Under Construction
I make things on the internet
The Library of Congress has Alexander Graham Bell’s family papers in their collections. Among the thousands of pieces in the archive are Bell’s journals, containing sketches and details from the earliest telephone prototypes. The diagram above indicates that using the telephone should be a far more epic experience. The Atlantic has a selection of some of the weirder sketches in the notebooks.
Frank Chimero’s illustrated 16 Activities for Creatives is available for your viewing pleasure. A partial list of the activities:
You can purchase a physical copy for ââÂŹ5 from Corraini.
McDonald’s has somehow managed to screw-up oatmeal.
Others will argue that the McDonaldââŹâ˘s version is more ââŹĹconvenient.ââŹÂ This is nonsense; in the time it takes to go into a McDonaldââŹâ˘s, stand in line, order, wait, pay and leave, you could make oatmeal for four while taking your vitamins, brushing your teeth and half-unloading the dishwasher. […] Incredibly, the McDonaldââŹâ˘s product contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and only 10 fewer calories than a McDonaldââŹâ˘s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin.
Take a fast and healthy staple, pump it full of sugar and chemicals, serve. Sounds like the rest of the breakfast cereal industry, or just pre-processed food in general.
A slideshow of Colonel Qaddafi’s various wardrobe incarnations.
Drawing upon the influences of Lacroix, Liberace, Phil Spector (for hair), Snoopy, and Idi Amin, LibyaââŹâ˘s leaderââŹânow in his 60sââŹâis simply the most unabashed dresser on the world stage. We pay homage to a sartorial genius of our time.
The Ultimate In-N-Out Secret Menu Survival Guide, including some super-secret options. I need to plan a trip to the American west-coast at some point.
Proof that every man looks better with a beard, a weblog with side-by-side celebrity headshots — Better with a beard. Yes.
Ken Jennings is doing an AMA on Reddit — it’s kind of like free-for-all question time. I had to post one of Jennings’ responses:
Q: What has been the single biggest change in you life since your epic winning streak, besides the money?
A: Old people can’t keep their dry, lilac-scented hands off me. Man, do old people ever love Jeopardy. I can’t go anywhere in public where there might be old people, like Hallmark stores or cemeteries.
So much for the Jeopardy! hiatus.
Animals on the Underground, a collection of line-art animals discovered within the London tube map.
The animals, created using the tube lines, stations and junctions of the London Underground map were first spotted by Paul Middlewick in 1988. The original animal, the elephant was discovered while Paul was staring at the tube map during his daily journey home from work. Since then, the elephant has been joined by many others from bats to bottlenose whales.
There are more than thirty animals so far, maybe you can find another one?
A list of Super Nintendo games that pushed the limits in terms of what the system was capable of. I remember Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario RPG being two later generation games that wowed me.
Ottawa uses dynamite to clear up ice in the Rideau river. It’s the first time I’ve heard about this program.
Since mid-February, specialist workers have been using buzz saws and amphibious ice breakers to cut channels and long grooves in the ice. The next step is to drill holes, pack these holes with sticks of dynamite, and blow apart the sheets of ice.
Basically, it helps prevent massive flooding in the spring time.
Update: Another article from The Globe and Mail.
Street Art View is a collaborative project to catalog street art that is visible on Google’s Street View.
The Art Project by Google allows you to get up close and personal with well-known pieces of artwork. The project has street-view style walkthroughs from a number of museums, with large resolution versions of many paintings. A portion of the paintings have a very-high zoom level, allowing you see them in minute detail. The crop above is from The Bedroom by Van Gogh. The site requires Flash.