hippoblog

Nearly 23 inches long and $2.50

Not quite the 26-year epic in the making, but impressive in its own way: "The Crackers"

via BoingBoing

* Ray, 2/19/2005 08:33:20 PM
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More Space Jam, anyone?

WB seeks revitalized cartoon franchise with new look for Bugs Bunny and friends
Action-adventure plots for the WB. So much for innocence. Um, does that make Spongebob the new Looney Tunes?

* Ray, 2/19/2005 08:31:09 PM
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At last, architecture with a sense of graphic design

Look at this new(ish) mag: 32 Beijing / New York, "a non-thematic, non-hierarchical structure of open-ended linkages which bracket a space between origins in Beijing and New York." Distributed by PAP. Hoity-toity wording, sure, but the pages look slick. Interesting material, too. Current issue features Office dA (with text by Rodolphe El Khoury), Steven Holl Architects, Zhang Lei, Bernard Tschumi Architects, Ai Weiwei (with text by Toshiko Mori).

* Ray, 2/19/2005 08:24:29 PM
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Dare Ya

Rami sent me this list of slightly insane and occasionally normal behavior.

ONE-POINT OFFICE DARES
1) Run one lap around the office at top speed.
2) Groan out loud in the toilet cubicle (at least one other "non-player" must be in the toilet at the time).
3) Ignore the first five people who say 'good morning' to you.
4) Phone someone in the office you barely know, leave your name and say, "Just called to say I can't talk right now. Bye."
5) To signal the end of a conversation, clamp your hands over your head
6) Leave your zipper open for one hour. If anyone points it out, say, "Sorry, I really prefer it this way".
7) Walk sideways to the photocopier.
8) While riding a lift, gasp dramatically every time the doors open.

THREE-POINTS DARES
1) Say to your boss, "I like your style" and shoot him with double-barreled fingers.
2) Babble incoherently at a fellow employee then ask,"Did you get all that, I don't want to have to repeat it".
3) Page yourself over the intercom (do not disguise your voice).
4) Kneel in front of the water cooler and drink directly from the nozzle (there must be a 'non-player' within sight).
5) Shout random numbers while someone is counting.

FIVE POINT DARES
1) At the end of a meeting, suggest that, for once, it would be nice to conclude with the singing of the national anthem (extra points if you actually launch into it yourself).
2) Walk into a very busy person's office and while they watch you with growing irritation, turn the light switch on/off 10 times.
3) For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as "Bob".
4) Announce to everyone in a meeting that you "really have to go do a number two".
5) After every sentence, say 'mon' in a really bad Jamaican accent as in "the report's on your desk, mon". Keep this up for one hour.
6) While an office mate is out, move their chair into the elevator.
7) In a meeting or crowded situation, slap your forehead repeatedly and mutter, "Shut up, damn it, all of you just shut up!".
8) At lunchtime, get down on your knees and announce, "As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry again."
9) In a colleague's diary, write in 10am: "See how I look in tights".
10) Carry your keyboard over to your colleague and ask "You wanna trade?".
11) Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the same person: "Do you hear that?" "What?" "Never mind, it's gone now".
12) Come to work in army fatigues and when asked why, say, "I can't talk about it".
13) Posing as a maitre d', call a colleague and tell him he's won lunch for four at a local restaurant. Let him go.
14) Speak with an accent (French, German, Porky Pig, etc) during a very important conference call.
15) Find the vacuum and start vacuuming around your desk.
16) Hang a two-foot long piece of toilet roll from the back of your pants and act genuinely surprised when someone points it out.
17) Present meeting attendees with a cup of coffee and biscuit, smash each biscuit with your fist.
18) During the course of a meeting, slowly edge your chair towards the door.
19) Arrange toy figures on the table to represent each meeting attendee, move them according to the movements of their real-life counterparts.

And if that wasn't enough for you here is some examples of insane acts you can use anywhere...

1) At lunchtime, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hairdryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
2) Tell your children over dinner. "Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go."
3)Every time someone asks you to do
something, ask if they want fries with that.
4) Put your rubbish bin on your desk and label it "IN."
5) Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over his or her caffeine addictions, switch to regular.
6) In the subject field for all your e-mails, write " FOR SEXUAL FAVOURS".
7) Finish all your sentences with "In accordance with the prophecy."
8) Don't use any punctuation
9) As often as possible, skip rather than walk.
10) Ask people what sex they are. Laugh hysterically after they answer.
11) Specify that your drive-through order is "to go."
12) Sing along at the opera.
13) Go to a poetry recital and ask why the poems don't rhyme.
14) Put mosquito netting around your work area. Play a tape of jungle sounds all day.
15) Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you're not in the mood.
16) When the money comes out of the ATM, scream "I Won! I Won! 3rd time this week!!!"
17) When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot yelling,"Run for your lives, they're loose!"

* Ray, 2/18/2005 05:25:12 PM
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Those Gates

Now that Googling "Gates" leads to Central Park instead of Bill Gates, I think it's safe to assume that nothing I post here will be news to anyone. Still, there are Gates-related links floating around that deserve mention...

IKONOS satellite photo of the park

The Somerville Gates

I think Hoover said it best: "i had zero expectations and my expectations were fulfilled."

* Ray, 2/18/2005 05:08:03 PM
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Stupid things

1. You can now order pizza through (while playing) Everquest.

2. This wooden keyboard costs $2500.

3. This is a clock run by a robot hamster.

* Ray, 2/18/2005 12:19:09 PM
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Zipperhead

I stumbled across this site completely by accident: MediKin Teaching Aides

Product description for above:

zippered head that opens to reveal brain cross section with shunt and ventricular catheter

Rib cage opens to reveal lungs, healthy airways shown on left, inflamed airways on the right. The affects of proper medication plans can be shown with air flow and mucus demonstrations.

Wowee. Great gag gift (if they weren't hundreds of dollars each).

* Ray, 2/17/2005 05:17:23 PM
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Take heart or worry

Is it a good sign or a bad sign that the founder of The American Conservative magazine thinks neocons are proto-fascists?

Hunger for Dictatorship

Students of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, "the Sixties" (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trials--all have their dates. Weimar, whose cultural excesses made effective propaganda for the Nazis, now seems like the antechamber to Nazism, though surely no Weimar figures perceived their time that way as they were living it. We may pretend to know what lies ahead, feigning certainty to score polemical points, but we never do.
...
I don't think there are yet real fascists in the administration, but there is certainly now a constituency for them--hungry to bomb foreigners and smash those Americans who might object. And when there are constituencies, leaders may not be far behind. They could be propelled into power by a populace ever more frustrated that the imperialist war it has supported--generally for the most banal of patriotic reasons--cannot possibly end in victory. And so scapegoats are sought, and if we can’t bomb Arabs into submission, or the French, domestic critics of Bush will serve.

* Ray, 2/17/2005 04:59:50 PM
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a price above rupees

Fans and haters of Judge Richard Posner will enjoy this posting from his blog, in which he tries to estimate the cost of each life lost in the tsunami. Our friend Nick described it as "crass"; I think that Nick was being rather generous in this case.

* joshua, 2/17/2005 02:08:00 PM
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Beetlejuice

Lest any of you think that Singapore is too squeaky clean and lacking in edge, feast your eyes on this common local cure for a sore throat. Apparently, you get the plastic packet with all of the little goodies (including the beetles) and you just add hot water. Thank to Shing for sending this on.

* joshua, 2/17/2005 01:47:00 PM
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Future Gift

Don't know if this is any good, but I list it here in case someone's looking for a parental gift at some point.

Black & Decker Jar Opener

* Ray, 2/17/2005 09:12:23 AM
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Crappy recordings should be free

...and now they are. Found at Lifehacker

New web service SmashTheTONES lets you send any mp3 music file to your phone to download and use as a ringtone for free.

Featured on TechTV show The Screen Savers, SmashTheTONES requires a web-enabled cell phone with text-messaging.

SmashTheTONES
How-to video from The Screen Savers

* Ray, 2/16/2005 02:20:31 PM
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Axonotopia

m-city via near near future:

M-city provides an application for constructing stencil cities on your own, from the same elements as in the real world. The constructor came to life to prolong the life of Cities when they cease existing in the real world.

The first step of preparation is a sketch of a given building on the A4 paper. All of the buildings can be joined in multiple ways and the buildings themselves can be customised by mixing the roofs and elevations - parts of different stencils.

* Ray, 2/16/2005 08:26:40 AM
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Over- or under-designed

Gizmodo : Happy Hacker Keyboard Professional

It's completely blank, no silkscreened letters or numbers. Bad-ass. Comes in black too.

Reminds me of an interview I read with a MTV designer (of the hipper-than-thou Brooklyn crowd), who put all her shampoo, conditioner and lotions into identical glass bottles because it looked better. After a week she forgot what was what and had to throw them all away. She chalked it up to the price of "good design."

* Ray, 2/15/2005 04:50:00 PM
(2) comments

"I spit on an old lady."

come clean, a place to confess your dirty secrets and read other confessions. Nicely done. Available in screen saver form.

via k10k

* Ray, 2/15/2005 02:09:30 PM
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Well, duh. If you can hear it, you can copy it.

Looking to build up your digital music collection in a jiffy? marv on record explains how to get 252 80-minute cd's out of Napster's 14-day free trial. Play protected Napster music through WinAmp, save-as-WAV as you play, burn to CD. This is way too easy. Napster may have been reborn under corporate branding, but the spirit's the same: music shall be released free unto the world. Maybe the youngsters at Napster pulled one over on the old men in suits. Maybe they knew all along that this protected-music idea was absurd and easy to bypass. Kudos to them, if so.

* Ray, 2/15/2005 09:24:37 AM
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Blowfish Jacket

How low-tech we were back in school, sticking our fingers out around our cheeks...
we make money not art: Wearable Warnings

The prototype coat features warning strips of fur that become electro-statically charged when the wearer feels threatened. 'When charged the fur begins to stand on end; a visual indication that the wearer is uncomfortable. If someone invades the wearer's personal space they will begin to feel a second warning; as they enter the coat's electrostatic field they will feel tingling skin sensations and their hair will stand on end. The fur will begin to twitch toward them and emit crackling sounds. If the 'threat' proceeds to touch the fur then 100,000 volts of electro-static charge discharges from the fur, into the offender's body.'

Videos available at the link.

* Ray, 2/15/2005 09:03:09 AM
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Viral Design

I just saw this post on Slashdot | Digital Life and Evolution and thought, hey wow that's neat. For a couple years now scientists have been writing computer programs replicate, mutate and evolve on their own. Then I remembered this article on the BBC today about using an impotent strain of HIV to attack cancer cells. So I'm thinking now, what if architecture could be designed this way? What if you could write code to solve an architectural problem, then pit it against a different way to solve the problem, and let them duke it out? It would certainly be hip enough for academic architects to latch on to, and I believe it would make for buildings that functioned better. Who knows? Might even look cool.

* Ray, 2/14/2005 08:45:22 AM
(1) comments

Laptops are for wimps

Glowing server contained in an aluminum case. SuitCaseServers (via Slashdot). I don't understand the benefit of the handle/portability, but it looks very slick. I guess that's about all the reason you need.

* Ray, 2/13/2005 04:27:47 PM
(0) comments

Architecture from the near near future

When you get tired of the same old celebrity sitings on Archinect go to near near future's architecture category. With talk of organic, self-feeding habitats, interactive walkways and gigantic teddy bear buildings, it makes you feel like you're shopping options studios all over again. I guess that's good and bad. Lots more interesting than the standard magazine fare, though.

* Ray, 2/13/2005 10:10:10 AM
(0) comments

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