Carter Asmann, an artist in Encinitas, California, is incredibly skilled at producing precise renderings of machines in pencil. Lately, he's been staining paper with coffee cup rings, then filling in images of motorcycles around them. His command of the details of his craft is impressive! Asmann's drawings are so technically good that they looks like photographs of the motorcycles. You can see more at his Instagram account.
-via Colossal
Office furniture designers have a goal: to annoy workers as much as possible. They want to make office work even more unpleasant, so they've invented devices like treadmill desks, hamster wheel desks, punching bag keyboards, and full-body mouse controllers. This is, of course, precisely the wrong direction we should be moving in. The optimal work position is supine in a comfortable bed.
One popular take on this concept is that terrible yet persistent idea: the standing desk. A standing desk requires that you stand whenever you need to do work, instead of sitting in a comfortable chair. If you're in reasonably good health, you can probably stand up for a long time. Maybe even an entire work shift. Perhaps the experience isn't so awful after all.
(Photo: Fluid Stance)
That's where Joel Heath's The Level comes in to rescue you from the dangers of comfort and contentment. It's a surfboard-like platform on an unstable base. To keep upright, you have to constantly shift your body with tiny movements.
-via Marilyn Terrell
(Photo: Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge Complex)
There ain't no party like a manatee party! When the manatees show up, you know that the party is going to rock all night.
And they showed up in numbers at the Three Sisters Springs north of Tampa, Florida on Monday. About 300 manatees swarmed a 1 acre area, forcing managers to shut down boating and swimming to make room for them. This is about double the largest number of manatees they've ever seen at the site at the same time.
-via Huffington Post
These buskers in Donostia, Basque Country, Spain perform the iconic song "Help" by The Beatles. They're totally convincing! I'm especially impressed with the puppeteers' vocal performance, which perfectly matches the original sound.
That's a real PS3 controller resting on a perfectly crafted replica that serves as a table. It's not functional, but it will certainly impress gamers who visit your home. Scott Blackwell, a woodworker in South Carolina, made it. He's offering the table for sale on Etsy.
We've previously featured other work by Scott Blackwell: this twisted bookcase. That's the dominant theme in his work. It's especially effective in this bookcase that takes inspiration from Dr. Seuss's The Lorax.
-via Nerd Bastards
Russian designers Tanya and Misha Repin developed LOLO, a "capsular micro kitchen." It would be a good pick for upscale office settings or hotels. The cabinets hold small cooking implements, such as microwave ovens, coffee pots, and water coolers. They're designed to resemble dainty dozing birds.
-via Fubiz
This clever gadget is the Goatee Saver, a shaving template that keeps a firm barrier between a razor and a vulnerable, precious goatee. The owner grips it in his/her teeth, then shaves normally. It's adjustable to fit different facial sizes and features.
-via David Thompson
Gaston's profile is about what you'd expect. And he probably gets a lot of right swipes for it.
Peter Pan? You'd be surprised how close he is to you.
Characters from Disney movies are looking for love or for someone--anyone--to fill the emptiness inside of them. So they've added the Tinder dating app to their smartphones. Shea Strauss of College Humor illustrates the results.
-via Tastefully Offensive
Thursday was World Nutella Day, a celebration of that wondrous hazelnut chocolate spread made by the Italian company Ferrero. To celebrate, Elizabeth of Sugar Hero made huge Ferrero Rocher candies. These are small balls of hazelnut and chocolate--luxurious bits of joy that are about an inch wide. Elizabeth's version is fully 5 inches across!
They aren't simply enlarged versions of Ferrero Rocher candies. Such a concoction, Elizabeth explains, would not be able to hold together consistently. Instead, she made spheres of hazelnut chocolate mousse and cake that give you the same delicious experience.
(Photo: Reprodução/TV Liberal)
Ivete Medeiros of Belém, Brazil was shopping at a supermarket one day when she was accidentally shot by a criminal who was robbing another person. The bullet struck her in the chest, impacting along the underwire of her bra. Medeiros attributes her survival to God and her bra. The Guardian reports:
Her husband told the Globo channel, he feared his wife had been killed because she had been shot in the heart. She told reporters that all she felt was “a little burning sensation” thanks to divine intervention.
“It was not just the bra wiring, which softened [it] a little, but God who saved me,” she said, showing the small hold made in her blouse by the bullet.
The manufacturer of her bra now has a great marketing opportunity.
-via AP
YouTube user hexdude24 owns a truck. The reverse gear in his transmission went out. He can't afford to fix it. In the meantime, he's using this device that he made. It slips under his rear wheels. As he drives forward, it pulls his truck backward.
Forgive me, readers: Alex hired me for my looks, not my brains. How does this system work? I'm struggling to understand it.
-via 22 Words
I'm a bit surprised. Since half of Neatorama's authors live in California, I had simply assumed that blogging is what most Californians do. But for California, like most of the country, the most common job is truck driving, as NPR learned by pulling US Census data.
The maps are part of an interactive tool that shows the most common jobs for every quadrennium from 1978 to 2014. You can see the gradual reduction of secretaries, farmers, and machine operators for truck drivers, school teachers, and software developers.
What do you think that a map like these for the year 2050 would look like? What jobs do you think will be common?
-via TYWKIWDBI
The mighty USS John C. Stennis, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier based in Bremerton, Washington, passed through a rainbow in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday morning. For the photographer, Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ignacio D. Perez, it was a perfect moment. He described the event to CNN:
"As a photographer I am used to documenting operational events like aircraft launches and recoveries," Perez, a 21-year-old mass communications specialist third class, said in an email. "But when I saw the rainbow I was excited because it was different. I knew the odds of the ship passing near another rainbow were pretty slim."
Perez was fortunate he was on the ship's flight deck on another assignment when things began to fall into place.
"I was actually covering the end of a 5K run on the flight deck at the time, but I noticed the rainbow as a fog cloud was breaking and quickly changed my location to ensure I had a better view of the ship passing underneath it," Perez said.
-via Jalopnik
It's time to rise and shine and chase after those food pellets. Eat and don't get caught by the ghosts. That's your job every single day. For eternity.
If you need a reminder of that, Bob of Making Stuff has a great clock design for you. Bob built this clock showing Pac-Man chasing his undead enemies. This time-lapse video shows the construction process from start to finish. It's run with an Arduino-compatible controller and a servo mounted in a 3D printed bracket.
The body pieces are made very skillfully with a scroll saw. Bob's well-equipped workshop makes me jealous. I need a scroll saw, as cutting off my fingers with my jigsaw takes too much effort.
-via Hack A Day
Twitter user @samurai_ball snapped this photo of a snow formation a couple years ago. This cat is far more into winter than even Rudiger the snow cat. Bring him in from the cold!
-via Rocket News 24
