Archive Category: Blog & Internet
Neatorama’s Guide to 25 of the Strangest Collections on the Web
Some people collect stamps, others collect comic books. The people on this list, however, collect things that are far, far stranger. Behold, Neatorama's guide to the 25 Strangest Collections on the Web:
1. Graham Barker's Navel Fluff Collection
Graham Barker's Navel Fluff Collection
Some people see navel fluff or bellybutton lint as life's little annoyances. Not Graham Barker: he began collecting them since 1984, and now has the world's largest collection of navel fluff according to Guiness Book of World Records:
It was on the 17th of January 1984 that I found myself under-occupied in a youth hostel in Brisbane. The night was steamy and stormy - too wet outside and too hot inside to do very much, and my attention drifted to my belly button. There it was ... fluff! I must have seen it before that night, but this occasion was the first time I ever picked it out and wondered about it. I became curious about how much navel fluff one person could generate (enough to stuff a cushion, maybe?), and the only way to find for sure was to collect it and see. My first piece of navel fluff was stored in an empty film canister, and the collection had begun.
2. Air Sickness Bag Virtual Museum
Like its name implies, the Air Sickness Bag Virtual Museum is all about vomit bags. Indeed, it catalogs more than 2,000 photos of air sickness bags from all over the world.
In addition to airplane air sickness bags, the website also has a collection of bus sickness, sea sickness, and even space sickness bags!
Though most are underwhelming in terms of design, some are actually quite artistic. Virgin Atlantic airlines even held a "Design for Chunks" project in 2004, where artists submit their designs to be put as a limited edition barf bags!
Before you check out the website, I'll leave you with a few of the more unusual bags from the Visitor's Favorite section:
From left to right: Brooklyn Artist Sarah Nicole Phillip's Little Brown
Barf Bag, a parody of Bloomingdale's Little Brown Bag; The Space Shuttle
Sickness ("Emesis") Bag; Barf Bag One, unfortunately only a
gag gift and not the real thing.
3. Joseph W. Lauher's Handcuffs
If
you want to collect handcuffs, then Joseph W. Lauher is your man, and
handcuffs.org is the website to see. Indeed, Joseph has the largest collection
of handcuffs (with focus on vintage ones), leg irons, nippers, and thumbcuffs
on the Web: Link
What's a nipper and a thumbcuff? Well, a nipper is a handcuff that locks only one hand, but has a handle for keeping the cuffed person under control (Photo to the left is a 1888 nipper made by Thomas & Smith).
A thumbcuff, like its name implies, cuffs both of the person's thumbs.
4. Bob Toelle's Fish Posters
Bob Toelle collects posters - but not any poster, just the ones about fish - and he's got a lot of it. Currently, Bob has more than 700 fish posters from around the world: Link
5. Medical Antiques by Douglas Arbittier, M.D.
Amputation set by Ferris & Co., Bristol (c. 1885)
Dr. Douglas Arbittier collects old medical equipments, and specializes in cased surgical sets. His collection includes a lot of amputation saws, and bloodletting artifacts (leech jar, anyone?).
When you visit his website, keep what Dr. Arbittier said in mind: "be thankful you live in today's medical world ...": Link
6. Barney Smith's Toilet Seat Art
Texan artist Barney Smith has an unusual choice of art medium: toilet seats! For the past 30 years, Barney had created over 700 artistically decorated toilet seat lids. Check it out here: Link
7. Sergei Frolov's Soviet Calculators
W.T. Odhner Arithmometer (1890)
Sergei Frolov has a fantastic collection of over 150 Soviet-made calculators, as well as vintage computers, watches and slide rules. I'm particularly fond of the old mechanical arithmometers, as shown above: Link
8. Phil Miller's Sugar Packets
Phil Miller is a sucrologist - meaning that he collects sugar packets and sugar cube wrappers. Indeed, Phil has been collecting since 1978 when he started with the Presidents of the United States sugar packets, and he hasn't looked back since. Life must be sweet if you collect sugar packets ... Link
9. The Asphalt Museum
The
Asphalt Museum is actually a real museum in a real building in Sacramento,
California, but it's weird enough that we'll just have to include it on
this list. It has a large collection of (you guessed it) everything asphalt.
The museum was founded by Scott Gordon and Marie Vans in 1991, while both attended Colorado State University.
In addition to asphalt "samples" from famous (like Route 66, Highway I, and the ancient Roman road Appian Way) and not-so-famous roads, the museum also has a recipe on how to make your own asphalt: Link
10. Gideon Weiss' Back Scratchers
Gideon Weiss must've had one really itchy back when he started collecting back scratchers. His online collection has grown to include 236 of the strangest back scratchers I've ever seen: Link
11. Michael Lewis' Moist Towelettes
Michael
Lewis welcomes visitors to his website with these warm words: "Welcome
to the exciting world of Moist Towelette Collecting."
Though I'm not sure just how wet naps would rank in the excitement scale, Michael's collection sure is something: Link
Don't miss the "Awards" section!
12. Nancy Alford's Mangles
What
is a mangle? You'll be forgiven if you don't know what it is: a mangle
is a cast iron contraption with two wooden rollers, a spring, and a side
wheel with handle. Its function is to wring clothes dry after you wash
them, so obviously it's now obsolete with the invention dryers and all
...
A few years ago, Nancy Alford was in a local department store when she saw, and fell in love with, a mangle. For her sixteenth wedding anniversary, Nancy wanted (and got) - you guessed it, a mangle. Her husband thought she was mad.
Since then, she has collected so many of them that they had to build a new house (which she aptly named Mangleten) to fit all her mangles. Link
13. Victor Paul Taylor's Scratchcard Collection
Victor Taylor is a lotologist (yes, a made up word meaning someone who collects lottery tickets). He has a particular interest in "Instants" Scratchcards, produced by Camelot for the UK National Lottery. As far as I can tell, none of the scratchcards have been scratched, so he's sitting on a potential goldmine worth bazillions!
Check out his incredibly detailed collection, which starts with the 1995 issues: Link
14. Lydia's AOL CDs
Younger Neatorama readers may not be familiar with AOL CDs, but the rest of us surely remember getting spammed with tons of these discs from America Online.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, AOL produced over a billion CDs (with over 1,000 distinct designs) for its direct mail campaign. The strategy was a huge success: AOL became the largest dial-up Internet Service Provider in the world (for a while anyway). After its fateful merger with Time Warner and the decline of dial-up as a mean of accessing the web, the company stopped producing the discs in 2006.
But fear not. Lydia of Lydia's AOL Disks shares with us her collection of over 2,500 unique AOL diskettes and CDs. Check it out here: Link
15. Museum of Burnt Food
The
Museum of Burnt Food is dedicated to accidentally burnt food, er ... carbonized
culinary masterpieces (no intentionally burned artwork there!). The museum
was founded by harpist Deborah Henson Conant, who recounted this tale:
The museum was founded in the late 1980's one night when Deborah put on a small pot of Hot Apple Cider to heat, then received an unexpected . . . fascinating . . . and very long phone call. By the time Deborah returned to the kitchen, the Cider had become a "Cinder" and thus the first, and perhaps still the most impressive, exhibit: "Free Standing Hot Apple Cider" was born.
SINCE THEN, countless other works have entered the museum, such as "Thrice Baked Potato," "Why Sure, You Can Bake Quiche in the Microwave," the indestructible "Mmmm……Soy Pups," and the lovely matching set of Pizza Toast.
Deborah has a tip on kitchen decorating, which I think everyone should heed: "Never scrimp on fire extinguishers and smoke alarms." She would know now: Link
16. Steve Salcedo's Street Sign and Traffic Light Collection
From left to right: Auto Club of Southern California Stop Sign (c. 1940);
Children "Wanted Alive" sign, the equivalent of "Slow -
Children at Play" sign (c. 1950); "T" Intersection with
Marble Reflector (c. 1940); Eagle 4-way 12" Beacons (c. 1930)
Steve Salcedo's fascination with street signs and traffic lights began when he received a bulletin board about traffic signs when he was just a small boy. Two years later, his collection was well under way.
Currently, Steve has over 350 street signs in his collection - all legal (rescued from street departments before they were scrapped, purchased from antique stores, flea markets, etc.): Link
17. The Chocolate Wrappers Museum
In 1996, Martin Mihál's began collecting empty chocolate wrappers from around the world with a sizeable collection of 674 wrappers. A decade later, his collection grew to an astounding 38,579 wrappers! Martin has over 8,700 wrappers from Germany alone and even a few wrappers from far-flung countries like Oman and Uzbekistan.
So, the next time you eat a chocolate, think of Martin before you throw away the wrapper! Link
18. Becky Martz's Banana Labels
In 1991, Becky Martz first noticed banana labels when she put two bunches of bananas in the fruit bowl together. She noticed that the "Dole" labels actually weren't quite the same: one said Guatemala and the other said Honduras. Later that year, she noticed a particularly festive Chiquita label and decided that she wanted to collect banana labels.
Today, Becky has more than 7,000 different banana labels and even branched out to collect asparagus and broccoli bands.
If you think that this is a strange hobby, well, ... it is. But Becky isn't alone: there are others like her in the world, and they even have their own Banana Sticker Collector Convention. Check out Becky's collection here: Link
19. Museum of Talking Boards
The
Museum of Talking Boards is all about collecting Ouija boards. The site
is quite neat: it explains the history
of the board, theory
as to how it works, as well as things
you should never do or ask.
And, of course, it has a fantastic gallery of over 80 antique talking boards.
The board above is the original Ouija board, created by Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard and produced in 1891 by Kennard Novelty Company.
Visit the Museum of Talking Boards here: Link
20. Scott Weed's Date Nails
Date
Nail is exactly that: a marked nail hammered into poles and bridge timbers
to identify or date them.
Scott Weed of Nailhunter, who has a huge collection of these nails, wrote that "unlike most collectibles, Date Nails can still be found in the wild. With a couple of tools, some spare time and transportation, the world of Date Nail is open to everyone."
Indeed, but for now, I presume all of you will just satisfy yourself with visiting his website: Link
21. Dr. Val Kolpakov's Toothpaste Collection
Dr. Val Kolpakov is a practicing dentist in Saginaw, Michigan, so it's only natural that he has an unnatural affinity to toothpaste.
Starting in 2002, Dr. Val began collecting toothpaste from around the world. His website, Toothpaste World, categorizes toothpastes according to location, brand name, and year of production. Right now, he has over 1,400 items: Link
I'd be remiss if I didn't share with you a toothpaste trivia from Dr. Val's website. Here's the world's oldest known formula for toothpaste:
The world's oldest-known formula for toothpaste, used more than 1,500 years before Colgate began marketing the first commercial brand in 1873, has been discovered on a piece of dusty papyrus in the basement of a Viennese museum.
In faded black ink made of soot and gum arabic mixed with water, an ancient Egyptian scribe has carefully described what he calls a "powder for white and perfect teeth".
When mixed with saliva in the mouth, it forms a "clean tooth paste".
According to the document, written in the fourth century AD, the ingredients needed for the perfect smile are one drachma of rock salt - a measure equal to one hundredth of an ounce - two drachmas of mint, one drachma of dried iris flower and 20 grains of pepper, all of them crushed and mixed together.
The result is a pungent paste which one Austrian dentist who tried it said made his gums bleed but was a "big improvement" on some toothpaste formulae used as recently as a century ago.
22. Weird Fortune Cookie Collection
Ever got a strange fortune from a fortune cookie? Well, it belongs in the ever-growing collection at Weird Fortune Cookie Collection. Seriously, head on over there and browse their gallery (preferably after a nice little Kung Pao Chicken meal): Link
23. British Lawnmower Museum
British Anzani Lawnrider (c. 1960)
The tireless curators of the British Lawnmower Museum, Brian and Sue Radam, dedicate their lives to preserving the best example of British engineering prowess: the lawnmower!
The lawnmower was invented in 1827 by English engineer Edwin Beard Budding, who wanted a superior alternative to the scythe. He took a machine designed to cut the knap off cloth and used it to cut grass instead. At the time, people thought that he was mad, so he tested his invention in the middle of the night so no one could see him!
The British Lawnmower Museum's now has over 200 vintage lawnmowers and part of 400 others: Link
24. Helena Vnouckova's Napkins
Napkins: you use and throw them away, but Helena Vnouckova collects them. A lot of them - in fact, she has over 16,000 napkins from around the world (with sets of Christmas themed napkins, company napkins, and even airline napkins): Link
25. Museum of Hoaxes
I'm
going to end this long list with Neatorama pal Alex Boese's excellent
website: Museum of Hoaxes.
Alex Boese probably has the strangest collection of them all: he collects stories about and examples of scams and hoaxes! In 1997, Alex created the Museum of Hoaxes as research notes for his doctoral dissertation, and the website quickly became popular. So much so that Alex the "hoaxpert" wrote three books which we have featured on Neatorama before: The Museum of Hoaxes, Hippo Eats Dwarf, and Elephants on Acid And Other Bizarre Experiments.
If you haven't seen it before (perhaps you've been living under a rock), then definitely check out the Museum of Hoaxes: Link - you won't be disappointed!
I'll be the first to acknowledge that this is but a short list of unusual collections you can find on the Web. For more weird things people collect, check out MuseumStuff's Unusual Museums and Strange Collections, and Unusual Museums of the Internet at RingSurf.
If you or someone you know has an unusual collection we should list here, please let me know in the comment section!
Update 5/14/08: If you like this post, please digg it here!
56 Houses Left, a Blog about a Neighborhood Destruction
Talkin’ about depressing places to live, Neatorama reader Michael submitted his wife Desy’s blog, 56 Houses Left, about what remains of Carrollton subdivision in Bridgeton, Missouri. The place where she and thousands of other people grew up.
The subdivision was bought out by Lambert Airport for a runway expansion. Nearly 1,900 homes were bought out and since then crushed by bulldozers and trucked away. As of October 9, 2007, only 56 houses remained:
This is where I grew up… and over the past decade, a little bit is erased away each day. It used to not have much significance in my life. After all, I knew this would come… ‘they’ have been talking about it ever since the early 90s. Even then, even when they took my friends’ houses, or the house where my cousins
lived, or my teacher’s house… I was still too young to grasp it… too young to sit up and pay attention…. to care. It wasn’t until I saw the wrecking crew blow through my old bedroom on October 24th, 2006 when finally it all came slamming into my face- this place, this land was all I ever really known. My house, my friends’ and my families’ homes, my sidewalks, pools, parks, churches, schools, businesses… everything… gone. Soon, I will never be able to come back to this place again. If I have kids, I will never be able to show them where I came from. They will never know the place where I once played… the place where I once dreamed of one day leaving… This place that now I come back to wonder what exactly happened… and why. (Link to this Post)
Just a couple of week ago, Desy wrote something ironically poignant:
The article today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts Lambert International, and with it the fate of Carrollton, into startling perspective.
It is true, and now there is even more evidence- the destruction of our homes was, officially, for no reason. According to the article, the airport has been classified as simply a ‘mid-sized’ airport since 2003. In 2003, the new runway was barely started and many houses on the south still remained. Aside from hardship cases, my mom’s side of Carrollton was not approached for buy-out in 2003. She was not approached until 2006. Nearly all of my friend’s houses were still standing in 2003. All of the destruction could have been stopped when the officials realized that Lambert will NEVER fill the numbers of flights they had in the 1990s. Even those flights were executed without the shiny new runway that now sits uselessly in Bridgeton.
Its a brutal shock to me that they could take everything away, without doing their homework, without doing the research or checking their facts, but take it all for landlust and false pretenses. All that had existed from my childhood has been bulldozed down to dirt and busted roads, all for absolutely nothing. (Link to this Post)
Link - Thanks Michael! (Photo: radio_inactive [Flickr])
Your Face
Damien Weighill wil draw your face and put it on his blog!
Real people don’t read your blog.
A fact that I wasn’t made aware of when I signed up for these things; It now seems so obvious.
If you are reading this and you do happen to be a real person then why not send me a photo (one which includes your real face) and I will draw a picture of you and post it here to serve as everlasting proof that sometimes facts are wrong.
Damien is in Japan until June, but will return and begin drawing again. I was hooked when the first portrait I saw was Juan Carlos drawn as Maneki Neko! You can send in your picture, too. Link -via Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy
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+SUJournal of Cartoon Over-analyzation
Remember the know-it-all who ruined your Sunday morning cartoons by over-analyzing it? Well, he now got a blog:
Are there existential dilemmas in Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends? Does Brad Bird’s oeuvre contain creepy Objectivist subtext? Is there a Lorenzo Music/Bill Murray Ghostbusters-Garfield conspiracy? Were Paw Paw Bears simply evolved Snorks with a totemic religion? Or maybe Scooby and Shaggy, like, totally smoked weed, man. These and other questions require more than careful analysis. They demand over-analyzation.
With mind-boggling posts like A Freudian Analysis of Beavis and Butt-Head, The Secret Identity of Dr. Claw (I’d never have guessed!) and my favorite: Alchemical Symbolism in Smurfs, the Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations makes for some awesome reading!
Link - via MetaFilter
Top 5 (Relatively) Quick and Geeky Last Minute Mother’s Day Gifts
It’s hard to buy something different for Mom when she 1) already has a lot of things, 2) doesn’t ask for anything, and 3) you’ve bought her all the traditionally sentimental gifts you can think of over the years. Trueroots has some suggestions for geeky gestures that will surprise Mom on Mothers Day. And they don’t cost much, either. Link -via Digg
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUHow I Spent My Stimulus
See how Americans report spending their economic stimulus checks, and submit your own report at the blog How I Spent My Stimulus. Doug in Ohio sent this picture in, saying:
“I bought 25 yards of mulch which included a back ache. Fun, Fun, Fun!”
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUFlame Warriors
Nitpick compensates for his limited fighting ability by pouncing on points that are only marginally relevant to the discussion. For example, if his opponent in a sports forum conflict casually mentioned the Cubs’ 4-2 victory in the 1908 World Series, Nitpick would quickly counterattack with something like, “4-2 !? Any moron knows the Cubs won the Series 4-1! Someone so ignorant about baseball history can’t possibly know anything about salary caps!” Even if the minor point is conceded by his opponent Nitpick will return to it whenever the battle turns against him. Though weak, Nitpick is very tenacious and will never admit defeat. Nitpick is a close ally of Artful Dodger.
Illustrator Mike Reed began caricaturing the personalities that forum users display during flame wars some years ago, and the collection has expanded over time. There are now 89 distinct warriors! Surely you will recognize some of these from your own experience. Flame Warriors should be required reading for all users before participating in any online forum. Link -via Everlasting Blort
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUWrongcards
Wrongcards are ecards that say things normal ecards don’t. Like “Get well soon, because I’m not going back to jail for necrophilia” and “four out of five mental health professionals agree that i’m no danger to anybody.” They also have some lovely Mothers Day ecards, like the oh so sentimental one you see here. Link -via Shiny Shiny
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SU10×10
100 pictures, arranged in a 10×10 grid, showing the biggest news stories of the hour.
Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image. In this way, we can dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other.
10×10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10×10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds.
You can pull up clickable headlines by clicking on the pictures or the one-word headlines on the right side at the site, but the pictures are not explained. This screenshot was taken at 11PM Wednesday (the time in Italy). Link -via YesButNoButYes
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUGoogle Video Billboard Ad
To advertise its Google Video service in Germany, the giant Internet company put up a "see-through" billboard made like a Google Video window and then filmed the way people interact with it.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via AdFreak
And am I the only one who noticed the irony of this clip being on YouTube (also owned by Google)?
Art in Under 1K Contest
Boing Boing Gadgets is having a pretty interesting competition in collaborations with Seagate: readers are invited to submit art, writing, code, whatever - as long as the size is 1 kilobyte or less!
This one to the left is Gabriel McGovern’s 1K rendering of the Mona Lisa.
Google Street View Captures Kid Falling Out of His Bike
One minute he was having fun riding his bike, and the next he’s sprawled on the driveway after wiping out … and all captured by Google Street View:
Link - Thanks Ian Andrew Bell (nice meeting you on Web 2.0 conference, btw!)
Neatorama is Cool Site of the Day!
Woo-hoo! Neatorama is selected as today’s cool site by Cool Site of the Day. CSotD has featured a unique site every day since August of 1994, making it the original (and for many, the best) website of its kind.
Please visit Cool Site of the Day and kindly vote for Neatorama: Link (Today only, Friday 4/25/08, and hopefully you’ll give it a good score though you should vote your conscience ) - Thanks Greg Smith!
PS We’ve also been featured in Yahoo! Picks - but sadly, Yahoo! has stopped updating it earlier this year.
Update 4/26/08: Thanks guys! Neatorama got over 7.9, making it the highest rated website in April and amongst the top rated sites of all time. You can check it out in the CSotD archive here: Link)
Goin’ to Web 2.0 Expo!
Thanks to the good folks at Technorati, I’m going to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco (just for the day). I used to live in the Bay Area, so it’ll be nice to walk around the old neighborhood again and see family.
If you’re going to be at the Expo tomorrow, let me know - maybe we can say hello. IRL! How’s that for a change?
Blogging Business Exposed!
(YouTube link)
In response to a recent story about the deaths of two bloggers, Barely Political did an undercover expose of the seamy underworld of the blogging business. Bloggers are subjected to horrific conditions and inhuman treatment, which must be immediately remedied. -via Bits and Pieces
WordPress 2.5 Admin Backend Category Shenanigans and How To Fix It
If your blog is on a WordPress platform, then you know that the new 2.5 version is out. While it’s always a good idea to update the software for security reasons, upgrading always comes with a bit of anxiety. Plug-ins will invariably break, and there will be some getting used to the new admin layout. Designing a software as complex as WordPress is a big task - and overall, I’d say that Matt and the Wordpress team did a good job.
The new admin backend got a big facelift. It was re-designed from the grounds up by usability expert Jeffrey Zeldman and colleagues at Happy Cog. The look is cleaner and admin panel is supposedly designed to be easier to use by new bloggers. Except that it isn’t (at least for experienced bloggers).
I’m a big fan of Zeldman (love, love, love his A List Apart website), but the new WordPress 2.5 admin backend design is a step backward in usability. It’s actually harder to use the admin backend in this version as compared to the previous version of WordPress, and I’m not alone in this.
Here’s why: the category as well as post author and other settings are moved from being side by side with the post editor to below it. Even with a large monitor, I’d have to scroll down to select the category on every post!
If you’re not into scrolling nirvana, and would like to get the category back the way it was, Judy Becker of Persistent Illusion blog has the hack for you: she edited a few WP files so all you need is to swap these new ones with the original files and voilà! Good ol’ category on the sidebar.
I find that I had to move a few options that I seldom use (like comment & ping, post authors, password protect) back to the bottom of the editor but that’s just a few simple cut and paste job.
If you want to recover your admin sidebar, here’s the hack: Link (Great job, Judy!)
(Lots of people complained about the re-designed widget editor, but I’ve never used that feature, so I really can’t comment on it. Also, this hack will only work for self-hosted WordPress 2.5 - wordpress.com users, sorry - can’t help you).
The Day of the Donut
(image credit: Kevin Collins)
The Flickr group We Demand Donuts was the recipient of 10 dozen donuts at a donut shop in San Francisco today, courtesy of Flickr employee Matthew Rothenberg. The event began as a way of making light of a Flickr protest against the new feature that allows pro users to upload video to Flickr.
We Demand Donuts sprang up long before the video feature was added, but the group never had much of a following until last week, according to Jake Rome, who started the group in 2007. Shortly after the option to include video was added and several groups protesting the new feature emerged, the We Demand Donuts movement gathered steam.
We Demand Donuts had events in other places, but Flickr only organized and bought donuts for the San Francisco “protest”. Link to story. Link to Flickr group.
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUIllustrations of CNN’s bad headlines
Pictured: “Baby with two faces worshipped as goddess.” Kelly Chambers’ CNN is like the worst ever is pure genius and a nice companion site to WTFCNN?. Via Gawker.
Zombie Daily
My favourite artist / illustrator is at it again. Rob Sacchetto of Zombie Portraits fame has ripped and torn his way through over 400 of his custom zombie portraits in just over a year. However, creating at least one zombie portrait a day was not enough for Sacchetto as he has now launched Zombie Daily, a blog featuring a daily zombie illustration. Some are bare-bone sketches, some are full-blown masterpieces. Some are scary, most are whimsical and hilarious.
It’s certainly not to be missed.
Image: ‘Farrah Fawcett’
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this +digg +del.icio.us +reddit +SUTake Me Back: an Intriguing New Web Series
Take Me Back is an intriguing new web series by Joe Baron and Seth Mendelson. It’s a story of a guy named "Al" who leads a pretty boring life until he wakes up one morning to find his car gone and a mysterious guy wearing a silver mask shadowing his every move …
So far there are two chapters online - new ones get posted every Monday. Link - Thanks Joseph!
Turning Spam Into Cartoons
We’ve featured a lot of artists turning spam into art, but Özi of Oezicomix has a slightly different take on the matter: he’s turning ‘em into funny cartoons!
Unofficial Google Translate Firefox Extension
Hey, this is quite useful: Jimmy Ruska created an unofficial Google Translate plug-in for Firefox. All you have to do is ALT-click on words and presto! You’ll get the translation right then and there.
Link - Thanks Jimmy!
Firefox Bus
Well, it’s not as big as the Firefox star, but this is still pretty cool: the Firefox bus, as taken by LiveJournal user Kalyan Varma around Mysore, India. Link
The World’s First Computer Matchmaking Service
Waaay before eHarmony, there was "Match" - the original computer matchmaking service:
Out of computers, faster than the eye can blink, fly letters stacked with names of college guys and girls—taped, scanned, checked and matched. Into the mails speed the compatible pairs, into P.O. boxes at schools across the land. Eager boys grab their phones… anxious coeds wait in dorms … a thousand burrrrrrrings jar the air . . . snow-job conversations start, and yeses are exchanged: A nationwild dating spree is on. Thousands of boys and girls who’ve never met plan weekends together, for now that punch-card dating’s here, can flings be far behind? And oh, it’s so right, baby. The Great God Computer has sent the word. Fate. Destiny. Go-go-go. Call it dating, call it mating, it flashed out of the minds of Jeff Tarr (left) and Vaughn Morrill, Harvard undergraduates who plotted Operation Match, the dig-it dating system that ties up college couples with magnetic tape. The match mystique is here: In just nine months, some 100,000 collegians paid more than $300,000 to Match (and to its MIT foe, Contact) for the names of at least five compatible dates. Does it work? Nikos Tsinikas, a Yale senior, spent a New Haven weekend with his computer-Matched date, Nancy Schreiber, an English major at Smith. Result, as long date’s journey brightened into night: a bull’s-eye for cupid’s computer.
“How come you’re still single? Don’t you know any nice computers?”
Here’s an interesting article by Gene Shalit in the February 1966 issue of Look: Link
(And yes, today there is an unrelated dating site called Match.com)
Gaffe a Minute
Gaffe a Minute is my favorite new find on the Web. It’s a website dedicated to stories about embarrassing mistakes, clumsy blunders and kid’s innocent sayings.
Here’re a couple of stories from the "Slips of the Young" category:
Kiss and Tell
My kindergartner was disgusted: a girl in his class liked him. She followed him everywhere and talked to him nonstop. Then one day he returned from school distraught. Kaitlyn had kissed him! “Where did she kiss you?” I asked, thinking, Forehead? Cheek? Lips? My son answered in a dramatic, horrified whisper: “In the library!”
—LizBurning Issue
Our local firefighters taught my six-year-old’s class what to do if they ever caught on fire. Several days later, while cooking dinner, I accidentally set off our smoke alarm. My son, who happened to be standing nearby, suddenly dove to the floor and started rolling across it while yelling, “Stop! Drop! And roll!”
—Katie
And yes, you can submit your own gaffes: Link - via Presurfer
Are Ad Blockers Thieves?
Michael Alan Miller wrote an interesting post in his blog about ad blocking - and why he doesn’t consider this "stealing":
Look, when I visit your website, I didn’t sign any contract that says I have to do anything in particular. I am in no way obligated to view your obnoxious ads. I understand completely that your website, like many others, depends on ads for revenue. I don’t care. I have no interest in being marketed to, cajoled into consumerism, insulted by unexpected sounds, and otherwise annoyed by asinine affixations found on your page.
If there were some way to fund deserving website by micropayments, I’d gladly sign up for that. For example, if I were charged $0.02 every time I visited Ars Technica (one of the worst whiners, link goes to a comment of one of the prime whiners), I’d sign up for this in a heartbeat. Why micropayments haven’t taken off yet, I have no idea, as ads are just not a good model for most of the Internet. Don’t get me wrong; I do want to support sites that I like. I learn much from them, and depend on them for many things in my life. However, I will not view ads, ever, if I can help it.
Do you think blocking ads is equivalent to thievery?
Link - via reddit (interesting sets of comments there as well)
Postcard From Yo Momma: Compilation of Emails from Mothers
Postcard From Yo Momma is a neat website where you can send (anonymously) emails from your mom. Some are very Internet-literate, whereas others still use their AOL emails and send out little guilt traps like "I wish you’d call more often."
Reading the entries are like getting glimpses into the mothers that I know, including my own! (I love you mom!).
For example:
Things just change
I am sure it will happen again. The trick is not to kid yourself. Everyone is all in love in the beginning but as time wears on every relationship, even the ones you try hard to keep fresh and alive, get a bit stale. At first you wouldn’t even dare fart in front of him, 10 years later you’re talking to him while you’re sitting on the toilet. Things just change.In Bloom
Hi Again: Twice in one day, oh my! I just washed those white curtains from the condo. Please measure the bathroom windows and I’ll try to get them made up for your bathroom in NYC if you still want them. It is so beautiful with everything in bloom. I just feel God all around when it is like this. Off to my soaps. Love, Mother
And even this tech savvy mom:
my mother (aged 68) the tech head
I’ve just downloaded QuickTime Player 7 Pro (cracked bittorrent) so that I can record the music I get from the radio stations on iTunes. By the way I have two sets of computer speakers here which I use for the Sony fm/mw/sw which I bought in Singapore. I plug in the iPod and can listen to all the podcasts. I also use the speakers in the back bedroom, so I am also smiling.
The photo is, of course, Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver, America’s favorite mom in the TV series Leave It to Beaver.
The 5 Most Ill-Advised Dating Sites on the Web
They say you can find anything on the internet, including specialized niche dating services. Cracked takes a look at five you should avoid, and the reasons why (if they aren’t obvious to you). Link