Saturday, July 24, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Turn an inkjet into a 3D printer

Posted: 24 Jul 2010 05:08 AM PDT

The comics Bill Watterson sent to Berkeley Breathed

Posted: 24 Jul 2010 05:02 AM PDT


Nathan sez, "Aaron Barnhart, on his excellent TV Barn website, took some photos of Berkeley Breathed's Comic-Con lecture. Including some shots of cartoons Bill Watterson sent Berkeley throughout the years. (The congratulations to Breathed on his Opus holiday special poking fun at the Charlie Brown Christmas Special was my personal favorite.)"

Comic-Con 2010: Berkeley Breathed and the Piano Thing (Thanks, Nathan!)



Lurid brain-buckets protect your noggin in style

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:54 PM PDT

No work in the US? Move to India

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:47 PM PDT

When Andrew Dana Hudson found himself unemployed (along with most of his graduating class) even after sending out 500+ resumes, he decided that sponging off his parents in St Louis wasn't much of a plan. So he flew to India, where he traded his English proofreading skills with a local newspaper for room and board, and he lives modestly but well on about $10/week.
Two years earlier, I had spent a semester abroad in the Nepali-speaking regions of northeastern India, learning the language and culture through a fantastic study-abroad program at Pitzer College. In India, I met Pema Wangchuk, editor and publisher of Sikkim NOW, the most popular local English-language daily newspaper in the state of Sikkim. A couple months into my job hunt, I sent Pema an e-mail asking if he knew anyone who might be interested in hiring a young, enthusiastic American college graduate. "We'd be quite keen to have you here," he wrote back...

My arrangement with NOW is informal. I help out doing a little photography, a little feature writing, and a lot of copy editing. Native-level English proficiency is a rare skill in much of the developing world. I take garbled press releases from local nongovernmental organizations and government departments, and equally garbled correspondent reports from remote districts of the state, and fix the punctuation, syntax, usage, and spelling to turn them into real news stories.

I also write feature pieces for our `Sunday edition, interviewing NGO's about their projects and local experts about social trends. I'm learning a lot about reporting, writing, and running a small newspaper, not to mention life and politics in northeast India and Asia in general. I suspect I am getting more intimate and comprehensive journalism experience here than I would in almost any internship, temp position, or entry-level job that I could have found back in the States.

In exchange for my work, Pema found me a flat to stay in and arranged for my meals. The cost of living here is so cheap that, with my room and board taken care of, I can live comfortably on around $10 a week. If I were back in the United States, even with the most austere lifestyle, I would be costing my family far more than that by just eating their groceries, running their utilities, and burning their gas.

What I Did When I Couldn't Find a Job (via Beyond the Beyond)

Typographic mustaches -- handy identification poster

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:35 PM PDT


A Girl Named Tor's "Field Guide to Typestaches" illustrates all the facial hair options that can be attained through clever typography. Poster for sale here.

A Field Guide to Typestaches (via Kottke)



Herpes Boy screening today at Comic-Con

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:25 PM PDT

Comic-Con attendees, don't miss today's screening of Herpes Boy, "an award-winning independent feature film comedy about a social misfit with a facial birthmark (not herpes) who accidentally becomes an Internet celebrity."

It runs today (Saturday) at 1425h in Marriott Hall 2.

Herpes Boy (Thanks, Tim!)

Amanda Palmer sells $15,000 worth of merch in three minutes; you probably can't, but that's OK

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 10:49 PM PDT

Awesome, copyfighting punk diva Amanda Palmer put her latest indy EP (the magically titled Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele) up for sale direct to her fans, along with a wide collection of limited edition merch.

Three minutes later, she had sold $15,000 worth of music and objects containing or celebrating music (vinyl records, various deluxe packages). As of this writing, practically everything else has sold out.

This model doesn't work for everyone. But it's worked for Palmer and various others, repeatedly. Just as not every artist can succeed in the studio, or can succeed touring, or can succeed performing covers, or can succeed performing original materials, not every artist can do this.

But the fact is that every commercially successful artist is basically a fluke. Most artists -- even those who've attained "success" in the form of a deal with a major publisher/label/etc -- do not find commercial independence there, and it has always been thus. As someone who helps support his family with his arts-related income, I'm here to tell you, if your kids want to pursue the arts, they should have some other marketable skill to fall back on (or chances are they'll fall back on you!).

And yet, what Palmer is doing is fascinating, because it involves spending less capital to reach smaller, more specialized audiences who willingly part with larger sums, from which Palmer gets to keep the lion's share. That looks a lot less like the old winner-takes-all model in which you get 100 or so acts who can fill a stadium and get rich, and a bunch of also-rans living on bread and water. In Amanda's model, individual artists gross much smaller amounts, but net much larger amounts, because they're not supporting a whole supply chain of execs, marketing people, giant buildings, trucks full of vinyl, radio DJs, etc.

What's more, she's made this work repeatedly, and there's every indication that it will work for her again.

Now, if your plan is to do what Amanda is doing in order to keep yourself in room and board, you will probably fail. But that's nothing new: practically everyone who set out to earn a living the old record-label way also failed (failed to get a deal, or, with a deal, failed to earn a living from it). The important thing here is that this can work, and work at least as well as the old system -- without demanding that the entire internet be surveilled, without making war on fans, without buying corrupt laws, or turning artists into sharecroppers.

That's a fine thing indeed.

Fan Feeding Frenzy: AFP's New EP FTW (Thanks, PeaceLove)



Gross-a-licious cupcake molds: open skull with bare brain

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 09:00 PM PDT

Nomskulls! I am not a five year old boy, but I am still dancing a little WANTWANTWANT dance right now. It's a silicone mold you fill with batter, then bake, so the "brain" icing was really the choice of the decorator here. One might just as easily cover them with ooze-y blood glaze. (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Jet pilot ejects from crashing plane at near-zero altitude (photos)

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 08:41 PM PDT

These photographs of Royal Canadian Air Force pilot Capt. Brian Bews escaping from his CF-18 fighter jet an instant before it crashes into the ground are really quite something. Mr. Bews survived, with injuries. (thanks, Hagrid)

Double Rainbow tribute video: montage of notable rainbows in video games

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 08:35 PM PDT

Australia-based Boing Boing reader Alexander Ringis shares this full-on, all-the-way musical tribute to rainbows in video games. The remix includes an original music composition, and fair use remixin' of audio and video from the original games and from Yosemitebear's original "double rainbow video."

With lots of thanks to Rainbow (children's TV show with that Zippy character), Rainbow Islands (I spent an entire summer playing this in a shopping mall with the beach a short walk away), Katamari Damarcy (who knew dung beatles have so much fun), Robot Unicorn Attack (taking cheese to a whole new level), Bytejacker (the best video podcast for free indie games), Rainbow Brite (never heard of it, but I'm not a girl and I don't have a sister), Mario Kart (and the Rainbow Road tribute song crew), The Wizard of Oz (check out the mad lip-syncing), Bit.Trip Runner (we love you, gaijin games), Captain Rainbow (the Japanese really have an obsession; that's four rainbow games), The Muppet Movie (sweet Jim Henson, we dedicate this song to you), and that nice American lady who thinks rainbows in her sprinkler mean her oxygen supply contains metallic oxide salts.
And is it uncool to add that I still have not tired of the original video? It is true.

Double Rainbow (All The Way) - Original Song

(rockethands, on YouTube)

Reminder: Free SRL show in Bay Area, Saturday July 24 (pyro/robot/punk/mecha-doom)

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 08:46 PM PDT

A reminder, in case you missed the post earlier this week: Survival Research Laboratories (SRL), the grandfathers of robot performance art, or whatever the hell you call their brand of fiery metal deathmagick—will be performing a rare show in Petaluma tomorrow. "It won't be as big as a full-on SRL extravaganza, only two machines," SRL crewmember Karen Marcelo tells us. But what machines they are. They'll stream it all live on Ustream (here is the show's permalink) 4-6pm PST. That is, if The Man don't shut 'em down sooner... as He so often does.

Faux femme fatale finds flaws in social networking security

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 05:27 PM PDT

Researcher Thomas Ryan wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability of social networks, so he created a fictional analyst alter-ego named "Robin Sage." She was a hot 25-year-old with an MIT degree, a résumé that included a job at the Naval Network Warfare Command, and "over 10 years" of hacking experience (she started at age 14.) She was active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like, and soon had hundreds of friends from the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and security contractor firms. Could her looks have had anything to do with her success in duping them? Well, 82% of her "friends" were male...

Computerworld has the full story (via MSNBC).

Maggie's cynical prediction on future of energy bill

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 04:35 PM PDT

Tom Daschle and Bob Dole wrote an op-ed for Politico advocating for a renewable energy standard that would force utilities to generate a certain percentage of non-nuclear clean energy—wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass. It's worded in such a way as to make me suspect that the "final bill" presented yesterday might not be the actual final bill—but rather a decoy meant to be so terrible that it makes everybody happy with a replacement bill that doesn't include carbon caps or pricing, but does include some real renewable incentives. A couple of other energy geeks I've talked to are getting the same tinglings in their spidey sense off this thing. What do you think?

Watermelons in the shape of cubes, hearts, and pyramids

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 03:08 PM PDT

Img 2313

There's nothing like the food emporiums in the basements of Japanese department stores. They are huge, free samples are offered, and the products are beautifully packaged and displayed. Many of the items are expensive (like $200 cantaloupes) but not everything is unaffordable.

On our recent vacation to Japan, we visited a few food emporiums for lunch and for snacks. I was eager to see first-hand a heart shaped watermelon (as posted on Boing Boing last year), and sure enough, I found one. What a beauty! And the price has gone down -- last year they cost $150, but this year you can steal one for about $100.

See my photos of watermelons shaped like cubes and pyramids after the jump.

Img 2312



Img 2314

DMCA used to shut up sarcastic blogger

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 02:48 PM PDT

A wag on the internet pointed out similarities between an enthusiastic review of a Herman Miller chair at BenchmarkReviews.com and a press release issued by the company selling it.
I notice that the article has in the last 24 hours been amended to identify some sections as being written by Herman Miller, which were previously not identified as such. Interestingly, you appear to be claiming that the current version is the original, something which is easily disproven via Google Cache. Are these the only sections of the article not written by you personally? Can you confirm, for example, that the following passage is your own work? "Designed by Bill Stumpf (who pioneered the Aeron Chair) and Jeff Weber, the Herman Miller Embody chair goes a step beyond being merely "heath-neutral". Over time, it can actually improve the health of the person sitting in it. Scientific studies have shown that Embody users can experience better circulation, reduced resting heart rates, and less tissue damage around the sitting muscles. Embody promotes natural alignment in the spine, relieving stress across the entire back no matter how you twist and turn." If so, can you provide links to these "scientific studies", since presumably you wouldn't have cited them if you didn't read them yourself?
The review's publisher apparently used a DMCA takedown notice of copyright infringement to get the critical blog post deleted. I wonder if it will work out for them. [via Mark Johnson]

Ant drinking from a rain drop

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 03:10 PM PDT

Draw a Sasquatch the Ed Emberly Way

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 02:34 PM PDT

Eitguoy7Jn8 Td4Skn4Rldi Aaaaaaaaaxa Jzuscerpvxk S1600 Emberleysasdirections

I probably have almost every Ed Emberly instructional drawing book ever published. My 7-year-old daughter loves his books as much as I do. Emberly's books are appealing because his step-by-step instructions are clean and simple, and if you follow them you will end up with a great looking critter.

When I saw the image above, I thought it was from a new Ed Emberly book, but it was actually created by illustrator Nate Wragg, who is also an Emberly fan. Here's what Wragg says about Emberly's work:

As a kid I had several of his books, and I have to say he was one of my first artistic inspirations. I used to love to draw from his books, follow the steps, use all the fun shapes, and adding all the detail at the end was my favorite part. One of the things I love about Ed Emberley's work is the way he designed his characters off such simple shapes. It's one of the first things that I think we all learn and do as designers when we are working on a character design, or thinking about structuring a layout drawing for a background. Start simple, and play with simple shapes to help vary your design, then go from there.
Ed Emberley Sasquatch tribute

Onion AV Club interviews cartoonist Jim Woodring

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 02:17 PM PDT

B7Vod6O9Ea8 Tdewehou9Ai Aaaaaaaaa88 4Ata0Gjk3Gk S1600 Jimwoodring M Jpg 595X325 Crop Upscale Q85 Images Articles Article 42888 Weathercraft-Cover Jpg 300X1000 Q85

Jim Woodring says: "The Onion AV Club pried all kinds of words out of my unwilling mouth with the skill of a tenured, ten-armed shucker."

(I highly recommend Woodring's new graphic novel Weathercraft, which is not only stranger than you think, but stranger than you can think.)

AVC: A documentary about your life and work, The Lobster And The Liver, premièred recently in Seattle. How did it feel to have someone approach you about such a project?

JW: Like a lot of freelance cartoonists, when any opportunity like that comes along, I have a hard time saying no, whether it makes sense or not. I was flattered that these Canadian filmmakers wanted to make this film. I acquiesced, but after that, I think I made it kind of hard for them. They had an artistic approach that they wanted to use, and I really didn't want to do that. I guess I just wanted them to film me talking and show my work, and if they wanted to interview other people, then do that too. But I resisted their attempts to kind of set up tableaus and situations. If they were filming me at a public event, they'd want me to go around a corner, count to 10, and walk into the store as if they'd just captured me doing it. I refused to do that. It's hard enough for me to walk down the street anyway, and to pretend that I'm just nonchalantly walking around the corner into a building, I just couldn't do it. I would feel too weird, and it would show on the screen.

I think that left them at loose ends as to how to approach it. The first filming started five years ago, and it's been finished for a year or two, so they persevered. I've heard from people who have seen it that it's a fairly accurate portrait of me. I've also heard it's an unflattering portrait of me, which is probably good. I think you have to be suspicious of anything that makes someone look too good. It makes me cringe to think about it, not because I think it will be a bad film or anything, but because I'm already self-conscious enough. I've seen a couple intermediary versions of it, but I've never seen the final product, and I probably never will. It's very hard for me to watch myself onscreen. It's hard for me to even contemplate.

Jim Woodring interview

7" Android Tablet Touch PC, indeed.

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 01:56 PM PDT

androidtouch.jpg Something ... isn't quite right. [Amazon via @Gruber]

Oscar Grant: Youth Radio's magazine about the aftermath

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 01:52 PM PDT

Grantstationnnn Oakgrannnt
On New Years' Day 2009, Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot Oscar Grant in the back while the unarmed man was held down. Onlookers recorded the whole thing on phonecams, instantly making the world witness to the terrible crime. Earlier this month, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter but not guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter. My friends at Oakland's Youth Radio, a youth media organization that helps underserved young people learn the tools of media creation, were right in the middle of it all. A small group from Youth Radio decided to make a digital magazine/photo essay of the 19 months following the shooting. It's designed as "a a living archive of community response" to this tragic tale. "Grant Station: A Killing and the Aftermath (in images)" (Thanks, Nishat Kurwa!)

Crimefail (or PR stunt?): thief who grabbed iPhone used in GPS tracking demo promptly caught by cops

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 01:43 PM PDT

An exceedingly unlucky thief named Horatio Toure grabbed an iPhone out of a woman's hands on Monday afternoon in the SoMa area of San Francisco. What she knew, but he did not, was that this iPhone was being used to demonstrate GPS real-time location tracking program for Mountain View-based tech co Covia Labs. Police pinned down his location and arrested him within 10 minutes. More: MSNBC, SF Chronicle. Update: Some are asking if this might have been a PR stunt. I've put in a query...

Mila's Daydreams: mom photographs what her baby might be dreaming

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 12:41 PM PDT

Adele Enersen in Helsinki says, "This is my maternity leave hobby. While my baby is taking her nap, I try to imagine her dream and capture it."

Mila's Daydreams

(via Laughing Squid/Matt Haughey)

Jelloware: edible, biodegradable, compostable drinking cup concept

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 02:56 PM PDT

Designers at the NYC-based consultancy The Way We See The World created these fun drinking glasses from agar agar (a vegan gelatin alternative made from algae) and cast them in various colors and flavors to compliment corresponding drinks.

Image gallery here. Spotted on PSFK and Treehugger. (thanks, Laura Sweet)

High-flying cluster ballonists

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:56 AM PDT

Several months ago, Jonathan Trappe flew across the English Channel suspended by a cluster of helium balloons. Yet Trappe is just the latest in a long line of adventurers enamored with cluster ballooning. At Air & Space Magazine, Mark Karpel, who volunteered on Trappe's groundcrew, tells the stories of 10 cluster balloonists starting with aeornautical engineer Jean Piccard who took off in 1937. (Star Trek: TNG's Jean-Luc Picard is his namesake.) Seen below is another cluster ballooning pioneer, Garrett Cashman, during a 1955 flight that approached 20,000 feet, causing Cashman to hallucinate. From Air & Space:
Images The Drifters Gall 3 Aug2010 On September 9, 1954, residents of Albany, New York, looked up to see 60 balloons floating into the sky with a figure beneath. It was Garrett Cashman, a part-time hypnotist and dance teacher, and according to Lawrence Gooley, an authority on the Adirondack region, Cashman was seated on a piece of plywood that dangled from two clusters of balloons; between the clusters, a parachute was slung. Cashman had brought along an anchor, sand for ballast, and a meatloaf sandwich. He rose to over 6,000 feet, floated for about 20 miles, and, immediately upon landing, was arrested for flying without a license and operating an unlicensed aircraft. He was jailed and later fined $50 by the Civil Aeronautics Administration.

He later got both licenses and launched a career flying balloon clusters at airshows and auto races and as an advertising gimmick. After one rough landing in which he sprained his ankle, Cashman told reporters he "might quit the business," adding, "I like to dance too well."

"The Drifters"

Robot eats sewage for energy... and craps too

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:33 AM PDT

Researchers are developing a synthetic stomach for a robot so that it can eat food for power. Developed by the Bristol Robotics Lab, the Ecobot III is not the first robot that employs a microbial fuel cell that uses bacteria to "digest" food as a fuel source. But it is the first that has a system to crap out the waste. Apparently, its current diet is processed sewage containing "minerals, salts, yeast extracts and other nutrients." Eventually, they hope to feed it flies. From New Scientist:
Cnwk.1D I Tim 2010 07 21 Ecobot3 270X471

"Diarrhoea-bot would be more appropriate," Melhuish admits. "It's not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets." Even so, he says, it marks the first demonstration of a biomass-powered robot that can operate unaided for some time.

The key to getting this gut to work, says Ieropoulos, is a recycling system that relies on a gravity-fed peristaltic pump which, like the human colon, applies waves of pressure to squeeze unwanted matter out of a tube.

"Artificial gut frees sewage-eating robot from humans"

Two-headed, six-legged baby dragon

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:25 AM PDT


Just a month after the Venice Beach Freakshow acquired a two-headed albino snake named Lenny and Squiggy, they've welcomed a two-headed six-legged baby bearded dragon to its new sideshow home. Freakshow owner Todd Ray paid $5,000 to an amateur herpetologist near Dayton, Ohio for the critter, now named Pancho and Lefty. The Freakshow now has 14 live two-headed animals. From AOL News:

(Pancho and Lefty) move with relative ease, although sleep can occasionally be a struggle when Pancho wants to rest, but Lefty doesn't. Lefty will start walking and dragging his twin in a desired direction. When Pancho inevitably wakes up, he'll start pulling the other way.

But overall, they get along well and never fight.

"It's like they're used to having each other there," Ray said.

"Two-Headed, Six-Legged Dragon Is 'Amazingly Cute'"



Modern Danish computer enclosure

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 10:51 AM PDT

Assets Stories Q4Ze4Yn Vyjej2Lecqw5Yq Assets Stories I9Twmhik56Agtxedray9-G
Over at Collectors Weekly's Show & Tell, slipperskip posted this lovely DIY "Modern Danish-styled PC enclosure" under construction.

HOWTO deal with pirates

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 11:07 AM PDT

Bmp3 Publishingimages Cover Sml

The organization Maritime Security Centre - Horn of Africa has published a free pocket-sized booklet on how to "avoid, deter, or delay piracy attacks." It's titled: "Best Management Practice: Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and Arabian Sea Area." (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

A brief history of juggalos

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 10:37 AM PDT

A helpful infographic plotting the evolution of juggalos throughout time. (thanks, Chris)

Colin Christian's "silicone lady art"

Posted: 23 Jul 2010 01:56 PM PDT

Above, two works by artist Colin Christian. Matthew Bone has a neat post up about this guy at Nerdist.

A hopeful idealist, the women of Colin's armada are the amalgams of the many beautiful icons that he grew up worshiping, sanded and painted to a shiny perfection to match the streamlined clothing and provocative space gear that adorn his ladies. Though one could dismiss the work as being too sexy or kitschy, these sculptures embody what it's like to be a child, to see the world as a beautiful shiny egg to crack, one where sexuality, cooperation, and advancement are not hindered by closed mindedness or cynicism; basking in the embryonic glow of cinema and television has allowed Colin to create a 3-dimensional manifestation of how he sees, or hopes to see where technology, art, and science can take us. "As a species we must embrace technology in the right way, and leave this planet... When we leave our genitals will come with us, eventually spacesuits will get sexier."
(via @matthewebone)

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

CrunchyTech

Blog Archive