More ideas and inspiration to be creative: “Design Something Every Day!”

Interesting: “Eight cool social media infographics.”

These sites are fascinating: FFFFOUND! (image bookmarking), grain edit (modern graphic design inspiration blog) and Black and WTF (seriously, WTF).

Flight 1549 and marine animals

This animation (with audio) is based on all currently available data concerning the US Airways Flight 1549 crash: Flight 1549 3D Reconstruction, Hudson River Ditching Jan 15, 2009. Hard to believe it’s been almost a year now since that Hudson River landing. Even though you know the plane lands safely, it’s still a tense experience to hear the audio again, especially in the context of the flight animation. Worth watching.

Check this out: A pod of bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Florida have developed a remarkable hunting strategy in order to catch fish: Life: Bottlenose dolphins mud-ring feeding.

This is amazing: “Solar-powered sea slug harnesses stolen plant genes.”

These photographs are stunning: “David Liittschwager – Marine Micro Fauna (8 pics).”

Holidays

More photography: “A Very Tesla Christmas.” Take a Tesla coil and a super-long camera exposure and you can have an “electrifying display of holiday cheer.”

From Stereogum: “New Indie Rock Christmas MP3s For 2009.”

I bought a pineapple to eat over Christmas break. I’m also thinking about trying to grow a new pineapple using the crown of the old one: “How to Grow a Pineapple at Home.”

Krampus

Speaking of holiday cheer, I really like this Shirt.Woot t-shirt designed by Missmonster: “Greetings from Krampus.” It celebrates the annual return of Santa’s old pal Krampus.

Happy New Year!

(In case you need it: press in dire situations.)

Chiquita bananas

Every weekend I buy a bunch of bananas. I usually choose organic, and normally select them based on ripeness level and the presence of bruises. But sometimes these criteria can (apparently) be expanded to include marketing stickers. Yes, stickers. (Yes, I am 30 years old.) My distaste for crass commercialism and sleazy marketing can in fact be overridden by charming, clever graphic design ideas. (Plus, I don’t mind manipulating children into wanting to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. Let’s put cute stickers on all fruit!)

Here’s the question: How can anyone resist Mexican wrestler stickers on their Chiquita bananas? You can’t. It’s not possible. You just have to buy the bananas.

Behold the new selection of Chiquita banana stickers:

These 24 new stickers can be found on the Chiquita Banana page on Facebook. You can also design (Mr. Potato Head-style) your own custom stickers at EatAChiquita.com. And there is a Twitter account called ChiquitaChatter.

So, if you were sick of Carmen Miranda (the inspiration for the Chiquita Banana lady), now you have a Mexican wrestler and many other goofy options. Makes me a little nostalgic for Strong Bad.

Star Wars and Star Trek

What if Star Wars characters were on Facebook?  I enjoyed this from College Humor: 5 Star Wars Status Updates.

And I liked this absurd Star Trek parody: Happy in Paraguay. Apple juice!

Graphic design and architecture

I haven’t gone through this design list in detail yet, but it looks useful: 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory.

Lastly, this is awesome: Underground Home Designs – Swiss Mountain House Rocks. The underground house is a collaboration between the Netherlands architects at SeARCH and Christian Muller Architects.

Follow me on Twitter for more interesting items between blog updates.

I’ve browsed through a number of non-Flickr sites lately that have provided excellent inspiration for my own photography projects. Here are some:

• Scott Wade’s Dirty Car Art Gallery
• “Rubik’s Cube Sandwich,” which I plan to make someday (but with different, more colorful fruit and vegetable ingredients)
• James D. Griffioen’s photo sets, including Feral Houses
• “Gallery: Inside Alaska’s Answer to Area 51“
• The Ruins of New York
• The ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which still has an actively burning Silent Hill-style mine fire (also see Johnny Blough’s Centralia set on Flickr)
• Russian plastinochnye (record) collages

Weeds, fruits and vegetables

I will probably want to refer to this article later. From The Oregonian: “Get rid of those weeds once and for all.”

This list by the Environmental Working Group will help you decide what produce is the most important to buy organically grown: “The Full List: 47 Fruits & Veggies.”

I’m thinking about trying some Vegiforms-type molds for my garden vegetables next year. Who doesn’t love novelty vegetables with little faces? These clear plastic forms are very similar to how the Japanese create square watermelons for easy refrigerator storage and stacking.

Technology and gaming

Cool: “Five Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH.”

Amanita Design’s Machinarium looks amazing: “Machinarium has become too gorgeous.”

Insect technology

I found this fascinating: “Hacking a remote-controlled moth with insect venom.”

Cats and baby animals

He’s quite the cat: “Pet cat catches the daily bus for four years.”

Need to replace your toilet? Make your next one a toilet-tank aquarium: Fish ‘n Flush.

Lastly, here are three more of of these blogs: FYBA, Item Not As Described and Probably Bad News.

We spent most of Saturday afternoon in Darkside Cinema at the da Vinci Film Festival encore.

I loved the feature documentary In Pursuit of Panama by first-time filmmakers and lifelong friends Garrett Martin and Ryan Swan. The film is Kerouac-like, both genuine and inspiring. It’s a truly funny, coming-of-age story about a seven-country road trip that starts in Corvallis, Oregon. I definitely recommend it, if you can find it. (Personal sidebar: The experience of watching it approximated the feel I wanted to create with my first novel . . . that I never actually finished.) See the trailer at their website.

More movies

Last weekend I also watched Timecrimes, which was very good and reminded me of Primer. I love the exploration of time-travel paradoxes. See other films I’ve rated and reviewed at Filmometer.com.

Here is some interesting news: “Neuromancer movie in the works (no, really this time!).” The attached director is Joseph Kahn. You may know him as the director of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and “Stronger” music videos. As well as Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” . . . and a Blink-182 music video . . . and a horrible feature with Ice Cube called Torque . . . and . . . I am afraid. I really want Neuromancer to be awesome.

On that note: “After Watchmen, What’s ‘Unfilmable’? These Legendary Texts.”

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus received a standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival this May but has not yet been picked up for U.S. distribution. Read more: “Terry Gilliam’s Final Cut for Heath Ledger and Imaginarium.”

The Orwellian satire Visioneers starring Zach Galifianakis looks very interesting as well.

It’s refreshing that Michael Bay has progressed to this current point in his career, where he’s willing to be a parody of himself. He’s really become the ultimate artist the postindustrial world has been waiting for. See: Verizon Commercial – Michael Bay EXTENDED. Groan.

Browsing the Web from 10,000 feet

This is very cool: Pixamix. It’s an experiment that reduces any site to its core color mood (i.e., giant pixels of color).

Resignation

Vanity Fair edits Palin’s bizarre, incoherent resignation speech into publishable shape: “Palin’s Resignation: The Edited Version.” Wow.

Ice cream

Will they succeed in making ice cream fall from the sky like snow? Check it out: “The Cloud Project Would Theoretically Make Ice Cream Fall Like Snow.”

I am reminded of a few weeks ago when I ate Cold Stone ice cream that melted into JELL-O pudding (mentioned here and here on Twitter). That was fun.

First, I really liked the YouTube DTV logo from June 12, 2009. Goodbye, analog television.

Second, below is some old crap that might still be funny or interesting.

Music and movies

This is intriguing: “David Lynch Writes a Rock Album.” Also, the “Kids” music video by MGMT is pretty cool. A friend sent this to me via email: “Everyone is monsters. Except your mom. And MGMT. MGMT’s dog is OK too.”

Here’s a political mashup: JFK Auto-Tuned. And a funny Jurassic Park mashup: Hey!

Also found this older stuff: The Lonely Island Episode 1: White Power! and every clip of Zach Galifianakis from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! on Adult Swim.

Transformers 2 and Michael Bay

The photo at right is the only keyboard Michael Bay knows how to use: “MICHAEL BAY: THE BOOM GOES ON.”

Press Ctrl-Alt-BOOM to restart. Click BOOBS to continue.

I’ve made several Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen posts on Twitter in the past couple of days, such as these two about screenwriters Kurtzman and Orci and the soundtrack.

I love this review (includes spoilers): “Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie.” And how! I’m sure the new Transformers movie will explode many heads this weekend.

Food (sort of)

Eat Me Daily has a lot of disturbing food-related features, as does the This is why you’re fat. blog.

Here’s an Eat Me Daily example: Cheez-It Flavored Lip Balm. What? There’s so much fast-food wrongness here: Burger King’s Super Seven Incher Ad, The McDonald’s Mac Snack Wrap and The McGangBang. Ugh.

Animals

Cute Overload calls this guy the blorpiest: disapproving frog. Also see: Super Keyboard Cat Bros. (the 8-bit version).

Cats be getting stoned: How catnip gets cats high.

Office jargon, Ground Zero and Twitter

I feel like it’s time to revisit some entertaining office jargon/annoying buzzword sites: The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary and Generation X Office Lingo.

The Ground Zero app is an interesting. Here’s a quote: “Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? With Google’s Maps framework and a bit of JavaScript, you can see the outcome. And it does not look good.”

If you like texts from last night, you should also like the Twitter-based Favrd.

Iran election crisis

Here are two interesting articles from last week about the Iran election crisis/protests: “U.S. Government Asks Twitter to Stay Up for #IranElection Crisis” and “Cyberwar guide for Iran elections.”

Go, Twitter! Though, weird, right?

This new Sam Rockwell film Moon looks like it could be really good. Check out the cool poster and watch the trailer.

“Analysis: Corewar – The Ultimate Video Game?” is a great article if you’re interested in early computer gaming/programming. Here’s an excerpt:

Corewar was first popularized in a series of articles printed as part of the Scientific American column “Computer Recreations,” a successor of Martin Gardner’s legendary Mathematical Games. This puts it in the same kind of company as John Horton Conway’s Game of Life, the prototypical cellular automata.

See this related post I wrote almost six years ago: “Junk food research (and Turing machines).”

Tweeting in Oregon

Now you can follow Travel Portland on Twitter and get PDX advice and recommendations by adding the identifier #inpdx to your tweet. Welcome to the “Twisitor Center.”

Multicolored shell pasta

I just wanted to follow-up on this tweet with a rainbow pasta photo that’s exactly what I was talking about. (The inset photo is actually a poster you can buy.) Yum. But I don’t know of any macaroni that comes in solid blue.

Thai postpacks

Also wanted to follow-up this tweet with a photo of the very cute Thailand Post padded envelope I received in the mail.

Science articles

These two stories are a little scary: “Military sonar blamed for mass dolphin strandings” and “Friendly ‘Death Star’ Laser to Recreate Sun’s Power.”

Also, a scientist in Italy predicted the recent devastating earthquake, but was officially denounced in court: “Scientist Forced To Remove Earthquake Prediction.” Hmm.