I do not always check my statistics so it was only yesterday that I noticed that in the past days some visitors to The Presurfer were coming from The Wall Street Journal. I checked it out and found an article about 'Ron Paul and Foreign Policy.'

At the bottom of the page they publish 'Blog Posts About This Topic.' To my surprise I found this:

I really don't know how that got there. How can a post about beautiful castles have anything to do with Ron Paul and his foreign policy?

Linkdump

The Ultimate Student Resource List

Five Myths on Leasing a Car

Solar System Exploration

The Secret Museum of Mankind

Always wanted to know what the offices of Twitter, Digg, Flickr, or Facebook looked like. Here's how.

Name That Disease

Are you a Christian Troy, a Cliff Huxtable, Perry Cox, Hawkeye Pierce, or a Doogie Howser? Find out how much you know about about diseases.

I'm Hawkeye Pierce.

(via Miss Cellania)

Engrish

Does your frying pan fall apart from old age? Throw it away! Do not use mental tools for prolonging the life of the pan.

Engrish refers to grammatically incorrect variations of English, often found in East Asian countries. While the term may refer to spoken English, it is more often used to describe written English, for which problems are easier to identify and publicize.

Am I Awesome?

This morning I asked myself 'Am I awesome?'
The answer is 'Yes.'

Are you awesome?

Hitchhiker

A short digital animation by Simon Reeves.

(via Ehrensenf)

Male Angels and DOING this Internet Site now for a Year.

This is what TED has AGREED to DO for a Year what are Male Angels what did NOT do WEVILD Earth DUTY and are NOT wanting to tell you and will tell you this … this was MAJORITY were CONSCRPTED and did NOT in slightest even want to do it even voluntarily!

Many claims have been made with regard to where spectacles originated. Both China and India have their advocates, but the best evidence is that they reached these countries from Europe via circuitous routes.

Pliny wrote of Nero viewing gladiatorial events zmaragdo, that is, through beryl, one of a family of transparent green precious stones of which emerald is another. The word beryl has lived on in my language. In the Netherlands we call spectacles a 'bril.'

The Jedi Church is dedicated to the doctrines of the Jedi force religion. The Jedi religion believes there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together, and accepts all races and species from all over the universe as potential members of the religion.

The Jedi Church has no official doctrine. The church recognizes that all people have an innate knowledge of what is right and wrong, and the Jedi Church celebrates this like no other religion.

Cookthink

What am I craving? That's the question we always ask ourselves when thinking about what to eat. So, wouldn't it be cool to have a tool that could listen to what we were craving and then suggest something good to cook?

Cookthink is that tool. To find a recipe based on what you're craving, tell Cookthink what you want, choose ingredients, what kind of cuisine you want and what mood you're in.

For ingredient I chose fish, for dish I chose omelet, for cuisene I decided on Latin-American and for mood sophisticated. Cookthink suggested I try fish tacos with avocado, feta and cabbage.

Do's And Don'ts With Babies.

(via Neatorama)

Will $10 be enough to the airport? With World Taximeter you don't have to guess, you'll know it.

World Taximeter gives you an estimate of the cost of a taxi ride in cities worldwide. Currently only Barcelona, London, Madrid, New York, Prague, Rome and San Francisco are supported.

For example, what would a taxi ride from John F. Kennedy Int. Airport to Penn Station in New York cost? The duration would be 45 minutes and the estimated fare $45.00.

Dan Liebert, the Verbal Cartoonist.

10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong

Why do we fear snakes but not cars? Why do we speed up when we put our seat belts on? Why do we love sunlight but fear nuclear power? Our brains are terrible at assessing modern risks. Here's how to think straight about dangers in your midst.

10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong.

In an interesting little twist, it seems that flight planning software and GPS receivers are showing Area 51 as an airport with the call sign KXTA.

To boot, the Jeppesen FliteStar'' flight-planning program and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Real-Time Flight Planner identify KXTA as Homey Airport.

The IAI EL/M-2075 Phalcon is an Airborne Early Warning and Control radar system in use by a number of countries to give intelligence to maintain air superiority and conduct surveillance. It was developed with a partnership between Israeli Aircraft Industries and Elta Electronics Industries, of Israel.

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

Pedro And Frankensheep

A crazy guinea pig scientist and his cyborg pet sheep in a sleep related adventure. A short animation from The Brothers McLeod.

Cluttered Desk

Cluttered Desk.

(via Grow-A-Brain)

Tasha Maltby is Dani Graves' girlfriend. She describes herself as a human pet - and she is happy to walk around on a leash. She is used to odd looks and even odder remarks.

But nothing had prepared her for the reaction of the bus driver who allegedly told the self-styled Goth and her boyfriend: 'We don't let freaks and dogs like you on.'

John St.Claire is a genius.

He invented a training system which enables a human being to acquire sufficient hyperspace energy in order to pull the body out of dimension so that the person can walk through solid objects such as wooden doors.

The Business Of Death

Throughout the developed world the business surrounding death has often been an uneasy topic of discussion.

Originating in the mid-19th Century, the modern funeral has evolved into an economic and cultural monster, with a vast network of supporting industries and myriad options for your earthly remains.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Italian artist Maurizio Savini uses a strange material for his creations - pink chewing gum or as it's called in Italy 'American gum.'

The sensual act of chewing, the voluptuous warmth of rebelling saliva, the artificial and secretly aseptic fragrance which spreads from the mouth as a promise and missed kiss.

The synthetic fleshliness of the pink color, the obsessive square shape of the product unwrapped and ready to be shred to pieces by the power of the tongue, all compete in crashing on the senses.

EveryBlock

'What's happening in my neighborhood?' For a long time, that's been a tough question to answer. In dense, bustling cities the number of daily media reports, government proceedings and local Internet conversations is staggering, but who has time to sort through all of that?

EveryBlock will solve that problem. EveryBlock collects all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. At the moment EveryBlock is only available in three American cities: Chicago, New York and San Francisco. On each site, you can type in any address to read local news and public information near you.

Twenty-five of the most intriguing castles in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North America, and from around the world. The oldest castle is being restored in Iran after an earthquake destroyed eighty percent of its buildings. The newest castle was built during this century on a stretch of private land on the Sinai coast.

Top 25 Most Beautiful Castles in the World.

Windows of the World is a miniature world amusement park in Shenzhen, in the Guangdong province in China. Juergen of Random Good Stuff just visited the amusement park and made some beautiful pictures.

Windows of the World.
Windows of the World II.

13 Time-Lapse Wonders

Time-lapse is a cinematography technique whereby each film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing.

13 Time-Lapse Wonders.

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

No More LOL

No More LOL has been established to abolish the ever-present lie that is LOL. Over the past decade it has become increasingly obvious that countless web users are misrepresenting themselves by typing LOL when they are not actually laughing out loud.

The National Acronym Monitoring Board of Linguistic Anomalies has begun to crack down on 'False Lolling' which is a class G felony punishable by permanent IP banning and in rare cases death by pwnage. To help LOL addicts curb their deceptive temptation the National Acronym Monitoring Board of Linguistic Anomalies has implemented a new acronym that is more accurate while at the same time poignant and conveniently recognizable.

Mass Attack is an addictive little game. The scales will start out uneven. Hold down the mouse to grow a new weight. Release the mouse to drop it. Attempt to balance the scales. You can drop weights on either scale.

What's Your Best Quality?

Want to know what your best quality is? Want to know what makes people like you?
Then you need to take the 'What's your best quality?' quiz and find out.

You might think you know why people like you but you are going to have to take this quiz to find out. There are six different quality results, find out which is your best.

My results:

(via Cyn)

Linkdump

10 Tips for Improving Posture and Ergonomics

How to Lose a Geek in 10 Seconds

21 Money-Saving Sites from Around the Web

The History of Salt

29 Brilliant Music Videos

What do you do when you love your car so much you can't sell it even when it's actually too old to drive around? You cut it in half and install it in your apartment.

Laura Splan is a New York based mixed media artist. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of California, where she originally studied Biological Sciences. She received her Master of Fine Art in Sculpture from Mills College in Oakland, CA.

Her conceptually driven work employs a variety of materials and processes that usually have a feminine sensibility about them. Unsettling scientific and medical imagery are foiled by more comfortable domestic imagery and craft processes.

The legend of Saint Guinefort concerns a greyhound said to have lived in mid-13th century France. Dogs in feudal times were often highly-prized, especially hunting-dogs. They were also a source of warmth on the baronial bed during cold nights in unheated, cavernous and draughty stone castles.

(via corsinet)

Christina Billings For President

Princess Christina Gerasimos Billings-Elias born to be President of 'Our America.' The Chosen One, as proclaimed by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, friends of Theodore and Evelyn Gerasimos, first Greek in Detroit 1890. People's King of the Greeks emanating from Spartan Royalty Warriors.

(thanks Jared)

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Monday, January 28, 2008

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Friday, January 25, 2008

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Monday, January 21, 2008