Karl Fabricius of Environmental Graffiti has just posted an interview with me about Neatorama and how the blog came to be. Actually it's a story I've never told anyone online - so it's a neat exclusive for Environmental Graffiti. Here's the interview: Link - Thanks Karl, that was a treat!
Neatorama on Twitter!
A while ago, I posted about Neatorama's account on Twitter. Long story short, we got the account @neatorama back amicably from a fan (Thanks Mike!) ... and now am wondering what we should do with it.
Should we continue displaying Neatorama's posts (using Twitterfeed?) or should we do Twitter only content (like mini-posts)? Or both? What do you think?
The only thing we've decided so far is that we should do twitter-only contests - so if you're on Twitter, here's Neatorama Twitter page: Link
A study by biomechanicist (apparently, there's such a thing) Roland Ennos and Peter Warman of the University of Manchester, UK, has just blown away decades of conventional knowledge: fingerprints do not increase our grip - instead, it reduces it!
Rather than singe the prints off an unlucky student to compare hands with and without prints, Ennos rigged Warman's fingers to a special device that slides a weighted sheet of Perspex across a finger and measures the resulting frictional force.
Ennos and Warman determined that the amount of friction generated went up as more of the fingerprint was touching the sheet, but not by as much as expected. This indicated that the skin was behaving like rubber, where friction is proportional to the contact area between the two surfaces.
So, if not for increasing grip, then why do we have fingerprints? Scientists think that fingerprints may improve tactile sensitivity, help water wick off fingers, and reduce shear stress.
As if that fingerprint thing wasn't enough, here's another earth-shattering study - for cat lovers anyhow: psychologist Britta Osthaus of Canterbury Christ Church University has proven that cats aren't as smart as their owners think!
[Osthaus] tested the thought processes of 15 of them by attaching fish and biscuit treats to one end of a piece of string, placing them under a plastic screen to make them unreachable and then seeing if the cats could work out that pulling on the other end of the string would pull the treat closer.
They were tested in three ways, using a single baited string, two parallel strings where only one was baited, and two crossed strings where only one was baited.
The single string test proved no problem, but unlike dogs (which Osthaus has previously tested) no cat consistently chose correctly between two parallel strings. With two crossed strings, one cat always made the wrong choice and others succeeded no more than might be expected by chance.
What would Wikipedia look like if it were printed out as a traditional encyclopedia? Rob Matthews decided to make it his art project: behold, the 5,000 pages of Wikipedia (featured articles only, mind you) in book form: Link - via Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival
The photo above, taken by Vernon Bryant for Dallas Morning News, depicts the bravery of Dallas Fire-Rescue officials warning residents of West Dallas of flooding (and if necessary, rescuing them) when a pump station failed (Source).
It's the staple stuff of newspapers - local news and such - so if you're wondering why it's on this blog, take a closer look at the photo. Go ahead. Don't see it yet? Take another look. We'll wait - you'll get it ...
Is nothing sacred anymore? After decades of having the rule (it was even made into a Charlie Brown song), the British government is ditching it:
Advice sent to teachers says there are too few words which follow the rule and recommends using more modern methods to teach spelling to schoolchildren.
The document, entitled Support for Spelling, is being distributed to more than 13,000 primary schools. [...]
It says: "The i before e rule is not worth teaching. It applies only to words in which the ie or ei stands for a clear ee sound. Unless this is known, words such as sufficient and veil look like exceptions.
"There are so few words where the ei spelling for the ee sounds follows the letter c that it is easier to learn the specific words." These include receive, ceiling, perceive and deceit.
The document recommends other ways to teach pupils spelling, like studying television listings for compound words, changing the tense of a poem to practise irregular verbs and learning about homophones through jokes such as "How many socks in a pair? None — because you eat a pear."
Quick: what do you usually do on a family outing? Do you go to the movies? Maybe eat out? How about steal together? That's exactly what one family did in Boerne, Texas.
Kim Fischer of WOAI reports:
Boerne police said that they've never seen anything like it. A family stealing items right off a store counter. Then, caught on surveillance video, a child walking out the door with them.
Wal-Mart camera saw it all. First a man cases the jewelry section. Next, he brings in a child to cover him as he steals an entire carousel of jewelry worth $1,600. Then police say the adult let this small child do the dirty work. "She was the one who pushed that grocery cart out the front door ..."
If real life is any indication, for every android hero, there has got to be a hundred or so worthless robots floating around in science fiction. Neatoramanaut Johnny Cat has compiled his very own list of 5 worthless droids that ever graced the silver screen.
This one to the left is V.I.N.CENT, from the 1979 sci-fi movie The Black Hole:
4. V.I.N.CENT and B.O.B. Okay, I'll admit it. When The Black Hole came out in 1979, I was all over it. I even had the board game. This was mostly due to the effect Star Wars had on my embracing any & all space travel movies to the fullest. But as anyone who’s seen it will probably tell you, this movie SUCKED. These two whirligigs didn’t even impress my young sci-fi starved mind at the time, with their precious laser guns taking out countless other worthless sentry droids. They look like they were designed by a six-year-old with a serious head trauma. Also: Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens do the voices. Waste.
Some moustaches are so iconic that they are an essential part - calling cards, if you will - of some men's characters. Shaving them off seems unthinkable and would yield these men as mere shells of their former selves (I'm looking at you, Alex Trebek).
Thanks to a little photoshoppery, we no longer have to imagine what famous characters from history would look like without their 'staches.
GEARFUSE blog has 6 of these disturbing images. You've been warned: Link | More at English Russia
I *love* jigsaw puzzles but haven't had the time to put one together since I have kids. Who has the time? (Plus, I'm sure that if I even try now pieces would be eaten forthwith by said kids). So, when Smart-Kit asked me to do a review of their online puzzles, I jumped at the opportunity.
First of all, there are limitations to a Flash-based online jigsaw puzzle: the workspace is limited and the pieces are already rightside up. But the benefits far outweigh the limitations for a casual gamer like me. For one, you'd never lose a piece! Pieces virtually snap together when you get the right ones next to each other - and no rotating necessary (so I guess that rightside up pieces is actually a benefit after all).
You can select how complicated you'd like the puzzle dimensions to be: 4x3, 8x6 (the one above), 12x9 or if you like a challenge, 16x12. See the pic above? It took me about 8 minutes to complete - just the right amount of time for a little fun break at work.
We've covered Smart-Kit before on Neatorama (they also have many more non-jigsaw puzzles - like the SwizzlePop! and the Hidden Object Puzzle: Find the Bear, for instance), so for a quick online fun, give 'em a try!
Toronto's motto is "Diversity Our Strength" which makes it kinda awkward for the City to be busted for this exercise in forced diversity: they photoshopped in (badly) a token black guy for the cover of their Spring & Summer 2009 Fun Guide!
Allison Hanes of National Post has the story:
The smiling, ethnically diverse family featured on the cover of Toronto's latest edition of its summer Fun Guide was digitally altered to make the photo more "inclusive," which city officials say is in keeping with a policy to reflect diversity.
A spokesman for the department that publishes the guide listing recreation activities confirmed the publication was doctored to insert the face of a different father.
"He superimposed the African-Canadian person onto the family cluster in the original photo. It was two photographs and one head was superimposed over the original family photo," said John Gosgnach, communications director for the social development division.
"The goal was to depict the diversity of Toronto and its residents."
The cover shot caught the eye of a National Post graphics editor, who ran it through a program called TinEye that detects visual enhancements to standard art.
To add insult to injury, none of the people are actually Toronto residents: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/06/10/city-digitally-adds-black-guy-to-fun-guide-cover-to-make-it-more-inclusive.aspx - via Torontoist
I must've been living under a rock since I missed the bidding on this super awesome sofa/pool table combo. The sofa, a 1970s collaboration between Pierce upholsterer and pool table manufacturer Riley, is probably one of a kind prototype - it's perfect for a retro bachelor pad!
The sofa/pool combo has made its way round the Net, but I found it while surfing About Colon Blank: Link
Time sure flies when you're having fun (or in my case, buried with work). I'd like to take a minute and give you a State of the Blog update.
Upcoming Queue Top Submitter - May 2009
When we launched the Neatorama Upcoming Queue, we promised to reward Top Submitters. As a token of my appreciation, the top 5 submitters of May 2009 will get a random cool ice tray from our online store:
Ice Invaders, Gin & Titonic, Bone Chillers, and Cool Jazz ice trays See our complete selection here: Party Ice Trays
You still have a chance to be a Top Submitter for this month (and there's always next month) - learn more about the Neatorama Upcoming Queue here: FAQ | Tips
Neatorama Facebook Fan Page Hits 1,000 Fans
Thanks to Neatoramanaut Becky, we have a Neatorama Facebook Fan Page - and recently we've just hit 1,000 fans! Thank you, guys!
Rogue Ads
It's taken a lot of work behind the scenes, but I believe we've significantly improved the quality of ads on Neatorama - not only are the rogue ads gone, but so are the annoying yellow teeth ads! (Scuttlebutt of the ad industry is that those yellow teeth ads are actually the best performing ads in the history of Internet ads. That's why you see them everywhere - they're coming from practically every single ad network on the web. Banning them cost us a pretty penny, but I think we did the right thing).
Running a small blog costs next to nothing (I know, Neato was once very small) but running a large one is actually quite costly. Bandwidth and server costs for Neatorama run in the 5-digits annually and growing. So unfortunately, ads are a necessary evil. Perhaps one day the Neatoama Online Shop is large enough that its revenue could sustain the blog, but for the foreseeable future, ads are our best option.
Because we have to rely on ad providers, sometimes rogue ads slip through - I appreciate everybody's continued help in spotting them. Please let me know if you see an inappropriate ad, banner that has a self-starting audio, etc., so we can track 'em down and ban 'em (my contact info is at the bottom of the blog).
As a final note, I'm trying to find a balance between maximizing ad revenue and minimizing the number of ads that appear on the blog. Many of you probably noticed ads moving/appearing/disappearing starting in the past couple of weeks.
Neatorama Widget
Neatoramanaut Ajan surprised me with an gift: Neatorama's very own RSS feed widget for Macs. Now, I won't pretend to understand the mechanics of how it was made (I don't have a Mac and wouldn't know the first thing about widgets) - but it looks very neat! If you want one, click here to download it: Link - Thanks Ajan!
Note: a while ago, someone asks how to get in on the Mystery Sale and whether there is an email alert or something like that. Well, the answer is simple: visit Neatorama every day (or subscribe to our RSS feed) - the Mystery Sale is never announced beforehand and it only lasts for a short period of time, so you have to catch it when it's going on (That's part of the fun!)
Why wasn't I told that June is National Bathroom Reading Month? I've been celebrating it all year long!
Anyways, to celebrate this momentous occasion, our pal Uncle John's Bathroom Reader is running a neat contest: Deep Thoughts From the Throne.
You can win nifty prizes (including an iPhone, a set of Bathroom Reader books autographed by Uncle John himself and a year's supply of toilet paper - a year! - now that's a prize) for entering a video clip you create about ... your bathroom!
Here's the details: Contest Rules | Visit Uncle John's YouTube channel for approved entries
There's office romance, and then there's post-it office romance! Here's a cute short film by Academy Film's directors Simon Atkinson and Adam Trowley (better known as Si & Ad) about how two office workers express their love for each other using office supplies.
