(YouTube Link)

YouTube user macjonesnz programmed his CD-ROM tray to repeatedly open and close. Then he tied a string between the tray and his child's car seat. Result: sleeping baby.

Via Bits & Pieces

I'm afraid that this product is exactly what it looks like: a bracket that holds a stringed plastic bag while attached to your dog's tail. At the expense of your dog's sense of dignity, you get to avoid scooping up after him:

People invented many useful technologies to make people's life easier. All these inventions (car is among one of them) are to make people's life more convenient. With our "PooTrap", no need to worry that dogs will cause environment pollution, and as dogs owners may know, actually it's difficult to pick up poop.

Link via CrunchGear (where there is a video)

A company called Evergreen sells wood-faced LED-lit alarm clock radios with speakers. There are two versions available, with either one or two speakers. It sells for about $25, but so far, only in Japan. More info at the link (if you speak Japanese).

Link via CrunchGear

Attach this spout to a bottle of liquor. As you pour, a LED light will illuminate the liquid. Unlike similar gadgets, it only lights up when liquid pours through it, adding a cool visual effect to bartending during its four-hour battery life. Video at the link.

Link via Nerd Approved

Photo: John Locher

In 2005, pastry chef Jean-Philippe Maury created this enormous 25-tiered chocolate fountain for the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. It's 27 feet tall and circulates 120 quarts of chocolate per minute:

It wasn't, you see, quite as simple as constructing a waterfall.

"Water doesn't change," Maury said. "Chocolate is complicated."

It must be at the proper temperature to flow properly, for starters. Then there's the issue of the chocolate's viscosity, which affects the flow. And the viscosity of chocolate changes with every little bit of moisture in the air.

"The envy of chocolate is humidity," Maury said. With an increase in the humidity, cocoa butter and coconut oil must be added to the 2,100 pounds of chocolate in the tank. Maury takes viscosity readings every two or three days.

The 25 glass vessels from which the chocolate flows are each unique, and each handmade in Montreal. Maury and Oliver tested the system there for seven months.

Link via Gizmodo (where there are videos of the fountain)

Photo: Times of London

Bank Machine, an ATM operator in Britain, now has five cash machines in London that offer users the opportunity to conduct their business in the cockney dialect. It's a promotional gimmick designed to amuse customers:

“Readin’ your bladder of lard”, read the message on the screen. It asked for his “Huckleberry Finn”. Then more bewildering questions: did he wanted to see his balance on the Charlie Sheen? Did he wish to change his Huckleberry Finn or did he simply require sausage and mash, with or without a receipt?

Link via DVICE

826LA is a non-profit organization in southern California that teaches kids how to engage in creative writing. It's known for innovative workshops and clever marketing. We previously featured their time travel store on Neatorama. 826LA has applied that same theme to traditional propaganda posters, producing ten, including the above poster warning time travelers about the dangers of the Butterfly Effect.

Link via io9

Illustration: Reilulf Ramstad Architects

Norway plans to construct a wooden building 16-17 stories tall with carbon neutral construction techniques. The Norwegian Barents Secretariat will use it for a cultural center for the nation's northern coast. It will house a library, a theatre, and art studios in its approximately 10,000 square meter interior space and will highlight sustainable development:

The idea is to construct a building which will be CO2-neutral, where the concept of the cycles of nature will be preserved. The innovative solutions on modern wooden constructions will stand as a token of the level of competence in the region, says architect Reiulf Ramstad.

As far as I have been able to determine, the record for tallest wooden building in the world is currently held by the 43-meter tall St. George's Cathedral in Guyana.

Link via Gizmodo

Jeffrey Thomas is a California-based artist and character designer. He plays with pop culture in twisted and amusing ways, such as his latest series on eleven of the Disney Princesses. Pictured above is an Ariel more sinister than the one in The Little Mermaid.

Link via GearFuse

Artist's blog

Frankie Flood is an artist and professor of jewelry and metalsmithing at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He makes custom pizza cutters inspired by American motorcycles, such as the one above apparently modeled on the work of Mantis Choppers. Flood writes:

My work investigates one of a kind objects and their role in a world based on mechanical reproduction. Industry has removed the aura from objects and stripped them of their individuality. My pizza cutters seek to demolish the sterile conformity of mass produced objects and represent the stylistic and flamboyant embellishment of groups who live on the fringe of popular culture. The outlaw biker image is a break from the conformity that has taken over America since industrialization. My machined pizza cutters draw inspiration from chopper motorcycles and attempt to reclaim the mythology and economic usefulness of the American worker as patriarch; translating machine or functional object into flesh and blood. The outlaw as defiant nonconformist, as well as social outcast, parallels being an artist who makes functional objects and being an individual who takes pride in the power of invention and skill.

Link via Geekologie

Need a good excuse for why you're late to/absent from work? The Office Kid kit lets you pretend to have a child, which you can then use as an excuse for your questionable work ethic. Each kit comes with a framed picture of a child (ethnicity of your choice), a work of children's art, and a list of suggested excuses. For additional fees, you can have the child photoshopped into a sports team picture or a doctor's note on official-looking stationery.

Link via Bits & Pieces

Photo: David King Collection, London

The New York Times has a slideshow of famous faked photographs, including Abraham Lincoln's head on John Calhoun's body and Stalin's erasure of his enemies. Shown above is the before and after photo manipulation where Nikolai Yezhov, a one-time head of Soviet's secret police NKVD and a central player in Stalin's Great Purge was himself purged - from life and this photograph.

Link via Instapundit

(YouTube Link)

8-Bit Trip is a stop motion LEGO video tribute to classic video games. It was created by the Swedish band Rymdreglage after 1,500 hours of work.

Via Boing Boing

Architect Sou Fujimoto created a house inspired by the table game Jenga. It consists of cedar blocks 35 cm wide and was completed in Kumamoto, Japan in 2008.

Artist's Website

Link via Juxtapoz

Inventor James Dyson's fountain, inspired by the work of MC Escher, gives the illusion that its water flows uphill:

Covering the ramp is a glass surface. Water is pumped in at the bottom, and comes out of the opening at the top. At the opening, some of the water is diverted back down the ramp, covering the glass in a thin layer of water.

Compressed air is also pumped in where the water enters - bubbles then travel up the ramp to the opening. These bubbles, combined with the thin layer of water going downhill, are what create the illusion that the surface of the ramp is not just a glass lid.

Link via OhGizmo!