Coudal Partners

Coudal Partners are among the small number of sites that take the blog paradigm and present it in a well-designed, interesting, and fun way. It is an excellent piece of marketing for their firm- it's not just full of blog regurgitation, but heavily mixed with content they have created. I love the pseudo-newspaper look - my favorite page is the 'under construction' page for Photoshop Tennis emblazoned with huge letterforms declaring 'Noy Yet'. They also feature quite a number of videos that they have produced, anything from comedic shorts (Copy Goes Here) to Western State (documentaries about non-traditional artists). All very intriguing stuff - perhaps one day my open-minded, jack-of-all-trades mindset for all things design, photography, music, writing and video will culminate in a firm like Coudal.

Atari Days and Beyond

A link to this Flickr set of ST Format scans via Boing Boing really brought back some fun memories of my early geek days. It all started with the Commodore 64, many hours of copying basic code out of books, writing text games, and figuring out sprites. I remember playing Red Alert for what seemed like hours. Looking back now, it's amazing what a crude game it was, yet it was captivating at the time, despite the load time from the cassette tape drive. I would play around with my friends' Spectrum ZX or Amiga and get jealous at the graphics.

Then it was onto the Atari ST - 3.5" floppies, GEM, desktop publishing software, and the beginning of my software piracy vice. Select the software you want our of this black and white copied booklet with a few pounds (UK) and you'd get a couple floppies in the mail. Hello Pompey Pirates and Medway, Dungeon Master & Elite, modems and MIDI. It was so great! (Didn't even know what piracy was at that age!) The craziest Atari ST upgrade was when me and my brother, not even teenagers yet, tromped around London alone together to pickup our STFM that had been disassembled, installed into a tower case with a whopping 40mb hard drive. Let the games begin!

One of my all time favorites was a game called Captive, a Dungeon Master style game set on the future where you controlled 4 droids and had all sorts of crazy weapons and enemies and had to fight your droids through bases on different planets. Really. You had to be there. I've recently played the game on an emulator and it stills holds the same addictive, adrenaline pumping, superball throwing and monster dodging appeal.

atari.st online
atari explorer

CSI is like crack!

I can't help but watch CSI, cringing the whole time at the stupid production values and cheesey fake CSI-reality. At least they stopped making inkjet printers make dot matrix sounds - I mean, not to mention the obvious fakeness, but when they are so busy showing off their fancy high tech lab gadgets, why would they want to date their printer back to the 80s? Anyway, I was pseudo-enjoying an episode and wondered what funky csi-sci-geek words they use most frequently. So, being a freak, I spent entirely too long today aggregating the season 1 scripts, stripping them to bare text, parsing and other PITA unix stuff, and finally came us with this - the CSI Season 1 word analysis. It would be nice to drop the info into some neat flash-based viz tool - but that'll have to be some other time.

RANK--WORD---------FREQ
100---EVIDENCE------158
110---CRIME---------136
124---BLOOD---------121
158---BODY-----------93
216---PRINTS---------64
377---CSI------------32
220---DNA------------62
586---FIBERS---------19
631---FINGERPRINTS---17
725---TRACE----------15
1752--EPITHELIALS-----5
NOT USED : allele (bet that's a spelling bee stumper!)

Hey, Nice Axe!

i wrote about the digital guitar in an earlier post, but I didn't really think of how such a gizmo could allow the paradigm of playing the guitar to shift. Check out the Gizmodo report from CES where they describe how you can configure different strings to have separate fx, pan to different outs, and other crazy mind-warping stuff. Yes, that is an ethernet cable poking out the side. Not cheap at roughly $4K.

Tis the Season to Rebrand

It was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show that Intel will ditch it's 37 year old logo with the offset 'e', and rebrand the company with a new look. Well, it was about time, but that doesn't mean the new version is any better - in fact it looks like any other generic tech startup logo... Can't anyone make a logo without a damn oval around it? What is that?

Kodak Brand Change

Today, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported that Kodak will be making logo history by abandoning it's world famous boxy K logo. While the new logo retains the colors of the dated one, it sorely lacks in concept, typography and brand building. While this might be a death blow to other large companies, this might be a move indicating the desperation that Kodak has reached with the decline of the company's profits and brand popularity. My take - the 'custom' typeface is really hideous, and the logo doesn't speak visually to what the company does. Good luck out there logo! Be grateful you aren't a Verizon or a

Get Hooked

Holy Giant Velcro Batman! It'sHarry and Harry Jr., a unique, funky method of hanging stuff from walls, doors, or your favorite person (ok, that's a stretch!). The two different versions of this morass of plasticy hooks will let you hold anything from a iPod (would you trust your pod to this doohickey?) to kitchen utensils. Batman would hang his utility belt from it. BAM! POW! To the Batcave Giant Velcro!

Uhura's latest upgrade

Gizmodo reported this gizmo from CES, which to me looks a helluva lot like it came right out of ST:TOS (That's Star Trek, The Original Series to you non-geeks) It is the latest upgrade of Uhura's earpiece communicator... or would it perhaps be crude early version of her 23rd century doohicky? "It's a big galaxy Mister Scott"

Gizmodo from CES: Motorola H5 Miniblue: "Moto showed a futuristic Bluetooth earpiece called the H5 Miniblue today. It’s an in-ear speaker, about the diameter of a quarter, and it picks up your voice through your ear canal. It comes with a charging base that has a rechargeable battery inside. So you can plug in the base, charge it up, then unplug it and put the earpiece in there to charge while you are on the run. The earpiece itself gets only 1.5 hours of talk time, but it will fully recharge after 20 minutes in the base."

Metagalactic Llamas Battle At The Edge Of Time

Llamasoft is the software & games company started by Jeff Minter (AKA YAK) way back in the 80s. This guy has more llamas per pixel on his site than anyone! Not to mention all of the many llama references in his games! I have almost hallucinogenic memories of playing some crazy psychedlic, fiendishly impossible llama related game on either my Commdore 64 or Atari ST. I think I was so disturbed by the lack of mental cohesion caused by the explosion of llamas that I am unable to identify even which game it was! In any case, Llamasoft did write some normal games which were very good - and at the same time was instrumental in breaking the concept of shareware to the UK. Many of his games are available for download here.

Where Mythbusters Collide

Check out this Google Map that shows former Naval Air Station Alameda where the Matrix freeway scenes were shot on a gigantic fake road set. It is also where the Mythbusters often go to conduct their unorthodox experiments - they should use it to see if someone really could dodge cars like that on a motorbike.

Starry Eyed Surprise

"Oh my starry eyed surprise, sundown to sunrise,
I dance all night, we’re gonna dance all night, dance all night to this DJ."

I'm typically disgusted by advertising, but this Diet Coke ad still continues to catch my eye and ear - and for good reason. The tune is the uber-catchy "Starry Eyed Surprise" written by DJ Paul Oakenfold and sung by Shifty from Crazy Town. The bubbling feelgood goodness of the video was dreamed up by one of my favorite video directors Michel Gondry. He works on cool music vids for Bjork and directs crazy movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The blonde girl is possibly Nicole Vicius

"all my knittas in the house..."

These weird women from Houston have a pseudo-graffiti problem. Mainly, they are the problem, and their knitting is the pseudo-graffiti. They take their knitted pieces and attach them to poles, railings and other public things so that it looks like it was knitted onto the object. I think they must pre-knit the pieces and then just sew up the tube with yarn or something. What will people think of next? Quilting Bee Terror Cells?

Are you understanding the words that are coming out of my mouth?

Esperanto is a language constructed by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. Meaning, he made up a whole language, and now it is spoken by anywhere between 100,000 and 2 million people worldwide. However, it is not country or ethnicity specific - it is a language for everyone. It has a funky alphabet : a b c ĉ d e f g ĝ h ĥ i j ĵ k l m n o p r s ŝ t u ŭ v z. Here are some samples:

* Hello: Saluton [sa.ˈlu.ton]
* What is your name?:
Kiel vi nomiĝas? [ˈki.el vi no.ˈmi.ʤas]
Kio estas via nomo? [ˈki.o ˈes.tas ˈvi.a ˈno.mo]
* Thank you: Dankon [ˈdaŋ.kon]
* You're welcome: Ne dankinde [ˈne daŋ.ˈkin.de]
* Please: Bonvolu [bon.ˈvo.lu]

Breaks Tunes of the Day

Terra Skye - Is this Love (Fords Breakbeat Mix) - OMG, it is love! High cheese factor but I can't help myself. Ford's remixes are usually good stuff

hi-fi bugs - The Knife Drawer (Ryeland Allison Edit) - At girst I couldn't tell this was a guitar riff all super cut-up like. And then when I drop into a totally different genre and bpm - my brain did a little 180°.

ELT - Deatta Koro No You Ni (Hybrid Remix) My better half is usually the one downloading, ripping, and blasting j-pop around the house, so when I independently found this japanese track remixed by Hybrid I was pretty surprised. Excellent, clean sounding Hybrid remix fare with Japanese vocals that pull you in.

Be (Disaster) Prepared

The Personal SafetyPac from Humanscale should be a required item in places prone to disaster such as SF. It only make sense to have a safety kit anyway! I'm guilty of not having any kind of emergency stuff - time for me to get all Boy Scoutish and be prepared.

The Personal SafetyPac is a self-contained, thermo-formed plastic, handheld pac with easy-to-access compartments that hold emergency evacuation tools.

Each Personal SafetyPac contains an Evac-U8 smoke hood, flashlight, light stick, personal alarm and preserved water. These tools were chosen to give users the four critical life-saving abilities during an emergency: the ability to breathe, the ability to see, the ability to be seen and the ability to be heard.

Hello! ... Interface Design?

The 2006 Bloggies call for nominations site has to be one of the most irksome examples of a web form I've seen in quite some time. I can just imagine how many potential voters are going to be totally overwhelmed by the huge page and nav away. It would have been much more elegant to have each category in some sort of expand/collapse CSS box.

chick sexing is a dirty job

NPR has a good interview with Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. The description of how to check the sex of a baby chick is particularly funny, going into detail on the poop-squirting and anal-probing required to figure it out. I'd much rather toil away in an office cube than shovel excrement or gut squid all day, every day.

Fiero Concept GTR

One of my very favorite modified Fieros is the Concept GTR. It's a modified '87 GT with just a ton of really classy big mods, and a whole lotta smaller, subtle touches as well - Not to mention the phat honkin 3800 II Supercharged engine substituted for the fairly weak 2.8L stocker! I have some reservations about some of choices on the interior mods, but from a technical standpoint, it's done really well.

Muumuu Heaven is retro-cool!

Muumuu Heaven is a super cool Hawaii company that takes vintage clothes and retro objets d'art and breathes new life into them in the form of cute skirts, lovable pillows, and neat-o knick knacks! All their products are one-of-a-kind and very well made. Each item has a unique name and a fun little description of what would go well with it in an outfit! I recommend browsing through their fabulous offerings!

Pair this with a white tank, a tan, some chunky silver and turquoise jewelry and you're movie star fabulous!

WTF are these?

I spotted these on this site, and am wondering what they are. I've seen them here and there, but can't figure out how they would be useful. Looks to me like a 2D barcode, perhaps for tagging products or items?

Apple Tats

I really wonder if some of these people will regret getting these things permanently poked into their skin. If I had to do one I'd pick the dead mac icon, but really small and hidden away somewhere.

McDon-ads

This ad billboard is quite clever. But I still won't eat McDonalds.

Saul Bass had it going on

Graphic Designer Saul Bass was perhaps most famous for his title design for movies such as Vertigo and North by NorthWest. Check out a list of all the titles he worked on here. The site lets you clicks through each of the 24 movies' title sequences. Recent homages to Bass include the titles to "Catch me if You Can" He is also a renowned designer who did such famous logos as United Airlines, the timeless AT&T 'Death Star', and the not-so-timeless United Way hand logo. Saul Bass on Wiki

Braille Web Graphics

To celebrate Louis Braille's birthday, today Google had their logo as Braille (should that always be capitalized?). Now, is it me, or does the idea of a braille web graphic on a flat screen kind of seem self-defeating?

(don't) Mail-a-Pet

The USPS guidelines for how to deal with perishable, specifically animals, makes for entertaining and slightly un-nerving reading. I don't think I'd ever wanna send any animals I cared much about through the mail! And what exactly does 'viable condition' mean?

9.3.13 Disposal

Any parcel of live animals that cannot be delivered to the addressee or returned to the sender within 72 hours (for live day-old poultry) or within the delivery period marked on the parcel (for other animals) is immediately disposed of under the relevant standards. A parcel not marked with the delivery period is disposed of immediately if it reasonably appears that the animals cannot be returned to the sender in a viable condition. [C022.3.13]

Rubick's Cube XXL

At $500, the Rubick's Cube inspired Jellio Cube Table is just asking to become someone's DIY project! These 16" cube coffee table units are full of the kind of shiny acrylic goodness that oozes the '80s, but without being overwhelming. OK, OK, yeah I guess it screams the '80s! Closest acrylic store please? Gluing acrylic boxes together is tricky stuff - easy to mess up. For some tips, check here.

My Humps! My Humps! My Humps!

If you haven't seen this video that makes fun of the Black Eyed Peas song "My Humps", you probably should. They kinda deserve to be made fun of ;) And here's my lil poke at them!

Black Eyed Peas - "My Humps"

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely little lumps. (Check it out)

Robots are so KAWAII!

Which would you choose? - I'm not sure, it's a tough choice since they're all so cute! Check out the 1st Ave site - they have a few real nice CG vids. I wonder how long it will take for robots to have such a common public presence in our society? I bet that in Japan it is more likely to happen - the only exposure the US has to robots is a giant hockey puck that cleans your floor. Big whoop. Gimmie Qrio anyday!

Blonde Joke!

OMGAR! This is the funniest blonde joke I have heard in a long time!

Reblog Symbol

Mucho reblogging + Feed Icon = Reblog Symbol. I figured I'd give the icon a quick attempt - here's what I came up with. Hybrid of the recycle symbol and the Feed Icon. I prefer the left version better.

Virtual Product Placement

Product placement has been around forever, but sly ad agencies are always dreaming up new ways to brainwash the consumer. A new wave of product placements center around the concept of editing in virtual products in post-production - similar to how football games have virtual 'down' lines. Why not just put a box of crackers on a coffee table during the show? For flexiblity and the option to keep reaping dollars out of both the consumer and merchant. The idea goes that the TV virtual product might be different than the DVD release product, which might be different than the special edition release. Look people - we don't wanna buy your crap, virtual or not! Read the whole New York Times article.

Million-Germ-Eliminating Toothbrush Sanitizer at Hammacher Schlemmer

If you've ever worried about fecal matter on your toothbrush, then maybe you should consider buying the lengthyly named Million-Germ-Eliminating Toothbrush Sanitizer. This puppy will clean your toothbrush and turn your bathroom into a UV radiating room of doom. I bet once you have a Million-Germ-Eliminating Toothbrush Sanitizer you won't need to use your Urine-Gone in your bathroom. They should a larger version that you can dip your hands into for ultra-cleanliness.

Recursive Signage

After seeing this funny blog post about a self-referential sign, I was reminded of a joke I'd made to a coworker when working on a calendar. We had a generic calendar hanging in the background of a photo we took for one of the months, and I said we should edit in the calendar we were working on into the photo to make the calendar recursive. Here is the self-referential result.

The 18% Problem

As an aspiring (sometimes perspiring!) photographer, I try to learn as many tricks as I can. One bit of research lately about how to take photos in snow really opened my eyes as to how built-in camera exposure meters work. Have you ever had your photo of a black subject turn out more gray than black? Does your snow look like ash? Well, the reason is most likely the 18% gray problem. Built-in meters assume that the subject of your photos is 18% gray - this is because most scenes are on average this tone. While this won't cause problems with your average shot, it incorrectly assumes your snowy landscape is 18% grey and underexposes it to adjust. The trick is to give white subjects a stop more exposure, and true black subjects a stop less, give or take. Of course, the best guide I to learn through experimentation and learn how to shoot by manually adjusting for your given scene. Get a much more in-depth look here

Vacuforming is Fun!

"This procedure will help you construct a simple vacuforming device. With it, you'll be able to fabricate plastic parts or make copies of of objects in plastic. Vacuum forming is a popular industrial process for manufacturing hollow, thin walled, plastic parts. In industrial units, a sheet of plastic is heated, usually by infrared lamps. This homemade vacuformer is made by using a piece of perforated circuit board as the platform, and a project box as the vacuum chamber. A heat gun is enough to melt most thing plastics, and a shop vac provides plenty of 'suck'."

How many times have a wanted to vacuform something when working on some weird project or other! Well, this DIY vacuformer should do the trick for small projects. I wonder how far you can scale up this concept before the vacuum cleaner no longer provides enough suction. A good alternative for pre-drilled PCB board is that fiberboard stuff with holes in it... Here is a larger scale version DIY vacuformer by George Gassaway.

Fiero Shift Kit Write-Up

A few years back I installed a shift kit on my Fiero since I had an automatic, and figured I might as well make the most of it. Here's the write-up I did on the installation. The job turned out to be really tricky and had lots of fiddly bits that were pretty intimidating if you've never popped open a transmission before! Sure shifted nice and hard after though!

Freefall Dog Tricks

This is this funniest video clip I have seen in a long long time. It is just frickin hilarious! The best part is the doggie looks like he's just chillin, havin a good time, like 'Hey, what's up dudes!'

Zapruder Footage Authenticity

From WFMU's Beware of the Blog: "Here's the alleged stabilized Zapruder film that's been making the rounds. Is it a hoax? A hoax of a hoax? The truth revealed? You decide: [download video: 6.5 meg quicktime file]"

What is interesting to me is that of all the documentaries I've seen, amy of which cover this topic of the assassination pretty thoroughly, none of them have pointed out these discrepencies in the footage. Sure, they may not have anything to do with who committed the crime, but it should definately be considered in any scientific study of the mystery - yet it doesn't seem to receive any attention.

Happy 3D Holidays

Bust out those 3D glasses! Here is a 3D xmas card me & my better half put together with the help of two plush Opii (Opuses? Opusctopus?) from Bloom County / Outland. This was achieved by using a standard digital camera and taking two pics at about the distance between a person's eyes while moving the camera on a horizontal track. Then with the help of Photoshop, and hey presto! Experimentation is usually needed to get the best results, depending on your scene and equipment.

Fiero Side Scoop

I while ago I got the notion that I wanted to make a bolt-on side scoop for my Pontiac Fiero. Hours of research, many sticky itchy days, and much frustration later, I successfully made my scoopy design. The fiberglassing process is quite tedious, especially if you haven't ever done it before... Making molds, using the right mixtures of goopy stuff, what release agent to use. In the end, it worked out very well - I made about 10 scoops and sold em on PFF (Pennock's Fiero Forum) I was surprised today when someone posted a pic of their Fiero with my scoop on it! Shweeeet. Guess they're still out there somewhere being appreciated. They sure do look much better than the Holley POS!

scoop- wide shot
from above
close-up
unfinished
unfinished 2

Bad Cop, No Donut

I caught U.S. Marshals on the boob tube last night, and at some point in the movie, one of the marshals commandiers a civilian car. This got me to thinking (uh oh!) whether law enforcement really has the power to do this - and if they do, there must surely be rules and regulations concerning how to do it. It seems to me that it would be a violation of a civilians rights to be yanked out of their own car at gunpoint, have their vehicle used in a chase and possibly damaged. (ok, that's mostly movie antics) And the likelihood of some hotheaded gun-totin' A-merican just popping a cap in the noggin of the officer would be high too. Maybe the whole commandiering thing is bunk. Or maybe it's done much more politely, over tea with cucumber sandwiches and paperwork. No guns at the table please, it is quite rude.

Guys Gone Wild

While Urine-Gone might be some really bizarre advertising, at least you know what they're selling, and who needs it. Well, when I saw the "Guys Gone Wild" ad on TV for the first time yesterday I was quite confused. No, not about my sexual orientation, but about who exactly this Girls Gone Wild with guys was targeted toward. My guess is that even though they make no references to neither gay men nor women, it is probably more geared toward homosexual men. Though I suppose if women bought the stupid videos, they can't lose!

Record and Process Vocals

Tweakheadz has a good write-up on How to Record and Process Vocals in your Home or Project Studio. Throw in some DIY work by making a pop filter out of an embroidery hoop and some stocking, and all you need now is a vocalist that doesn't suck (or lots of post-processing - Eg. Britney!)

Urine-Gone!

Urine-Gone is the most amazing marketing for a new product I've seen lately! I love how they promote that it 'features an enzyme with an appetite for urine, hunts it out, breaks it down, and digests it." Wow. I always lose my appetite for urine right before I am about to drink some... I must have some sort of urine eating disorder. And you get a blacklight for your money too! Pop on some techno, and you can have a rave party with your urine. But you'll get the most effective trippy splashes and drip effects if you get your pet to piss everywhere first.

The Coat Rack Search

I need a coat rack. The problem is, most products out there are hideous. There are some elegant solutions though. The Charles and Ray Eames Hang-It-All is cutesy, geometric and adaptable. The Ghost Antler rack is seriously unusual. I love the simplicity of the 'Flip Hook' - though I'd probably never tuck away the hooks when grabbing a coat. Topdeq has a modern hook thingy that costs way more than I would pay.

Most floor based coat racks are straight up cringe-worthy... Even Ikea just couldn't do it for me (that thing is pretty huge in real life!). This tree-inspired piece is pretty cool tho.

Bathtub Mysteries

Maybe not every bathtub has the same features - this fancy shmancy tub has crazy colored lights - but many of them feature a drainage hole somewhere below the spout. This hole never fails to be so low that you can't fill up the tub high enough to really have a decent bath. I would suspect that this is some calculated placement designed so that if you fill up the tub then get in after, you most likely won't cause an overflow. So this leads to the interesting question of who the heck determines the 'average volume' of a human being? I sure hope a 300 lb person doesn't try to take a bath in a regular size tub (there wouldn't be any space for the water!) They should create drainage holes that can be opened and shut.

Market Prices

If you are into playing Ragnarok Online, then the snipah ro-market site is indispensable. It gives you the lowdown on the prices of items on the various RO servers. I would guess that this is accomplished by the use of a bot and some SQL queries. Very helpful for anyone with a merchie.

Oh, the Dancing Chibi Goodness!

Unfortunately, I don't understand Japanese. So I have absolutely no clue as to what the hell "Funky Cat Maybe" is supposed to be all about. It seems like some mutant hybrid of Michael Jackson's Thriller, 3d rendered chibi anime cat girls, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's quite moggling. [hi-res torrent]

Perhaps equally as weird is Morning Musume making cat noises. Nyah Nya!