Carla Collins Collections

Wow, I'm really impressed with this website.  It takes a few been-done-before elements and turns them into something really unique and interesting.  It is basically  the Carla Collins Collections put into books that you can turn the pages of.  The images are all variations of each other so that they effectively form a flip book. The real beauty of it is that you can play though the pages quickly to see the full flip book effect both forward and backwards and then you can rotate the whole book around and do the same thing upside down.  This lets you see what was on the other side of the page in an entirely different way then you saw it the first time.  Have I mentioned on this blog before about how much I like Flash websites (imagine my best innocent smile here).

Dharma Initiative Food

Last Wednesday I was over at my friend Laura's with the usual LOST crowd celebrating the return of the series.  As we were watching there was a shot of someone eating the Dharma Initiative Cereal.  We started talking about how awesome it would if you could actually buy Dharma Cereal (the general consensus was that it would taste really good!).  Well, apparently we weren't the only ones thinking this.  The proactive guys over at Insanely Great News have taken the initiative to create PDF Dharma labels that you can just print out and relabel all the stuff in your cupboard.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University created this video to explain Web 2.0.  It follows the evolution of the web from HTML to its current state.  Very interesting.

10 x 10

10 x 10 is a website that aims to create a unique view of our time by collecting 100 highly used words and their corresponding images every hour, day, month and year.  The content is gathered from a few news sources and sorted automatically with no human intervention.

This is a pretty interesting idea.  It creates an illustrative historical record that is more about observation than interpretation.  This site won a Flash Forward award a couple of years ago for its technical merit. (Thanks Heckman).

Head First HTML and CSS

I learned pretty much everything I need to know about the basics of HTML and CSS from this book over the weekend.  That's right, I made it through 650 pages of text and exercises over one weekend because that is how awesome this book is.  This book calls itself a "Brain-Friendly Guide to HTML and CSS" and that is a pretty good description.  It is written like an elementary school text book with clear explanations, examples and exercises that make it easy to take in and retain the information.

This was the best learning experience I've had from a book in a long time.  I highly recommend this book and apparently I'm not the only one.  Out of 107 customer reviews on Amazon it received an average rating of 5 out of 5 stars.  Worth every penny of the $27.00 I spent on it.

Rulered Sheets

Just in time for Valentine's day, rulered sheets. These sheets are meant to help solve the issues of who is hogging all the covers. They are printed with rulered markings starting from 0 in the middle working out to 80 on either side. The numbers are readable from inside the bed. Just in case you can't count, they are also color coded. Hahaha! For more information go to Experimental Design.

TV Online

One of my favorite new internet trends is TV networks providing full episodes of their popular programs online for free. ABC and CBS have done a particularly good job of this.  Yeah, it's not perfect.  It stalls sometimes and the picture is relatively low res, but how can you complain when you have the ability to catch up on your favorite TV shows anywhere you have internet access.  I wish they had had this when I lived in England so I wouldn't have had to wait the 6 month lag that it takes American shows to be broadcast there, that is, if they are shown there at all.  I hope more networks jump on this bandwagon, especially international ones.  It would be great to be able to watch some shows that we don't have access to here.  I love the internet.

Sunset Time Graphs

Jim Bumgardner (a.k.a. jbum) has put together some pretty intriguing time graphs using photos from Flicker. Over one year he collected 15000 photos posted to Flickr with the tag Sunset. He then used the image's EXIF data to tell when the photo was taken and graph the photos accordingly. The horizontal axis represents the days of the year and the vertical access shows the time of day. The photos are dimmed to reflect the number of images posted at that time. The overall effect is a graph that shows the sun's cycle over the seasons. He also calls attention to the echo of sunset photographs taken between 5-7am caused by all the people who have their cameras am and pm settings backwards.

Check out this and more fascinating graphs by Jim on his flickr account.

Hook Box

This hook box concept, designed by Luca Nichetto, was featured on Gizmodo today.  This is such a good idea and it looks good too.  My cell phone, keys, and sunglasses are always thrown on various surfaces in the general vicinity of the door.  Unfortunately it is only a concept and not purchasable product.  I can't imagine it staying that way for long.

Flying Fish Bowl

I always thought life life as fish would be good but I never imagined it to be this good.  The flying fish bowl by Shay Alkalay is a large wall mounted fish bowl with rotating 3D scenery.  See more images at www.shayalkalay.com.

Sketches of Frank Gehry

I watched the Sketches of Frank Gehry today on DVD.  I was somehow expecting him to be more of a rock star architect but he comes across as very down to earth and often even under confident.  He spends a lot of the movie talking about how he stresses over his designs and has to become suitable frustrated with something before he can get it right.  You get a good sense of his creative process  and approaches by the end.  There are also some  great quotes from Gehry like 'That is so stupid looking, it's great'.  After I was done watching, I immediately ordered a copy on Amazon.  You can watch the movie trailer here.

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

This hat will help those around you who still struggle with the true meaning of life.  Available at Jinx.com.  (This is my 42nd post.  I couldn't resist)

Chuck Anderson

Artist/Designer Chuck Anderson has a new print out entitled Places You Can't Imagine 1.  It is a lot simpler than some of his previous work, which can be seen on his website NoPattern.com.  It's hard not to admire Chuck's shameless self promotion.  It seems to be working for him as he has a pretty stacked client list and he is only 22 years old.

Pepper Face

Designer pepper spray, now there is an interesting idea.Pepperface.com offers a range styles from plain aluminum bodies ($35) to crystal adorned bodies ($105-$295). You can even get a custom canister made with your own design or message. There is also a celebrity auction range with designs from Kelly Ripa and the cast of My Name is Earl. This site also deserves props for the information it provides about raising awareness and helping to prevent violence against women.

Digg Labs

it is a website where users submit links to stories, videos or podcasts that they find interesting and then other users "digg" the submitted stories.  The stories are ranked according to how many diggs they get.  It's an interesting site, and if you haven't been there you really should check it out.

My favorite part of Digg is the Digg Labs where you can view the stories as Swarms or Stacks.  They are both visual representations of stories being submitted and dugg in real time.  In Swarm, stories are represented as circles.  You can see Digg users swarming around the stories and watch them grow as their popularity increases.  In the Stacks view stories are shown as columns and diggs fall from above.  The columns change color to represent the number of diggs they have received.

Brandi Milne

Check out the gorgeous artwork of Brandi Milne.  Her work is very art nouveau but with a modern twist.  There is lots more on her website www.brandimilne.com.

Color in Motion

Color in Motion is a Flash site created by Claudia Cortes. It's a combination of short animations and interactive activities to educate the user about color symbolism and communication.This site is simple, effective, and most importantly fun.I originally came across this site a few years back when it was nominated for a Flashforward award.I still enjoy it.

Honesty Stamps

There is nothing like a rubber stamp to let someone know that you mean it!  This set of honesty stamps was designed by Dominic Wilcox for mosleymeetswilcox.  They come with the following messages:

1. All I ask for is one last chance.

2. In all my life I've never met anyone as beautiful as you.

3. I sincerely apologize for all the trouble I've caused. 

4. I swear on my mother's grave I'll never do that again.

5. I know in the past I've found it difficult to say these words but I LOVE YOU.

6. What do you mean I'm always too busy?

7. You're right, the key to a strong relationship is communication.

8. Set of two Stamps - It wasn't my fault!  But I've changed!

You can buy them online at Greener Grass Design.

Running the numbers

Running the Numbers is a fascinating series of photography by Chris Jordan that uses images to reinforce statistics. Each overall picture is made up of a certain number of smaller images used to illustrate a point. The piece shown above, called Cans Seurat 2007, uses 106,000 cans to make up the image. This represents the number of cans consumed in the US every thirty seconds. Other works include an image of Ben Franklin made up of 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills (amount the US government spends every hour on the war in Iraq) and fifteen million sheets of office paper (the equivalent of five minutes of paper use). Check out these and other works by Chris Jordan at www.chrisjordan.com.

You are beautiful

You ARE beautiful! All of you!  This site gives out stickers that say YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. People post them around their city and then send back photos. Yes, I know this a form of vandalism but seriously, how can you not like this idea?