unique and interesting: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

How To Grow A Rainbow Rose

In 2004, two Dutch companies, River Flowers and Zandbergen, experimented and successfully grew a rose that had its petals rainbow colored. As petals get their nourishment through stem, the idea is to split the stem into several channels and dip each one in a different colored water.

This way all the colors will be drawn by the stem into petals and the resultant rose will have all the colors in it. The same method can be applied to other flowers especially to Chrysanthemum and Hydrangea. You can use the same idea to color any flower, anyway you like.

For sale on eBay: a CellSensor EMF Ghost Detection-Paranormal Activity & Measurement Meter.

A spirit emits a pulsating electromagnetic field. Paranormal activity will activate the CellSensor with a spiked needle, a beeping sound and a flashing light which corresponds to field strength. Great for traveling to check out your hotel rooms, cemeteries, historical buildings and more.

NewsCred lets you create newspapers about your interests and passions and share them with your friends. The service is totally free for one newspaper but if you want to have one in your own domain you need to pay a month subscription fee.

You have full control over your newspaper. You can fill your newspaper with news content from 2500+ sources, choose the topics that you're interested in, customize the look and feel of your newspaper, and choose your news sources. Your newspaper comes with high quality articles, blog posts, topic pages, beautiful images, videos, twitter buzz and more.

I'm interested in car racing and I created a journal with the latest news from Formula 1.

Create your own newspaper.

(thanks Cora)

Ode To Quantum Mechanics

A long time ago I studied quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter.

Quantum mechanics is difficult to understand. Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once said: I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. Here's an ode to quantum mechanics.

image credit

There are some things which require a great deal of patience and others that simply go beyond that. This is just one - an enormous rendering of Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings - made entirely out of matchsticks. This is not a hobby, this is a magnificent obsession.

(thanks Robert-John)

When you are delusional, you lose the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. Sufferers stumble through life, constricted by pseudo-worlds of their own making. Although the term was first coined in 1977, symptoms of delusion have been recorded for over 150 years.

(thanks Danny)

Matt Braun and Chris Mufalli designed a beer bottle with marks on the side to let you know what notes are made when blowing across the bottle when the beer is at those levels.

Tuned Pale Ale is a product that explores the musical affordances in everyday objects and promotes social spontaneity. While drinking beer, people become musically encouraged and often start making music with objects around them.

This product aims to promote more of this type of social interaction. This product aims to inform users about the musical qualities of existing bottles and to make the bottle a better instrument.

(via Laughing Squid)

Vintage pocket calculators from the 1970s listed by company.

image credit

In Russia the keen eyesight of the pigeon is put to a very practical use for, at one factory in Moscow, they are used to sort ball-bearings. After four or five weeks special training, the birds inspect the ball-bearings as they pass on a conveyor.

If any show the least blemish the pigeons peck a special plate which operates a reject sign, the faulty bearing is removed and the birds is rewarded with a few millet seeds.

16 Weird and Amazing Bird Facts from Around the World.

My Wife Knows Everything' Beats 'The Wife Doesn't Know'

What happens when during a horse race at Monmouth Park on August 22, two horses compete neck and neck to the finish, one being the #3 horse Mywifenosevrything and the other being the #7 horse Thewifedoesntknow?

You get a very funny announcement.

(via Miss Cellania)

Great hands-on science. Dissect this sanitary owl pellet which contains the skeletal remains of an owl meal. Learn about the owl's habitat, place in the food chain, and predatory skills. Use some archaeological skills to piece together the skeletons using the bone chart.

Owl Puke Dissection Kit.

(via Boing Boing)

The largest plants in the world are the giant redwood trees of North America. Sequoias can grow up to 350 ft or more in height and may be up to (26 ft across. They can weight more than nine times as much as a blue whale, the heaviest animal that has ever lived.

29 Fascinating Facts About Plants From Around The World.

11 Foot 8

Low clearance can be a real challenge for a truck driver. Especially inexperienced drivers of rental boxtrucks seem to be quite oblivious to the warning signs. So frequently do trucks crash into the 11-foot-8 railroad bridge at Gregson and Peabody in Durham, North Carolina, USA, that the railroad company installed a crash beam in front of it.

This is a compilation of 13 crashes at the railroad bridge.

The 11 foot 8 web site.

The Palettenpavillon by German designer Matthias Loebermann is a structure made entirely from shipping pallets, ground anchors, and tie rods.

Designed to be easily assembled and dismantled, and then entirely recycled at a later date, the resulting building is intended as a temporary meeting place.

The Emmy Awards are an annual presentation for outstanding achievement in U.S. television. They are considered the equivalent to the Academy Awards for film and are presented in various sectors of the television industry, including entertainment programming, news and documentary shows, and sports programming.

Over the years the Emmy Awards celebration have experienced innuendo-filled speeches, missing glasses, boycotts and the ever-popular wardrobe malfunction. Here are 20 of the most embarrassing, weird and awkward moments in Emmy Awards history, including a pair that happened off-camera.

Kodak Kodachrome Film Test 1922

A sample of some of the earliest color motion picture films. In this test, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark, which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film.

image credit

In 1969, the Army Corps of Engineers accomplished an awesome feat: They turned off Niagara Falls. They did it to clean up the area, and check for structural integrity. Here are pictures of this bizarre episode in structural engineering history.

Expedition Titanic

Expedition Titanic is a free website that lets you explore and watch Titanic wreckage footage entirely through your web browser. You are virtually taken deep into the sea and the site of the wreckage is loaded up.

You can see a scale diagram of the wreckage. You can view the distances from the main ship to where its stern section and other parts are located. Photos and videos are also available in the virtual explorer, along with informative details on the wreckage that covers important topics such as bio-deterioration, plant and animal life, etc.

(thanks Cora)

Designer Yeongwoo Kim created this Eco Urinal where men can pee and wash in the same stand. What Kim has done is incorporated the wash basin just above the spot you take aim to pee.

The reason cited is that you'll save a water flush cycle, coz when you rinse your hand after the job, the same gray water can be used to cleanse the urinal basin.

(via Laughing Squid)

Bandai, a Japanese toy maker, released the 'Neko Nyanbou,' a fake cat paw with claws that can be controlled by a small switch hidden in the 'handle.'

What can you do with the cat paw? You could scratch your back, scare a colleague or use it just as an extension of your arm.

image credit

In the Mopti region of Mali a group of people, numbering less than a million, retain a unique cultural and architectural heritage which they have enjoyed for hundreds of years.

To outsiders their way of life, and certainly their buildings seem odd, bordering perhaps on the bizarre. Yet for the Dogon, isolated on their plateau, society and architecture evolved in a unique manner.

(thanks Robert-John)

For those who grew up on the A-Team TV Show or are big fans of Rocky, Mr. T will always be a memorable personality which is simply larger than life. Although you do not see him as much in TV or movies these days, he is still a personality to be reckoned with.

This collection of 16 Mr. T designs includes various pieces of art, design, products and more which prove that Mr T is still popular today, and if you don't agree... then I pity the fool.

(via NeatoHub)

Dress up your headlights with a touch of fashion and a twinkle of crystal.

(thanks Cora)

Live On From Beyomd The Groove

When the album that is life finally reaches the end wouldn't it be nice to keep that record spinning for enternity? And Vinyly offers you the chance to press your ashes in a vinyl recording your loved ones will cherish for generations.

Record a personal message, your last will and testament, your own soundtrack or simply press your ashes to hear your pops and crackles for the minmal approach. And Vinyly was founded by Jason Leach, who co-founded the techno group and record label Subhead in the 1990s.

(via Neatorama)

Dictionary: bottomless. adj. Too deep to be measured.
Too deep to be measured? We'll see about that!

Wouter Scheublin's Walking Table

Dutch designer Wouter Scheublin created a walking table. The table is carried by two sets of mechanical legs and starts walking when it is pushed.

(thanks Cora)

Memes are skills, habits, songs, stories, or any other kind of information that is copied from person to person. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

A meme can experience variation and mutation; they can become extinct or they can evolve with society. An internet meme, on the other hand, is an idea that spreads quickly via, you guessed it, the internet. It's the 'viral' in a viral video.

(via Nag on the Lake)

Tomorrow, Sunday, August 29, 2010 will mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in Louisiana. Five years ago, Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, centered on New Orleans, as a Category 3 hurricane. More than fifty levees were breached by its storm surge, causing massive flooding.

Over 1,800 Gulf Coast residents lost their lives then, and damages totaled more than $80 billion. Many intangible things were damaged then as well, communities were erased as their neighborhoods washed away, and much of historic New Orleans was badly damaged.

They are a snapshot of a bygone age and as these charming pictures from the 40s, 50s, and 60s show, growing up in post-war Britain was an experience that would be unrecognisable to today's children.

It was a time when school dinners meant clearing your plate, however unappetising the food; playtime meant rough and tumble games and lessons involved learning to write using a slate and chalk.

Movie stars have been known to do just about anything in the pursuit of looking good, but being beautiful isn't the only motivation in an actor's life. Some are so committed to their craft they will dramatically alter their appearance when a part calls for it.

Whether they've had to lose a significant amount of weight or build up massive muscles to be believable, the following thespians went to extremes to nail a role.

(thanks Jessie)

SlipQuit

Remember the JetBlue flight attendant who left his job by exiting via the plane's emergency exit with beer in hand? Now you, too, can quit like the JetBlue guy with the SlipQuit.

English Bulldog Watching TV Sitting On A Couch

It's her favorite show. She doesn't want to get bothered while the show is on.

(via Neatorama)

Just put the author's name in the box and create a French book cover.
I made this book cover. 'Le Naufrage du Fleuve' which I believe means 'The Sinking of the River.'

Beautiful sliding clock.

Every dog owner knows why they gave their dog its name, but how well do you know the story behind their breed names? For example, poodle comes from 'pudeln,' a German word that meant 'to splash,' so these brave retrievers were known as pudelhund, or 'water dogs.' The word eventually evolved into the English poodle.

Let's see how a handful of common breeds found their monikers.

(via Look At This...)

Silence

A silence competition between internet personality Magibon and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.

It may sound like a contradiction in terms, but scientists have created 'dry water.' The substance resembles powdered sugar and could revolutionise the way chemicals are used. Each particle of dry water contains a water droplet surrounded by a sandy silica coating. In fact, 95 per cent of dry water is 'wet' water.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool, England, believe dry water could be used to combat global warming by soaking up and trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Tests show that dry water is more than three times better at absorbing carbon dioxide than ordinary water.

Two weeks ago I posted an article about 'man caves,' rooms just for the guys. Now 'The Art of Manliness' tells us about the 'man caves' of 14 of history's great men.

Within these rooms they formulated ideas that would change the world, wrote books that remain classics, and revitalized the dynamic manliness that drove their success. Shown in the picture is Mark Twain's billiards room.

image credit

If you've ever gone on a road trip, chances are you've driven past a few unusual tourist attractions. And if you've stopped to take a look, you know they can range from odd to completely outrageous.

Check out this list of 15 wacky roadside attractions worth seeing, including a museum devoted to toilet seat art and the world's largest hammock. Bizarre? Yes. But they're certainly a welcome change of scenery as well as a great excuse to pull over and stretch your legs.

(thanks Jessie)

Rain Level Boots

These 'Rain Level Boots' by Italian designer Regina Regis are both stylish and informative as they tell the wearer how deep the puddle is he just walked into.

(thanks Cora)

Rescue Bear is a nice little game where you have to help bumbling bears roll, slide, and hurdle back to their nest. Click objects in the scene to help the bears reach the nest.

Get all of the bears to the nest to complete a level. Wood can be removed, but stones are stationary. Bricks cannot be removed, nor are they stationary; but there are times when they'll 'fall into place.'

Researchers have discovered a new species of frog in Borneo which only grows to the size of a pea. Finding the mini frogs, named Microhyla nepenthicola, proved to be a challenge due to their size. Adult males range in length from 10.6 to 12.8 millimeters.

There are some specimens of these frogs in museum collections that are over 100 years old. Scientists presumably thought they were juveniles of other species, but it turns out they are adults.

The quick and easy way to bring your bathroom tissue within convenient reach. This bathroom tissue extension hooks over your existing holder to make the roll easily reachable.

Accordion-style extender pulls out and pushes back with ease. No more stretching across or swiveling around. However inaccessible your bathroom tissue holder has been - you can bring the roll to you, right where you need it.

(via J-Walk Blog)

Famous Boat Captains Compared.

The very name 'V8 Hotel' is enough to give any auto freak goose bumps and make him instantly think of being couched in one of his or her favorite car. Based in the centre of Stuttgart, Germany, guests can sleep in everything from a Morris Minor to a Mercedes.

The V8 Hotel boasts rooms guaranteed to rev the engine of any car lover. The four-star hotel has 34 rooms, many of which are decorated with a car theme. Some of them even contain real cars.

(thanks Cora)

Her name is Arria and she is beautiful. What's more, she knows that and she surveys the Scottish landscape, arms outsretched like some giant four armed nineteen sixties soul diva about to launch in to a power ballad for the ages.

In fact she is the creation of sculptor Andy Scott and is the new figurehead for the Scottish New Town of Cumbernauld.

(thanks Robert-John)

Hygienically drink or rinse your mouth straight from your tap, without worrying about dirty hands or cups. Create a fun and convenient drink fountain from your tap by simply squeezing your Tapi.

(via Laughing Squid)

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From Georgia's peaches to Maine's lobster, nearly every US state has its own prized food, and a festival to celebrate it. As delicious as these foods are, though, sometimes they can feel a little... boring. The next time you're in a culinary lull, pack your bags and follow this list to find the country's wackiest foodie fests.

These food festivals serve up a terrific sampling of regional cooking - everything from pig intestines to fruitcake - and are guaranteed to give your palate a jumpstart.

(thanks Jessie)

Scary Japanese Webcam Girl

Although I'm not from Sweden I seem to be some kind of hero over there.
As you can see here.

Make your own Thank You movie.

(via No Subscription Required)

Use the Snazzy Napper and get your much needed sleep anywhere, anytime! It's like privacy in a bag. The Snazzy Napper is a lightweight blanket that blocks out distracting light.

Wrap around a pillow, head cushion, or chair while traveling for extra comfort. A soft nose clip allows the shield to gently contour around the nose and shut out light.

(via J-Walk Blog)

There are tons of tools to measure how well you're doing on Twitter in terms of influence, engagement, impact, trends and more. Klout measures your social media influence and reputation across the web, specifically on Twitter.

It seems I'm a dabbler on Twitter. My Klout score is a meager 13. Klout says: You might just be starting out with the social web or maybe you're not that into it. I guess they're right, I'm not really into it.

View Your Klout Influence.

Turn yourself into an ugly dancer.

Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Made by Pfizer, Despondex is the first drug designed to treat the symptoms of excessive perkiness.

(thanks Cora)

Interesting article about the Art and Tradition of Typography.

For over 25 years Microsoft has been very focused on the development of type and type technologies. In order to fully understand the technical foundations of typography in Windows, a brief overview of some of the highlights of 'typographic engineering' from the past 500 years can add some useful insight.

Singapore-based artist Anton Tang makes cardboard figurines and repositions them in Lilliputian set-ups full of humor and pathos, thus reimagining what it means to be human. He says:

There are times when many of us would like to cover our heads with a cardboard box and shield ourselves from the outside world. Other times, we walk around feeling as if we're enclosed in such packaging anyway - like faceless, boxed-up products on an assembly line.

Yet whichever our experience, alienated or anonymous, one plain fact gives us hope: We're all human. And we're not alone.

The 200 Yard Gong Shot

Tucked away in the Gap of Dunloe in Killarney, Ireland, professional golfers David Howell, Paul McGinley, Marcel Siem and Rhys Davies attempted the impossible - to skim a golf ball 200 yards across the lake and hit a 9 inch gong target.

(thanks Cora)

How great would you feel if a real person called you every day to tell you, 'You're Awesome'? With AwesomenessReminders, a real person will call you every day to tell you how much you rock.

If you're not around, they will leave you a voicemail. Only $10/month! Cheaper than the cost of a movie ticket and way cheaper than the cost of a life coach.

John Lennon's toilet will be among the highlights of an auction of Beatles memorabilia next weekend. Lennon told a builder, John Hancock, to keep the porcelain lavatory and 'use it as a plant pot' after he had installed a new one.

It was stored in a shed at Hancock's home for 40 years until he died recently. The toilet is estimated to fetch £750 to £1,000 ($1,165 to $1,553).

Can anyone please help Tammy.

(via Miss Cellania)
Miss Cellania just celebrated her blog's 5 year anniversary. Congrats, Miss C.

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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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Saturday, August 28, 2010

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

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