Ploafmaster General

Flickr user Tim Mitchard has a photo set about the WWII-era Maunsell Sea Forts (Thanks, Mitch, for permission to use the photo above). These giant tin-cans-on-stilts were an interesting piece of the British defense system against Nazi air raids, and Mitchard has a detailed write-up about the forts and his photography of the relics.

My friend Stephanie has made a habit of posting an 80s/New Wave music video every Thursday for a while now, and yesterday she posted New Order's "World" (I've embedded the MTV Music version because it's a little clearer):

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:47153

I'm not terribly fond of the song, but the video is fantastic short-form film making. The whole thing is only five shots over nearly 4.5 minutes, and the second shot is almost 1.5 minutes alone! That's some serious coordination and rehearsal. It was directed by Baillie Walsh who's since directed videos for Kylie Minogue and Oasis.

Behold the birthday clown, sad and terrible (with a touch of potty humor - strictly PG, though) :

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2143224&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1
Scenes From An Unmade Movie : Job from Jason Zada on Vimeo.

This edible info graphic is spectacular. I wonder how it tastes...
(via swissmiss)

Holy sweet mercy it's about time :-)

One of my favorite radio programs (via its podcast), Radio Lab, has started its new season. Do check it out - it's more fascinating than I can describe.

But I think I'd still like to build my own gasoline powered soda bottle rocket launcher.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBJwiwfqg70&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1&w=580&h=470]
(via Coudal)

There are pop culture critics, and there's The Hater. Today Amelie Gillette tears down what sounded like a good idea on paper...

This is an absolutely brilliant design for a ladle whether it's used for punch or a pot of chicken soup:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiPAyU-2wOY&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1&w=580&h=470]

(via Gems Sty)

John Gruber tipped me off to Flickr's iPhone-specific version of the website (clicking from a non-iPhone mobile or computer shows you the generic mobile site) just one day before I acquired an iPhone of my own. I've had a similar reaction to Gruber - the iPhone-optimized Flickr site is fantastic and useful. It's so good that I've had no reason to use Exposure (the App Store program for easy Flickr navigation), and in fact, I've discovered a feature that I wish the regular Flickr website included.

If I'm looking at photos from my contacts, I see something like this:



If I click on that first image from The 10 cent designer I see something like this in the sidebar:



I'm taken to the page for the specific photo as if I was viewing the user's photostream and I see a visual next/previous navigation element above the "This photo also belongs to:" section. If I want to look at the photos from my other contacts I have to go back to my contacts page and click on another user's photo or username. This, in my opinion, breaks convention with most other contexts in which you click on a photo on Flickr's site. If I click on a picture in a group pool, I get a next/previous navigation for the pool. The same is true for a set and, of course, the photostream itself.

On the iPhone-optimized Flickr site, however, we have the behavior I've wanted for a few years. In the next two screenshots I've highlighted an image in light green so you can see the behavior. First, we have the "photos from contacts" list:



The third image from the top is the one to watch here, from Jean-François Juteau. When I tap the image directly above, from a different user, I see this:



You can see that the next image is the green-highlighted picture. I wonder what it would take to add this same functionality to the standard web version of the website? I'd hope the feature is programmed portably, but we'll see. Perhaps I'll write the good folks at Flickr to determine whether I'm only the four-thousandth person to bring this to their attention :-)

In a manner of speaking:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70dKZjP4NOo&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1&w=580&h=470]
(via, etc.)

Those crazy-awesome crazies at The A.V. Club made and tasted bacon-infused vodka.

My only problem with the whole enterprise is that they couldn't figure out a simple way to get all the fat out. All you have to do is pour the whole thing into a parallel-sided container and pop it in the freezer. The fat solidifies and floats to the top and the vodka would clarify quite a bit. THEN you could strain it to make it even more clear if needed.

Also, I'm in favor of adding maple flavor (unless it's already maple bacon...) and some vanilla to the infusion. Shake with some butterscotch schnapps and cream, and you have buttered pancakes with syrup and bacon in a glass. Maybe :-)

I don't know how long it'll be until it's little more than crappy reality TV shows, but MTV has returned to music...online.

MTV Music is a joy to my music-loving heart. The interface is - so far - fairly uncluttered. The search engine is quick to dig through the 22,000+ videos. In addition to a simple but fast-loading player you have sparse but useful information such as the director (linking to other videos by the same person!). As a fitting test, here's the video to one of my favorite songs by the sadly-no-more Big Wreck:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:46306

And as a bonus here's Stars by Hum:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:55357

I don't see how you could get any weirder/funnier than Robocop on a Unicorn.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Okay, you know I'm a fan of the digital galleries curated by folks at The Morning News.

Well this week's offering is simultaneously nerdy, surreal, and beautiful. Rosecrans Baldwin interviews Cornelia Hesse-Honegger about her strangely pretty watercolors of insects affected by low-level radiation.

Check out the BBC's article about the Belgian political situation. I never would have guessed that a modern Western European nation would have such divisions with the real (though not likely) chance of a split. The article was a fascinating read (since I knew very little of the small country), and packed quite a bit of information into the short space. I'm reminded of my need to pay attention to the world outside of United States borders, even (if not especially) during our intense election cycle.

You might need to change your undies after laughing your bowels out at this one:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAg5KjnAhuU&hl=en&fs=1&w=580&h=470]

(via that font of Friday fun, yewknee)

Malcolm Gladwell's recent New Yorker Article, "Late Bloomers," has already been linked around the internet, but I can't help chiming in having read the piece. Whether or not you or me or anybody else is destined to reach "genius" status, it's encouraging to understand that not all brilliance manifests itself at an early age. Additionally, I loved the notion that late-blooming talent is often aided by outside forces:

Sharie was Ben’s wife. But she was also—to borrow a term from long ago—his patron. That word has a condescending edge to it today, because we think it far more appropriate for artists (and everyone else for that matter) to be supported by the marketplace. But the marketplace works only for people like Jonathan Safran Foer, whose art emerges, fully realized, at the beginning of their career, or Picasso, whose talent was so blindingly obvious that an art dealer offered him a hundred-and-fifty-franc-a-month stipend the minute he got to Paris, at age twenty. If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.

The article is a lengthy one, but certainly worth a read. It makes me (and hopefully others who pursue good artistic output of any kind) relax a little bit about my own creativity and dulls the false sense of urgency to do something significant before I age "too much." The article also seems to celebrate the pursuit - the research and preparation as a component of the art itself. And that, I can appreciate.

There seems to be a fair amount of letterpress type to be had on eBay, and much of it seems to be in gloriously good shape, such as this example from Flickr user h. wren:



I think I'd have a hard time justifying the purchase of letterpress type to Valerie, even if it is one of my favorites :-)
(That would be Gill Sans, in case somebody looks at this page long after the eBay auction is gone.)

Check it:



This device, striking in its simplicity of function, is one of the coolest ideas I've seen an a long time. Bushnell's BackTrack GPS device is cheap ($60 on Amazon) and basic, functioning much like a stop watch for your location. You press a button to mark your location, and you press a button again to start pointing you back to that location. I'd like to see something like this get cheaper and ubiquitous allowing, for example, parents to give one to each child, or travelers on a budget to find their way back to a key location.

This is a very clever innovation in what's fast becoming a crowded GPS market.

For that tasty mix of irony and awesome, you really ought to consider a tray that makes bullet-shaped ice.

The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin interviews British actor Simon Pegg. I'm already a huge fan of Pegg's work in Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but this interview sheds some light on his wit and intelligence as well.

David Friedman, of Ironic Sans, has recently updated his portfolio site. That's all fine and dandy, but said portfolio site now includes a photo blog as well.

Subscribed.

His Inventor Portraits are shaping up to be a fascinating series.

I'd forgotten the sheer beauty of Phillip Bloom's film making:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1466234&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1
Portrait of Siberia from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Dig that sample of the Knight Rider theme...

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1831024&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1
Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

(via yewknee)