the nerdy yet very mighty wondercon approacheth the san francisco moscone center this weekend! plus the even mightier folks at maverix studios are having a wondercon party & showing off their many talents. awe-shume! i know folks like rhode and jamie will be exhibiting their hot stuff (& their comics & drawings too) at wondercon. are you going? are you exhibiting? feel free to post your booth info all up in the comments. see you there!
sent in from jonathan, here’s a link via ticketbooth to view all the Oscar nominated animated shorts online. listed below are embedded video links to the five nominated animated shorts. the oscars are broadcast this sunday Feb 24th, 2008. thanks jonathan for the link!
Peter & the Wolf - part 1 (part 2) (part 3)
Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
I Met the Walrus (trailer only) (website)
it’s friday and giantmonster would like to remind you that bananas are a valuable source of vitamin B6, vitamin b12, vitamin C, magnesium, and potassium. bananas have a high iron content and one medium-sized banana (about 4 ounces) contains 100 calories. there you go. have a banana for lunch please!
incredible! myaspartameexperiment.com is a very detailed website of an extensive experiment conducted by a private citizen on the effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame (nutrasweet). in short: stop using anything with nutrasweet/aspartame today! the experiment was conducted by victoria inness-brown, MA. inness-brown put a group of rats on a steady diet containing nutrasweet for 2 years and 8 months. the aspartame received daily by her rats was equivalent to two-thirds the aspartame contained in a 8 ounce can of diet soda (meaning it was less than the human equivalent of the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for aspartame as set by the FDA). the results are startling -the rats fed nutrasweet developed tumors, eye diseases, bone disorders, and eventually died. quoting the website for the basis of the experiment:
“I did my aspartame experiment because my family was addicted to diet soda. After researching the effects of aspartame, I strongly believed the artificial sweetener might one day lead to their illness and even early death.”
WARNING: the website myaspartameexperiment.com contains disturbing images of rats with symptoms of severe diseases and and illness. you can review the setup for the nutrasweet experiment here. fyi: nutrasweet is another bad product made by monsanto (the makers of round-up, agent orange, rBST/rBGH).
wired has an amazing gallery of nanoscale images and scans. the incredible images of were captured using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). you can view a schematic of how a STM works and also watch this video of a scanning electron microscope filming a scanning tunneling microscope in action.
if you like to browse websites with lots of interesting eye candy, then i recommend yanko design. it’s a great design blog that showcases cutting edge design ranging from concepts, products, gadgets, interior spaces, industrial design, branding, tools, toys, everyday items, and more. it’s very advertisement heavy, but still very much worth a visit.
fellow nerds & geeks can now safely go where no such nerd has allegedly gone before with this very handy map of the star trek universe. the map is a scan from Star Trek Star Charts: The Complete Atlas of Star Trek. yeah, totally. additional star trek inspiration available here. trek map via geekstir.
meet the two new meat eating dinosaurs that were unearthed in niger, africa back in 2000. first, there’s kryptops palaios, which means “old hidden face.” and second, there’s eocarcharia dinops, or “fierce-eyed dawn shark.” both of these predators measured over 25 feet in length. their discovery is part of a larger expedition led by University of Chicago paleontologists in the year 2000.
hey - foodies! if you love food (and drinks, yes, can’t forget drinks), or try to keep up with what good restaraunts and good food & foodie events are taking place in san francisco & bay area, follow foodie gossip, or all of the above, then you will really like tablehopper. you will. the culinary swashbuckler that is marcia gagliardi writes fantastic food reviews and food related articles. i highly recommend it. thanks marcia!
finally, a non-lethal weapon that is fun at parties too! introducing the LED Incapacitator, a flashlight-like device that emits a nauseating strobe light to the effect of making its targets throw up. that is correct: we have a barf gun! point this flashlight in the face of an attacker - or even a friendly work acquaintance or loved one - and the blinding light combined with the continuously changing colors and pulses of the LED capacitator will make them temporarily sick and vomit! great for parties, boring powerpopint presentations, and halloween. i’m ordering 4 right now!
on a trip from san francisco to new york back in october of 2007, i took the opportunity to fly the then new virgin america. the cabin interior is really great - very slick and very comfortable (as in roomy with great seats & well lit). each seat has a touch screen kiosk with a wired remote control/mini-keyboard in the back. with the kiosk system, you can watch videos, buy food, text/chat with other passengers, play video games, and all that. very convenient and very cool! shortly after take off, my kiosk froze up (very highly possibly due to my spazzing out on the typepad) and had to be re-booted. when the startup scripts where running, i got to see that virgin america uses linux to run their in flight kiosk system. i liked that too! with the kiosk now up & running, i cued up a big daddy kane video and ordered some drinks. thanks virgin!
meet the world’s largest wind turbine! it’s the enercon E-126 made by enercon. this beast is gigantic! The length of each rotor blade measures 413 feet (126 meters)! the first E-126 wind turbine was setup near emden, lower saxony, germany in november 0f 2007. though it’s rated to generate 6 Megawatts of power, it is expected to go much higher - up towards 7+ megawatts (20 million kilowatt hours per year). with those figures, enercon expects one e-126 wind turbine to generate enough power for 5,000 households of four in europe. awesome!
check out these beautiful glass art pieces created by dylan kehde roelofs consisting of hand-blown incandescent light bulbs sculptures. very lovely!
it’s super tuesday (isn’t every day super, though, really?) and that means you are supposed to vote. with that in mind, does your vote actually get counted? it has been 8 years since the 2000 election and electing officials to office still remains broken and rigged. please watch this very homemade but accurate video showcasing how simple it is to hack and change the results of optical scan vote machines. while the video focuses on recent new hampshire primary, these same optical scan machines are used throughout the country and are becoming the preferred system in california - even though they are still hackable! related links:
Open Source Voting Consortium
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Black Box Voting
fanning the flames of hype for the 4th indiana jones adventure, movieweb has an alleged exclusive first look at the actual crystal skull from indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull. hmmm … i may be wrong, but the indiana jones crystal skull looks almost exactly like eddie the head of the heavy metal band iron maiden. ye olde crystal skull and eddie the head cover art from ‘number of the beast‘ provided to help you decide. speilberg and lucas must be secret metal heads, so there’s hope for this movie yet!
do you sometimes attempt to feel slightly better about yourself by rejoicing in the embarrassment and/or failures of others? well, you are not alone. serving up slices of fail pie are these three photo blogs that will darken or brighten your day: the fail blog, shipment of fail, and doing it wrong. failing never felt so good.
artist maurizio savini creates some very amazing sculptures using pink chewing gum as his medium of choice. check out a few of the the fleshy looking creations below. link via dumptrumpet.
it’s friday and giantmonster would like to provide a clear example of how to ruin a billboard. it’s simple, as seen in these pics from the las vegas mccarran international airport baggage claim area. just place the words ‘carrot top’ and ‘fantasy’ right next to each other. you look up and read ‘carrot top fantasy’ and your mind will almost immediately shut down. carrot top and fantasy are words that should NEVER be used in the same sentence, much less follow each other in the same sentence. yet in vegas, such horrors exist. why? so scary. you are warned. please travel safe! previous carrot top horrors unleashed here.
sad news: the only actual democrat running for the president of the united states has dropped out of the race. dennis kucinich, the only other democrat presidential hopeful (other than mike gravel) to vote no for the iraq war and no on subsequent funding of the war, and the only democrat presidential hopeful with a working, non-socialized health care plan - free for every american - that does not cater to insurance companies, has decided to withdraw his bid for president. kucinich will make this announcement tomorrow. oh well. kucinich was treated very poorly by the traditional news media during the race. i really cannot trust any of candidates that were short sighted enough to vote yes on the iraq war resolution in 2002 (senate vote - house of representatives vote) and give the power to declare war over to the president. so i must vote my conscience. in looking at all the candidates, electing ron paul is the only hope for real change. so ron paul for president in 2008. yeah, i said it. and i mean it.
from wpcandy comes a very handy wordpress help sheet and an equally handy yet more advanced wordpress help sheet. they also have a wordpress reference guide for developing your own wordpress blog theme. lots of other goodies on the wpcandy site. thanks wpcandy!
apparently word is getting around that clowns are creepy, and possibly even scary. a university of sheffield england study seen on the bbc news states that the majority of children find clown images too scary and that children find clown faces and imagery frightening and unknowable. yikes! perhaps if england had a decent child clown outlet like we do in the states, the thoughts of clowns wouldn’t be seen as so scary.
though it’s not coming to any victoria’s secret shop anytime soon, it does make smuggling contraband so much more exciting and sexy! yes, it’s the plunderbra - as in to plunder, steal, or loot (click the pic to the left for a more detailed image). very inventive & ingenius. this custom made bra was used to smuggle $195,540 (£100,000) of cocaine into Britain. special! one can only wonder of the undetected plunder brought in prior to the plunderbra’s final blunder. yes …
the 2010 winter olympics in vancouver canada will have a rad sasquatch mascot named quatchi. this pleases me. the use of quatchi as a mascot will hopefully send a signal to all sasquatches, yowies, yetis, bigfoots, and skunk-apes to stop leaving giant footprints and just come out of hiding. or it will bring a massive lawsuit filed on behalf of all sasquatches for illegal appropriation of celebrity likeness. awesome mascot design by meomi design. quatchi mascot info via the very funny blogfoot (thanks blogfoot!).
for those of you who have embarked or are embarking into the magical world of raising a baby, giantmonster salutes you. and we would like to help by pointing you in the direction of some very handy parenting flash cards. from c00lstuff.com comes the awesome do’s and don’ts with babies. print them out and paste them all over your house for quick reference. some of the guidelines are posted below. enjoy & happy parenting!
the fantastic visionary director michel gondry will be appearing at the stockton street apple store in san francisco this monday january 7th 2008 at 7pm. gondry will be there to promote his new movie ‘be kind rewind’ and probably discuss how the film was edited using apple’s final cut pro software. i know this will be crowded but i’m gonna try to make it. all of this information via slashfilm (thanks /film!).
a very interesting and informative article from tech author nicolas carr via his blog rough type titled Google, Apple and the future of personal computing. the article discusses the future of personal computing based on the developing partnership between google and apple. the future would have apple building the front end of sleek gadgets, devices, & handhelds that easily integrate with each other (phones, computers, etc) and google providing the back end of a networked supercomputer to provide the bulk of the data-processing might and storage capacity for the devices. it’s brilliant. what would such service and computer setup like this mean for the user? according to the article, computing will be cheap, highly energy efficient, very low maintenance, and it will be flexible. for more in depth info, please check out the original article (and the comments too).
ladies & gentleman, from a radiographs photo set on flickr created by surfacant, i bring you the dildo. quoting the caption from the photo on flickr: What I do appreciate, though, are the patients who are in this situation and just get brutally honest with you. “I was getting off on this thing in my ass and it went too deep.” there you go. this makes me wonder if there is a hallmark card made for every occassion & special moment. yes, there has to be. thanks surfacant!
think you’ve got roller skating skills? how about limbo-skating? check out the article on daily mail titled the amazingly flexible boy, 6, who can limbo-skate under cars. it’s about aniket chindak, a boy in india who holds the unofficial world record for ‘limbo-skating.’ aniket is training to break his own world record of skating under 57 cars in 45 seconds.
update:
oh boy! now with video!
very cool time-lapsed video clip of what is called an automatic graffiti robot. the art is created using a spray can attached to cables running on a X / Y axis. the cables control or press the nozzle on the spray can at precise moments. the cable are moved & controlled by a computer program. it reminds me of a giant plotter printer. very cool idea! the clip is from 2006 but i haven’t been able to find any other info on this artist other that the video. anyway, enjoy!
take a look at a really amazing animated short by alan becker via deviantArt titled animator vs. animation. the battle takes place on the flash interface! so so great & clever! thank you alan for the hard work and great animation!
