While New York City manhole covers are potential deathtraps, in comparison the Japanese use them as a blank canvas upon which they create beautifully carved and painted scenes, such as this one seen above.
Viewing entries in
Design
Excerpts from a Japanese manga (slightly NSFW) adaptation of the film JAWS. Does not feature T-Pain on a boat. Here's part 1 and 2.
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From the book "101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu," here's a way to put your crawling baby to work!
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Create over 2000 different Japanese "kaomoji" or emoticons with this stamp. $51 here. You can get a good explanation and examples of kaomoji here.
Sean Johnson's "Love Seat" at Howard House gallery in Seattle.
If Saul Bass (previously) created the intro to hit TV show Lost, it might look something like this. [vimeo=http://vimeo.com/6660925]
I Am Not An Artist is a junkyard of creative GIF files or otherwise self-described as "an animated GIF paranoia about nonstop design workers." [Hat tip: Rolando!]
Actually, it should read 50% organic, 50% bacon.
Get this t-shirt here.
This promotional full size replica of a Ferrari Grand Prix race car was built using 1,500 t-shirts, 88 pairs of jeans, 20 belts, 26 pairs of shoes and baseball caps. More information plus a behind-the-scenes video available [vimeo http://vimeo.com/10510576] Fascinating talk by Fred Wilson (venture capitalist and partner of Flatiron Partners and Union Square Ventures which means he knows what he's talking about) about what he believes are 10 important qualities that make for successful web applications. There are some good takeaways here not only for app developers, but also marketers and brand builders.
Deadspin's round up from various people including Yankee fans on why Yankee Stadium sucks.
3) THE NEW YANKEE STADIUM IS NOT A PRIVATELY FINANCED. We paid for a large portion of this stadium. Why Bloomberg, who had no stake in seeing the Yankees get a new home, went along with it is a mystery to me. It's simply unconscionable for a city, with children attending classes in janitor's closets, to spend money on for-profit sports franchises.
Although this is a criticism that can be leveled at almost all professional stadiums.
Some pretty looking infographs and visualization of airplane crash data.
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As a bookstore fanboy I went agog over Buenos Aires' El Ateneo, a stunning bookstore converted from an old theater. Relatedly, as one anonymous Boing Boing commenter pointed out, check out this this Brooklyn Duane Reade location which also used to be a movie theater.
Today's single serve Tumblr site: Clients from Hell.
Client: "I want them to be rectangles, but I want them to have the feel of a triangle."
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Kottke compiles the first reviews of the new iPad by the tech industry's most influential, including Walt Mossberg who reportedly is the highest paid journalist at the Wall Street Journal. Mossberg writes:
The iPad is much more than an e-book or digital periodical reader, though it does those tasks brilliantly, better in my view than the Amazon Kindle. And it's far more than just a big iPhone, even though it uses the same easy-to-master interface, and Apple says it runs nearly all of the 150,000 apps that work on the iPhone.It's qualitatively different, a whole new type of computer that, through a simple interface, can run more-sophisticated, PC-like software than a phone does, and whose large screen allows much more functionality when compared with a phone's. But, because the iPad is a new type of computer, you have to feel it, to use it, to fully understand it and decide if it is for you, or whether, say, a netbook might do better.
Any of my early adopter friends getting this?
RISD industrial design student Louie Rigano came up with these rain boots created from recycled plastic bags.
The original concept was simply to press layers of plastic bags, but thorough exploration yielded new solutions. By pressing an additional fibrous material, such as cheesecloth, into the plastic, new strength and functionality was achieved. Rain boots as the product were selected due to their material appropriateness and their utilitarian, purely functional nature. The plastic material is inherently waterproof and the necessary thickness of the material required for the rain boots is very minimal. The final design is extremely economical and easily produced.
The above equation maps out "MROD" on a graph. Did I bust out my mad AP algebericulus knowledge combined with my innate geek powers to figure this out? Nah. I let other geekoids create a website that does all the hard work for me. Behold, the Inverse Graphic Calculator:
The Inverse Graphing Calculator (version beta-1) is like a backwards graphing calculator. Normally, you enter an equation into your calculator and then get a graph of the curve. The way the IGC works is, you type something you'd like as your curve, like 'Hello World' or 'I love you'. The IGC produces an *equation* which has this phrase as its graph!