unique and interesting: February 2008

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Queen Victoria In Sydney

Sizable crowds turned out last Sunday to see the new Cunard liner Queen Victoria on her first visit to Sydney. Take a look at this beautiful panoramic picture from photographer Peter Murphy.

(via Ursi's Blog)

How Not To Tow A Car

(via Arbroath)

Linkdump

Maze Design

Easy Ways to Improve Your Vision

Top 10 Do It Yourself Car Hacks

Demons A to Z

Ready Kids

Ready Kids is a tool to help parents and teachers educate children in grades 4-5 about emergencies and how they can help get their family prepared. Ready Kids is part of the U.S. Deparment of Homeland Security's Ready campaign.

It's a national public service advertising campaign designed to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to natural disasters, potential terrorist attacks and other emergencies. The Ready Kids web site features age-appropriate, step-by-step instructions on what families can do to be better prepared and the role kids can play in this effort.

100 Weird Facts About The Human Body

* The higher your I.Q. the more you dream.
* The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger.
* During your lifetime, you will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools.
* Babies are always born with blue eyes.
* After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.
* The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.

100 Weird Facts About the Human Body.

The Two-Fork Toothpick Trick

This streaming video shows a fun trick that you can use to impress your friends. But can you explain how it works?

(via Miss Cellania)

Friends, Romans, celebrants - lend me your ears. Are you sick of counting all those passing years the conventional way? Slow the chariot down and start counting the Roman way.

Roman Candles are easy and fun, and doesn't 'L' look a lot better than '50'? Party like it's MMVIII.

(via Optical Poptitude)

unFortunate is the only place where you can view, create, share, and print your own fortunes.

(via Michelle's Mental Clutter)

Hollywood Stars

Hollywood Stars.

According to the Soda Museum in Missouri, this formula appears to be the original formula to Coca-Cola.

(via Reality Carnival Unleashed)

25 Of The Most Ridiculous Popular Diets

Some people will do anything to lose weight, even if it means defying common sense and nutrition. But just because your best friend's cousin lost 20 pounds by drinking hot-peppered lemonade doesn't mean you should do the same.

These 25 diets are not only ridiculous, they're ineffective and even dangerous.

Morph Concept

Morph is a concept developed by Nokia demonstrating some of the possibilities nanotechnologies might enable in future communication devices. Morph is a flexible two-piece device that can adapt its shape to different use modes.

More about the Morph concept.

Linkdump

Barbie Tarot

101 New Uses for Everyday Things

How to Increase Your Metabolism

Do You Know Caffeine?

How to Draw an Impossible Triangle

Chris Harne began collecting condiment packets in November of 2003. He discovered how many different condiment packets existed. A collector by nature, the only logical thing for him to do was attempt to get every different packet design he possibly could.

The Condiment Packet Gallery.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Meet Jon Arbuckle. Let's laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

In most refrigerators, you don't come across living things. Except maybe some yoghurt or a spot of mould. But open up Shirley Neely's two fridges and you'll find them teeming with life.

On every shelf, wrapped in tea towels, are slumbering tortoises. The smaller ones are snuggled up in a biscuit tin, but the bigger fellows are laid out side-by-side in their makeshift sleeping bags.

30 Of The Most Creative Bookshelves

A collection of the most creative bookshelf designs.

Can a bank make people happy? Bankwest of Australia will be undertaking a number of experiments in happy banking to find out. As part of their research so far, they discovered that kittens can make people happy by reducing stress levels.

To test this theory, they've made a video featuring kittens, a ukelele and you. Type in your name, your gender and click 'begin.'

(thanks Peter)

With the Hair Particle Drawing Generator you can create your own Hairy Drawings. Images with good contrast work best, and there are some rudimentary controls that allow you to lighten lights, darken darks and bump contrast.

You can press the load image button which will allow you to copy and paste the url of any image on the internet to create a hair particle drawing of. Be patient the hair may take several minutes to grow into a recognizable image.

Parents who can't let go of their dancing days a new breed of disco is emerging - where mums, dads and toddlers come together to boogie.

Baby Loves Disco is a family event. There is no structure, just plenty of environment, atmosphere and healthy snacks. There is music spun by the DJ with bubbles floating over the the dance floor to get the mamas, papas and little ones moving.

There are egg shakers, play scarves and a chill-out space with pillows, stuffed animals, books and toys and puzzles. There are balloons to enjoy and take home as well as the snacks for both kids and adults, plus the bar is open for non-driving adults.

Yahoo! announced it has given serious consideration to the $44.6 billion purchase offer from Microsoft Corporation. However, the Yahoo! Board of Directors has determined it would be more beneficial to both parties if Yahoo! instead purchased Microsoft for $44.7 billion to form Yahoocrosoft!

The deal would pay Microsoft stockholders $4.80 per share, also conveniently redeemable as a voucher for one month of GeoCities Plus dial-up Internet access.

Yes, winds have names. Like the Haboob, a strong wind in the northern and central part of Sudan. Or the Warm Braw, a wind in the Schouten Islands north of New Guinea.

The Brickfielder is a wind from the desert in Southern Australia. And the Coromell is a night land breeze prevailing from November to May at La Paz, near the southern extremity of the Gulf of California.

Names of Winds.

(via Information Junk)

They say a man's home is his castle but sometimes it seems that anything goes. Check out some of the fruitcake houses people call home.

The Splinter is a graduate project for some students at North Carolina State University and is the vision of industrial design student Joe Harmon.

The Splinter will be 600-hp with wood used for the chassis, body, and parts of the suspension and wheels. The car is powered by a twin-supercharged Northstar V8.

(via Inventor Spot)

The Infinite Oz. An artistic collaboration that brings to life the world of the sci-fi miniseries event, Tin Man.

(via Everlasting Blort)

The skyscrapers looked more imposing, somehow, in the black-and-white photographs from the bygone era.

Perhaps it's the absence of reflective glass facades with their false sky intervals, and over-abundance of bland stone walls. Either way, New York of the 20s to 60s period is a very special place indeed.

The Spongebob Digital Thermometer plays the 'SpongeBob SquarePants Theme' at the end of temperature taking. Nice!

(thanks Beth)

Dr. Seuss' books have a wide range of colors on the bindings. Here's a picture of a Dr. Seuss collection in their proper color spectrum order.

(thanks Chad)

TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922.

Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.

Morning Glories

This movie shows the extreme nutational movements of Morning Glory vines. Climbing vines need to find a suitable support on which to grow. This movie shows three morning glory plants at the stage where they have just begun 'looking' for a support to climb. The images were captured at 10 min intervals.

(via Neatorama)

Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.

Want a quick shine on your shoes? Take the inside of the banana skin, and rub directly on the shoe. Finish with dry cloth.

20 fascinating facts about the natural healing power of bananas.

Food Blog Search is a custom built search engine specifically for searching food blogs. It uses Google technology, through the Google Custom Search Engine program.

Food Blog Search searches over a thousand hand-selected, high quality food blogs. More and more food blogs are added to the list of sites searched every day.

The Presurfer Is Your New Bicycle

Keep on clicking to see what The Presurfer has done for you.

Who's Your Daddy? is one of 41 hilarious Science Fair experiments.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Windmill Accident

A windmill in Hornslet near Aarhus, Denmark, got out of control during a storm.

(via Hoempa!)

Darwin Dating

In order to join Darwin Dating, you cannot have nerdy glasses, mullets, disproportionately large ears, teeth that aren't white, wobbly upper arms, or hairy feet. Yes, Darwin Dating is for beautiful people only.

Are you sick of dating websites filled with ugly, unattractive, desperate fatsos? Darwin Dating was created exclusively for beautiful, desirable people. Our strict rules and natural selection process ensures all our members have winning looks.

Imagine a vehicle that runs on air, achieves over 100 gas-equivalent mpg and over 90 mph, has zero to low C02 emissions, seats six, has plenty of space for luggage, cuts no safety corners, and costs no more than an average economy to mid-size vehicle.

This is the expected performance of the revolutionary 'Air Car' that Zero Pollution Motors is introducing to North America.
The 'Air Car' project is headed by French inventor and Formula One race car engineer, Guy Negre.

How does your umbrella hold up in windy conditions? Are you tired of you umbrella inverting and breaking all the time? Introducing Nubrella, the ultimate weather protector. Nubrella is no ordinary umbrella, it stops rain, wind, snow and extreme cold, and keeps your head, face and shoulders drier than ever.

Nubrella went one step further and is changing the game forever. With Nubrella's new patent pending 'shoulder straps' and 'offset handle' you can now be completely hands free.

We live in a working age. Our bodies and minds suffer from the toils of our occupations and 'careers'. Sadly, our day jobs consume 60%-80% of our lives. The remaining 20%-40% seems the flash by before our eyes. We do not vacation enough, we do not play enough, we do not sleep well and we neglect our loved ones. It is a horrible situation indeed.

A fake doctors note allows a not-so-sick patient to escape from certain situations. For the most part, they are meant to bring humor into their monotonous lives. It's harmless and quite rewarding. It has brought them many days of freedom and joy.

(via J-Walk Blog)

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: Cells, Friend or Foe?!

click on the picture for real size

Things For Sale David Horvitz Will Mail You

David Horvitz sells things. For example, if you give him $400 he will take a train to a desolate area with a packed lunch and sit down and read Anna Karenina. He will do this for 6-10 hours. He will repeat the same thing the following days until he has read the entire book.

He will send you documentation of this from the closest mailbox to where he does this. He'll also write the location of the mailbox on the envelope if you ever wish to go to where he will have sent it to you from.

Things For Sale David Horvitz Will Mail You.

Maywa Denki's Tsukuba Series

When crisis hits, are you going to be ready? Can loved ones rely on you when the chips are down? Will you be relying on them? Decide now whether your going to be a hero or helpless victim. Prepare yourself, physically and mentally. You have a choice.

Divorced, injured, bankrupt and overweight in the cold months of 2001, Jason Comely was tired of being a loser. He set out on a fact-finding mission to improve his health and his life, and eventually shed 80 lbs of body fat. Zero to Superhero is the end results of the author's formal studies, exhaustive research, and selfexperimentation.

Linkdump

The Atoms Family

Beautiful Caves

Why Eating a Big Mac is Cheaper than Eating a Salad

Fail Dogs

Optimus Maximus Keyboard

The Optimus Maximus is a computer keyboard with screens embedded in each button. Each key is a stand-alone display that shows the function currently assigned to it.

Engadget made a video of the Optimus Maximus keyboard in real world use with their machine running the Configurator software.

I know it's not nice to make fun of other people's names. But I couldn't resist it this time. The guy in the picture above is Storm Field. And he's a weatherman. Really, he is. Just like Dallas Raines is a weatherman. And just like Aloha Taylor is a weatherwoman.

20 Ridiculous Real Weathermen Names.

(via Weird Blogs)

The Largest Music Collection In The World

What to do if your life circumstances have changed and for some reason you are forced to sell your music collection? Put it on eBay of course and wait until someone bids US $3,002,150. Yes, that's right. Over $3,000,000.

But what you get for that amount of money is probably the largest music collection in the world. 3 Million records and 300,000 CDs containing more than 6 million song titles.

What's wrong with this merry-go-round? Try to figure it out first before going to this site to find the answer.

Some Things To Consider

Some things I read in a newsletter:

The most destructive habits are worry and assumption.
The greatest joy is giving.
The greatest loss is loss of self-respect.
The most satisfying work is helping others.
The ugliest personality trait is selfishness.
Our greatest natural resource is our youth.
The greatest problem to overcome is fear.
The most effective sleeping pill is peace of mind.
The most powerful force in life is love.
The world's most incredible computer is our brain.
The worst things to be without are hope and humor.
The deadliest weapon is the tongue.
The greatest asset is faith.
The most beautiful attire is a smile.
The most prized possession is integrity.
The most contagious spirit is enthusiasm.

The Beer Collection

Beer is a complex mixture that contains a wide variety of both low and high molecular weight carbohydrates, minerals, alcohol, trace amounts of proteins, yeast by-products, and other diverse organic compounds along with carbon dioxide.

The Molecular Expressions Beer Shots website features photomicrographs and digital images (photographs taken through an optical microscope) of the world's most famous beers. Shown here is a beer shot of one of my country's most famous export products, Heineken.

(via Das verrückte Huhn)

Wikileaks

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Wikileaks' primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Wikileaks looks like Wikipedia. Anybody can post comments to it. Whistleblowers can post documents anonymously and untraceably. Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity.

Those who provide leaked information may face severe risks, whether of political repercussions, legal sanctions or physical violence. Accordingly, sophisticated cryptographic and postal techniques are used to minimize the risks that anonymous sources face.

This weekend the winners of the 80th Academy Awards will be announced. Here is a compilation of the posters for all of the best picture winners so far.

(via Weird Blogs)

Unflattering Photos From The Campaign Trail

Their pictures have been taken thousands of times in recent months. Granted, in most of those photos the Presidential candidates put their best face forward, but here are some photos they probably wish hadn't been snapped.

Didn't you?

No?

Well, in case you did, go here.

Rogue Spy Satellite Blast

This week, a standard missile carrying a kinetic warhead was launched northwest of Hawaii from the USS Lake Eire, a Ticonderoga Class missile defense cruiser.

24 Minutes later, at 10:50, the Joint Space Operations Center at the Vandenberg Air Force base confirmed the breakup of the satellite at 153 nautical miles above the Earth from a direct hit.

Email apnea - a temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doing email.
I've just opened my email and there's nothing out of the ordinary there. It's the usual daily flood of schedule, project, travel, information, and junk mail. Then I notice. I'm holding my breath.

Are you holding your breath while reading or answering your email? You probably do.

(via Weird Blogs)

Linkdump

Top 9 Unique Structures Soon To Be Built

50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website

Movie Cars Spotted In The Wild

Why We Kiss

How to make a weird looking light bulb that works.

Historically we have sought to know the world by categorizing and classifying what we see around us. There is, however, a whole universe of easily overlooked and forgotten things that remain unclassified. Once noticed, these Very Small Objects seem to exist in every niche and corner in staggering numbers and varieties.

We encounter these very small objects every day hidden in plain sight. They fill our pockets, cabinets, and corners. They populate our environments and make our machines work. They come from our plants, our pets, and even from our own bodies.

For the viewers of Turkmenistan's popular nightly news programme, it was another routine bulletin. But as the newsreader began the 9pm broadcast, viewers across the central Asian country spotted something unusual crawling across the studio table: a large brown cockroach. The cockroach managed to complete a whole lap of the desk, apparently undetected, before disappearing.

But the consequences of this particular cockroach's impromptu five minutes of fame were immediate and severe. The country's president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, took news of the insect so badly that he responded by firing no fewer than 30 workers from the main state TV channel.

Hillary Clinton Is Your New Bicycle

Last Monday I showed you what Barack Obama has done for you. Since I am impartional, see what Hillary Clinton has done for you.

And here's what Michelle Obama has done for you.
And John McCain.
By the way, Hillary Clinton is also your new HD DVD player.

The Red Beans Beard series of portraits by contemporary artist Takao Sakai who calls himself Azura.

(via Grow-A-Brain)

Sometimes Red, Sometimes Blue

The title says it all.

Sometimes the page is red, sometimes it's blue.

That's it!

Paris

Remember when Paris Hilton was in jail?
The warden certainly does. And he misses her.

Linkdump

What Europeans Think of Each Other

Worthwhile Websites for Learning

12-Step Program to Eating Healthier Than Ever Before

Engineers Explained

The Huashan Hiking Trail is the most dangerous tourist hiking trail in the world. Mount Hua is located in the Shaanxi Province of China, close to the Himalayas of Tibet.

This is not mountain climbing. Mountain climbing involves using advanced equipment and skill honed through experience. Instead you will see a public trail used by anyone foolish enough to give it a try regardless of their physical ability or previous climbing experience.

Obsolete Skills

Obsolete skills are things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us like dialing a rotary phone, putting a needle on a vinyl record, using a slide rule, or parking a harddisk.

Here's a list of obsolete skills.

In the first 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system.

After 20 minutes your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst.

After 40 minutes your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream.

After 60 minutes the phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a boost in metabolism. After 60 minutes you'll start to have a sugar crash.

Synchronized Flamingo Mating Dance

Play your own Beatbox. The site is in Swedish but it's very easy to understand what to do. Press the spacebar to start recording and use to A - K keys to add your own sniffs.

(via Ursi's Blog)

A road train is a trucking concept used in remote areas of the world to move bulky loads efficiently. The term 'road train' is most often used in Australia. In the U.S. and Canada the terms 'triples', 'Turnpike doubles' and 'Rocky Mountain doubles' are commonly used for longer combination vehicles.

A road train consists of a relatively conventional prime mover, but instead of pulling one trailer or semi-trailer, the road train pulls two or more of them.

Figuring out food labels is not for everyone, but simply seeing what you are eating can be surprising to all of us. Foodsel provides a wealth of information at your finger tips, neatly organized by group, manufacturer or nutrient. Visualize what you are eating.

Foodsel provides information ranging from the usual information about sugar, fat and carbohydrate all the way up to detailed information about lesser known nutrients.

I'm A Comma

What punctuation mark are you?
I'm a comma.

You are open minded and extremely optimistic. You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything. You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests.

You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time. Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to. You excel in inspiring people, you get along best with: The Question Mark.

(via Nag on the Lake)

Pages - Menu

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Friday, February 22, 2008

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Tuesday, February 19, 2008