Clocking Off

Clocks
Like the Mario thing I have heaps of clocks and watches just waiting to be posted, so here they all are at once…

The Mississippi Clock – available from Amazon – counts the passing of time in the traditional.

Or how about the whiteboard clock – a clock that allows you to jot down appointments so that you don’t forget.

This one takes the whiteboard clock concept to a new level. It automatically wipes out the past…

Some people get up so early that they need to callibrate their eyes. This test pattern wall clock should help…

Sometimes when you wake up you want to be alert quickly, and alarmed, this pneumatic alarm clock will do the trick…

This digital “black and white” clock is digital technology taken to a whole new level. And it’s pretty awesome.

Digital clock: only figures, no case, only the necessary – only accurate time. Each figure has self-contained power supply and independent control, it can be fixed to any surface autonomously. A light sensor will switch the clock to an invert mode: the figures are white in the dark time of day and black at daytime.

Watches

Here’s a spherical pocket watch of awesome.

The problem with the myriad social networks available to divert and distract is finding the right time to use each… that’s no longer a problem with this social networking watch.

Look mum, no hands. This is a ground breaking moment in clock technology… Blue for hours, red for minutes.

Unblocking the queue

Thanks to the awesome power of Google Reader I have a stack of things (more than 200) that I have the best intentions to post.

Sometimes these build up, and as you’ll no doubt note from the post of Mario stuff, and the post of clocks, they are often variations of a theme.

This post is all about Tetris. Enjoy.

The perfect Tetris fit out requires perfect Tetris cushions…

Like these

These Tetris shelves are part of a bigger collection from a pretty clever design firm. They’re the almost perfect modular storage system…

Tetris is so good that it’s captured the heart, minds and skin of fans.

There’s also this salt and pepper shaker created by this clever Flickr user.

Credit for finding these gems must go to Walyou.

Super Mario Art

There’s a whole lot of awesome Super Mario Bros stuff out there just waiting to be posted.

To save myself some of the trouble I’m going to compile it all into one post.

Found here.

This vibrating Mushroom Cushion ($US11.99) will give new life to your room.

This Etsy user has a whole stack of bed spreads and other 8 bit inspired manchester.

A game is only as good as its collection of villains. Here’s someone’s take on how the bad guys were cast…

Obviously Super Mario Bros was a good game. And much more entertaining than that video. Good enough to inspire this sort of street art

Or these sorts of incredibly painful tattoos

And this sort of painstaking dedication to converting things into Japanese artwork

This, for those not familiar with the whole Mario thing, is someone’s attempt to get everything turned into a handy graphical representation of a family tree – you can get a bigger version here.

And finally, this is a shirt laying down the life lessons learned from a life playing Mario games

Sticking around

Sticky tape. It’s so versatile. If I’m not using it to hold broken things together – I’m using it for some sort of nefarious inter-office purposes.

You could be using the power of stickytape for so much more. Like inter-office football tournaments. You can buy a roll of this here, and check out the guy who designed it (and the second roll of "frame" tape too)…

Go where others fear to tread

You’re torn right. A bike. Walking. It’s so hard for the environmentally conscious fitness freak to decide how to get to work. Oh, and there’s fitting in the gym too… Here’s a solution. A treadbike. From Wired. There’s a company making these – and they’ve taken it to a whole new level of production quality

Flipping the bird

I’m sick. So this might not be as funny if I were well…

Meal break Musings

Back by popular demand…so i was meant to write blogs here, but then i haven’t since the very first one. This is mostly because 1. I dont have time to write blogs. 2. I dont think people have time to read my blogs. Then with the marketing knowledge that i posses i thought about a solution to this problem – short blogs which i do have time to write in my lunch break, and that you have time to read during your lunch break. Not that i am assuming you would chose to use your precious 30 min meal break to come and read this. It should only take a couple of minutes, or less. It is really just going to be one sentence about something i’ve been muling over. 

EG.

Why is it that – it is only socially acceptable for Asians to wear facemasks in  public?

Hmmm…food for thought.

I’ll keep you posted (irregularly obviously!)

Spring cleaning

Spring has sprung – well, it feels like it has for those of us living in the tropics and enjoying 27 degree days.

I’ve done some further rethinking about how I structure this here page – and I’ve moved the daily posts of links out of the “Curiosities” column and into the far right.

You’ll also notice some new little images in the footer which were fun to put together. I may move to styling all my images like little polaroids, but we’ll see.

If you’ve got more suggestions for tweaks I should make – hit me up in the comments. I’ve got a fair bit of time on my hands this week.

This little piggy…

It seems I’ve picked up a case of H1N1. We’ll never know for sure… but Robyn went to the doctor yesterday and was diagnosed, and now I’m sick too. I’m going to the doctor this afternoon.

So expect more posts today, tomorrow and Friday.

Robyn wants to make it clear that we’re not dying. So it’s too early to start dividing up our possesions amongst yourselves.

One for the books

I’m a sucker for a good bit of other person promotion. And it’s probably time I mentioned Goannatree anyway.

It’s a good place to read intelligent scholarship from a Christian who is into literature, the arts and all sorts of culture.

This week Goannatree is running a book giveaway to encourage lurkers out of the woodworks – and probably to score a swag of new readers. So get along, check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

Links from August 4, 2009

Facing the music

Another post, another YouTube video…

As I mentioned earlier, Matt Redman, who is responsible for a few cringe worthy "worship" songs, is undergoing a bit of a Copernican revolution. He has realised that some of the soppiness in his songs can be a little bit over the top, and not quite Biblical.

I’m glad he uses the framework he does to assess his songwriting (and that of others).

"In the Bible you don’t see a lot of people coming up to Jesus and saying you’re beautiful"

More new Muse

Here’s the second Muse song from the upcoming album – The Resistance. It’s less Queenish than the last one.

The tracklisting includes quite a few songs with “symphony” in the title. Which is pretty exciting in and of itself…

Unfortunately the YouTube video was pulled for violating copyright. Here’s a link to the song on the Muse website.

YouTube Toosday: Put an inner spring in your step

This is pretty funny.

Mor(e )on Christian music

Two interesting tidbits to add to my crusade against cringe worthy Christian music… 

The first, is an opinion piece in The Age where an atheist journo went along to a PlanetShakers experience*… it’s got all the echos of the South Park episode I mentioned a few weeks back – just so you know I wasn’t exaggerating the issue here’s a quote…

“Christian pop, ’80s power anthems, Metallica meets Cheap Trick. A mosh pit for Jesus was jumping with teenagers in rapture and a balcony of Planetkids went off for Christ. Music blared from the stadium sound system while the screen seduced us with slick videos edited so fast the phrase ‘‘subliminal image" kept popping into my head. Lyrics flashed up: "Come like a flood and saturate me now." I wondered what Freud would have made of the disproportionate use of such words as ‘‘come’’, ‘‘touch’’ and ‘‘feel’’, and the phrases "move within me" and "being filled". My favourite was "King of Glory, enter in".”

Secondly, There’s apparently an article somewhere where Matt Redman – cliched songwriter extraordinaire – repents from his ways of writing love songs to God. I’ll find that article when I get home and update this post.

*As a side note – this gonzo journalism thing where atheists try to experience Christian stuff from a true outsiders perspective is an interesting phenomena and is probably worth listenting to for those people trying to catch the atheist cultural zeitgeist. Other examples are the Guardian’s Alpha experiences and the Friendly Atheist Hermant Mehta’s book on his experiences in churches that he went to after an ebay campaign where confident churches could buy the right to try to convert him.