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| Expensive watches from Baselworld Posted: 31 Mar 2009 11:00 PM PDT  Wired has a gallery of 20 of the most interesting watches from this year's Baselworld -- and most of just aren't that interesting. Modern watch design basically sucks. Of course, there are exceptions. Times Are a-Changing: Watches From Baselworld 2009 Presented By:
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| To Market, To Market: The Re-Branding of Billy Bailey - my sf story read aloud Posted: 31 Mar 2009 10:49 PM PDT Roy Trumbull has just posted his latest installment in his podcast readings of science fiction stories, and for this one he's chosen my story "To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey," which was published in my first short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More. Roy really nailed the reading -- this is one of my more comic stories, about elementary school kids who worry endlessly about their personal brands and sponsorship opportunities. Billy and Principal Andrew Alty went all the way back to kindergarten, when Billy had convinced Mitchell McCoy that the green fingerpaint was Shamrock Shake, and watched with glee as the little babyface had scarfed it all down. Billy knew that Andrew Alty knew his style: refined, controlled, and above all, personal. Billy never would've dropped a dozen M-80s down the girls' toilet. His stuff was always one-on-one, and possessed of a degree of charm and subtlety.To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey by Cory Doctorow Previously: | ||
| Tween boy-band rocks out about Oscar Mayer wieners Posted: 31 Mar 2009 10:44 PM PDT Here's tween band Gary and the Hornets performing the Oscar Mayer jingle. Man, those kids sure loved hot dogs. GARY & THE HORNETS - Classic Commercial Jingle (Thanks, Sean!) | ||
| Posted: 31 Mar 2009 10:16 PM PDT | ||
| Off-Kilter Japanese Cult TV show "Oh! Mikey" Posted: 31 Mar 2009 10:42 PM PDT Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. Once a part of the wonderfully named "Vermilion Pleasure Night," a sort of Japanese version of "Adult Swim," "Oh! Mikey" is a bizarre comedy show cast entirely with widely grinning, frozen-faced mannequins. Each approximately two-minute episode of "Oh! Mikey" is about an American family living in Japan. It often doesn't make a lot of sense (in that good Japanese way of not making any sense) and most episodes end with the characters laughing hysterically whether something funny is happening or not. Lately "Oh! Mikey" has been airing on the G4 network as part of their "G4 Late Night Peep Show" line-up. Oh! Mikey USA site Original Japanese clip "Oh! Mikey Fever" Thanks Lenora Claire! | ||
| Carpal Tunnel Syndrome exercises that really work Posted: 31 Mar 2009 06:58 PM PDT Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. A demonstration of effective stretches and exercises you can do that will greatly relieve carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis. Both my wife and I watched this video and started doing the stretches. It really works. Within a few days you can really tell the difference. Try it and see what I mean. Pass this one on to people you know who might benefit from it. Thanks Ann Magnuson! | ||
| Posted: 31 Mar 2009 06:06 PM PDT  MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab researchers have installed an indoor tomato garden tended by hacked Roombas. The idea made me nostalgic for Ken Goldberg's pioneering Tele-garden that was online from 1995 to 2004. MIT News posted a slideshow of their robot garden: The idea for tending to a garden without human hands came from work done by Nikolaus Correll, a postdoctoral assistant working in MIT Professor Daniela Rus' Distributed Robotics Lab. Correll saw the possible applications of swarm robotics to an agricultural environment and thus the idea grew into a course in which students created robots capable of tending a small garden of tomatoes. Each robot is outfitted with a robotic arm and a watering pump, while the plants themselves are equipped with local soil sensing, networking and computation. This affords them the ability to communicate: plants can request water or nutrients and keep track of their conditions, including fruit produced; robots are able to minister to their charges, locate and pick a specific tomato, and even pollinate the plants.MIT's robot garden Previously: | ||
| More on the new Mark Ryden toy Posted: 31 Mar 2009 05:49 PM PDT  Yesterday, I posted about Mark Ryden's first toy as photographed by Brian McCarty. Hi-Fructose has behind-the-scenes shots of the photo session and an interview with Long Gone John, founder of Sympathy for the Record Industry and also Necessaries Toy Foundation, makers of the forthcoming Ryden collectible. From Hi-Fructose: "Mark Ryden's YHWH & behind the scenes photoshoot" Previously: | ||
| Little Red Riding Hood animation inspired by Röyksopp video Posted: 31 Mar 2009 05:41 PM PDT Tomas Nilsson created this animation as a school assignment. It is an interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood with music by Slagsmålsklubben. He was inspired by the music video for Röyksopp's "Remind Me." (Thanks, Dale Dougherty!) | ||
| Musicians drawn with instruments as body parts Posted: 31 Mar 2009 05:34 PM PDT  Former police sketch artist Shawn Feeney has a new exhibition opening in San Francisco of portraits depicting musicians with their instruments as extensions of their bodies. Seen above is "Astor & Pullux," described as "Siamese twins connected at the bandoneon (a free-reed instrument similar to the accordion and concertina). The faces are modeled after Astor Piazzolla, the Argentine tango composer and bandoneon player." The exhibit, titled Musical Anatomy, opens at CounterPULSE gallery on April 6 and will run until April 30. Also included are homages to Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, Howlin' Wolf, and others. Feeney's site also features a time-lapse video of him creating the Dylan drawing. Musical Anatomy | ||
| Posted: 31 Mar 2009 05:25 PM PDT  Iron Fist makes these "Zombie Stomper" high heels. They're £44.99 from Dress Code. (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!) | ||
| Lamps made from plumbing fixtures Posted: 31 Mar 2009 04:47 PM PDT  The Demo/Design Clinic store on Etsy features these new Kozo lamps made from plumbing fixtures. Handsome, functional, and heavy -- just how I like my furnishings. Kozo3 lamps (via Dvice) | ||
| Posted: 31 Mar 2009 04:47 PM PDT   These Chinese architecture stamps look like they'd be a lot of fun for decorative and design projects. Unfortunately, they're sold out at the distributor. Got another source for them? Post it to the comments, below. "This stamp set recapitulates the elements of chinese traditional architecture, such as ridge of a roof, lintel of door and ridge animal." | ||
| Electronic Arts releases DRM-removal tool Posted: 31 Mar 2009 04:31 PM PDT Electronic Arts has released a de-activation tool for removing the SecuRom digital rights management that the company earlier deployed on several of its games. SecuROM is known as the most Draconian DRM tool for games, apt to screw u your computer and harm your ability to play the games you bought. It's also entirely ineffective against piracy: Spore, the SecuROM-crippled game released to much fanfare in 2008, was also the most pirated game of 2008. It seems like the decision was driven by the massive, global negative publicity that SecuROM attracted, and by the rumblings from the FTC about regulating DRM. Electronic Arts has posted a SecuROM de-authorization management tool. Once downloaded, the tool will search your drives for EA games infested with the draconian online DRM system, and help you download their respective individual de-activation tools. This isn't a perfect solution, since it's still possible to run out of activations in the event of hardware failure or other source of data loss, but since the announcement that this particular DRM system will be dropped for The Sims 3 , it would seem that EA has had a minor epiphany about DRM.EA Releases DRM License Deactivation Tool Previously: | ||
| Fantastic fan-site for Disney World's Polynesian Resort needs hosting Posted: 31 Mar 2009 11:29 AM PDT  Henry sez, "Steve Seifert has been religiously documenting Disney's Polynesian Resort since 1999, first on geocities, and now on homestead. While it's certainly not the most modern, it really shows off true passion of the early web: a single subject site that's zealously updated. Steve also runs the popular Disney fandom Tikifest event, happening this summer. With his homestead bandwidth bills going, Steve is going to shut down the site as early as today. Please help Steve keep the site alive! Email: polynesian@tikiman2001.net if you can provide hosting / help him import to a more reasonable site." This really is an impressive fan-site. The Poly is one of my favorite hotels in the world. I wrote the middle chapters of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom on a lanai in the Roratonga long-house, listening to the distant howl of the wolves at the Haunted Mansion, the chug of the railroad, the crack of the Jungle Cruise drivers shooting the hippos, and the calls of the tropical birds all around (I made close friends with an ibis on that trip). Tikiman's Polynesian Resort Pages (Thanks, Henry!) | ||
| Short story in spreadsheet form Posted: 31 Mar 2009 09:49 AM PDT  David Nygren sez, "A few weeks ago I Tweeted an idea about writing a novel in an Excel spreadsheet. The Tweet got a reaction. At the link, I've posted the first draft of a 'short storyspreadsheet' called 'Under the Table.' I've turned on Track Changes and am asking readers to help me out with edits/suggestions and send their own version of the Excel file back to me." Short Storyspreadsheet: Excel as a Trojan Horse for Literature Coral Cache mirror of the Excel sheet (Thanks, David!) | ||
| Boing Boing Video: Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance. Posted: 31 Mar 2009 09:17 AM PDT Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscren" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is the first in a series of featured interviews conducted during the recent Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. All last week, we ran a marathon streaming video webcast from a friend's loft near the conference site, and tons of interesting people stopped by. Today, we present a conversation and Katamari Damacy Cosplay Dance-off with Jane McGonigal of Institute for the Future. Jane talks with us about her research into emotion and gaming, and her project "Top Secret Dance-Off," which explores how we respond to online interpersonal reactions -- and, what kind of "play" activities make us feel good about ourselves and each other. For instance, she says that the experience of humiliation -- say, the embarassment you might feel dancing in front of a streaming video camera -- involves a brief blip of happiness. Jane explains why, in this 10-minute clip that melds neuroscience, sociology, and funky Katamari choreography. Don't miss the very end. Jane and Xeni test out the theories in a not-so-top-secret Bollywood dance-off. Previously: * Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your Own Reality * BBV @ GDC live stream archives, at Ustream.tv * Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: offworld.com archive * Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: boingboing.net archive [ Credits and props for BBV Live @GDC09: Production Team -- Jolon Bankey, Derek Bledsoe, Daniela Calderon, Eddie Codel, Xeni Jardin, Allison Kingsley, Matty Kirsch, Alice Taylor, Wesly Varghese. Special thanks to Wayneco Heavy Industries (accommodation and studio facilities), Virgin America Airlines (air travel), Celsius (thermogenic energy beverage), Ustream.tv (streaming video host). Moral support, production assistance, additional talent, and good vibes provided by: Domini Anne, Scott Beale, T.Bias, Jeremy Bornstein, Brandon Boyer, Chris The Van Guy, Peter S. Conrad, Marque Cornblatt, Wayne, Bre, and the entire de Geere family, Marcy DeLuce, Cory Doctorow, Joel Johnson, Kourosh Karimkhany, Jim Louderback and the Revision 3 team, Karen Marcelo, Rocky Mullin, Alicia Pollak, Jackie Mogol, Taylor Peck, David Pescovitz, Micah Schaffer, and Teal. ] | ||
| Posted: 31 Mar 2009 08:20 AM PDT Over at Slate.com's XX Factor blog, Susannah Breslin writes: Not long ago, I was contacted by a representative from Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, who pointed me to Condition: Critical, an online project that seeks to give voice to victims of violence in Congo. I've written about the situation in Congo here previously; New York Times East Africa bureau chief Jeffrey Gettleman has done an amazing job of chronicling the atrocities and their aftermath in a civil war-torn country where rape is used as a war tactic. "According to the United Nations," Gettleman reported, "27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country."The entire post is here, and includes graphic and disturbing personal testimony from survivors. Above, a brief clip from the feature-length documentary "Condition Critical: Voices From the War in Congo," which you can watch in entirety online here. You can follow Susannah's work here, and she posts brief items to Twitter and Tumblr, too. Update: Down in the comments section of this post, "resident media pundit" adds, "You may also be interested in the excellent documentary film, "Women In War Zones: Sexual Violence in the Congo." Trailer on YouTube." Previously: | ||
| Jasmina Tešanović: 10 years after NATO bombings of Serbia Posted: 31 Mar 2009 08:08 AM PDT (Ed. Note: The following guest essay was written by Jasmina Tešanović. Full text of essay continues after the jump, along with links to previous works by her shared on Boing Boing. I'm sorry that I'm posting this one a few days late, was on the road last week and mostly off the blog other than our live video broadcast marathon from SF -- but didn't want to let this go unblogged. XJ) La vita e' bella Even though I wrote this ten years ago, even though I am not a futurist or a pessimist, I did not expect this kind of development of events: after all this time, after such an experience, history does not, unfortunately, walk with big steps as Zoran Djindjic, our killed president, hoped... On 24 March, 1999, NATO begin air strikes on Yugoslavia. 26 March 1999, 5.p.m. I hope we all survive this war, the bombs: the Serbs , the Albanians, the bad and the good guys, those who took up the arms, those who deserted, refugees going around the Kosovo woods and Belgrade's refugees going around the streets with their children in arms, looking for non existing shelters, when the alarm for bombing sets off. I hope that NATO pilots don't leave behind wives and children whom I saw crying on CNN as their husbands were taking off for military targets in Serbia. I hope we all survive but not this world as it is. I hope we manage to break it down: call it democracy call it dictatorship. When USA congressman estimates 20 000 civilian deaths as a low price for the peace in Kosovo, or president Clinton says he wants a non harassing Europe for American schoolgirls, or Serbian president Milutinovic says that we will fight to the very last drop of our blood, I always have a feeling they are talking about my blood, not theirs. And they all become not only my enemies, but beasts, werewolves, switching from economic policy and democratic human rights to amounts of blood necessary for it (as fuel). Today is the second aftermath day: I went to the green and black market in my neighborhood, it has livened up again, adapted to new conditions, new necessities: no bread from the state, but a lot of grain on the market, no information from the official TV, so small talk among frightened population of who is winning. Teenagers are betting on the corners: whose planes have been shot down, ours or theirs, who lies best, who hides best victims, who exposes best victories, or again victims. As if it were a football game of equals. The city is silent and paralyzed, but still working, rubbish is taken away, we have water, we have electricity... But where are the people, in houses, in beds, in shelters... I hear several personal stories of nervous breakdowns among my friends, male and female. Those who were in a nervous breakdown for the past year, since the war in Kosovo started, who were very few, now feel better: real danger is less frightening than fantasies of danger. I couldn't cope with the invisible war as I can cope with concrete needs: bread, water, medicines... And also: very important, I can view an end, finally we in Belgrade got what all rest of Yugoslavia had: war on our territory. I receive 10-20 emails per day from friends or people whom I only met once: they think of us, me and my family and want to give me moral support. I feel like giving them moral support, I need only material support at this moment, my moral is made out of my needs. (more after the jump...) People are gathering at homes, to wait for the bombs together: people who hardly know each other, who pretended or truly didn't know what was going on in Kosovo or that NATO did mean it all the time. We sit together and share things we have: solidarity and tenderness brings the best parts out of Serbian people: there it is, I knew I liked something about my people... My German friend phones me, she says, I didn't leave the country, I didn't take out my children, even my new born grandchildren, I am fed up with everything, I want to lead my personal life. My feminist friend asks me to have a workshop with our group of conscience raising, my other friend wants us to go to Pancevo, the bombed city at outskirts of Belgrade, to give a reading of my novel. But there is no petrol, we must buy bicycles. We phone each other all the time, seeking and giving information: I realized children are best at it, they prefer to be active than passive in emergency situations: we grown ups harass them with our fears and they are too young to lie or construct as grown ups: they deal with facts and news. Mostly we are well informed, with children networks, some foreign satellite programs and local TV stations. I think of the Albanians in Kosovo, of my friends and their fears, I think they must be worse off then us: fear springs up at that thought, it means that it is not the end yet. I have no dreams, I sleep heavily afraid to wake up, but happy that there is no true tragedy yet, we are all still alive, looking every second at each other for proof. And yes, the weather, it is beautiful, we all enjoy and fear it: the better the weather, the heavier bombings, but the better the weather, probably more precise bombings. I wish I only knew do we need good or bad weather to stay alive? And finally, I saw Benigni's film "La vita e' bella," the night before the first bombs fell. The day after it started happening to us too. Maybe, I shouldn't have seen it, but now it is too late: and I realize, in every war game led by Big Men the safest place is that of a victim. PS. At this moment the alarm is interrupting my writing...the alarm is my censor and my timing. I switch on CNN to see why the alarm is in Belgrade, they say they do not know. Local TV will say it after it all is over. Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here. - - - - - - - - - -Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing: - Made in Catalunya / Lou and Laurie | ||
| Family of Crawdaddy's Paul Williams needs help Posted: 31 Mar 2009 07:25 AM PDT Jonathan Lethem sez, Paul Williams (Thanks, Jonathan!) | ||
| Global hacker ring exposed -- what it means Posted: 31 Mar 2009 07:11 AM PDT  The CBC's SearchEngine podcast delved into the GhostNet story that broke yesterday, in which the University of Toronto's CitizenLab discovered and revealed a spy-ring (apparently of Chinese origin) that was gathering intelligence from sensitive government, military and NGO computers in over 100 countries. CitizenLab's researchers managed to gain access to the control server for these spy-trojans, and got an unprecedented look at the extent to which these machines were compromised (for example, they saw the spymasters activating the cameras on compromised machines and watching meetings and other sensitive communications). SearchEngine and CitizenLab went well beyond the news coverage and had a fascinating discussion about what this means: how it signals a turning point in the ongoing militarization of cyberspace, and whether this demands a comparable peace movement for the Internet. It was one of the most fascinating things I've heard said about the Net this year, and I think I'll be listening to it again, just to get a good crack at it. | ||
| Adventures in Cartooning: wit and instruction for kids who want to learn cartooning Posted: 27 Feb 2009 02:22 AM PST  Adventures in Cartooning is a comic that tells the story of an elf who teaches a kid how to draw comics -- a kind of Understanding Comics for kids. It's incredibly charming and full of sly wit, and the combination of the story (and there is a real story here) and the instruction is perfect inasmuch as the story illuminates the techniques in the construction. Taking kids through the basics of layout, dialog, and doodling, Adventures in Cartooning is an inspiring text for any kid who loves comics, regardless of artistic abilty. Adventures in Cartooning: How to Turn Your Doodles Into Comics |
I dig the design of this 
It is a gorgeous product produced in a rich pink, with high quality blue doll eyes rimmed in a deeper rose. There is an additional "special edition" that will be of 80 run in black and 80 in white, that will be signed by Ryden. The box itself is a piece of graphic confectionary itself, like a magical curio from a time gone by. Looking similar to a Chinese firework box, the box is embossed with gold leaf, and features hand wrapped paper. " We really wanted to make this look like it was an artifact from a long time ago, like something that had just been sitting on a shelf for ages" John says. "We really made an effort to make it look not contemporary as much as we could."
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