Friday, November 30, 2012

Link roundup

1.  The future is here:
On school-day mornings, I walk my grade-school-age son 400 meters down the hill to the bus stop. Last winter, I fantasized about sitting at my computer while a camera-equipped drone followed him overhead.
  
So this year, I set out to build one.
2.  The real life hunting expedition video that inspired King Kong:
In 1926, the American Museum of Natural History trustee William Douglas Burden set sail with a team of adventurers that included a hunter, a herpetologist, a cameraman, and Burden’s wife. They were off to capture dragons.
3.  Bungie teased their next big game way back in Halo 3: ODST.

Gaston at Disney World is pretty great





Meet and greets with mimbo Gaston are pretty entertaining. (Not as great as meeting the Evil Queen, though.)

*Buy Poster Art of the Disney Parks at Amazon.

"Humans have stripes! You just can't see them"

"These stripes, called Lines of Blaschko, are invisible most of the time, but certain conditions bring them out."

Thursday, November 29, 2012

The JawSaw

Special edition Nike Fuelband



Special edition Nike+ FuelBand to benefit the Doernbecher Children's Hospital.

*Buy Fuelbands at ebay.

Tentaculos



Tentacles movie posters, some of which are available at ebay.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Skrillex Quest



Skrillex Quest is a free game by Jason Oda.

Fashion that shows off your power fists; Venom pillow; Supervan


The latest in Madéleine Flores's ongoing series of fashion tips.



Venom pillow on sale here.



Posters and promotional photo for Supervan.  The posters are available at ebay.

Adventure Time by Jim Rugg




Jim Rugg posted a preview of his contribution to Adventure Time #10, out today.

*Adventure Time Comics Vol. 1 is 40% off at Amazon.

"'Poison' pen mightier than sword for would-be North Korean assassin"

CNN:
Disguised to look like a Parker ballpoint pen, it contains a poison needle and is practically impossible to identify as a weapon.

The second pen shoots a poison-filled bullet which penetrates the skin and releases the toxin and the third weapon is a flashlight, loaded with up to three bullets. They all look completely innocuous but all three will kill.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Holographic square



By Jen Stark.

Axe "Thai Massage" shower gel



Fast Company had a recent article about advertising such products:
Rubin and McCarthy are in a fraternity of sorts: the Axe Republic. That's the name that, without irony, the global Axe team uses to refer to itself. Theirs is an adventurous life, involving frequent forays into college towns, where the Axe team joins bar crawls and keggers. Older Republic members have designated "trendslators," fresh hires who can explain what's on teens' minds. And when these new pledges are brought in, they're even shown an indoctrination film. It's a classic clip from The Matrix, where the hero, Neo, is offered two pills--a blue one to preserve his ignorance, or a red one that will show him a new reality. Axe is the red pill. "It encapsulates what the Axe Republic is about," Rubin says. "There is a whole bunch of stuff that might apply to other Unilever brands that doesn't apply to the Republic. The rules of gravity can be pushed."

"Within two or three decades the difference between automated driving and human driving will be so great you may not be legally allowed to drive your own car"

NewYorker:
and even if you are allowed, it would be immoral of you to drive, because the risk of you hurting yourself or another person will be far greater than if you allowed a machine to do the work.

That moment will be significant not just because it will signal the end of one more human niche, but because it will signal the beginning of another: the era in which it will no longer be optional for machines to have ethical systems. Your car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when an errant school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path. Should your car swerve, possibly risking the life of its owner (you), in order to save the children, or keep going, putting all forty kids at risk? If the decision must be made in milliseconds, the computer will have to make the call.

Monday, November 26, 2012

The Black Knight custom action figure (from Scooby-Doo)



The Black Knight from Scooby-Doo as a custom action figure by loose collector.

*Buy Scooby-Doo toys at eBay.

Homemade cardboard Star Destroyer



Homemade cardboard Star Destroyer by Bruce Ross.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Calvin Johnson/Megatron collection from Nike


Nike:
In celebration of Thanksgiving weekend, Nike celebrates a long-standing weekend of football and an athlete that has truly transformed the game. The Nike CJ81 Collection Inspired by Megatron speaks to WR Calvin Johnson’s rare combination of physical talent and mental toughness. This menacing combination creates a prototypical specimen that undoubtedly deserves a moniker like Megatron. Much like the fictional character, Johnson relies on his uncanny ability to pull out an arsenal of physical strengths or “weapons” based on anything he encounters on the field. 
The collection, inspired by the Hasbro Transformers character created in 1984, features iconic Nike silhouettes across lifestyle, training and performance including the CJ81 Nike Air Max Flyposite, CJ81 Nike Huarache Free Shield, CJ81 Nike Vapor Jet Glove 2.0, CJ81 Nike Vapor Football Sock, CJ81 Nike True Adjustable Hat, and the CJ81 Nike KO Hoody. 
Merging the old and new, the traditional Transformers grid pattern and colors of black, silver, purple and blue from the original Megatron packaging, help highlight the CJ81 logo design. 
The limited collection will be available starting November 23 at several Nike retail locations as well as Nike Yardline at Champs Sports and Eastbay online.

Link roundup

1.  "I have never seen anything like it. It happened the morning after the first rains of the season that recently drenched Nairobi, Kenya. I was on my way to my first appointment but halfway through my journey, not far from the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters, when the road I was on was blocked by a wall of suds, white and fluffy as if spewing out of an errant giant steam carpet cleaner, was slowly swallowing the four-lane highway before me."

2. Deadspin:
D-III Player's 138 Point-Game Is A Sham Record And Shouldn't Be Celebrated By Anyone

Since becoming Grinnell coach in 1989, Arseneault has focused less on putting together a successful team and more on getting his players' names in the record books. And, not incidentally, selling books and videos touting his innovative "system." At least three separate times a Grinnell player has set the D-III single-game scoring record, and each one has gotten national attention.
3.  Gawker:
Just over a week after being reelected as district attorney in Cortland County, Mark Suben held a press conference today to confess his past as a porn star in the 1970s, a charge he'd denied just a few weeks before the election. Suben, who's held the office since 2008, admitted to lying in the days before the election, saying he used "bad judgement."

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Spider-Man tattoo designs



Spider-Man tattoo designs by Andy Pitts.

"Ask an Economist: Which Bond Villain Plan Would Have Worked (and Which Not)?"

Vulture:
Quantum of Solace
Plot: Scheming environmentalist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) wants to dam Bolivia’s fresh water supply to create a monopoly. Then, he’s going to help a Bolivian general stage a coup d’état, but not before he forces the general to sign a contract making Greene’s company the sole water supplier of Bolivia, at much higher prices.

Plausibility: “This is another plot based on history,” Dethier says. “There were a lot of privatizations of the water supply systems in Latin America some years ago. Many of them were bought by a French multinational. It didn’t work. They realized it was impossible to manage. They had huge problems with poorer communities, and eventually had to withdraw. There was so much opposition, and people were constantly disrupting the infrastructure these companies were trying to control. There’s actually a very good film about this, set in Bolivia, called Even the Rain, starring Gael Garcia Bernal.”

Thursday, November 15, 2012

"a construction team severed a cable. And it turned out, unfortunately, to be the cable"

Atlantic:
Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, had lost contact with its satellites -- all of them. Which meant, as well, that it had lost contact with the International Space Station, and with the cosmonauts who call it home. . . . While doing repair work on the Shchyolkovsky Highway outside of Moscow, a construction team severed a cable. And it turned out, unfortunately, to be the cable.

Stardust the Super Wizard figurine




There's a kickstarter to get a Stardust the Super Wizard figurine ($36 shipped in the USA).

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

"I was scavenging my corpse"

Playing the Zelda minigame for the Wii U:
I keep getting the hearts beaten out of me. But look at that skull on the ground. That's wasn't there last time. I'm going to shoot at it. It gave me a heart! That's nice. Later... the game is loading up a new Zelda level and it's mentioning something about those skulls which—oh!—they show up where I last died in the level. So they were my skull. I was scavenging my corpse. 

Windows 95 Tips



Windows 95 Tips is already more successful than the Surface.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Petraeus scandal roundup

1.  "Petraeus scandal: This is the national-security establishment turning the surveillance apparatus on itself."

2.  "Petraeus' departure again demonstrates we are strict about intimate behavior, but extraordinarily lax about professional incompetence."

3.  "Did an Anonymous Wikipedia Editor Try to Out the Petraeus Affair Back in January?"

4. "Paula Broadwell’s Driver’s License Discovered in D.C. Park As Things Just Keep Getting Crazier."

5. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the FBI to take action on an actual online death threat case, if the recipient isn't a well-connected 'honorary ambassador' in the military social elite?"

6.  "But private life for a C.I.A. director today is apparently quite different from what it was in the Dulles era. Mr. Petraeus resigned after admitting to a single affair; Allen Dulles had, as his sister, Eleanor, wrote later, 'at least a hundred.'"

7. "Both Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. John Allen intervened in the same nasty child custody battle involving Natalie Khawam, the “psychologically unstable” twin sister of Jill Kelley."

8.  From January, video of Paula Broadwell on The Daily Show fawning over Petraeus, making fun of her husband, and then showing off that she can do way more pushups than her husband.

9.  Two guides to actually keeping online communications secret.

10. "How I was drawn into the cult of David Petraeus."

11. "New details about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation handled the case suggest that even as the bureau delved into Mr. Petraeus's personal life, the agency had to address conduct by its own agent—who allegedly sent shirtless photos of himself to a woman involved in the case prior to the investigation."

Monday, November 12, 2012

Narwhal/unicorn sculpture by kozyndan



Rainbow unicorn/transparent narwhal resin sculpture by kozyndan, who have art on sale here.