unique and interesting: June 2008

Monday, June 30, 2008

The Sarniematic 6 Cheddar-O-Meter

The Sarniematic Cheddar-o-meter, produced by West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, will utilise a newly discovered formula to ascertain the Sarnie Strata Ratio for your perfect cheese sandwich based on your choices of filling and calculate the optimum thickness of the slice of West Country Farmhouse Cheddar you should use.

Loss Of Natural Teeth By US State

Adults aged 65+ in the USA who have had all their natural teeth extracted.

Inanimate Alice tells the story of Alice, a young girl growing up in the early years of the 21st century, and her imaginary digital friend, Brad.

Written and directed by writer Kate Pullinger and digital artist Chris Joseph, this series of multimedia interactive episodes uses a combination of text, sound, images, and games as Alice takes us on a journey through her life from the age of eight through to her twenties.

Use your mouse to click on the arrows to move forward. Sometimes you may need to perform an action for the story to continue.

(via Ursi's Blog)

How Many Cannibals Could My Body Feed?

The most important question you'll ever ask.
How many cannibals could my body feed?

My body could feed 8 cannibals.

(via Everlasting Blort)

101 Things To Do When You're Bored

Strike up a conversation with a total stranger, start a blog, learn to peel a banana with your feet, lie on the grass and look at cloud shapes, Google everyone you knew in high school.

101 things to do when you're bored.

(thanks Andy)

Poisonous or dangerous food is considered a special delicacy by some cultures in several parts of the world. In most cases, a nice feast may turn into a deadly game of Russian roulette.

Would you take the risks of eating these deadly delicacies?

(via UniqueDaily)

Skype is a software program created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Skype allows users to make telephone calls from their computer to other Skype users free of charge, or to landlines and cell phones for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer, short message service, video conferencing and its ability to circumvent firewalls.

Now, Skype has launched the Laughter Chain. They're creating the world's first and longest giggling fit, and they want you to join it. Just plug in your webcam, watch the start of the Laughter Chain video, and film yourself watching it. Send them your video and your laugh could be added to the chain.

(thanks Alex)

3D graffiti, whether it's in chalk or paint, on walls or the street, represents a new way of combining the mastery of Renaissance art techniques with the gritty, ephemeral qualities of amazing street art.

These 3D street artists give graffiti a whole new meaning – one that departs from the conventional interpretation of graffiti as vandalism in the form of images and letters scrawled on public property. Street art that's so incredible it is almost impossible to pass by without being sucked in to the worlds they create on asphalt and concrete surfaces.

Mr Clock Radio

A very creepy clock radio. Mr Clock Radio has 50 different wake-up shows with multiple wake-up settings.
Take a look at the video to see Mr Clock Radio in action.

Questions, Questions

Where do you want to go?

What do you use?

What are you doing?

How are you feeling?

Who do you want to meet?

What are you consuming?

What do you want to change in the world?

What are your goals?

What are your friends inta? (yes, it's inta)

How To Fake Being Sick

Thumbnail photos of members of the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia. They don't look very happy.

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

9 Extraordinary Human Abilities

Some people are blessed (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with the ability to recall a scene as if they were looking at a photograph. Other people can recreate music from memory. What other extraordinary abilities might humans have?

Here's a list of the most well understood and interesting abilities rated from most common to most interesting and rare. Bear in mind that most of these unusual abilities are genetic and cannot be controlled by the person affected but are an inherent quality of their physical self.

The Buzzball delivers a thrill like no other interactive ride can. At the heart of the Buzzball is a dual motor configuration, enabling the pilot to control the motion and direction of travel via left and right control triggers, which provides power to the driving wheels.

Once the Buzzball is in motion the pod maintains an upright position until the pilot turns, causing the pod to rotate inside the ball against the direction of travel, which applies a braking force and the pod to lock with the ball. This causes the pod to rotate with the ball until the weight of the pilot and pod overcomes the inertia forces and causes the Buzzball to change direction.

Why should ads be boring? Check out this collection of unforgettable advertisements from around the world.

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: The Pick-up Artist Part 2.

click on the picture for real size

It lives, it breathes, it moves.
And it's capable of communicating with your cellphone.

The process that leads to the development of an Ingeneo creature requires the use of cutting edge technologies, skills and solid theoretical knowledge of various branches of modern science.

Of course, Ingeneo creatures are fake. They are made by a group of designers from Florence, Italy.

The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards.

The Fulgurator can be used anywhere where there is another camera nearby that is being used with a flash. It operates via a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected on an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it.

Every photo another photographer takes of an object at which the Image Fulgurator is also aimed is affected by the manipulation.

See the Image Fulgurator in action at Checkpoint Charlie.

The Writer's Creativity Finder

The Writer's Creativity Finder tells you where to look for ideas for stories, articles or books. Here's how it works...

1. Take out a reference book. 2. Look to see how many useful pages are in the book. 3. Enter the number of the first and last page. 4. Click on the Idea Finder button. 5. Go to the page in the book and see how it could help you.

(thanks Joel)

Yoga is a discipline aimed at training the consciousness for a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquillity. Hatha yoga is the branch of yoga which concentrates on physical health and mental well-being. Finger yoga is hatha yoga for the fingers.

To a certain extent, hands represent a microcosm of the organs of action. They need a slightly different emphasis, perhaps from the other limbs. In particular, they are easier to apply excess force to, and potentially expose more connective tissue to stretching forces.

A Lefty Will Win The White House

The nominations of senators McCain and Obama will renew one surprising trend: for the fifth time in the last 35 years, America will have a lefty in the White House. Since 1974, presidents Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton have all favored their left hands, while President Carter and the current President Bush are righties.

Studies have shown that whereas righties favor the left hemisphere of their brain, which controls language, left-handers are more likely to have bilateral brain function, which could allow them to visualize problems more broadly and with more complexity.

The Rewind Museum has a good collection of old technology. It is unique in that it covers a wide range of vintage consumer electronics and concentrates on manufacturers first achievements. e.g. first VCR, first laser player etc.

Instant Origami

Instant Origami is the contemporary interpretation of the traditional Japanese paper folding technique - focusing on speed and imagination rather than on the technically brilliant execution.

The goal, to create a representation of an object by folding a single piece of paper without the use of glue, remains unchanged.

The Moaster is the highest popping toaster in the world. Freddie Yauner from London, England, the man behind 'The Moaster,' used power generated by a high-pressure CO2 gas system and mechanical ram.

Yauner managed to get his toast to pop up about seven feet into the air - but that figure was restricted by the height of his ceiling, so he will try and re-set the record with an attempt conducted outdoors.

Where The Hell Is Matt?

Matt Harding is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut and known as 'that guy who dances on the internet.' He only does one dance. And he does it badly. But he does it everywhere, all over the world.

Yesterday, on June 27, 2008, Microsoft's Bill Gates left the company he co-founded more than 30 years ago. He is going to devote himself to philanthropic work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Half the world hates him, the other half loves him. Whatever you think of Bill Gates, he has been one of the most influential people in the PC industry.

What we'll miss about Bill Gates - a very long goodbye.

Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What's up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love.

Twitter is social software that asks a simple question: What are you doing? Botanicalls Twitter is a system that was developed to allow plants to place phone calls for human help. When a plant on the Botanicalls network needs water, it can call a person and ask for exactly what it needs. When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their habits and characteristics.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a photographic technique in which several shots are taken of the same high-contrast scene at different exposures. Highlights from the underexposed images and shadows from the overexposed frames are blended together to create a more natural look.

20 Beautiful HDR pictures.

Stupid, But Very Lucky Driver

This driver doesn't see a train speeding at his car until the last seconds and literally avoids a crash by a couple of feet.

I'm not 100% sure but when I look at the train's colors, this happened here in the Netherlands.

(via Joanne Casey)

Downloading Windows Moviemaker

Someone decided to download Microsoft's Windows Moviemaker. This is what he said:
So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called Windows XP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP...

...What an absolute mess....

...So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package...

Who is this someone? Well, It's Microsoft's Bill Gates himself. It's from a leaked memo from Microsoft, it's several pages of Gates just laying into his design and programming staff for - among other issues - his personal experience when trying to install Windows Moviemaker. And it's a very fulfilling read if you've ever been frustrated by a Microsoft product.

Yes, they still exist. Web sites so ugly they make your eyes hurt. Yvette's sells tuxedos, bridal-, prom-, evening-, and pageant gowns. And shoes. Yvette's also paints your portrait in oil on canvas.

And obviously, ugly sells. It's what tech geek blogger Robert Scoble called 'anti-marketing design.'

Elvis Presley. From his humble beginnings in Tupelo, Mississippi, to his lonely, pitiful death in the bathroom of Graceland, his Memphis, Tennessee mansion, Elvis redefined music.

In a career spanning about 23 years, he single-handedly transformed himself from a poor sharecropper's son to the icon of rock and roll music.

How well do you know Elvis? Here are 10 facts that only the most-dedicated Elvis fan will know regarding 'The King'.

(thanks Tony)

Linkdump

Tips on Getting In Shape, In One Handy List

10 IT Health Risks - And How to Combat Them

Ten Cool Magic Bar Tricks

10 Very Rare Clouds

The Bug Free Page

Do you also hate it when flies are walking over your screen? Now there is a simple solution: The Bug Free Page. The Bug Free Page is an online bug repellent. Load this page and they soon will be gone! Really!

The Bug Free Page emits an ultra high frequency which is not attractive for all those nasty mosquitos and flies. Moreover, the color yellow works as a natural repellent.

(thanks Symen)

Have you ever felt exasperated when you bumped into someone at the store but absolutely couldn't remember their name? Sure, it happens to all of us. Despite being the strongest computer on the planet, our brains do lapse.

No matter how powerful our brains are, they need recuperation time, to be kept in shape, and even an occasional charge. How? Almonds, apple juice, sleep, meditation, whole wheat, and sex.

Yes, these are some things you can begin doing as soon as today to tune up your brain.

Bridges have long been a thing of fascination in the human mind because of what they connote: connection. Even though much of our communication is carried out via email or telephone, we are still nonetheless a sociable bunch. We go places, see things, visit people and experience life, all of which requires movement and interaction. Bridges are therefore a facilitator of connection in the broad mesh of human social life.

Take a look at 10 of the oldest, newest, biggest and best bridges in existence today from around the globe.

(thanks Andy)

Grassroots Movement

(via Google Blogoscoped)

Together at last! In a pairing nobody saw coming, Mattel married two classics together to make the Alfred Hitchcock The Birds Barbie Doll.

As you can see, the doll is being assaulted by a trio of angry avian attackers, making this one of very few products to be both awesome and classy.

Estimated to arrive in October 2008.

(via boynton)

Weird Encyclopedia

Atlantis, Alien abductions, Zombies, the Mongolian Death Worm, the Minnesota Iceman. It's all in the Weird Encyclopedia.

An encyclopedia of the weird, the strange, the fascinating, the mysterious, the unexplained. Its tagline is 'mundus vult decipi, decipimur' roughly translated to 'the world wants to be deceived, so let us deceive it.'

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

(via Reality Carnival)

We have no clue who these guys are. Not even one of them. But we want to find out. And perhaps go meet them and hang out. And such. If you know who these guys are, or have any hot leads, we'd love to hear from you:

Dr. Seuss Collection Organized By Color Spectrum: The Update

Last February I posted about a Dr. Seuss collection in their proper color spectrum order.

Now, a couple of months later, the books have been reordered. Some books have jumped across the shelf, while whole groups remain intact. What does this all mean?

(thanks Chad)

Whenever you're chasing flies with your swatter, the end result is the fly dies. The animal has no chance. And that's actually not very fair.

Now, with the 'Fly-Swatter 1:1000' which has an opening the size of a fly, it has a chance. Of 1 in 1000.

(via Zoomdoggle)

Looking like leaves floating in the sea, thousands of Golden Rays (Rhinoptera steindachneri) are seen here gathering off the coast of Mexico.

The spectacular scene was captured as the magnificent creatures made one of their biannual mass migrations to more agreeable waters.

You may have heard of the original 20Q, which first gained popularity as an online game where users log onto the website and play against an artificial intelligence foe. Players think of an animal, vegetable, mineral, or other object and 20Q guesses what the player is thinking in twenty questions or less.

Now there's 20Q: Star Trek. Think of a sentient being, place or thing from Star Trek, and the 20Q Artificial Intelligence will read your mind by asking questions.

Oops!

Some ladies wanted to thank George Brownridge.

They soon realized their mistake and the next day this advertisement appeared.

(via It is OK)

Big Mouth

(via kees)

Cheatneutral

When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and not cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.

At Cheatneutral, we believe that we should all try to reduce the amount we cheat on our partners, but we also realise that fidelity isn't always possible. That's why we help you neutralise your cheating. Your actions are offset by a global network of fidelity, developed by us.

By paying Cheatneutral, you're funding monogamy-boosting offset projects - we simply invest the money you give us in monogamous, faithful or just plain single people, to encourage them to stay that way.

TestFreaks collects product information and reviews from over 60 countries and several thousand sources to give you the best possible advice via user reviews, professional reviews, prices, blog posts, forum threads, news, rumors, manufacturers descriptions and specifications, manuals, videos and more.

Soungle

Soungle is a free site, developed by Southern Codes, for finding all kind of sound FX and musical instruments samples on their online library. Soungle is not a web search engine. It only searches in Southern Codes' growing monster database.

Keyword searches are performed by entering any word or phrase in a search box. Clicking on the play icon allows you to listen to the file. The download button instantly downloads the sound effect or musical instrument sample file.

Attention Chicken! is a three dimensional version of the collage that goes by the same title. Nicolas Lampert and Micaela O'Herlihy created a ten-foot rotisserie chicken out of polystyrene foam, hard coated, and then painted with latex paint and final coat of high gloss varnish.

(via Everlasting Blort)

A map of the world made of 1001 different clickable web 2.0 company logos. The logos will appear in full-size when you hover over the mosaic.

Ball Girl Makes Incredible Catch

A minor league ball girl makes an incredible catch on a foul ball in left field.

Swedish Furniture Name Generator

This is the kind of stuff you dream up while waiting around in IKEA for 2 hours. Enter your first name and it will create your Swedish furniture name.

Office Olympic Games

Synchronized Swimming.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Totlol is a community-moderated video website designed to be enjoyed by those between the ages of 6 months and 6 years. Launched for beta testing in May 2008, Totlol is an independent website made in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Videos available at Totlol are all intended to be enjoyed by tots. Parents can easily find the content they want because all the 'other stuff' is out of the way.

(thanks Dave)

Linkdump

100 Useful Niche Search Engines

The Tackiest Eiffel Tower Souvenirs

20 Super Foods You Need to Build Muscle and Lose Fat

How to Make a Hardcover Book

70+ Tools, Tips and Hacks to Work from Bed

50 Office-Speak Phrases You Love to Hate

Pale Blue Dot

Ice Core Scientist, a.k.a. Steven McGlinchey, is an Irish artist. Pale Blue Dot is a tribute to the late Carl Sagan.

(thanks Bronagh)

How many creative solutions for calendar design are out there? If you take a look around you'll find out that most calendars are designed in a 'standard' linear fashion. Calendar cards usually have the same structure: the month is designed in bold while the days are placed below within a rigid grid structure.

It doesn't have to be like this. In fact, there are a number of creative approaches one can consider when designing calendars.

I will just say it... my Mom is 82 years old in 2005 and I couldn't be prouder of her. This year she caught a 90 pound Halibut, a 55 pound King salmon and then a 50 pound King salmon.

This year was a good year for her AND for us as she can't possible get all that fish back to Atlantic, Iowa. The freezer is half full of fresh fish!! Thank you, Mom.

(via Grow-A-Brain)

Floating Hedgehog

Shming the African hedgehog swims and floats.

Do not try this with an inexperienced swimmer. Shming is an excellent swimmer, but you could drown one if you don't know exactly what you're doing! Even the best swimmer should never, ever be left alone!

GhostBikes are bicycle memorials placed in various cities around the world. A Ghostbike is a junker bike that has been painted stark white and afixed to the site where a cyclist has been hit or killed by a car driver.

Ghostbikes are intended to be memorials for the fallen and reminders to everyone to share the road with one another.

Ghostbikes is a project by Code in Motion.

Bucleta is a very strange site. The site is interactive - full of colors and animations - and you can click on almost everything. Its purpose? I don't know.

Microsoft's Bill Gates gave Fortune magazine access to some rare photos from the Microsoft archives - and shared his memories about them.

(via Doobybrain)

Thrift Hunting

ThriftHunting.com is an online community for the modern day treasure hunter. Basically for anyone who enjoys the thrill of looking for valuable items at thrift stores, garage sales, yard sales, etc.

Thrift Hunting also hosts an online utility named 'hunter' that uses an item's UPC or ISBN to search for the minimum price as listed on various websites.

The enormous steel ball you see in the photos and the video in this article is the world's largest 'tuned mass damper' and sits near the top of the world's largest completed skyscraper on earth, Taipei 101 in Taiwan.

The idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc.), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure's oscillations and minimise any movement.

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: The Pick up Artist Part 1.

click on the picture for real size

Star Wars Crawl

Easily create your very own Star Wars-esque prelude text crawl. Use it for a joke, homemade movies, e-cards, birthday wishes, or just to recreate the magic of the original films.

Like this one.

Make your own Star Wars Crawl.

(via Dump Trumpet)

Italian photographer Matteo Ferrari took pictures of people who drove the same car for many, many years.

It's like PostSecret but you don't have to send a postcard. At 'I Am Neurotic' readers reveal their crazy little habits. Send in your neuroses to iamneurotic.com and have them judged by the internet.

It'll Never Work!

In 1946, Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox said: Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.

Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy once said: Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.

And from a 1949 Popular Mechanics magazine: Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.

A list of inventions that were ridiculed by esteemed individuals, only for the product to become a raging success.

The atmosphere of Mars is hundreds of times thinner than Earth's atmosphere and is made of 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and contains traces of oxygen, water, and methane. It can support dust storms, dust devils, clouds and gusty winds.

With an amazing number of six current live probes exploring Mars, there are many thousands of images available. Only a few, however show atmospheric phenomena. Presented here are some of the best images of Martian atmosphere in action.

Related: Martian weather report.

Absinthe Lollipops

The US Government recently approved the sale of absinthe within certain guidelines, namely that there is less than 10ppm of thujone. Absinthe Lollipops contain an amount of thujone that is within the legal limits set by the US regulatory authorities and of the European Union.

Our Absinthe Lollipops are really freaking awesome. And we say that without even an ounce of hubris. People go crazy (not like, cut-your-ear-off crazy, tho) for them. We're pretty sure they're the ultimate party favor. The combination of absinthe's mystique and the inherent sexiness of lollipops is a pretty explosive one.

Sorry!

You see two pictures.
Try to guess who's the younger one.
My longest run was 40.

(via b3ta)

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Monday, June 30, 2008

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Friday, June 27, 2008

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Monday, June 23, 2008

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Saturday, June 21, 2008