MetaFilter posts by jonson.
Displaying 151 through 200. Subscribe: http://www.metafilter.com/user/14271/postsrss 
40,000 bees. 7 Days. One Vase.
posted on Apr-24-07 at 10:26 PM
If you took the concept of a cat scratching post, and replaced "cat" with "Horny Dog" and "Scratching Post" with "Hollowed Out Fuckdoll," you'd have the Hotdoll.
posted on Apr-18-07 at 10:18 AM
$78 Million worth of Red Tape. An amazing (and lengthy) LA Times article that provides an extremely rare glimpse into the finances of a major motion picture, with a line item dissection of the $160 Million disaster Sahara. The items include $230,000+ for bribes to local officials, $2 Million for a 45 second plane crash sequence cut from the final film, and 3.8 Million to a total of 10 different screenwriters for a movie that eventually went on to be one of the largest (in pure dollar terms - not adjusted for inflation) financial disasters in film making history.
posted on Apr-16-07 at 5:38 PM
I hereby declare myself king of Monkey Kick-Off. With a score of 4750 Monkey Meters, I feel secure & confident that my reign will be a long & prosperous one.
posted on Apr-13-07 at 1:40 AM
Chaffee, White, Grissom & Freeman are the names of four artificial islands immediately off the Southern California port of Long Beach. From the shore, they each look like an inhabited island paradise, complete with waterfalls, interesting buildings, many palm trees and crazy nighttime party lighting. In fact, they are offshore oil wells, built on 10 acre Dubai-esque man-made islands created for the purpose of housing the oil wells, and disguised so as to comply with local aesthetic standards.
posted on Apr-11-07 at 6:41 PM
First Responder Training Sites. For police training purposes, in Southern California ten locations have been set up to look like "anytown, usa", where target practice & hostage situations are acted out. These areas are known in the industry as situation simulation villages, tactical training sites, or Hogan's Alleys (?). Emergency State is an online exhibit of over 200 photographs of these strange prop towns.
posted on Apr-9-07 at 10:34 AM
Civil War Posters, Soviet Children's Books, 19th Century Shipping Posters, and much, much more are all part of this Flickr user's amazing collection of printed ephemera.
posted on Mar-31-07 at 9:42 AM
In 1977 Chris Haynes, a set decorator for The Six Million Dollar Man was setting up a scene to be filmed on location in the spookhouse ride of a Long Beach, CA amusement park called The Pike. While moving the various interior props around, Haynes discovered that the paper mache "mummy" hanging in the corner of the ride was in fact a homicide victim, a fact that had gone unnoticed by years of amusement park visitors. The story of how Elmer McCurdy's body was shot to death in 1911, only to be re-discovered & buried over six decades later, makes for an interesting read.
posted on Mar-29-07 at 10:41 PM
The excellent Chinablog EastSouthWestNorth has a series of photos entitled "Humanizing China." The photos are grouped in three categories: Survival, Relationships & Desires and all three sections are highly worth checking out. Via.
posted on Mar-28-07 at 9:34 AM
Shorpy is an unusual photoblog; billed as "the 100-year-old photography blog," it focuses on found images from many, many decades gone by. Some favorites, so far.
posted on Mar-19-07 at 2:35 PM
Watchismo is a blog dedicated to portable timepieces, spotlighting the spectacularly beautiful (and spectacularly expensive), among the rare handcrafted artifacts such as this watch made from wood, or this one made from bone. [Via]
posted on Mar-15-07 at 4:01 PM
How could you make the TARDIS even cooler? First, strip away the whole "bigger on the inside than the out" part, and second, get rid of the ability to travel in space & time. Finally, add the ability to play every arcade videogame ever invented.
posted on Mar-13-07 at 11:28 PM
Welcome to Desktop Tower Defence Creeps will try and make their way from left to right (and, depending on difficulty setting, from top to bottom). Use money to purchase canons which you then position to force the creeps to route around while sustaining fire. Killing creeps generates more money, which allows the purchase and/or upgrade of canons, which come in useful as the creeps getting stronger/more resistant to fire as the game progresses.
posted on Mar-6-07 at 7:26 PM
Christel Assante carves eggshells into extraordinary pieces of art. SculptorRon Cheruka , who goes by the nickname "the egg man," also works in the medium of eggshell, but he is not quite as talented in my opinion, a Salieri to Assante's Mozart.
posted on Mar-4-07 at 10:36 PM
Don't click this link yet. Think about all 50 United States, and then, when you're ready, click the link. It goes to an ajaxified quiz page, with a timer set to 10 minutes which starts counting down on page load, and a form entry field where you start typing the names of the states. When you get one right it automatically moves to a spontaneously generating list at to the bottom of the page. If the ten minutes elapse & you fail to name all fifty, the ones that you missed are revealed. Okay, now go.
posted on Mar-2-07 at 1:30 PM
Steampunk Star Wars. An ongoing series of drawings by Eric Poulton of Star Wars characters redone in the style of Jules Verne era sci-fi. Sadly only three have been done, so far, but hopefully more to come. Via
posted on Mar-1-07 at 1:24 PM
Virus is a very simple, addictive flash game; using the colors available to you at the bottom of the screen, convert all the tiles on the board into a single color. Similar colored connecting tiles become part of the viral mass. Via.
posted on Feb-21-07 at 9:52 PM
The Castle in Front of the Cave is, unsurprisingly, a castle in Slovenia fully integrated with a cave system; built in several stages beginning in the 13th century, the castle serves as the front to a large network of caves in the side of a mountain. This excellent flickr photoset has plenty more detail about the castle's history, defense systems & more. For those who want more detail, a series of QTVR panoramic images of the insides of the castle available on this Slovenian site. Via.
posted on Feb-20-07 at 11:49 AM
Mr Fusion - coming soon. Startech Environmental Corporation's "Plasma Converter" works like "the big bang in reverse," creating nothing out of something. With the ability to break down any type of material (other than nuclear waste) into component molecules and and actually generate energy in the process, we may be at the twilight of the landfill industry. Via.
posted on Feb-17-07 at 7:22 AM
Sally Wallace creates highly detailed miniature dollhouses, including several from the Harry Potter films (Olivander's wand shop & Honeydukes, Hogwarts, The Stairs). Via. Warning, every single annoying web 0.9 trick in the book is employed somewhere on this site, including but not limited to: embedded midi files, that java fake reflecting water deal, virtual exploding fireworks, etc. ugh.
posted on Feb-10-07 at 11:33 PM
Tastespotting is a wonderful visual blog for food enthusiasts, by the makers of notcot.
posted on Feb-8-07 at 7:19 PM
The Gummy Bears pool on Flickr is more compelling than I first expected it to be.
posted on Feb-7-07 at 6:47 PM
Photos from Hiroshima in August of 1945. Long supressed by the occupying U.S. forces, a highly unsettling (and decidedly NSFW) collection of photos from the days immediately after August 6th. Via.
posted on Feb-6-07 at 6:41 PM
Welcome to the Zombie Preparedness Initiative.
posted on Feb-2-07 at 10:28 PM
The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello is a series of four gorgeous steampunk victorian silhouette animated shorts from Australia. The first link goes to a trailer for the films, all four full animations are available on a DVD via the official site (which is loads of fun to explore play around on), and the (Academy Award Nominated) first of the four shorts has been released on YouTube.
posted on Feb-1-07 at 11:35 AM
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q s t u v w x y z
via
posted on Jan-30-07 at 10:00 PM
Drops of milk splashing into coffee. The beauty of high shutter speed photography.
posted on Jan-29-07 at 10:28 AM
2000 pigs sacrifice to the deity General Chao of Wudeh temple.
posted on Jan-24-07 at 10:13 PM
Minimundus is an Austrian theme park with seemingly all the major architectural wonders of the world rendered in miniature; while their primary site is woefully low on imagery, here's three pages worth of photos of their better exhibits.
posted on Jan-23-07 at 3:40 PM
Aniboom bills itself as "the home of animation," a place to discover new up & coming artists online. Towards that end, they've sponsored a $50,000 competition for the best animation across five categories. The field has been narrowed to 25 finalists, and all 25 entries are online for viewing/voting here.
posted on Jan-22-07 at 3:31 PM
Le Grand Content (embedded QT) is a short film inspired by the (previously mentioned) awesome charts-as-life-descriptors blog Indexed (and in fact, found via that site). More on the project here.
posted on Jan-15-07 at 6:15 PM
GDP per square kilometer (jpg), via.
posted on Jan-13-07 at 7:33 PM
[HOW IS POOP MAKE?] :: The long way from food to poop is one of many pieces in the gallery of artist Carlo Giovani. A true multi-media artist, his work runs from digital art (like this incredible series of pieces on 70s films done as pinball machines) to infographics (such as the poop one linked above) to stop motion work (like this quicktime commercial for Brazillian potato chips), and even sculptures (from clothing, lego & even food) but the highlights for me are the papercraft figures & dioramas. warning - the site will try to hijack your browser window, albeit mildly; if this is unacceptable, consider yourself warned & skip the link.
posted on Jan-12-07 at 6:43 PM
The (previously mentioned) excellent webzine Polar Inertia has a great photo essay on Soviet Roadside Bus Stops. The crazy architecture & diversity are really interesting, as is the abject sparseness of territory around the stops. Via.
posted on Jan-11-07 at 4:04 PM
The Man Who Shook Up Vegas is a fascinating and relatively brief Wall St Journal article about Bob Stoll, a college dropout whose statistical wizardry seems to be forcing the $96 Billion U.S. sports wagering industry to jump through hoops. Even if you don't follow sports gambling at all, the article is a very compelling read. note: since the wsj.com is subscriber only, link goes to a reprint of the article.
posted on Jan-9-07 at 9:54 PM
Monkey Punch Dinosaur. Q: What's better than a giant monkey punching a dinosaur? A: A giant monkey punching THREE dinosaurs! Shortcut to the delightfulnesss. Via
posted on Jan-8-07 at 9:36 PM
761 Vintage Travel Labels fans of art deco & european pre-war design, look no further.
posted on Jan-7-07 at 3:29 PM
Animation collective Three Legged Legs' (previously) newest piece, Samurai (embedded quicktime here, High Def direct download here) is a really beautiful looking short cartoon in Japanese. Warning to those fearing advertising, the piece was sponsored by GE, although it shows no branding or GE messaging of any kind.) Via.
posted on Jan-6-07 at 12:32 PM
Steam Wars is the many decades long dream project of writer/illustrator Larry Blamire. Essentially the story of three soldiers set in a Victorian era war that features giant Jules Verneseque steam-powered mechrobots, the story has kicked around in Blamire's imagination since the 1970s. In an attempt to get the story made into a movie, he's put up a site with concept sketches, full color art & even faux memorabilia from the ficticious wars.
posted on Jan-3-07 at 10:19 PM
Undark and the Radium Girls is the fascinating true story of several female employees of the US Radium Corporation at the turn of the 20th Centry. The women were employed to paint radioactive "Undark", a glow-in-the-dark paint for military application (dials that needed to be seen at night, etc) onto the machinery. The women were given lethal amounts of paint & fine brushes, which they all routinely kept sharp by wetting the tips in their mouths. Twenty years later, as their jawbones disintegrated & the tumors began to spread, they started down the path to figuring out who had murdered them, and how.
posted on Jan-2-07 at 10:03 PM
This time-lapse video of an oil-painting being created by Pablo Picasso is brief, but captivating. The clip is a scene taken from the 1955 French documentary "The Mystery of Picasso," in which director Henri-Georges Clouzot filmed the artist painting 20 different pieces. Bizarrely enough, almost all the art created for the film had to be destroyed upon close of production due to contractual obligation. Via
posted on Jan-1-07 at 9:44 PM
Sandeep Makam is an advertising copywriter who lives in India - his Blog is called twenty-four, and it's devoted to displaying the most interesting global print advertising he runs across. A couple of my favorites so far include this Red Cross spot for the ongoing victims of Chernobyl (click on the images to get the full size), and this great bit of typographic fun. More favorites listed inside. Similar, previously.
posted on Dec-31-06 at 9:23 PM
"Tall-tale postcards emerged around the turn of the 20th century, when postcards came to function as surrogates for travel. People soon realized that postcards could be used to create or sustain a certain utopian myth about a town or region, and crafty photographers began to physically manipulate their photographs. Nowhere did these modified images, or "tall-tale postcards" as they came to be called, become more prevalent than in rural communities that hoped to forge an identity as places of agricultural abundance to encourage settlement and growth. Food sources specific to the region — vegetables, fruits, or fish — were the most common subjects."
posted on Dec-30-06 at 8:46 PM
Swedish artist Thomas Broomé's series "Modern Mantra" is a collection of 14 New Yorkeresque ink illustrations of scenes using the names of the objects being drawn as the illustration technique itself; it's complicated to describe, but the results are pretty compelling. Another exhibit worth checking out at the artist's homepage is the Coca-Locust gallery, a series of locusts made from Coca-Cola product logos worldwide.
posted on Dec-29-06 at 6:20 PM
Geostationary Banana Over Texas is an art intervention that involves placing a gigantic banana over the Texas sky. This object will float between the high atmosphere & Earth's low orbit, being visible only from the state of Texas & its surroundings. From the ground, the banana will be clearly recognizable and visible day & night; it will stay up for approximately one month.
posted on Dec-28-06 at 5:57 PM
Yet another interesting Flickr Photoset; this time pulpy covers from hard-boiled Men's Magazines for True Men, addressing the key issues of the day, like "Do college girls enjoy panty raids," and exposing the fabulous secrets of the Nazi love camps.
posted on Dec-27-06 at 4:06 PM
451 Postcards from World War I. Personal notes, propaganda, battle memorials, etc.
posted on Dec-26-06 at 7:53 AM
Merry Christmas, Metafilter! In the spirit of the holiday, my gift for the Radiohead fans among you is this entire Radiohead concert (Google Vid), a non-bootleg produced for MTV originally recording from the OK Computer tour back in 1997. For the non-Radiohead fans, my gift is that I forgive you your imperfections. And finally, for those who don't celebrate Christmas, my gift is that I made you a cookie... but then I eated it.
posted on Dec-24-06 at 11:59 PM
Patchbox is an easy & fun way to discover online visual artists you may not have otherwise known. Each artist submits only an 80 x 80 pixel thumbnail, and if you like what you see, a clickthrough takes you to their gallery/homepage. Found via.
posted on Dec-23-06 at 11:47 PM
The artists participating in Operation Fragmentation were given an unpainted vinyl doll (with a grenade shaped head) and an Army surplus ammo case and let loose to create what they wished. The results are really great, with the steampunk automoton, the peace dove & the explosive genie in a bottle being my three favorites.
posted on Dec-22-06 at 7:41 PM
posted on Apr-24-07 at 10:26 PM
If you took the concept of a cat scratching post, and replaced "cat" with "Horny Dog" and "Scratching Post" with "Hollowed Out Fuckdoll," you'd have the Hotdoll.
posted on Apr-18-07 at 10:18 AM
$78 Million worth of Red Tape. An amazing (and lengthy) LA Times article that provides an extremely rare glimpse into the finances of a major motion picture, with a line item dissection of the $160 Million disaster Sahara. The items include $230,000+ for bribes to local officials, $2 Million for a 45 second plane crash sequence cut from the final film, and 3.8 Million to a total of 10 different screenwriters for a movie that eventually went on to be one of the largest (in pure dollar terms - not adjusted for inflation) financial disasters in film making history.
posted on Apr-16-07 at 5:38 PM
I hereby declare myself king of Monkey Kick-Off. With a score of 4750 Monkey Meters, I feel secure & confident that my reign will be a long & prosperous one.
posted on Apr-13-07 at 1:40 AM
Chaffee, White, Grissom & Freeman are the names of four artificial islands immediately off the Southern California port of Long Beach. From the shore, they each look like an inhabited island paradise, complete with waterfalls, interesting buildings, many palm trees and crazy nighttime party lighting. In fact, they are offshore oil wells, built on 10 acre Dubai-esque man-made islands created for the purpose of housing the oil wells, and disguised so as to comply with local aesthetic standards.
posted on Apr-11-07 at 6:41 PM
First Responder Training Sites. For police training purposes, in Southern California ten locations have been set up to look like "anytown, usa", where target practice & hostage situations are acted out. These areas are known in the industry as situation simulation villages, tactical training sites, or Hogan's Alleys (?). Emergency State is an online exhibit of over 200 photographs of these strange prop towns.
posted on Apr-9-07 at 10:34 AM
Civil War Posters, Soviet Children's Books, 19th Century Shipping Posters, and much, much more are all part of this Flickr user's amazing collection of printed ephemera.
posted on Mar-31-07 at 9:42 AM
In 1977 Chris Haynes, a set decorator for The Six Million Dollar Man was setting up a scene to be filmed on location in the spookhouse ride of a Long Beach, CA amusement park called The Pike. While moving the various interior props around, Haynes discovered that the paper mache "mummy" hanging in the corner of the ride was in fact a homicide victim, a fact that had gone unnoticed by years of amusement park visitors. The story of how Elmer McCurdy's body was shot to death in 1911, only to be re-discovered & buried over six decades later, makes for an interesting read.
posted on Mar-29-07 at 10:41 PM
The excellent Chinablog EastSouthWestNorth has a series of photos entitled "Humanizing China." The photos are grouped in three categories: Survival, Relationships & Desires and all three sections are highly worth checking out. Via.
posted on Mar-28-07 at 9:34 AM
Shorpy is an unusual photoblog; billed as "the 100-year-old photography blog," it focuses on found images from many, many decades gone by. Some favorites, so far.
posted on Mar-19-07 at 2:35 PM
Watchismo is a blog dedicated to portable timepieces, spotlighting the spectacularly beautiful (and spectacularly expensive), among the rare handcrafted artifacts such as this watch made from wood, or this one made from bone. [Via]
posted on Mar-15-07 at 4:01 PM
How could you make the TARDIS even cooler? First, strip away the whole "bigger on the inside than the out" part, and second, get rid of the ability to travel in space & time. Finally, add the ability to play every arcade videogame ever invented.
posted on Mar-13-07 at 11:28 PM
Welcome to Desktop Tower Defence Creeps will try and make their way from left to right (and, depending on difficulty setting, from top to bottom). Use money to purchase canons which you then position to force the creeps to route around while sustaining fire. Killing creeps generates more money, which allows the purchase and/or upgrade of canons, which come in useful as the creeps getting stronger/more resistant to fire as the game progresses.
posted on Mar-6-07 at 7:26 PM
Christel Assante carves eggshells into extraordinary pieces of art. SculptorRon Cheruka , who goes by the nickname "the egg man," also works in the medium of eggshell, but he is not quite as talented in my opinion, a Salieri to Assante's Mozart.
posted on Mar-4-07 at 10:36 PM
Don't click this link yet. Think about all 50 United States, and then, when you're ready, click the link. It goes to an ajaxified quiz page, with a timer set to 10 minutes which starts counting down on page load, and a form entry field where you start typing the names of the states. When you get one right it automatically moves to a spontaneously generating list at to the bottom of the page. If the ten minutes elapse & you fail to name all fifty, the ones that you missed are revealed. Okay, now go.
posted on Mar-2-07 at 1:30 PM
Steampunk Star Wars. An ongoing series of drawings by Eric Poulton of Star Wars characters redone in the style of Jules Verne era sci-fi. Sadly only three have been done, so far, but hopefully more to come. Via
posted on Mar-1-07 at 1:24 PM
Virus is a very simple, addictive flash game; using the colors available to you at the bottom of the screen, convert all the tiles on the board into a single color. Similar colored connecting tiles become part of the viral mass. Via.
posted on Feb-21-07 at 9:52 PM
The Castle in Front of the Cave is, unsurprisingly, a castle in Slovenia fully integrated with a cave system; built in several stages beginning in the 13th century, the castle serves as the front to a large network of caves in the side of a mountain. This excellent flickr photoset has plenty more detail about the castle's history, defense systems & more. For those who want more detail, a series of QTVR panoramic images of the insides of the castle available on this Slovenian site. Via.
posted on Feb-20-07 at 11:49 AM
Mr Fusion - coming soon. Startech Environmental Corporation's "Plasma Converter" works like "the big bang in reverse," creating nothing out of something. With the ability to break down any type of material (other than nuclear waste) into component molecules and and actually generate energy in the process, we may be at the twilight of the landfill industry. Via.
posted on Feb-17-07 at 7:22 AM
Sally Wallace creates highly detailed miniature dollhouses, including several from the Harry Potter films (Olivander's wand shop & Honeydukes, Hogwarts, The Stairs). Via. Warning, every single annoying web 0.9 trick in the book is employed somewhere on this site, including but not limited to: embedded midi files, that java fake reflecting water deal, virtual exploding fireworks, etc. ugh.
posted on Feb-10-07 at 11:33 PM
Tastespotting is a wonderful visual blog for food enthusiasts, by the makers of notcot.
posted on Feb-8-07 at 7:19 PM
The Gummy Bears pool on Flickr is more compelling than I first expected it to be.
posted on Feb-7-07 at 6:47 PM
Photos from Hiroshima in August of 1945. Long supressed by the occupying U.S. forces, a highly unsettling (and decidedly NSFW) collection of photos from the days immediately after August 6th. Via.
posted on Feb-6-07 at 6:41 PM
Welcome to the Zombie Preparedness Initiative.
posted on Feb-2-07 at 10:28 PM
The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello is a series of four gorgeous steampunk victorian silhouette animated shorts from Australia. The first link goes to a trailer for the films, all four full animations are available on a DVD via the official site (which is loads of fun to explore play around on), and the (Academy Award Nominated) first of the four shorts has been released on YouTube.
posted on Feb-1-07 at 11:35 AM
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q s t u v w x y z
via
posted on Jan-30-07 at 10:00 PM
Drops of milk splashing into coffee. The beauty of high shutter speed photography.
posted on Jan-29-07 at 10:28 AM
2000 pigs sacrifice to the deity General Chao of Wudeh temple.
posted on Jan-24-07 at 10:13 PM
Minimundus is an Austrian theme park with seemingly all the major architectural wonders of the world rendered in miniature; while their primary site is woefully low on imagery, here's three pages worth of photos of their better exhibits.
posted on Jan-23-07 at 3:40 PM
Aniboom bills itself as "the home of animation," a place to discover new up & coming artists online. Towards that end, they've sponsored a $50,000 competition for the best animation across five categories. The field has been narrowed to 25 finalists, and all 25 entries are online for viewing/voting here.
posted on Jan-22-07 at 3:31 PM
Le Grand Content (embedded QT) is a short film inspired by the (previously mentioned) awesome charts-as-life-descriptors blog Indexed (and in fact, found via that site). More on the project here.
posted on Jan-15-07 at 6:15 PM
GDP per square kilometer (jpg), via.
posted on Jan-13-07 at 7:33 PM
[HOW IS POOP MAKE?] :: The long way from food to poop is one of many pieces in the gallery of artist Carlo Giovani. A true multi-media artist, his work runs from digital art (like this incredible series of pieces on 70s films done as pinball machines) to infographics (such as the poop one linked above) to stop motion work (like this quicktime commercial for Brazillian potato chips), and even sculptures (from clothing, lego & even food) but the highlights for me are the papercraft figures & dioramas. warning - the site will try to hijack your browser window, albeit mildly; if this is unacceptable, consider yourself warned & skip the link.
posted on Jan-12-07 at 6:43 PM
The (previously mentioned) excellent webzine Polar Inertia has a great photo essay on Soviet Roadside Bus Stops. The crazy architecture & diversity are really interesting, as is the abject sparseness of territory around the stops. Via.
posted on Jan-11-07 at 4:04 PM
The Man Who Shook Up Vegas is a fascinating and relatively brief Wall St Journal article about Bob Stoll, a college dropout whose statistical wizardry seems to be forcing the $96 Billion U.S. sports wagering industry to jump through hoops. Even if you don't follow sports gambling at all, the article is a very compelling read. note: since the wsj.com is subscriber only, link goes to a reprint of the article.
posted on Jan-9-07 at 9:54 PM
Monkey Punch Dinosaur. Q: What's better than a giant monkey punching a dinosaur? A: A giant monkey punching THREE dinosaurs! Shortcut to the delightfulnesss. Via
posted on Jan-8-07 at 9:36 PM
761 Vintage Travel Labels fans of art deco & european pre-war design, look no further.
posted on Jan-7-07 at 3:29 PM
Animation collective Three Legged Legs' (previously) newest piece, Samurai (embedded quicktime here, High Def direct download here) is a really beautiful looking short cartoon in Japanese. Warning to those fearing advertising, the piece was sponsored by GE, although it shows no branding or GE messaging of any kind.) Via.
posted on Jan-6-07 at 12:32 PM
Steam Wars is the many decades long dream project of writer/illustrator Larry Blamire. Essentially the story of three soldiers set in a Victorian era war that features giant Jules Verneseque steam-powered mechrobots, the story has kicked around in Blamire's imagination since the 1970s. In an attempt to get the story made into a movie, he's put up a site with concept sketches, full color art & even faux memorabilia from the ficticious wars.
posted on Jan-3-07 at 10:19 PM
Undark and the Radium Girls is the fascinating true story of several female employees of the US Radium Corporation at the turn of the 20th Centry. The women were employed to paint radioactive "Undark", a glow-in-the-dark paint for military application (dials that needed to be seen at night, etc) onto the machinery. The women were given lethal amounts of paint & fine brushes, which they all routinely kept sharp by wetting the tips in their mouths. Twenty years later, as their jawbones disintegrated & the tumors began to spread, they started down the path to figuring out who had murdered them, and how.
posted on Jan-2-07 at 10:03 PM
This time-lapse video of an oil-painting being created by Pablo Picasso is brief, but captivating. The clip is a scene taken from the 1955 French documentary "The Mystery of Picasso," in which director Henri-Georges Clouzot filmed the artist painting 20 different pieces. Bizarrely enough, almost all the art created for the film had to be destroyed upon close of production due to contractual obligation. Via
posted on Jan-1-07 at 9:44 PM
Sandeep Makam is an advertising copywriter who lives in India - his Blog is called twenty-four, and it's devoted to displaying the most interesting global print advertising he runs across. A couple of my favorites so far include this Red Cross spot for the ongoing victims of Chernobyl (click on the images to get the full size), and this great bit of typographic fun. More favorites listed inside. Similar, previously.
posted on Dec-31-06 at 9:23 PM
"Tall-tale postcards emerged around the turn of the 20th century, when postcards came to function as surrogates for travel. People soon realized that postcards could be used to create or sustain a certain utopian myth about a town or region, and crafty photographers began to physically manipulate their photographs. Nowhere did these modified images, or "tall-tale postcards" as they came to be called, become more prevalent than in rural communities that hoped to forge an identity as places of agricultural abundance to encourage settlement and growth. Food sources specific to the region — vegetables, fruits, or fish — were the most common subjects."
posted on Dec-30-06 at 8:46 PM
Swedish artist Thomas Broomé's series "Modern Mantra" is a collection of 14 New Yorkeresque ink illustrations of scenes using the names of the objects being drawn as the illustration technique itself; it's complicated to describe, but the results are pretty compelling. Another exhibit worth checking out at the artist's homepage is the Coca-Locust gallery, a series of locusts made from Coca-Cola product logos worldwide.
posted on Dec-29-06 at 6:20 PM
Geostationary Banana Over Texas is an art intervention that involves placing a gigantic banana over the Texas sky. This object will float between the high atmosphere & Earth's low orbit, being visible only from the state of Texas & its surroundings. From the ground, the banana will be clearly recognizable and visible day & night; it will stay up for approximately one month.
posted on Dec-28-06 at 5:57 PM
Yet another interesting Flickr Photoset; this time pulpy covers from hard-boiled Men's Magazines for True Men, addressing the key issues of the day, like "Do college girls enjoy panty raids," and exposing the fabulous secrets of the Nazi love camps.
posted on Dec-27-06 at 4:06 PM
451 Postcards from World War I. Personal notes, propaganda, battle memorials, etc.
posted on Dec-26-06 at 7:53 AM
Merry Christmas, Metafilter! In the spirit of the holiday, my gift for the Radiohead fans among you is this entire Radiohead concert (Google Vid), a non-bootleg produced for MTV originally recording from the OK Computer tour back in 1997. For the non-Radiohead fans, my gift is that I forgive you your imperfections. And finally, for those who don't celebrate Christmas, my gift is that I made you a cookie... but then I eated it.
posted on Dec-24-06 at 11:59 PM
Patchbox is an easy & fun way to discover online visual artists you may not have otherwise known. Each artist submits only an 80 x 80 pixel thumbnail, and if you like what you see, a clickthrough takes you to their gallery/homepage. Found via.
posted on Dec-23-06 at 11:47 PM
The artists participating in Operation Fragmentation were given an unpainted vinyl doll (with a grenade shaped head) and an Army surplus ammo case and let loose to create what they wished. The results are really great, with the steampunk automoton, the peace dove & the explosive genie in a bottle being my three favorites.
posted on Dec-22-06 at 7:41 PM
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