Category: Curiosities

X-Things: popular icons from my childhood in the theme of X-Men

X-Muppets and X-Mario. How cool would those franchises be if their characters had mutant super powers.

Muppets first.

And Mario.

That one is part of a series.

Google set to eat itself, but not yet

A group of performance artists/social commentators/internet anarchists are trying to give Google back to the people. Setting up advertising and using the money to buy google shares.

“We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself – but in the end “we” own it!”

On current modelling this date is some time off.

202345117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google

“By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model.”

A while ago I considered starting up a webpage where people could punish bad companies by clicking on their ads. Turns out this is against Google’s click fraud policies so that couldn’t have worked. This too is against such policies, but these guys have hidden their links around the Internet. They’ve managed to purchase $400,000 worth of shares. The catch is that this money hasn’t come from google, but from the pockets of its advertisers. It’s a reverse-reverse Robin Hood scheme. They’re robbing the poor, through the rich, to buy the rich, to give to the poor.

Shoe nightlight: so you can catch people sneaking around

These are just a little bit cool. The laces are the power cords.

Via Kick-Fiend.

From designer Peter Bristol.

Magical “cut chair” not just a chip off the old block

I would like six of these please.

Pretty clever. Here’s how it works (sorry to spoil the illusion).

June 6, 2011

Don’t call me baby… unless I’m wearing this mask

These are pretty freaky (not to mention expensive), but if you’re sick of all your friends getting called baby faced without you… well, it could be $250 well spent.

There are three varieties.

Say “I miss you” in style

I’m not entirely sure what sort of style. But there’s a pun happening here.

From Etsy, via Bookofjoe

Knocking the edge off 8Bit characters

8Bit is so last millenium. Smoothing out the edges of old games won’t bring their gameplay into the new millenium, but it does give a modern perspective on franchises not famous enough to have made the transition. Sadly. The Pong Paddle looks exactly the same so wasn’t available for this treatment.

Yoshi…

The Invaders…

Sadly the Wolfenstein Dude became a burn victim in the process.

More at the source Bit Rebels. Via Churchm.ag

Ping Pong Party Tricks

Back in my day wasting study time with a ping pong ball involved a table and some friends. These days the table is optional.

Face painting: not high brow, but eyebrow

These are pretty clever. But I can’t tell if they’re self portraits (which is how they’re categorised on Flickr) or involve some sort of child labour.

Sucks to model for Jackson Pollock.

How to hide $1 million in notes

If you’re a bank robber in the US. And you steal $1 million in $100 notes. And you need somewhere to hide it. Then this post is for you. If you’re none of those things, at least it’s interesting to see where in your house you might be able to stash that cash.

It fits in a microwave.

Via.

Infographic: How to be a good guy, or bad guy

So you want to be a crime fighter, perhaps a real life superhero, but you don’t know where to start. Well. Now you do. Thanks to this infographic. If you’re into something a little more nefarious, check out the guide to being a bad guy.

From Everyguyed. Via Visual News

That’s not a banjo. This is a banjo…

A base banjo, to be precise.

It is huge. Huge enough to hide under during an airstrike.

““It was in a banjo band that went to the First World War to entertain the troops.

“The bloke who was playing it was called Wally Ogden and it actually got buried after the bunker got hit by a shell and they thought the banjo was lost.

“When they dug it all out again they found the tunnel was still there and they managed to get the banjo back, so it’s been through the wars.””

That makes my pun make sense now (I didn’t post the quote first time around…).

A stich in time: the knitting clock

This is quite brilliant. Every year produces a knitted 2 metre scarf. Designed by Siren Elise Wilhelmsen.

It goes through one ball of yarn a year, so it’s both clock and calendar. In a way. But the downside is you’re always wearing last year’s fashion.