Links

Theo Jansen, if you’re unfamiliar, is the progenitor of Strandbeests–autonomous, wind-powered plastic tube creatures, many the size of elephants and larger, that this Dutch artist / engineer assembles to roam the beaches of Holland.

Robot the Robot Habibi Motors Flip Flap plant Seahorses Swanksigns Ken Jennings Secret

nonzero.ca Seahorses One of the many amazing creatures featured in this photo gallery website dedicated to seahorses. Swanksigns A collection of funny public signs, a hobby we have all enjoyed at one time. Pacer This is a sweet ad for a sweet car. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Possibly the most exciting link this…

AOOA A beautiful game/experiment in web entertainment and interaction by a student of graphic design. These kind of short, Flash-based, artistic, mildly-challenging games are sort of a genre of their own online now. Time “On June 17th, every year, [this] family goes through a private ritual: [they] photograph [them]selves to stop a fleeting moment, the…

Updated at last, fiftypercentcashews.com. Be sure to catch the scientific video “Who Knew”. Doesn’t the fridge sound like Eraser Head to you?

I’m trying to find a video clip that made the online rounds a number of years ago featuring a dorky Arab(?) DJ in a red jumpshit spinning some beats. It was humour. I think the format was QuickTime. No wait, he had a website with images and clips. What’s the URL?…hold the press, my good…

Bottle Game, a new website created by a co-worker, artist and friend of mine.

Prof. Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds – The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. This exhibit features actual deceased people, their skin removed, preserved with a unique process called plastination – “an impregnation technique where tissues are completely saturated with special plastics in a vacuum” – and displayed in all their glory. “Anatomically prepared whole…

My good and long-time friend Jen has her own website now: www.jenmclean.com.

Was searching for CSS information this week as I take my web development to a higher and more standards-compliant level. Found a helpful forum via Google (keywords “id versus class CSS”) and in a forum post were a number of seemingly helpfull double-underlined green links for certain keywords, which annoyingly revealed themselves to be targeted…

How well can you tap a pint?

This Retail Alphabet Game is the second of its kind I’ve seen this month. Fun and maybe a little disappointing if you get a high score. I tried 12, got 9 right on my first try. I swore the J was Jiffy, as in the p-butter. I bet Naomi Klein gets like 25/26 and then…

Instructo Art, by self-proc. Master of the Obvious Matthew Vescovo, graphic designer. Cool little airplane-safety-pamphlet-like illustrations on “trivial habits and daily customs that humans have developed throughout history.” Also has a gig doing filler spots for MTV. Esp. like “Ratings System” and “Black and Curly.” Like a lot of the quirky design links I’m coming…

Japanese Toy and Candy Design. Kids must learn a lot of early self control in Japan. If you had intense packaging like that here, our youngins would either wimper with visual overload or go into hyper parental nag mode: It has giant bright cartoon colours and cute bug-eyed animals, must have, buy them now Mom!…

The iPod of the future. Short film/long ad format. Also, meant to post this a few weeks ago. Interesting article at Wired, asking four designers how they would re-do the Google interface. Exactly the kind of task I want to start presenting myself with on a regular, for-the-experience, portfolio-building basis: take an existing design, improve…

A 10-minute video (18.4MB) of a live art performance featuring sketches in sand on an overhead projector. From the Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF) 2003. Windows Media Player only. Thanks friend of Rosco for the link.

New Nike ad features famous athletes, including Lance Armstrong, competing in sports far outside their regular domain. Excellent use of CG and quick editing. Music a bit over-dramtic, but overall inspiring spot. Friend recently mentioned this Mario 1 flash movie epic, which I coincidently stumbled upon today. The saga, replete in pixels, Koopa, fallen comrades…

AT&T Labs has a demo online that converts text into speech. Nothing new in that – we’ve got cute little iMacs at work that do that – but not as fluently, or in so many languages, even dialects (US/UK English).

This new Quiznos ad is great. It features what look like dead mice with human mouths and eyes, wearing hats, singing and playing guitar. And selling sandwiches.

One of the more amazing optical illusion sites I’ve seen in a while. Note: link has been updated to Akiyoshi’s web site, a Prof. in the Department of Psychology, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. Thanks to Darb for the link.

This site has video excerpts of NHL hockey fights. Some clips are dubbed with heavy metal music (one was a Ween song I think). On another clip, the announcer calls the play-by-play action: “Laus with the right going to the side of Downey’s head. A couple of times. The helmets are still on both players.…

Two things that really cracked me up today: the White Ninja from a few days ago, and this sound clip (download file), borrowed from Show and Tell Music. The voice is from a ventriloquist children’s album, Joey Little Light.

Ikea Walkthrough v2.3.1 Just a day after I post my Ikea experience, an unawares friend shows me an Ikea survival guide in text-based adventure game format. Excerpt: IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you…

Just watched the new Strong Bad email and the letter was from Steve in Victoria, BC. Good going Steve, rep-wa-sent.

Fly Guy Enlightening in a cute and pixelated way. Esp. like the subtle dusting yourself off after a fall. Check out the root URL as well: this guy’s got some interesting work in this “new” genre of pixel art. Done games for some big names: Verizon, Lego and Diesel Marketing. Thanks a lot forefathers ASCII…

www.social-stuff.com/bubblewrap.swf Almost as good as the real thing.

www.ni9e.com Sort of along the lines of Yugo Nakamura’s Yugop-style creativity. Newest typeface-to-the-music is interesting, if drags on a bit. Thanks GDC listserve for the link.