Word Clock

Fun clock screensaver that simply changes text highlights to denote time. Not at all practical, but fun.

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Boy or Girl Paradox

in a random two-child family, one of the children is a boy. What is the probability that the other one is a girl?

It’s very unintuitive, but it’s 2/3. Very neat.

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Bruno Taylor’s Public Play Spaces

71% of adults used to play on the streets when they were young. 21% of children do so now. Are we designing children and play out of the public realm?

This project is a study into different ways of bringing play back into public space. It focuses on ways of incorporating incidental play in the public realm by not so much as having separate play equipment that dictates the users but by using existing furniture and architectural elements that indicate playful behaviour for all.

Satirical World War One Maps

A Flickr set of some fantastic maps produced during World War One, which attempt to depict the mentalities of the countries. The maps vary quite widely depending on which sides produced them.

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Baking Soda Can Improve Athlete Performance

Maybe this is a little follow-up to my baking-soda heavy green cleaning guide from last week. Apparently there is some evidence that eating baking soda before certain athletic events can help increase performance. Is there anything it can’t do?

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Shower Quick Shut-Off Valve

I recently installed a shut-off valve on my shower, which I figured cut down my water use in the shower by about a third. You can buy one at the hardware store for around $5. Here are some instructions on how to install your own.

The State of Giving Music Away

I knew musicians made most of their money from touring, but this article suggests that things are more extreme than I ever thought:

Lyle Lovett recently confessed to Billboard that after two decades and 4.6 million albums sold, he’s “never seen a dime” in royalties and has made his living primarily from touring. That’s a sure sign that business-wise musicians must find new ways to survive.

Via Indyish.

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Seal a Chip Bag Without Using a Clip

A neat little way to seal bags. It’s easy and works very well

Demolishing a Building One Story at a Time

Here’s an amazing video of a building being demolished by slowly lowering it to the ground and dismantling it one floor at a time.

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Do Gas Taxes Cover the Costs of Roads?

This article just barely scratches the surface of something I’d like to see a whole lot more about. They discus information released in Texas that reveals that gas taxes are not actually high enough to cover Texas’ expensive road system. I had the hunch that driving was subsidized by general taxes, but hadn’t seen any numbers. I’d love to see more on this.

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Lord of the Memes

David Brooks at the New York Times captures the changing state of intellectualism and taste: “prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever.” Nothing remotely groundbreaking, but this tongue-in-cheek article describes exactly what most prominent blogs have become.

NYC Bike Rack Design Competition

A jury including David Byrne is judging a competition to come up with a design for bike racks for New York City. The finalists are up and the winner is going to be announced in October.

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Smart Cookie

A cookie designed with a small indent for removing it from the package without breaking it. Pretty dang smart.

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Trading Places - The Demographic Inversion of the American City

This article from The New Republic examines what they call Demographic Inversion, a process allegedly occurring in some American Cities where affluent middle-classers from the suburbs are moving back into downtown urban environments, while poor inner-city minority populations are moving outside the city. I don’t think Houston is going to turn into Paris anytime soon, but the author cites Chicago as a prime example of a city where the process is already underway. I can definitely see signs of it here in my home of Montréal, where small urban condos are getting ever pricier, and formerly-working class inner-city neighborhoods are gentrifying like lightning.

Abandoned Pools

Walking Turcot Yards has a great link to a photo series of unused pools.

In the Thirties London’s outdoor lidos were at the peak of their popularity.

Gradually tastes have changed, resulting in a drop in attendances,

leaving the pools uneconomical to run.

Many fell into decay and many were demolished.

Only a handful of pools remain today as a symbol of a bygone era.

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Boing Boing TV Covers Long Now Clock

The Long Now Foundation is trying to build a clock which will run without human intervention for 10,000 years. It’s a marvelous and amazing piece of engineering. When visiting the Long Now in San Francisco, I tried to take photos of the prototypes of the various pieces, but low light left me with some grainy unusable photos. Thankfully, Boing Boing TV has a great piece about the various components of the clock, which I can attest were absolutely stunning.

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Reaction Ferry

A reaction ferry is a motor-less barge that is anchored to the shore by a rope or cable, and uses only the current of the river to move back and forth.They aren’t much in use anymore, but they exist in a few places.

It’s the Software, Not You

David Pogues little rant about usability is short, sweet, and hits a few marks well. I particularly liked the anecdote from the days when Palm was doing great usability:

Years ago, I read about a software designer at Palm named Rob Haitani. In designing the address-book program for the PalmPilot, he favored placing the “Add” button (to input a new person’s contact information) at the bottom of the tiny 160-pixel-square screen, but relegating the “Delete” command to a pull-down menu.

His fellow designers argued that those commands are equivalent, and should therefore be displayed with equal prominence. Haitani, however, disagreed. You add people to your address book all the time. But you delete people only rarely–when the die, move away or break up with you. So Add should be prominent, and Delete should be hidden to save screen space.

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Demake

Kokoromi’s Phil Fish coins the term “Demake” to denote a videogame sequel or spin-off which purposefully takes a step backwards on the evolutionary ladder, such as going from 3D to 2D. Includes some pretty great examples.

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GraphJam

There aren’t many things nerdier than looking at graphs for fun and entertainment. Via Flink.

OpenMoko Cellphone Interface Critique

The OpenMoko project is seen as a sort of open-source competitor to the iPhone. Unfortunately, however, it sounds as though the initial software is not at the high-level of design that the iPhone has reached. This is a video critique of some of the flaws, which I certainly hope they’ll fix.

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Too Weird for the Wire

An extremely bizarre story of african-american defendants in court cases calling for acquittal based on what they claim is the illegitimacy of the American Federal Government, a concept first put forward (unsuccessfully) by white supremacists.

“I am not a defendant,” Mitchell declared. “I do not have attorneys.” The court “lacks territorial jurisdiction over me,” he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the Federal Reserve.

Via Said the Gramophone

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New Mega Man 9 Cover

The cover for the upcoming Mega Man game is retro in the coolest way.

Fez’s Phil Fish on the Indie Games Industry

His comments on the “boiling ocean of shit” that is the mainstream games industry, given at the recent Interfaces Montréal summit. The designer of Indie-game Fez compares the cookie-cutter first-person shooters with great lower-fi fare like Rez, Katamari Damacy, and Ico. Via JiPé.

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6 Retarded Gas Saving Schemes

This is more for comedy than anything else. It’s amazing to see what people are actually trying to sell, and the lies they are willing to spout in order to do so.

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Seven Things You Need to Know About Ed Tufte

Anyone not familiar with Tufte’s work, and need a quick introduction, can read this to start. If you are interested in design you need to read his books, period.

World Changing on Worldwide Energy Policies

A report on renewable energy. Not for everyone, but has some information on Germany’s renewable energy program, one of the most extensive in the world:

Germany generates 14% of its energy needs–a total of 31,000 MW–from renewable energy. This share has increased 1 percent each year for the past decade.

In Germany the typical consumer pays $1.97 USD/month (1.25 Euros/month) to invest in the renewable energy infrastructure.

Just goes to show how renewable energy doesn’t have to be as expensive as some people think.

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Martha Cooper’s Vintage Hip Hop, Graffiti, and B-Boy Photos

The Current has a piece on the great photography work done by Martha in the 70’s and 80’s, before Hip Hop had gone mainstream.

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OE Cake Physics Engine Toy

It’s a simple drawing/physics program that lets you build whatever you want from the ingredients they give you (springs, elastics, water, gas, fire, etc. Shown at left is a kettle boiling water and turning a small windmill.

If you’re anything like me you will be able to spend hours at this.