Archive for January 8th, 2007
Time Lapse Video of a Parking Lot
This is one of the still frames from photographer Sam Javanrouh’s mesmerizing time lapse video of a parking lot in Toronto. While a video of a parking lot may sound boring, the results are stunning and definitely worth watching. You can see the video by clicking here [daily dose of imagery].
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A Smidgen, a Pinch, or a Dash?
My friend The Pragmatic Chef got this set of measuring spoons for Christmas. I guess fingers are optional now.
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Fashion for Heterosexual Men.
Found at The Onion, still going strong after all these years …
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Meghan Murphy's Kawaii Not Comics.
Check out Meghan’s very funny 4-panel comic strip called Kawaii Not, The Webcomic for Cute Gone Bad. Link
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Astronomers Mapped the Position of Dark Matter.
They have finally mapped the position of dark matter:
Astronomers have mapped the positions of vast, invisible isles of dark matter in the sky, within which normal "bright" matter galaxies are embedded like glittering gems. The three-dimensional map spans not only space, but also time, and stretches back to when the universe was only about half its present age.
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Tree Goats!
Today’s Cellar / Neatorama Images of the Week are these weird tree-climbing goats:
Wildlife photo blogger Remo Savisaar posted an entry on tree goats – that’s right, goats that climb trees! Apparently this is quite a common phenomenon in Morocco.
Turns out, the goats are eating the nuts from the argan trees.
For more fun images, please visit Cellar Image of the Day (and browse through their 5 years’ worth of archives!)
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Turning Mobility Scooter into a Horse.
This guy loves to visit the Renaissance Faire, so in keeping with the spirit of the thing, he dressed up his scooter into a horse!
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Four Yolks in a Guangdong Egg.
Mrs. Deng, a 40-year-old housewife, surprisingly found these four connected yolks when she broke the “virgin egg” to cook at home. The egg whose smaller-than-average yolk diameters measure around 2.5 cm, was recently bought from her acquaintance, an egg boss in Guanshan Market, Maoming of China’s southern Guangdong Province.
Link to Chinadaily or Xinhua (in Chinese)
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Dog Runnin' From Da Law!
Not only is this dog running away from the law – he seems to be having quite a fun time too!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
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Armchair Cruisers.
If you enjoy cruising the streets, and if you enjoy sitting in your Lazy Boy, why not combine them? Armchair Cruisers has both electric and gas-powered models, plus options such as lights, coolers, and sound systems! Link -via Grow-A-Brain
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A Restaurant Where One Eats in Total Darkness
The first dark restaurant in Asia is officially opened on the 23 December 2006. This restaurant, located in Beijing, China, has its interior painted completely black. Customers are greeted by a brightly lit entrance hall and will be escorted by waiters wearing night vision goggles into the pitch dark dining room to help them find their seats. Flashlights, mobile phones and even luminous watches are prohibited while in this area.
The meal will be taken in this environment with the complete loss of vision. By starving one’s sense, your other senses are stimulated to full alert – all so the theory goes – and your food will taste like it’s never tasted before. In case you are wondering about the washrooms, they are all brightly lit. Link [in Chinese]
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Full Vinyl: The Subversive Art of Designer Toys.
There is a trend underfoot: designer toys or urban vinyl are becoming mainstream. These aren’t mass produced toys that you’d find in bigbox toy stores, in fact to call them “toys” is a bit misleading: these are pop art sculptures that happen to use toys as canvas.
Chances are you’ve seen urban vinyl toys. They are collectible figures and toys, made from vinyl or plastic, designed by both budding artists and famous ones alike. The whole thing got started in the late 1990s when Hong Kong artist Michael Lau created the first urban vinyl figure from an underground comic, which looked like a custom-made GI Joe action figure. After friends raved about the unique toy, one thing led to another and a genre was born. Now, you can find artworks by artists like Takashi Murakami, Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Coop, KAWS and Pete Fowler as urban vinyl.
This whole trend is captured by Ivan Vartanian in his new book Full Vinyl: The Subversive Art of Designer Toys. Ivan called the movement “subversive” because:
… we realized a consistently recurring theme: the act of subversion. Either the content of the work itself is subversive or the means of production is. The producers are subverting rules by how they work and the nature of their figures. Mass-produced toys are replaced by small-scale productions. Band-released “limited editions” are worthless compared to “insider picks.” Cute and pop characters have an erotic, aggressive, or gruesome element. High-brow is mixed with low-brow art.
Full Vinyl is like a who’s who of the urban vinyl movement: it has over 400 color photos of vinyl toys from the some of the most famous artists in the industry. True to form, the book comes with a corrugated cardboard cover (just like the box those toys come in!) and a cute vinyl squid keychain to boot!
But enough readin’, let’s see a couple of examples from the book:
Urban vinyl figures by Gary Baseman and Tim Biskup:
From Junko Mizuno and KAWS:
This fun one is from Nathan Jurevicius:
Last, but not least, from Pete Fowler:
That’s not all: HarperCollins is kind enough to sponsor a book giveaway to kick off the launch of Full Vinyl. If you want a FREE copy of the book, please leave a comment on your most favorite urban vinyl artist/creation (you can mention a few, but please one comment per person) – top 10 comments will get a free Full Vinyl book (Note: I can only ship to US addresses, though).
And please, visit the website: Full Vinyl to order.
The review above as well as the giveaway are sponsored by HarperCollins.
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Invented Languages.
There are a lot of languages (9,500 not counting the dead ones, by some estimates), and some people would argue that you ought to learn a couple – like, say, Spanish or Mandarin – that already have a loyal following. But why not invent your own language, coerce millions into using it, and conquer new linguistic frontiers? In case you’re looking for inspiration …
Klingon
That’s Neatorama in Klingon, according to Klingon Language [wiki]
Why It’s Worth Learning: It’s the surest way to a Trekker’s heart.
Why It Was Invented: Because Star Trek is so unbelievably realistic and authentic, except for the traveling-faster-than-the-speed-of-light-being-completely-impossible part.
How Long It Takes to Learn: You won’t be fluent until you’ve memorized the surprisingly lengthy Klingon Dictionary.
The Basics: Of the handful of constructed languages inspired by Star Trek, Klingon is by far the most widely spoken. Some estimates indicate that there are thousands of Klingon speakers on Earth and billions more in the solar system. As for the language’s earthly origins, however, you can thank Marc Okrand. Mr. Okrand created Klingon [wiki] for Paramount Studios’ Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and what resulted certainly wasn’t pretty. Mainly because Klingon’s guttural and forceful tones reflect the warrior spirit of the Klingon people. For instance, there’s no way of saying "Hello," in Klingon; the only greeting is "nunqneH’" which more or less means "Whaddya want?"
Leetspeak
Neatorama in Leetspeak
Why It’s Worth Learning: You desperately want to fit in with all the kids on AOL Instant Messenger.
Why It Was Invented: B/c ppl R layz.
How Long It Will Take to Learn: Thirty 57X, if you pay attention.
The Basics: If you’ve ever hung out in a chat room, you’ve probably seen text like "d00d r u CuTie," which certain communities of chatter believe is a) a sentence, and b) a question, even though it c) lacks punctuation, and d) contains more grammatical and spelling errors than it does letters. While the d00ds of the online world probably don’t know it, such short-cut-laden, purposely misspelled typing (including "teh" for "the") is actually a typeset dialect known as leetspeak [wiki] (or more commonly, 133+5p33k). And while words like d00d aren’t particularly hard to decode, hardcore leetspeakers can fashion sentence like 73]-[ |)0|\||<=j 15 4|\| 45$ (hints: j = y, and |< = k, and = = e).
Elvish
That's Neatorama in Elvish, according to Ned Gulley
Why It's Worth Learning: If elves ever show up in the world, and if they're really as hot as Liv Tyler and Orlando Bloom, you'll want to be able to talk to them.
Why It Was Invented: J.R.R. Tolkien thought that designing languages was fun.
How Long It Will Take to Learn: Years, if you want to be able to read or speak Elvish [wiki]. But you can learn to say, "Liv Tyler, you are so beautiful. Please come home with me," in just a few minutes.
The Basics: J.R.R. Tolkien actually developed several languages during his life. Aside from a few Elvish poems in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien wrote in his constructed languages mostly for his own, um, entertainment. Many of his Elvish writings since have been translated by a dedicated group of Tolkienians who go by the name Elvish Linguistic Fellowship (ELF – so clever, those Tolkien fanatics). The Quenya dialect of Elvish (as heard in the movies) sound a lot like Finnish, but most of the vocabulary came straight from Tolkien’s mind. And yes, Tyler really is speaking Elvish in the movies, although many Tolkienians claim her accent is, like, totally bogus.
Esperanto
I’d have no idea how to convert Neatorama into Esperanto, maybe:
Nitorama
Why It Was Worth Learning: So you can help rebuild the Tower of Babel.
Why It Was Invented: To end all disagreement, war, strife, and unhappiness.
How Long It Takes to Learn: Esperanto [wiki] advocates say it’s easier to learn than most any other language. But still, that means you will only be able to say "Pierre is going to the library with his friend the acrobat" for the first six months.
The Basics: Between 1877 and 1885, a Polish Jew named L.L. Zamenhof constructed a language. He hoped that a universal, easy-to-learn language might create a world where people could communicate with one another using words rather than bullets. His language, Esperanto (which means "one who is hoping" in Esperanto and "one whose hope is a bit unrealistic" in English), caught fire with European intellectuals, but never took root with the public at large. Today there are some two million Esperanto speakers worldwide, but on the whole, people still prefer communicating with bullets: In the 20th century, there were some 110,000,000 war-related deaths.
Mirror English
Neatorama in Mirror English.
Why It’s Worth Learning: It’s not.
Why It Was Invented: Someone held a book up to a mirror and said, "Hey. I can’t read that."
How Long It Takes to Learn: If you own a mirror, you’re basically already fluent.
The Basics: In mirror English, the letters are reversed, so as to be read in front of a mirror, and the meaning of the words is also reversed, so as to seem clever. For example, if you wanted to say, "My little friend, Boris, sleeps with the fishes," you might write:
Or take the first sentence of the following quotations we just made up: "I will never understand the concept of ‘dry hair.’ You don’t need a special shampoo to de-dry your hair. You need water." That first sentence might become 
______
From mental_floss’ book Scatterbrained, published in Neatorama with permission.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!
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Big Sale!
Found at Link [Flickr] – via Say No to Crack
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Harbin Ice and Snow Festival.
Spluch has some really cool photos from the 23rd international ice and snow festival in Harbin, China: Link
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Amy Bennet's Artwork.
Amy Bennet has some fantastic paintings of houses – this one is called Evening News. Check out more of her artwork: Link – via Eduyayo
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Worst Hockey Play Ever.
This is the now famous worst hockey play ever, i.e. how Patrik Štefan [wiki] choked in front of an open net… Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via A Welsh View
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World's Oldest Noodles.
Scientists have unearthed (literally) the world’s oldest noodles:
The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood.
Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old.
Link – via Random Citations
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"Hi" by Psapp.
A fantastic stop-motion music video, starring diodes capacitors (you know, those electronic components), by Psapp (the music is called "Hi"). Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | Official website – via Miss Cellania
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Fish Pool Toys Actually Swim.
These cute fish are actually motorized pool toys that swim as soon as they hit the water! Link – via Scribal Terror
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