John Farrier's Liked Blog Posts

How to Play Airplane Peekaboo

Long plane rides are so booooooooring. Here's a traditional game that helps you pass the time. Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal gives us a primer on the rules. It's really straightforward. Now the man on the toilet must tag his playmate back.


(Video Link)

Note that on some planes, the sign flips up rather than down.


Diorama Artist Creates Amazing Miniature Worlds in Ordinary Objects

Be careful putting anything down in the studio of Akihiro Morohoshi, a Japanese miniatures artist. Cities will quickly pop up on everyday objects. Musical instruments, home appliances, and food containers will teem with life and the industry of tiny people. You can see more of his work at Spoon & Tamago.


A Darth Vader to Japanese Translation Phrasebook

If you're a native Japanese speaker traveling to an English-speaking country, you might wonder how you will be able to conduct business and everyday transactions in a language that is very different from your own. How will you order food at a restaurant, check into a hotel, or make a business deal?

Thankfully, in the Anglosphere, you can get most of this done by selectively quoting Star Wars. Darth Vader's own dialogue is a particularly good starting point, which is why the publishing company Gakken has produced a phrasebook which translates Lord Vader's English into Japanese. Here are some sample pages.

-via Rocket News 24


S'Mores Chicken Wings

Once again, Nick Chipman of DudeFoods invents a food product that becomes instantly indispensible. Now that you know that these things exist, you feel an overwhelming urge to eat them, right? Of course, you do!

They're simple to make at home. First, bake unbreaded chicken wings. Then dip them in melted marshmallows, sprinkle with graham cracker crumbles, and pour on chocolate sauce. Yummy!

-via That's Nerdalicious!


Retirement Community Remakes Pharrell Williams's "Happy"


(Video Link)

And it's completely charming!

This is the Diana Isaac Retirement Village in Christchurch, New Zealand. 60 residents and members of the staff made this shot-by-shot remake of the original music video by Pharrell Williams. They made it to show their friends and family that they're happy. The Daily Mail describes the dapper fellow who plays Williams:

The star of the video, complete with a Pharrell-esque smart white shirt, bow tie and iconic hat, is 79-year-old former engineer Alister Leckie who Mr King said 'had never done anything like that before, and absolutely loved it'.

The residents stay in shape with regular exercise and flashmobbing, so they were up for the demands of the video.


(Video Link)

Yes, really! They hold flashmobs. The residents converge on malls and dance. Skip to 4:00 in this video to see them in action.

-via 22 Words


The Turboencabulator--A Classic Engineering Joke


(Video Link)

For a number of years now, work has been proceeding in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a transmission that would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters. Such an instrument is the turbo-encabulator.

Do you understand? If not, just nod you head and pretend that you do because it's vital that no one else grasps how little you understand about the world. That is the premise of the turboencabulator (or turbo-encabulator or turbo encabulator), a classic joke in the engineering world. Rebecca Linke of Computerworld offers a history of this gag that has been running since at least 1944. It's a long string of total gibberish that sounds right to the uninformed. In short, it's technobabble so good that even Geordi La Forge would approve.

John Hellins Quick, a graduate student, published about the turboencabulator in a 1944 issue of the British Institution of Electrical Engineers Student’s Quarterly Journal. It was republished in the US in a 1946 issue of Time magazine. In 1962, the Instrument Department of General Electric published a professional-looking datasheet on the turboencabulator, complete with a list of accessories, specifications, and ratings. Several companies produced training videos, including the hilarious one embedded above.

-via American Digest and Ka-ching!


4 Inmates in Australia Repeatedly Break out of Prison, Get Drunk, Then Sneak Back in, Hoping They Won't Get Caught


(Photo: Darwin Correctional Centre by Bidgee)

It was a cunning plan. During the night, the four inmates at a prison in Darwin, Australia climbed over the fence, where they met partners on the outside. These colleagues gave them alcohol and marijuana. After partaking of those refreshments for a few hours, the prisoners climbed back over the fence and got back into their cells, hoping they wouldn't get caught. 

Then they repeated the process a few times.

Finally, early on the morning of July 20, guards noticed these thoroughly drunk prisoners in the yard, fighting over a cell phone. They have since been transferred to a higher security unit. Authorities are not sure if the four will be charged with attempting to escape from prison. 

-via Ace of Spades HQ


Woman Didn't Want to Take Maternity Photos, So Her Husband Did It for Her

Maternity photo shoots are a thing now. The results are often funny or sweet photos of expectant mothers showing off their baby bumps. But the pregnant wife of redditor DruishPrincess69 (Funny--he doesn't look Druish) didn't want to have a photo shoot. So he hired a photographer and did it himself. You can view the entire set here.

It looks like he's about 6 months along. That's when the back pain tends to set in. Be careful, DruishPrincess69. Don't push yourself too hard.


The Decline and Fall

Chris Hallbeck of Maximumble has a point. But I think we've reached serious danger only when you decide to stay on your couch and watch a different movie instead. Or if you're hungry, but decide to stay on the couch instead of getting up to go to the kitchen.


The Ten Commandments Rewitten by BuzzFeed


(Image: Paramount Pictures)

David Tate of McSweeney's rewrote the Ten Commandments to make them more clickable. Here are the first five new BuzzFeed headlines:

YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT GOD SAID TO THIS MAN…

  • What You Need to Know Now About the Lord Totally Being God
  • At the Beginning He Had Me Confused, But by Minute Two I Knew That I Shouldn’t Have Other Gods.
  • Are You Making This Common Mistake with Graven Images?
  • How I Work: Read This Life Hack from God Your Only Creator.
  • She Admitted to Doing What Every Sunday?

Moses, rewrite everything. You've got to get those traffic stats up! Remember that there's a dozen 23-year old journalism majors who would part the Hudson River to get at your job.


(Video Link)

Here's a bonus video from Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part I.

-via Ace of Spades HQ


Cross Stitch Doctor Who 12-Sided Die

Each of the twelve enumerated incarnations of the Doctor appear on Robin's 5-inch tall dodecahedron which is charmingly cross stitched in vibrant colors. She writes that the numbers on opposing sides add up to 13, so presumably Peter Davidson is opposite Paul McGann, and so on.

The War Doctor is, I gather, not included. Could one created a 13-sided polyhedron with identical faces? I am not sure. One could certainly do so with non-identical faces. But I was hired to work at Neatorama for my good looks, not my math skills.


Creative Writing Prompt: "Oh God Where Is My Gun!"

That's the title of this compelling painting by Vitaly S. Alexius. There's more context available. But I'd like to leave it at just the title.

In the comments, write a bit of flash fiction. What can you do with this image? What stories spring from your mind as you look at it?


Watch This Dog Faint from Excitement after Reuniting with Her Owner


(Video Link)

Rebecca Ehalt moved to Slovenia. For two years, her dog, Casey, lived with her parents in Pennsylvania. Their reunion was unexpected but joyful for the nine-year old schnauzer. He got so excited that he fainted.

Don't worry! Casey recovered. It was just an overwhelming emotion. Ehalt concedes that although it was only a two-year separation for her, "in fairness [that] is 14 years in dog years."

-Thanks, Wifey!


The Garbage Dress

Robin Barcus Slonina is an artist who creates novel items of clothing from unusual materials, such as a bikini made out of poker chips and a dress made of wiffle balls. For a while, she was composing "a site-specific, interactive 'dress' sculpture in each state of the union." This dress made of garbage bags represents New York.

Slonina is a native of Chicago. Her first visit to New York City was during a sanitation workers' strike. There were huge piles of uncollected garbage everywhere. They left a lasting impression. In her mind, "the sanitation workers that mange these tiny mountains every week are the true heroes of the city."

Slonina made her dress out of garbage bags filled with newspapers--specifically, The New York Times. The entire dress is thus recyclable. You can see more photos of it on her Facebook page.

-via Recyclart


Reverse Dog Shaming

(Image: redditor: drain65)

We've seen dog shaming--where humans place signs in front of their dogs, calling out their disgraceful behavior in the first person. Now man's best friend is turning the tables on us, forcing us to admit how we cheat them.

I will confess that sometimes I just pretend to throw the ball. And sometimes I act like a piece of ordinary dog kibble is a treat. I'm a bad human.

-via Tastefully Offensive


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Profile for John Farrier

  • Member Since 2012/08/04


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