John Farrier's Liked Blog Posts

Doggy Pool Party Makes Me Wish I Was a Dog


(Video Link)

Lucky Puppy is a cage-free dog day care facility in Maybee, Michigan. There's a 21 by 41-foot bone-shaped pool for lucky dogs who get a break from their human families. It's a walk-in pool, which is great for pups like mine who prefer to get just their bellies wet.

Other dogs, particularly those of the Labrador persuasion, though, jump in as quickly and as often as possible!

-via The Presurfer


The Will of the Dragonslayer

(Moose Kleenex)

You want to acquire a new skill and learn more about yourself? Take up a project that you don't know how you're going to complete.

If you're not following Kelly Bastow on tumblr, you should start. She's remarkably expressive and emotionally open in her art. She pours out her inner thoughts beautifully in ink.


Shopping Cart Escalator

Yoshio, a staff writer for the Japanese division of RocketNews24, visited a Target store in the United States. There, he found a technological marvel: an escalator built for hauling shopping carts up and down floors. It was right next to the step escalator. Just push your shopping cart in and it will ride up to the top.


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Yoshio was tremendously impressed as he has never seen anything like this in his home country.

And, honestly, neither have I. I've lived in the United States all of my life and I've never heard of one of these things, let alone seen one. Have I just not been going to the right stores?

The only big box retailers that I've been to have been built on a single level. Perhaps these shopping cart escalators are more common in densely-populated areas where it's necessary to build vertically rather than horizontally.


An All-Audio Video Game for the Blind

A Blind Legend isn't a video game that has been modified to make it accessible to people with visual impairments. It's designed from the outset to be used with only audio information. The player character is a blind hero who goes on a dangerous adventure in a fantasy setting. Allison Meier of Good describes it:

In A Blind Legend, you assume the role of a knight whose eyes were cruelly gouged out. To add insult to injury, your wife has also been stolen away by a ruthless enemy and you’ve been left only with your auditory senses to lead you to vengeance. […]

While playing A Blind Legend, the user’s screen remains dark, displaying only a vague, shimmering texture. Players maneuver through the game using simple swiping motions on their device to move their feet or their sword. The sound of your daughter’s voice guides your advance; you hear the clash of swords as you battle unseen enemies. Slowly, as the user acclimates, a complex, engaging environment begins to emerge. The audio is layered through binaural sound, a three-dimensional recording method designed specifically for headphones, which creates a convincing sense of sonic topography. To master A Blind Legend requires gamers to concentrate on elements that would just be part of the background in most other games.  

The developers are trying to offer a unique gaming experience for everyone:

A Blind Legend is aimed equally at non-sighted and sighted players eager for a novel gaming experience – using their hearing as the only way to orient themselves and take decisions. We want to offer non-sighted people a proper video game, with a rich storyline and tailored gameplay, which is as interesting for this audience as for sighted players.

They have a working demo and are crowdfunding a finished product. It will function on mobile devices and be available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play. 

-via Brian J. Noggle


Scientists Developing Camouflaging Fabric Inspired by Octopus Skin


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The octopus was almost invisible until the diver was within grabbing range. Fortunately, the octopus preferred to swim away instead of fighting. It can change color so quickly and so precisely that you'd never see it until you were almost touching it. It's the ninja of the sea.

Aren't you envious? Well, maybe you can have this ability in the future. Researchers at the University of Houston and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign have developed a fabric that changes color when exposed to light. The design is similar to the properties of octopus skin. Loren Grush explains in Popular Science:

The design is loosely based on the skins of cephalopods, which are comprised of special pigment cells called chromatophores.  A group of muscles controls the size of these chromatopheres, changing their colors and creating different patterns.  It is also thought that light-sensing molecules called opsins help cephalopods use their skin to “see” light, triggering their complex adaptations.

The new artificial material, detailed in the journal PNAS, mimics this biological process in a way.  The top layer of the sheet is made up of heat-sensitive dye, which is black at room temperature and colorless at 116 degrees Fahrenheit (similar to the color-changing properties of the chromatophores).  A second layer underneath is made up of numerous reflective silver tiles, creating the white background.  And the third layer contains a silicon circuit, responsible for controlling the temperature of the sheet.

The fourth and final layer contains an array of light-sensing photodetectors that work kind of like the cephalopod’s opsins. These detectors sense when and where the light is being shined and tell the circuit to heat up in the right spot.  This action causes the top layer to go colorless, and, in turn, the white background shines through.


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Here's the photoreactive fabric in action.


R2-Dump2

You know this little dumpster is going to cause you a lot of trouble. But at least he doesn't have a bad motivator.

Crummy Gummy, a street artist in Orlando, Florida, painted this dumpster to look like R2-D2, the most foul-mouthed character in cinematic history. He made it for the Mills 50 district, a trendy neighorhood in Orlando.

The artist was born with the name Mauricio Murillo. He goes by the name Crummy Gummy because although he does street art, his early notable work was with gummy bears.

-via Global Street Art


Acrobatic Little Boy Climbs a Refrigerator, Then Tops That Feat


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This little boy easily climbs up on top of the refrigerator. He's proud of his accomplishment. But once he's done that a few times, he's ready for a new challenge. At about the 0:32 mark, he does something astounding.

Next, I suspect he'll try to walk along the ceiling.

-via 22 Words


So It's Not a Suppository?


(Fowl Language Comics/Brian Gordon)

It can be frustrating to help people less computer literate than yourself. But eventually, you'll be on the other end of the conversation.

The blue pill is really a more sensible choice.


The Wicked Witch of the West Accepts the Ice Bucket Challenge

The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz is actually a kind-hearted person. She has now topped every other participant in the Ice Bucket Challenge from the ALS Foundation.

-via Tastefully Offensive


Incredible Dragon Body Painted in a Single Brush Stroke

For four generations, artists at the Kousyuuya studio in Nikko, Japan have developed and mastered an amazing creative process. The artists make stylized dragon images in a practice called Hitofude Ryuu.

The artists make details to the head using several small strokes. But the long, curving, multi-colored body is just one--one!--brush stroke.


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You can see more videos about this process at Colossal.


Little Girl and Huge Dog Are Best Friends


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Prepare for a cuteness overdose! Simba, a Tibetan Mastiff, is a loving packleader with his human puppy, Weiwei. He gladly serves as her personal Clifford the Big Red Dog. Weiwei climbs all over him, bothering Simba not a bit.

-via Huffington Post


Every Day, This 99 Year Old Woman Sews a Dress for a Needy Child

This is Lillian Weber of Scott County, Illinois. She's 99 years old but still very active. Every day, she sews a dress for Little Dresses for Africa, a charity that sends clothing to impoverished children in Africa. She gets up in the morning, starts to work on a dress, takes a break, then finishes in the afternoon. For the past 2 years, she repeated this routine daily, producing 840 dresses. Ms. Weber plans to make 150 more by next May when she will turn 100 years old.

(Images: WQAD8)

Ms. Weber works from a standard pattern, but she personalizes each dress by combining different fabrics and trims. A child who wears one of her dresses isn't getting a copy of a mass-produced dress, but an original.

-via Huffington Post


Kentucky Fried Chicken Haircut Earns Man Free KFC Food for Life

Miguel Rosas isn’t just a barber. He’s an artist with your hair. From the New Style Barbershop in Moline, Illinois, he carves highly realistic images into hair. With a splash of paint, he can also put in some color.

Recently, Rosas gave one of his clients this KFC logo haircut. Afterward, he and the client went to a local Kentucky Fried Chicken to eat. WQAD describes the reaction:

“When we went inside everybody pretty much just stopped working,” Rosas said, while shaving a flame design into a client’s head. “All the employees came up to us and started taking pictures of the design.”

Just a few hours later, a KFC district manager called Rosas and asked to see the haircut:

“He told me that they wanted to possibly get my work on the KFC website and possibly use it on a commercial,” Rosas said.

The manager also gave Rosas vouchers for free food. He said that when he ran out of vouchers, he could just call and get more.

Here are some other amazing hair designs that Rosas has made.

Continue reading

Warning: Wardrobe Does Not Lead to Narnia

(Photo: Rohit Bhargava)

Sorry, shoppers. Although the easy-to-assemble cabinet smells fresh from cedar wood and will keep your clothing sorted properly, it does not lead to a magical world. There is no hidden door in the back, unlike some others.

-via Nerd Bastards


For Sale: Chocolate Toilets, Bidets, Sinks, and Bath Tubs

(Photos: Bathrooms.com)

Bathrooms.com is an online retailer of bathroom fixtures, such as fiberglass sinks and toilets. For that company, this chocolate bathroom was a simple response to evidence that there is a market for chocolate bathroom fixtures:

We understand design, functionality, what a shower tray actually does, all of that sort of stuff. Our area of expertise has not historically been confectionary! Nevertheless, of the millions of Google searches for sweet related terms each month, a number of these come to our web site. Why? Because people are regularly searching for "bathroom sweets".

Were people looking to find loo-specific treats, or was this just a simple case of bad spelling?

The answer is pretty obvious. Clearly people wanted bathroom suites, and they just got it a bit wrong. But that got us thinking: just how do bad spelling, a love of confectionery and bathrooms come together like that?

The company's response was to build a bathroom made of chocolate. Choccywoccydoodah, a British chocolatier, provided rich Belgian chocolate for the task.

All the chocolate objects that you see here are on sale. That bidet costs $11,656 (USD) and contains 210,000 calories. The entire set costs $133,196 and will add 9.4 million calories to your diet, should you choose to eat it.

The company claims that the chocolate fixtures will remain solid for 6 months if kept at room temperature. But let's be honest: you're going to eat it all long before them. 

-via That's Nerdalicious!


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Profile for John Farrier

  • Member Since 2012/08/04


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