Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Planet Terror’ site in Holland held a fake trailer contest recently, where the submissions had to be similar in style and tone to the faux trailers in Grindhouse. The submitted fan trailers were amateurishly bad, with cringe-worthy acting and sloppy sets. And that made them perfect for the contest.
The final winner was ‘Nailed by Nikita’, the saga of an exploited woman’s revenge with a nail gun.
The gallery has the winners’ video as well as the rest of the user-submitted videos. Watch them all. This is high camp at its best.
Link (Nsfw !!!)
FreakingNews.com challenged its readers to submit photoshopped images of partial face transplants done on celebrities and politicians. The submitted results were amazing and, well… freaky.
Some of the images in the gallery are hilarious, while some are just plain disturbing. Disturbing enough to make Bush look handsome.
Bikedispenser.com is an Amsterdam firm which rents out bikes to urban cyclists. This firm uses an automated machine to dispense bikes. Cyclists can hire a bike after paying a small fee, and then return it to the original machine or the other one across town.
The bikes come with RFID tags, purportedly for security reasons. It’s a small inconvenience users put up with, as it’s possible to track their movements. Still it’s a great way to do something eco-friendly for a change.
Link (Dutch only) (via the cool hunter)
Tim Ferriss, the author of the #1 NYT Bestseller ‘Four Hour Workweek’ (and self-confessed Serial Entrepreneur and Ultravagabond), shows off his pen tricks with an ordinary Bic Pen. There are five tricks in all, graded according to the level of difficulty in performing them. Really great stuff.
Snip from the article:
When I was 15, I went to Japan for one year as an exchange student. I was the lone American in a school of 5,000 Japanese, and I quickly acquired one habit that has since driven every girlfriend and teacher of mine absolutely nuts: pen tricks.
The Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans – none of them can hold pens still for a second. Now you won’t be able to either.
Look around at his site, there is a lot of interesting stuff to be found. Link.
It had to happen. Microsoft flexed it muscles and told the folks behind Autopatcher to take down the download page. Autopatcher was a collection of the various MS updates for its operating systems, put together in a single comprehensive user-friendly package. Unfortunately, users of pirated MS products could also easily update their computers with it, something which the Redmond giant must have been wary of. It somehow stayed under Microsoft’s radar and had a long run before time ran out. The move could probably have to do with the much anticipated release of the Windows Vista SP1 Beta .
That was the sound of a million computers with pirated MS software crying.
Visit this link to pay your respects.
Artist Jonathan Yeo unveiled has latest collage ‘Bush’ made from pornographic images. Republicans party members have reacted with righteous indignation to this supposed affront to their leader, and have called it a cheap stunt.
Snip:
Yeo was commissioned to undertake a portrait of US President George W Bush, but was later told his services were not required. He decided to continue the commission on his own, and Tuesday’s unveiling will reveal the fruit of his labours.
The work is on display and also for sale at the Lazarides Gallery in London.
It still does nothing for his looks.:twisted: Visit this link for a bigger image.
(Thanks, George Busley)
Des McKinney of Hometracked, has compiled an interesting list of recording bloopers which made it into the final cut of music albums. The mistakes were never corrected by the sound engineers, probably due to pressing deadlines or just plain shoddy work. The list includes tracks from some of the most iconic music albums.
Snip:
These aren’t performance missteps, where the band missed a cue, or the singer came in too soon. There are certainly countless examples of those but most were included intentionally, to add character or realism. Rather, the flubs below highlight mistakes in recording or mixing that could have been corrected before the track was released.
Some of the mistakes are quite obvious, while others need repeated listening. A good pair of headphones or speakers, would help. How many did you get on the first listen ?
Link to the 10 Recording Bloopers.
Watch the really weird video for the Chemical Brothers’ latest single ‘The Salmon Dance’. The single is from their latest album ‘We are the night’. The trippy music and visuals have left my poor head spinning. By the way, the big fish singing in a bass voice is a Piranha.
The Tempo Wireless Trash Can from CagninaDesign is actually an external hard drive, which does double duty as a bin for your deleted files and also as an external storage device. It is designed to resemble the ubiquitous ‘Recycle Bin’ on your desktop and has Bluetooth connectivity to interface with your computer. As the 250 Gb space fills up, the external Leds light up from the bottom to show the space available.
Unfortunately, it is still a design concept. If their client Intech ever gets around to producing this thingie, count me as one of their customers.
Link to CagninaDesign.
Pod Brix, a LEGO customiser par excellence, is back with a uber-geeky, limited edition LEGO minifig product – the Young Woz and Jobs Playset. The playset attempts to recreate the turbulent early years of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Apple.
Snip:
Hand created by Tomi, each playset contains a young version of Jobs and Woz immortalized in minifig form. The backdrop set features a desk with custom made computer, circuit board based project in progress, and a 2001 style calendar marking a fateful date. Woz holds our choice of either a tiny screwdriver or wrench (not pictured). The reverse of the backdrop displays the limited edition unit number and is signed by Tomi.
According to the Inquirer, the “fateful day” could probably be the day the Apple II was launched. The set is expected to go on sale on August 29th with a price of $39.99.
Link to Pod Brix. (via, the Inquirer).
This one is a prime candidate for an addition to the list of badly named products. TrekStor, a German company, is completely oblivious to the wrong connotations invoked by their awfully named Mp3 Players. They don’t stand a chance in hell of ever selling these products in America. People are going to die of laughter or just be plain offended by their names.
This fully featured gadget plays Mp3, WMA, OGG and SMV video files. Also has a TFT display with 260,000 colors, FM radio, 15 Hr operating time, Sennheiser earphones and a decent storage space of 4GB. Sounds good ? But this player is crippled with something even more deadlier than DRM; its name. It comes from Germany and it’s called Blaxx ? Good luck with that. Just what were they thinking ?
This Mp3 player was actually designed in collaboration with popstar Pink. The specs aren’t too bad. Mp3, WMA, OGG, SMV video playback compatible, FM Radio, picture viewer, 65,000 color TFT, 2GB space with a funky pink aluminum body. And it will never do well in America. With a name like i.beat P!nk, what do you expect ?
X-Rayography is the technique of using X-Rays to create art. The penetrative power of the rays is used to create detailed images of objects. Amazingly, the technique is not a new one and was invented almost two hundred years ago.
Albert Koetsier takes X-Ray images of organic and inorganic objects found in nature. The results are quite stunning to say the least. He regularly displays these photographs at various art festivals around the country. He also suggests that that we visit the shows, as the true beauty of these photographs cannot be gauged from the compressed images in the online gallery.
Snip from the site:
This is one of the striking discoveries Albert’s admirers make when they see this: most of the subjects are just tiny flowers and shells, but the x-ray photograph, because of its high-level of detail, can be blown up to many times the size without loosing any detail. Only the photographic medium permits this. Who would have thought that so much detail could exist in such a tiny shell, a shell that most people would never even think to examine more closely.
You can try to meet the artist at his shows by checking his schedule here. Link to the X-Ray art photo gallery.
I loved the first Alien (1979) and the first Predator (1987) movie (the sequels were big letdowns). So when the Alien vs Predator movie was announced, it had me really excited. It was almost a failsafe idea to put two of the scariest and bad-ass movie monsters ever, in battle with each other. But to put it mildly, Alien vs Predator was a huge colossal disappointment to a sci-fi junkie like me. But 20th Century Fox gave the franchise a second chance to redeem itself, which resulted in the imaginatively titled sequel – Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (notice how they added ‘s’ to Alien).
The trailer looks very promising, but the blood and gore factor is off the scale and so is strictly rated 18+.
