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"As an Artist You Have to Try New Things"

One of my favorite illustrators Christoph Niemann (I used to blog about his works ad nauseam over at Sundance Channel) recently published a wonderful interactive ebook called "Petting Zoo" for the iPad. I may or may not have strong-armed a friend recently into downloading it ostensibly for her niece ostensibly and not at all because I wanted to play with it.

He recently shared with The New Yorker the process and hurdles involved in creating the ebook. It's a worthwhile and humorous read that is also inspiring.

The natural instinct then is to rely on what you know is working. It’s unfair, but this is the surest path to boring and predictable results.

And who wants boring and predictable? Not I said the fly.

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Take My Picture

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/61348049] "Take My Picture" is an interesting documentary short on the evolution of fashion show coverage and the trendy popularity of "street style" fashion photography.

As we started to review the footage, two salient trends became apparent: fashion editors frustrated by the ensuing commotion outside of shows, and the rise of "peacocking" street style stars as a result of the proliferation of blogs. This film examines these themes from both perspectives.

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Ghost Ship

While that Carnival cruise ship finally limped home the other week, this abandoned Russian cruise ship "has been adrift in the North Atlantic since January, after breaking free from a towing line as it was being delivered from Canada to a scrapyard in the Dominican Republic." The Lyubov Orlova once brought tourists to Antarctica as seen in the photo above but has now been spotted drifting towards Europe with a crew of rats. It's a lot more romantic to imagine this ship disappearing in Antarctica.

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French of the Day

L’esprit d’escalier is a term I learned from a friend. It is French and describes the experience of coming up with a perfect comeback only after having left the situation where it might have been used.

[Via]

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Nixon and Robocop

This looks like a scene from some alternate universe where Robocop exists in real life and Nixon is serving his 8th straight term as President of the United States in a dystopic future. Or it could be a scene from a buddy cop comedy film.

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Flying V

Grantland's David Cho caught this brilliant moment during an Oilers hockey game a few weeks back. As any child of the 90's will quickly recognize, the team is running the most unstoppable...(or MIGHTY?) play in hockey: the flying V.

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Then and Now

Jeremy Lin chatting with Wataru Misaka, the first Asian American NBA player. As I wrote back in 2009:

Three years before African Americans were allowed into the league and the same year Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, Japanese American Watura Misaka was drafted in the first round by the New York Knicks. He later served in the US Army stationed in Hiroshima three months after the atomic bomb devastated that city.

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Surfers by Surfers

Surfing-08 I love this photo by Will Adler of professional surfer Kelia Moniz in Cabo. Will is part of a new photo agency Massif Management which was formed by Jonathan Feldman. This agency is a collection of photographers who also happen to be young surfers.

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Memory in 1956

A_4uwZsCAAAcm1m.jpg-large This is a photo of a hard drive containing 5MB of memory in 1956. Built by IBM it weighed over a ton. For comparison my iPhone today has 32GB or 32,768MB of memory.

There's a "Yo momma is so fat" joke somewhere in here that I'm too lazy to figure out.

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Life Sentence

While reading the featured wedding vow in today's New York Times (Yes, I read this, so what?), I was struck by the wedding announcement's concluding punch line from the officiating judge at the wedding between Cara Shepley and Genshi Ezawa:

Before the ceremony ended, Judge Legg, who is retiring in January, was moved to observe: “I have spent many hours in this courtroom, and this is the only time I’ve enjoyed imposing a life sentence. It’s wonderful that my last official occasion in this courthouse will be such a happy one.”

As for me, I wouldn't mind a life sentence in a room filled with Kit Kat bars.

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Update

Here's an update or rather apologies for the lack of updates here. I have been occupied but not with anything of import. It's not you, it's me: Over the past year I've increasingly shifted to using Twitter to share many of the links I previously used to post here on these pages.

If you liked those random tidbits such as videos, links, and lols from around the Web that you used to see here and want to see more then (plug warning) come and follow me on Twitter (@mattrod). Of course I will continue to occasionally update this blog, but in the meantime Twitter FTW.

[Image by William Eadon]

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