Brunch -

to be finished - eek, gettin' behind

Snack - Need Something to Get Obsessed With?

I recently got a package of Buckyballs. They're my new obsession.

One set of these thingies includes 216 5mm magnets that you can stick together in pretty much infinite ways. They can be a bit frustrating when they refuse to snap together in the proper formation, but they're pretty much extremely fun. I took that there pic of a chain of 'em; the surface they're on is not at all photogenic - I might end up re-taking the photo with a better-hued backdrop - but their natural shininess made for some good "buckyball-keh" in the background!

Lunch - Halloween Hangover?

Are you feeling a bit ill from the quantity of sugar-laden sweets you consumed in the past couple of days? Have no fear. Here are some games to distract you.

The first, Record Tripping, is a visually prettyful but difficult adventure in which you use your mouse wheel to scratch a record (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) backward or forward, thus turning a combination lock or blowing a seed toward its destination flowerpot. Warning: I played this game with my lappy-top's touch pad, and it didn't work exceptionally well. You might do better with a regular old mouse scrollerball.

Prefer an easier, more casual game? Try Ballies, an avoider game where you try to touch similarly hued spheres and stay away from those those of a different chroma. With endearing big-eyed balls and cute (if not repetitive) music, it's a mildly addictive play.

Now you're more distracted, right? Oh, I guess I shouldn't have reminded you. Sorry ...

Appetizer - Punkin Eat Punkin

pretty fierce, right?

Getting excited for All Hallows Eve yet? (For the ignorant layperson, that means Halloween.) If not, maybe the gallery of super creative jack o'lanterns at pumpkinway.com will getcha in the mood for the upcoming holidayz. Many of them employ that technique, skinning, in which the top layer of the punkin is peeled off, leaving the white flesh underneath. Perfect color for the jack's choppers or peepers! I tried it out this year when I made this cannibalistic pumpkin. Last year, I tried my hand at a puking jack o'lantern, or "barfkin -" you just let all the gourd guts spill out of its mouth. It worked pretty well, but I'll leave it to your imagination ... I would not want to further spoil your appetite for Halloween candy!

Dinner - Llama Edition

Prepare for the next installment in the My Fave YouTube Videos series - Llamas With Hats! This disturbing but very funny movie features a coupla chapeau-sporting llamas called Carl and Paul. In this edition, the two find a hand-less carcass in their home (it turns out Carl stabbed 'im and cooked up his hands.) There's also the next installment, where the slightly psychopathic Carl sinks a cruise ship, and Llamas With Hats 3, in which he topples a South American government. Viva La Revoluçion!!

If these videos have turned you off of llamas forever, I apologize. However, you may take comfort in the fact that they are still cooler than Hannah Montana - at least according to this Facebook group!

Dessert - You Don't Wanna Meet the Spider That Lives in This Web

Check out these giant spider webs. Calm down, arachnophobes: they aren't genuine. These humongous cocoons are spun from almost 170,000 feet (and 100 pounds) of packing tape. The tunnels and webs are big enough and strong enough for visitors to explore. You totally want to visit? What a coincidence - me too!

Breakfast - Light Show!

I recently tried this "light painting" technique where you take your camera out at night, set a really slow shutter speed, and wave your flashlight around or draw stuff with it in the air. It's fun but rawther hard to get a good picture. Here's one of my attempts at a heart ...

<3

I also tried a peace sign (lookity down below) and my name. However, I soon realized that everything comes out backwards in the pic, and writing your name backwards in the air with a flashlight is no piece of cake. Though that does sound tasty ...

Snack - Nom The Tiny Donut

Check this out if you like food and like cute things (I think that's about everybody, right?) A part of the Cheezburger website network (which includes places like the classic Lolcats site) EpiCute (presumably, the title is derived from the phrase "epically cute) is an upload-your-own-photos blog of adorable noms. Images are usually desserts, ranging from diminutive donuts to charming fondant animals, but there are a few cheese ladybugs and teensy tomato skewers thrown in as well. One warning, though - don't look at it if you're hungry!

Snack - Neck Beard Equals Threatening

Have you ever met someone and found that he appeared very friendly just because he had a full beard? Apparently, you're not alone. This well-designed infographic details the usual trustworthiness of different beard types, ranging all the way from Very Trustworthy (Full Beard; The Philosopher, Goatee and Mustache) to Disastrous (Pencil Thin Mustache a.k.a. The John Waters, The Joe Jackson; The Hitler.) The graph doesn't mind making blanket statements - unfortunately, you could be a very nice person, but if you were sporting the facial hair style of a werewolf, you would be considered "Dangerous" by readers of the chart. Life is so unfair.

Brunch - Giant Rodent Edition

Are you trying to decide which pet is right for you? Consider a giant rodent! This page shows some pics and description of Melanie Typaldos' capybara Caplin Rous, including an image of him next to a considerably littler guinea pig. According to the article, Cap' weighs 100 pounds - probably heavier than yours truly! And this page tells us that "Rous" stands for "Rodent of Unusual Size." I for one won't dispute the fact that his size is unusual!

No house space for a 'bara of your own? Compensate by watching the charming next installment in the My Fave YouTube Videos series (this film was linked to from Caplin Rous' website, gianthamster.com. It's pretty much three minutes (and five seconds) of somebody walking between a bunch of dozing capybaras and scratching them on the back. When scratched, they all roll over onto their sides - kind of like cow tipping, but more small-scale. And probably a lot cuter.

Breakfast - Head Suction Cup is Perfect for Subway Sleeping!

DIY-ers (for the uneducated in acronyms, that stands for "Do-It-Yourself-ers,") get excited - here's a page on Extreme Repurposing. This blog post shows ten ways to change household items into ... other household items ... but way cooler. For example, a clothespin's spring attaches to a pair of chopsticks for easy-peasy use or a funnel turns into an attractive coat hook. Some of them are a wee bit improbable (putting a lightbulb inside a water wing makes a lovely lantern, but the plastic would probably melt and get quite disgusting) and some are a wee bit odd (taking an eyepiece off a pair of goggles and attaching it to your head so you can lean against the window in trains.) Overall, though, everything is well-presented: each project is shown through four photos (the original object, the object being deconstructed, the object repurposed, and the object in use) and the ideas are clever. I don't recommend looking at the blog's comments, though - some peeps have nothing better to do than dis the projects and be annoying. Well, now you probably will look, since I mentioned it. You just don't listen, do you?

Lunch - Average is Awesome

Bored with your life? Thinking it's too average? You may feel a bit better after you read a few pages of mylifeisaverage.com. Here, people post their very everyday adventures - or non-adventures - always using the "Today ... MLIA" format. Some examples:

The other day I went shopping for a new bed. I made up my mind by choosing the lower bed so there was less space for monsters to hide. MLIA

Today, I briefly considered getting car insurance, before realizing that I didn't want to deal with it at the moment. Then I had some trail mix. MLIA

After reading several stories on MLIA about people getting sick after licking their iPod touches, me and a few of my friends decided to try it. 3 of them got a mild flu within 2 days and the other 2 had colds. I am the only one who did not get sick and I am officially convinced that I am immune to iPod touches. MLIA

Pretty average, all right. If you're still feeling too ordinary, though, the next installment in the My Fave YouTube Videos series may help ... or it may just depress you slightly. It's worth a watch, though. Remind Me, a music video by Royksopp (no, I've never heard of them either) is an animated day in the life of a female big-business worker in the city (I believe she's supposed to be somewhere in the UK.) Each event (the burger bought for lunch) is analyzed and leads to a series of images, (burger meat is made from cow; cow produces fresh milk; cows being milked; milk goes into milkshake) always leading back to our heroine (she's drinking a milkshake.) The music is pretty unremarkable, but it's more of a background to the intensely detailed vid. Well, enjoy this array of averageness!

Disclaimer: I do not advise licking your iPod Touch!

Snack - What About Lol Lemonwire?

Well, I was honestly trying to put up an Appetizer or Dessert today, but Blogger was being uncooperative and not loading on my ol' 'puter so y'all will have to settle for another nighttime snack.

Anywayz, take a look at this bizarre/cute Flash animation - it's basically an endless loop of the lyrics "Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate/Yar har, feedle-dee-dee, being a pirate is all right to be, do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate." This tune, which is likely to get stuck in your head and cause you to completely lose your wits, is accompanied by somewhat messily written lyrics and then a row of dancing pirates underneath the words "LOL LIMEWIRE." Now apparently, Limewire is a peer-to-peer sharing system that's often illegally used for - you guessed it - pirating. Well, that would explain the idea behind the animation, but not how they could neglect the other citrus fruits. Poor Lemonwire and Kumquatwire never got off the ground!

Snack - Playin' in the Park

And here's another late-night snack - the wee hours (well, I suppose they're not yet wee - they'll be there in a few hours, though) seem to be my favored blogging time. Early-to-bed types: please don't judge me.

In any case, I was recently at a Beacon, NY, park with my trusty camera (actually, it's not too trusty - it often deletes things with no provocation) and took a few pics of the playground equipment. The first photo we have here depicts part of a playset thingy - you know what I mean by "a playset thingy" if you've ever been to a playground. Our second image is a top view (or as top as I could reach my camera - I'm rawther short) of one of those tall climbing spirals. I gave that one an old-fashioned effect on picnik.com, a very fun and fairly user-friendly editing app. And if you look very closely, you can spot my toes poking through the spiral rungs!

Dessert - The Great Post-It Note Waterfall

Got a Post-It Note obsession? Well then, you'll love the next movie in the My Fave YouTube Videos series! Extreme Sticky Note Experiments is over 3 minutes of a couple of guys conducting increasingly complex and cool studies with sticky notes. By using those pads o' stickies that are attached in an accordion pattern, they're able to create fantabulous slinkys, rolling pinwheels, and color-changing waterfalls. The whole vid is done in a very cute style, and the Eepy Bird website and/or Facebook page (everything's got one of those now) are worth checking out as well - I haven't watched many of their other movies, but I did see a rawther impressive Diet Coke/Mentos explosion experiments video. But back to the Post-Its, for a moment, please - at the end of the film, it is proclaimed that 280,951 notes were used in the making. The eco-activist within me can only hope that they recycled those ...

Dinner - Phantastic Photos OR Perfect Pics

Photographers, Photoshoppers, and the rest of the masses, gather round to hear my tales .... um, click my links. First give a look to these piccers of the Impossible Scenes That Actually Happened. Well, they didn't actually happen, per say, but they happened over several hours. These images are made by layering lots o' different photos over each other to create scenes like 9 planes stacked up high in the sky or a bunch of tourists all snapping a building at the same time. Some are cooler than others, but each is worth at least a glance. Next check out this set of creative photos. These are elegant and artsy images like a haircutting scissor placed next to Chinese (or are they Japanese? I'm not too educated in the Oriental languages) characters constructed of snipped locks or a thermometer made of a matchstick. Some may take a few seconds to "get," but they are quite neat and sweet overall. These two pic links may inspire you to get acquainted with Photoshop or to seek out the cute and witty things in life - or at the very least, they may compel you to trim your hair.

Snack - Have Your Cake and Eat it Too!

Today was my birthday and I was hoping to find some interesting cake-related link, but apparently all the cake-maker games on teh internetz are rather stupid. So instead I present you with this iPhone app. Obviously, if you do not possess and iPad, -Phone, or -Pod, this is n/a, but the app is so cute it may inspire you to buy an i product - or at least steal a friends. In Cupcakes!, you get to ... well ... make a cupcake. In some cases, this would be nothing to write home about (if you're not already home) but the app lets you choose the pan liner, choose the batter, choose the baking time, shake your device to get your cake out of the pan, and then frost, decorate, fill, and "eat" your cuppercake. And it's all in pretty photorealistic (possibly made from actual photos) graphics. The only problem? The app provides instant cute 'n' cupcakey fun and will entertain you for about 15-40 minutes total, but after a few runs, you'll probably get a bit bored with it. It's just not addicting - well, only at first. So is it worth the 99¢ fee? Debatable - but probably, if you're an avid maker of real-life cupcakes like I am. Will it make you want cupcakes? Yes. Is that a good thing? Only if you have access to them!

Appetizer - Forget Norway!

Thinking of planning a trip to Africa? This video, the ... let's see ... ninth installment in the My Fave YouTube Videos series will convince you to. Kenya, another video by 'Tuber mrweebl (previously mentioned in "Narwhals and Dugongs and Giraffes, Oh My!") is done in the style of an advertisement for - you guessed it - Kenya. It's basically 47 seconds of very cute animated graphics of lions, tigers, and other wildlife, accompanied by a singer who pronounces that there are lions and tigers and Kenya, that you should come see them, and that Norway is lame. There are also flashing announcements ("AMAZING OFFER!! LIONS AND TIGERS AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING NOW!) and a graphic that shows exactly WHY Kenya is superior to Norway. Well, enjoy the vid and enjoy your trip to Africa, but don't let this set you completely against poor Norway - after all, they have a sad, sad lack of lions and tigers.

Dinner - Bandied About

it was pretty neat to see the different layers of color I had added

Recently, I noticed that my rubber band ball, which was made purely of bands and was rawther large, was starting to rot (YECH!) The rubber was just sort of disintegrating and coming apart. So I decided - why not? - to saw it in half with a kitchen knife. I was sort of picturing that I could knife it in half without it falling apart and then I could have a perfect cross section, sort of like a cut-in-half cabbage - it didn't QUITE work that way, but it was still very neat. Here's a pic while i was still just approaching the core. And to the left over there you see a close-up of the final product - a mass o' rubber bands. So the moral of this story is: make yourself a rubber band ball, wait a few years until it begins to putrefy, and then saw 'er up. Don't use those animal shaped Silly Bandz bracelets, though - those are much too fashionable. Well, actually, they're kind of ugly, but in a fashionable way. Apparently, this pup on the s-bandz' Facebook page thinks they're the cat's meow, though. Er, the dog's bark. Er ... whatever.

Snack - 100 Coins for the "Skanky Herring"

If you're interested in fishing but don't have the necessary gear (rod, bait, pond, stupid-looking hat,) give Fisher Girl a try. Basically, this relaxing game follows the plot that a shark has stolen your angler boyfriend - a small, Pokémon-ish creature - and you, the fisher girl (same shape, different color,) must rescue him. Apparently, catching a bunch of fish - Tuna, Flounder, and Skanky Herring (huh?) among the smaller ones, will save your beau, so that's what you must do. Fisher Girl operates on the same concept as any other angling game - cast out, earn coins, get rod and bait upgrades - but its elegant design and cute graphics make it rise above the others. And no stupid-looking hat is required!

Dinner - Mosaic Madness OR Collage Craziness

It's time for a mosaic-ful supper! I'm Talya, and I'll be your server tonight. Our eatables tonight are both of the "bunch-of-pictures-put-together" fashion. For the first course, take a look at the Starry Night Mosaic, a replica of Van Gogh's painting. At first glance, it just looks like ... a replica of Van Gogh's painting ... but if you zoom in closer, you'll see that it's all made up of what the site claims is 1.500,000,000 little photos. It's certainly a sight to behold. The second course is a this rather entertaining game. Guess-the-Google. The program creates a collage of images, and it falls upon your shoulders to guess what Google Images search would return them. With its attractive interface (lime green color scheme!) and creative concept, it's definitely a good investment of 5 or 10 minutes. Well, I hope you have enjoyed your meal! And I hope you left a tip. Actually, a tip widget on this blog site wouldn't be a bad idea!

Brunch - Facts From the Throne Room

So does everyone know and/or read Uncle John's Bathroom Readers? If not, check out this here website or that there Facebook page. For those uninformed, the Bathroom Readers are basically compilations of random trivia, short essays, and interesting facts. Although the topics are occasionally gruesome or creepy, the majority are rawther funny and entertaining. Here's a collection of snippets from Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader, which I have right here in my very own bathroom -

Alaska is the only state whose name can be typed on a single keyboard row.

In 2007 the Edmonton Sun interviewed a 70-year-old woman identified only as "Maggie" who claimed she devoured the Edmonton Sun every day - literally. For the previous seven years, she'd cut the newspaper into strips and eaten it because, she said, it "tastes good." The woman decided to come forward after doctors removed a massive ball of paper that was lodged in her esophagus.

... excerpts from real church bulletins:
"The church office will be closed until opening. It will remain closed after opening. It will reopen Monday."
"Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered."

It takes 300 pounds of pressure per square inch to break a macadamia nut's shell.

Well, that's it for now, and I hope you were in the bathroom when reading these Bathroom Reader excerpts - and hopefully you did not drop your computer in the toilet!

Late-Night Snack - Glowin' in the Dark

Christina, Michelle, and Jess playing with fire

This is a pic I recently took at a wedding; the bride and a couple others twirled these flaming wicks-on-a-string in figure eights, loops, etc. It looked extremely cool in the dark.

On the theme of lights in the night, this glowy spiral was a decoration from the aforementioned wedding. Basically, I think lights or flames in the dark = cool photo. (You can try proving this equation yourself - it's more entertaining than algebra!)

Appetizer - Don't Eat the Paint!

Here are the next installments in the My Fave YouTube Videos series: the very neat Tony Vs. Paul, and this speed painting - in the medium of Vegemite on toast. The first is basically a long sequence of two guys fighting, but it's in stop-motion, so they slide smoothly across grass, are buried by self-moving sand, etc. The Vegemite painting is one piece of a collection of art in odd mediums by the talented 'Tube user EclecticAsylumArt. More of their paintings shall follow in the Fave Videos series! Enjoy - but don't let the latter vid inspire you to taste Vegemite. I've heard it's disgusting.

Snack - Got Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

I just found this here blog-ish page, Things Organized Neatly. It's just what it sounds like - a collection of pics of things organized neatly. If you prefer chaos, avoid this site, but it's kind of satisfying for us slightly OCD types.

Brunch - Shadow Art

Lend an eye (don't literally take out your peeper, please) to this way cool Shadow Art. It's all ... er ... art made with shadows. For example, two furry thin-tailed rats in love, shadowed on a wall by a pile of junk configured to block the light in just the right way. Even cooler are the silhouettes of faces or bodies made from li'l building blocks on the surface of the shadow area - it appears that they streamed enough beams of light on them to create intricate designs. Or maybe they just made a cut-out of someone's face, held it above the shadow target area, and tossed some blocks around, but that would be cheating, and that wouldn't be very nice!! Hmph!

Dinner - Veggie Music and Cows With Guns

Take a look at the gallery at oddmusic.com, a long list of bizarre musical instruments! I haven't yet viewed them all, but so far I believe I'm partial to the Viennese Vegetable Orchestra, a group of musicians that plays their tunes only on veggies, including the carrot flute, the cucumber-phone, and the leek violin. Be sure to listen to the clip of them in action - it's kind of a wind-instrument-y wail with a background of bongos. Neat. And speaking of eatables, here's the next installment in the My Fave YouTube Videos series - Cows With Guns. It's the epic story of a herd of cattle who refuse to be turned into burgers, very empowering for us vegetarians. Well, actually, I'm a pescatarian, but, y'know.

Snack - Insane Cursor-Grabbing Bunny

If you're interested in building muscle tone in your mouse-moving wrist, check out this rabbit. He'll watch your cursor attentively, and when you move it too close, he'll make a leap for it and hold on fast. The only way to free your pointer is to shake him around violently for a few seconds. Well, do you have anything better to do?

Lunch - Dugongs and Narwhals and Giraffes, Oh My!

Well, here are the third, fourth and fifth installments in the My Fave YouTube Videos series. Narwhals, Dugongs, and Giraffe are all equally funny and weird, and are all made by the 'Tube user mrweebl. Narwhals and Dugongs are tunes describing the sea creatures mentioned in the title, Giraffe is a musical journey through the plight of having a long-necked mammal in your loft keeping you up at night. The thing to wonder about now is, what's a "weebl?"

Midnight Snack - Holiday Lights in August

I just got back from a wedding/dinner/dance party so I figured I may as well share a midnight snack! This snack is of the photo nature; I believe I'll have some raisin bread myself after I've finished posting this. I took this pic of holiday-ish little lights yesterday and I think it came out quite nicely - it was taken in one of the tents that the wedding was in, actually. I managed to get some nice bulb bokeh (bulbkeh?) in.

Appetizer - No Groin-Drawing Allowed

I just found sketchswap.com, a site with the rather inventive idea: you doodle anything you want, click submit, and your doodle is transmitted to a random user; meanwhile, you get to see the doodle of another user. It's fun but almost frustrating to not know at all who your pic is going to or what they thought of it. Many similar communal whiteboard-type sites are somewhat R-rated - everybody is only into writing swears and drawing ... er ... groins and genitals, but I'm pretty sure Sketchswap has a filter - I doodled for several rounds and received only G-rated materials. It's fun for the whole family!

Late-Night Snack - The Beatboxing Donkeys

If you have a thing for animated singing hooved animals, turn up your speakers and try out this site. Here you'll find four horses (or maybe they're donkeys, it's a bit hard to tell,) who, when clicked, will croon a tune for your entertainment. They each have a different song, so, presumably, you're supposed to turn them on in different combinations to make your own multi-part song. But use it however you want - they're also just kind of cute to watch. Or you could just admire their hairstyles (mane-styles? -) they're pretty fashionable, after all.

Breakfast - Bonfires

This is a pic I took in New Hampshire - my grandparents built a house there, which they lived in along with my mom and her sister and brother, when they (my mom etc.) were all kids. there's still no electricity there or any toilet - we have to use a somewhat odorous outhouse - but we visit every summer and I really love it there. In this pic, I was experimenting with different settings to get a good photo of our fire. Here, the shutter was open for a long time and before it had finished, someone switched on a flashlight. I thought it would ruin the photo, but it added that neat beam thing across the fire. Very abstract, eh?

While we're at it, I'll continue with the fire theme - here's another pic I took that night. The flash kind of illuminated the smoke in an interesting way on this pic of my grandma and aunt. The latter (to the left) looks kind of crazed. Or maybe the smoke is really a giant ghost that only shows up in photos and is terrorizing her. Yeah, that must be it. 

Dinner - Movie Clichés and Numa Numa

Check out this list of popular movie clichés! Some of them are fairly funny and very true. And speaking of movies, here are the first and second installments in the My Fave YouTube Videos series - the ever-popular and ever-bizarre Numa Numa and the even more bizarre kid singing Numa Numa on an American Idol-type show. Actually, maybe the second one doesn't belong in this series. I think it scarred me for life.

Late Lunch - Breathing Earth and Cicadas

I recently discovered this website, breathingearth.net, that shows you every human who dies or is born in what it claims is real-time, by showing a small blip on a world map. You can also mouse over countries to see how much carbon dioxide they are emitting, whether their population is rising or falling, and other stats. With its attractive graphics and ability to work pretty well even on a very slow computer like mine, this site is kind of addictive. A note, though - the whole thing is accompanied by a rising and falling noise that reminds me of cicadas on a midsummer night. Maybe they're just preparing us for the plague of the killer cicadas that they're unleashing in 2080. (Conspiracy theorists, take note!)