The Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games are freakin’ gorgeous! They so kick ass over Syd, Olly and Dickhead, and even more so over Amik, which means beaver, or non-descript clump of fuzz.
In recent years car manufacturers have provided trunk release tabs so that you can release yourself, but there were two problems with the early tabs. One, they used words to instruct those trapped inside on what to do, and two, the trunk of a car is pitch black when the door is closed. The new Ford Focus has solved both of these problems with an ingenious pull tab that glows in the dark and has an easy-to-comprehend symbol — via boingboing
Taiwanese airline EVA has repainted one of its jets with giant Hello Kittys. The plane’s interior features Hello Kitty-related items as well, ranging from boarding passes, baggage tags, dining utensils, and loo paper to attendant uniforms — via PopGadget
My Guitar Pick Earrings and Sky and Snow Postcard and Pin Set arrived today and I am very delighted indeed! Pixelgirlshop.com even threw in a cute badge and kitty hair tie. The photo was taken with my snazzy new Nikon Coolpix 7600 7.1 mega pixel camera.
New camera will be accompanying me to the Web Essentials 2005 conference tomorrow and friday.
Bigger kitty and pick photo, the limited edition card is not pictured, but rest assured is very cute.
I’m also very amused with Rhymes With Ditty, and getting settled in with the Adobe Creative Suite 2.
Derrick Hixson has submitted an amazing entry to the MacMod Mod Competition, a Millennium Falcon: complete with Mac mini and iSight. It even includes front USB ports. His modguide contains complete build instructions, and plenty of pictures
The Encyclomædia is a casemod that puts a PC into what appears to be a set of encyclopædia volumes — via BoingBoing
It took four months work, to casemod a 70s Dalek. Power LEDs are in the yellow domes and the power switch is in the eye
Produce industry service company Durand-Wayland developed a system for identifying produce with laser-etched codes in 2002. These fruit tattoos would replace those little stickers that always get stuck in your teeth when you bite into a nice, crisp apple while distracted — via BoingBoing
The MARC commuter trains between Baltimore and DC are sporting these terrornoia posters styled after the heyday of Stalin’s totalitarian regime, when Soviet citizens were exhorted to spy on their neighbours and fink them out for suspicious behaviour. And they say irony is dead — via boingboing
Pros and cons on the new job vs. old job
New:
- Pro: I get to draw little people for a good part of the day, and design the rest
- Pro: I get to travel
- Pro: I get to work with designers
- Pro: I get paid more
- Con: It’s in North Sydney (pain for me to travel)
- Con: I have to work on a DELL!
Old:
- Pro: I get full creative control over internal projects, including drawing
- Con: I don’t get full creative control over projects for external clients
- Pro: internal projects getting more priority
- Pro-ish: possibility of travel
- Pro: Will be heading new team of designers, currently training junior designer
- Pro: Just been offered same as new job
- Pro: It’s near central station
- Pro: I have a G5 and a nice cinema display monitor
Arrggh!!! Decisions!
Giant Microbes have new designs.
They’ve introduced TB, The Clap and, my favourite, The Pox.
I think I need more giant microbes
Work has decided that yes, we need another designer, but no, we can’t afford one. Solution: hire a graduate. But do we want to PAY to put an ad in at seek? No. Solution: go to closest uni. People applied, I set some a task, some did the task. I tell work which 2 I’d like to interview approx. 2 weeks ago. Work are trying to figure out if we can hire a junior designer. GRRRRR!!!!
TAFE term ends this week, so it’s back to 5 day working weeks again for the next 2 weeks. Shit hey.
Oh well, it’s friday and I haven’t blogged in quite some time due to large workloads (see above bitching) resulting in less time. But here are some quick amusing links:
The new Puma Beisser (or Bites
) have rubberised fangs on the soles, designed not to improve traction, but instead to look wicked. They are very limited edition, however, with just 500 pairs being released to retailers — via Gizmodo
On this Good Friday just passed, my Yankee mate Luke and I headed to our Aussie mate Nerida’s house to play videogames. Our packs were laden with gaming systems, controllers, and many, many discs and cartridges. We took a train to the crap side of the Harbour Bridge and a ute to our final destination.
Nerida’s house turned out to be a large rock with a TV antenna on top, a bit like Patrick’s house in the television programme SpongeBob Squarepants. We lifted up an edge and crawled inside. “It’s just like my place” said Luke, as he looked around the granite lounge room. Domestic animals peered at us warily from behind stacks of anime DVDs; storm clouds gathered. A purple plastic cube appeared in front of the TV. A rice cracker cracked ominously; a James Squire hissed as its cap was cruelly wrenched off.
We decided to ease into things with a shortish (15 turn) game of Mario Party 5 on the GameCube. As the name suggests, it’s a lightweight beer and pretzels affair; a collection of Mario-themed minigames. For the purposes of the Mario Party, I took the role of Toad the friendly mushroom, Nerida took Boo the spooky ghost, and Luke took Daisy, the… uh… perky princess. We decided that the CPU would take the role of the treasure-hungry Wario and began the game.
I took an early lead in the coin dept (leading to some muttering about the handicap screen from the peanut gallery), but soon fell behind as everyone else picked up stars. In a desperate attempt to get back into the running, I dueled Wario, wagering 50 of my coins for one of his stars. He quickly defeated me, took my money, and gained an impossible lead. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Of the human players, Luke fared best, trailing Wario by a handful of coins at the buzzer. Enjoyable minigames included
Mario Mechs (in which Luke and Nerida’s tiny mecha ganged up on and
lasered the crap out of my rampaging giant robot), Will Flower (in which my sunflower psychically bloomed first due to my 1337 A button pounding skillz), and Hotel Goomba (in which we brutally kicked small creatures around the lobby of the Mushroom Hilton for no apparent reason).
At this juncture my colleagues took a cigarette break while I hooked up the PS2 and tweaked its PSX driver settings.
Next up was a quick round of perennial favourite Worms World Party (PSX version). Due to the copious shelter afforded by their rocky domiciles, neither Nerida nor Luke had played Worms before. “Come on people!” I said, “It’s part of your rich cultural heritage! Get on board!” And get on board they did, with much shotgun blasting and cluster bombing and dynamiting and strategic prodding. Highlights included a CPU worm getting stuck in an infinite loop, Luke’s crazed blowtorching, Nerida dynamiting everyone simultaneously, and my inability to drive the jetpack.
After this spate of cartoon gaming, we were keen for a bit of fragging and fired up
Halo 2 on the XBox. Having recently moved into a rock house of my own, I had not yet played it and was keen to see whether it lived up to the hype. My first impressions were that it was not terribly different from any other FPS game, except that it had large maps with an excellent draw distance. Further play revealed some interesting nuances: really slick map design, a clever grenade implementation, a useful radar (could use some height info for the blips), strategic weapon management. Quite good fun, and I’d be keen to play an 8 or 16 player match at some point.
Cigarette break time again, and I played a few levels of Metal Slug Advance on the GBA while the others wheezed and hacked.
While the XBox was still hooked up, Luke snuck in a few levels of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II. The BG:DA games have always interested me from a technical perspective, as they look identical on all three of the current generation consoles
without sacrificing looks. They’re fun too, if you’re into top-down dungeon crawling. Anyway if you have a PS2 and you’re sick of XBox and GameCube owners poking fun at your system’s graphics, pick up one of these games and you’ll feel a bit better.
Enthused by the monster bashing theme, we plugged the PS2 back in and watched Luke play Final Fantasy X for a bit, back seat driving him in a boss fight and generally being annoying. I hadn’t played it in a while and had forgotten how gorgeous the graphics were and how annoying the voice acting was. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl again when I’m done with Phantasy Star I.
When the FFX cutscenes became too much to bear, we dined on gado gado and broke out the single malt whisky.
Since drink encourages foolishness, we took turns playing levels of PaRappa the Rappa 2. For those not familiar with it, it’s a rhythm game in which one takes the role of a paper-thin dog who is skilled at old school posi rapping (in the vein of the Sugarhill Gang). We chuckled at length at the game’s Nipponese surrealism, but after four or five levels the rhythms became too complex for boozy mortals and we threw in the mic.
At this juncture Luke produced a copy of Midway Arcade Treasures Volume 2. The treasures within — with the possible exception of Mortal Kombat — have not stood the test of time, really. Possibly this was because the games weren’t quite retro enough; 24-bit rather than 8- or 16-. It was interesting as a bit of history, but I think Volume 1 (with Paperboy etc) would be the better purchase.
Ranting interlude: Sony, where are the other two controller ports? Get out from under your rock house and get on board! Boo! End interlude.
Tiredness was setting in at this point, and there was time for but one more title. I had recently picked up Super Monkey Ball second hand, so we hooked up the GameCube for the last time and selected our simians. Nerida chose the cute baby chimp, I chose some sort of tweenaged girl money with a pink bow(?), and Luke picked a giant gorilla. Looking at the minigames screen we decided to go with the Monkey Racing Grand Prix first. This proved to be an enjoyable kart racer in which the ball-dwelling primates rolled around a gutter-like track, throwing fiendish bombs at each other (the most amusing of these being a device that turned an enemy monkey’s ball into an uncontrollable cube — hilarious at high speeds). My teenage years of compulsively playing Wipeout 2 led me to overall victory, despite my inability to keep my ape on the track on the final two courses. My colleagues were angered at my victory, and in the next game, Monkey Fight, they relentlessly pounded my monkey with their oversized boxing gloves. As Nerida gloated and capered, I rolled my battered and misshapen monkey ball in the direction of the animal hospital.
For our final monkey minigame, we played Monkey Target, in which the monkeys must glide from a great height towards an island target covered in bombs and mines. My monkey kept exploding, Nerida’s monkey kept drowning, and Luke’s giant gorilla finally tasted the sweet sweet banana of victory. We packed everything up, and wandered home, clutching our aching eyeballs and carpal tunnels.
And I didn’t have to use my AK. It was a good day.
A new spectacle design from KT Optica anchors your shades’ to the whorls of your ears, which is meant to prevent your glasses from sliding down your nose — via boingboing
Clocky is possibly the world’s ugliest alarm clock, but it is also the most devious. An MIT research lab designed specifically for people who have trouble waking up.
When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, Clocky will roll off the bedside table and wheel away, bumping mindlessly into objects on the floor until it eventually finds a spot to rest. Minutes later, when the alarm sounds again, the sleeper must get up out of bed and search for Clocky. This ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off. Small wheels that are concealed by Clocky’s shag enable it to move and reposition itself, and an internal processor helps it find a new hiding spot every day.
Apparently looking for new and exciting ways to draw lawsuits from parents with no sense of responsibility, the lads at Carnegie Mellon have created a souped-up high-soaring Pogo Stick, that appropriates design elements from a composite bow — via boingboing
While a traditional pogo stick allows hopping 3-6 inches (foot clearance) off the ground with great effort, the BOWGO (patented) carries the rider to 10-20 inches or more almost effortlessly, allowing new patterns of play and sport… We find it easy to hop in place 15-20 inches high for periods of a few minutes… We routinely jump 24-inch-high (foam-core) hurdles, and Illah has cleared a bar 42 inches above ground
Threadless is a site that solicits user-generated t-shirt designs and puts them out to vote, producing the most popular.
My current favs are My Pet Rhino, Squeaked and Corporate Zombie
Falling under the category of things I deperately want, this voodoo knife rack, which depicts a human form pierced by your knife collection in many strategic locations, is one of the best kitchen things I’ve seen for quite some time.
Unlike the shiny, red KitchenAid mixmasters that I want but will never use, I can never be without too many knives — via boingboing
For US$39 a month, you can receive bizarre environmental disaster stuffed animals; bunnies with three ears, animals wrapped inside other animals, furry things that talk, packed in leaves or string or paper or whatever’s on Morbid Tendencies’ living room floor — via boingboing
Something dreadful in the mail each month to brighten your life. I encourage you to have them delivered to your office
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