Interesting or Stupid?: 2005-05-15

Double Body

'Legendary noisetheory composer' Glenn Branca has created a Double Body electric guitar.

- LINK

[Via. Gizmodo]

Modern Toy Sets For Urban Youth

Eric Doeringer has created a set of toy packs that "imitate the look of the toy accessory sets commonly sold in grocery or 99-cent stores". These toy sets however have slightliy more disturbing themes such as 'Stoner', 'Junky', 'Teen Mother' and 'The Peeper'

- Modern Toy Sets For Urban Youth

[Via. Boing Boing]

MoMA world Clock

The MoMA world Clock is a pretty clever desk clock. Rather than fiddling around with setting the time for different timezones, simply turn the clock so that the timezone you want is resting on top.

- The MoMA world Clock

[Via. The Red Ferret]

Anyone for Tea?

In a interesting instalment of Art imitating Life, Niklas Roy has created 'Graphics Demo',a wireframe model of a teapot out of wire placed it in the shell of a old Commodore computer. Niklas painted it with green UV reactive paint and installed a series of electric motors that allows users to rotate the teapot using the numpad. The videos are pretty cool. Interestingly this is how they did the wireframe models in "2001:A Space Odyssey"

- Graphics Demo
- Video

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

Square-Eyes

Gillian Swan, a final year design student at Brunel University has creates a device that converts exercise into TV watching time. "Square-eyes" is a shoe sole which records the number of steps a child has taken in a day and then transmits it to a bass station connected to the TV, allocating time based on the number of steps. Once the allocated time runs out the TV automatically switches off

- Shoe kick-starts active lifestyle

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

MAMEintosh

MAMEintosh creates custom built arcade cabinet kits specifically aimed at Macintosh MAME retro gamers.

- MAMEintosh

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

Voodoo People

Steve, the "Associate Assistant of Departmental Operations" is a worker in a virtual office environment created by Donnie Bugden. The interaction between the user and Steve is rather unusual however, its done via a Voodoo Doll.

Poke him. Go ahead, give him a poke... Gently insert the provided pin into the Voodoo Doll to witness the effect of your input on the Associate Assistant of Departmental Operations. Please use with caution.

- B Side Games
- Associate Assistant of Departmental Operations

[Via. We Make Money Not Art]

The Bionic Woman

A 46yo British woman who suffered 2 strokes which left her left side paralysed has undergone surgery to implant 5 bionic microstimulators into her arm. The microstimulators were implanted close to the nerves supplying muscles in the womans arm and act like "bionic neurons" to mimick messages from the brain. The system is designed to help her arm 're-learn' movements it lost after the stroke.
- World's First 'Bionic' Device Fitted

[Via. Future Feeder]

Look Into My Eyes

CyberNet has released for tree the Navigaze:Hands Free Computer Control software. With only a PC, Webcam and the software you can control the mouse cursor by moving your hear up/down and left/right and blinking to indicate mouse clicks. So goodbye carpal tunnel, hello neck gap. I really want to try this out with a first person shooter.

- Navigaze

[Via. Future Feeder]

Lets See That Again, In Slow Motion

Bennett Wilburn, Neel Joshi, Vaibhav Vaish, Marc Levoy and Mark Horowitz have created a high speed video camera by creating an array of low speed CMOS cameras. Using 52 cameras running at 30 frames per second(fps) they are able to create a total speed of 1560 fps. They use special calibration to re-align the different cameras viewpoints after the footage has been shot. They have some videos and a in-depth PDF on their site.

- High Speed Video Using a Dense Camera Array

[Via. Future Feeder]

It Came From E3: Part One

Thought I would do a bit of a mash up of interesting things ive seen about E3 today. However there seriously is WAY too much for a smar article to hold, so your better off checking the individual sites

Kotaku,
Joystiq,
IGN
Electronic Entertainment Expo

Real Karamari

We Love Katamari
"I got to play around with We Love Katamari (is ‘Damacy’ in there still? I forgot). It’s a lot like the first one, but the multiplayer mode is crazy. You have to work with the other player to move your katamari around, which takes a lot of coordination best executed by screaming loudly at them and calling them dumb."

Namco Confirms Katamari Damacy for Mobile Phones

Trauma Center
A strange DS surgery aame called 'Trauma Center: Under the Knife.' where you use the touchscreen to operate while a anime nurse guides you through the procedure.

DDR Mario Mix

King Kong

Call for Duty 2

Quake 4

- Quake 4 Video

Remote Controll Mario Karts

Starcraft Ghost

There is so much more I could keep writing for days and not cover it all.. go seek it out.

[Via Gizmodo, Boing Boing, Kotaku, Joystiq, IGN]

Top 100 Movie Voices

Film Critic has compiled a list of the top 100 movie voices including greats such as Jack Nicholson, Anthony Hopkins, Peter Sellers, Vincent Price and of course James Earl Jones.
- Top 100 Movie Voices

[Via. Boing Boing]

Top Ten Favorite Words (Not in the Dictionary)

Merriam-Webster asked visitors to their site to submit words which were not in the dictionary. The following list is the pick of the bunch.

1. ginormous (adj): bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous

2. confuzzled (adj): confused and puzzled at the same time

3. woot (interj): an exclamation of joy or excitement

4. chillax (v): chill out/relax, hang out with friends

5. cognitive displaysia (n): the feeling you have before you even leave the house that you are going to forget something and not remember it until you're on the highway

6. gription (n): the purchase gained by friction: "My car needs new tires because the old ones have lost their gription."

7. phonecrastinate (v): to put off answering the phone until caller ID displays the incoming name and number

8. slickery (adj): having a surface that is wet and icy

9. snirt (n): snow that is dirty, often seen by the side of roads and parking lots that have been plowed

10. lingweenie (n): a person incapable of producing neologisms

Some of them seem very 'Meaning of Liff' to me, pretty funny that 'woot' made the list
- Top Ten Favorite Words (Not in the Dictionary)
- The Meaning of Liff

[Via. Boing Boing]

Feeling Insecure

"First of all… why are these gentlemen(which are FEDs BTW) grinning like a couple of highschool-teens? :-)"

"Probably because they can crack WEP-encryption in around three minutes and then have access to all your funny stuff…"
- The Feds can own your WLAN too

[Via. Geek Technique]

Das Keyboard

Daniel Guermeur has created and is selling 'Das Keyboard'. Marketed to 'UberGeeks Only' its a sleek black keyboard with totally blank keys.

If you are an elite programmer who can write sophisticated code under tight deadlines, someone who makes impossible projects possible; or a Silver Web Surfer your colleagues turn to when they need IT advise: this keyboard is for you.

Shouldn't your keyboard reflect your status as one of the elite? We think so!

Hopefully when things go wrong the UberGeek can find Ctrl+Alt+Del for Das ReBoot.

- Das Keyboard

[Via. Gizmodo]

International Contempory Furniture Fair

design*sponge also has some neat pics from the show.

vidalia vase by skram furniture

Design School Booth from the Royal Danish Acadamy

life shop outdoor furniture

toda (by notch design), a pretty cool coat rack

[Via. design*sponge]

International Contempory Furniture Fair

Day 4 from Moco Loco (more on their site)

[Via. Moco Loco]

DREAD

Leader Propulsion Systems founder Charles St George has created a prototype centrifugal weapon system named DREAD. DREAD spins up ball bearings to extreme speeds and releases them in short bursts travelling at about the same speed as a standard handgun round. It can release rounds only 8.5mm apart, has no heat signature and is totally silent.

- Centrifugal weapon could deliver stealth firepower
- LPS Teams with Major U.S. Defense Contractor to Develop DREAD Centrifuge Weapon
- Video

[Via. Boing Boing]

My Food Phone

One of the more bizzare dieting fads is My Food Phone. Basically the gist is that you take a photo of each of your meals with a phone cam, send it to MFP, and that image is sent to a personal nutrition coach who analyses the meal and tells you what you should be changing in your diet. Its not cheap either at $149 a month.

- My Food Phone

[Via. Lifehacker]

Kirsten Ulve

Kirsten Ulve does some extremely stylish and colourful illustrations, paintings and animations. Her gallery includes some caricatures of celebs, shorts from her animation pieces and some fantastic images. Some of the images seem to have a darker side to them, and some are quite funny.

clown vomiting

Cosmo Bitches

Black Hand of the Dummy
- Kirsten Ulve

[Via. Art Moco]

Secret Wall Tatooing

Secret Wall Tatooing is the act of conceling grafitti behind things such as mirrors, paintings and other wall hangings in hotel rooms.

- Secret Wall Tatoos

[Via. Cool Hunting]

The Wheelsurf

The Wheelsurf is a Brazillian designed single wheeled vehicle of a rather unusual shape. Its steered by shifting the centre of gravity (i.e. YOU), has a top speed of 50k/h and will cost around US$2500.

- Wheelsurf
- Gizmag Article

[Via. Toi Protocol]

The Last Supper

Eric Deschamps has done a mural for Giant Magazine which depicts the star wars characters at the last supper.

- Starwars Last Supper
- Eric Deschamps
- Giant Mag

[Via. Boing Boing]

International Contempory Furniture Fair

Heres some more ICFF stuff from Moco Loco

Ligne Roset was showing the new Bourellec chairs and carpet/cushion combo.

Mio was showing a new flatpak pendant lamp made of metal that you bend to make the shade you want.

Plodes wall art made with golf tees.

Digital Grandfather Clock

[Via. Moco Loco]

Crazy Gaming Rumours

Seems as E3 is about to hit the news wires are going nuts with rumours of gaming goodness. Here's a brief run-down.

The Game Boy Micro.
Nintendo is re-releasing the GBA for "image-conscious folks who love video games, the ones who want the look of their system to be as cool as the games they play on it"

- Game Boy Micro

The Nintendo Revolution
Nintendo's next gen console, the 'Revolution' is now slated for 2006. Features include backwards compatibility with NES, SNES, N64 and GCN(not sure how they are going to do this). It will be wireless for the controllers and the Internet.

- Nintendo Revolution

Playstation 3
The PS3 will also feature backwards compatibility. It will have a 3.2ghz cell processor, a nVidia RSX(”Reality Synthesizer”) graphics chip, a2.5 inch HDD attachment and bluetooth support for wireless controllers.

Play Station 3

[Via. Engadget]

Its Full of Stars

Ingo Maurer has created a glass table with hundreds of LED's embedded in it and connected by invisible circuitry so it looks like the LED's are floating in the glass. It comes in either white, blue or red LED's.

- Ingo Maurer

[Via. Engadget]

Brighthandle

Brighthandle is a light up door handle designed by Alexander Levik. The handle has a length of acrylic which glows red when the door is locked and green when its unlocked. Its powered from wires that run through the door and can be reprogrammed to glow at any time you want it to.

- Brighthandle

[Via. Engadget]