And the ball was square…

10 02 2009

Amazing tag line for the online at pongmuseum.com. Check it out, it has a lot of cool stuff from the history of pong, including this awesome video of the original inventor Ralph Baer and his hardware chief Bill Harrison playing one of the earliest versions of the game.  That Ralph was a competitive little guy who you could tell is really proud of his game.  He should be. It looks fun to play, and would be cool to have a copy of now.  Read on the site to learn the history and find out why the ball was square.

pongmuseum1





Wedding Band?

25 11 2008

I’m always looking for cool design ideas, and this one is really awesome. Sakurako Shimizu is a conceptual jewelry designer and he came up with the idea of waveform jewlery.  First he records your voice saying something, which in the case of a wedding ring would be “I do”. Then he takes the graphical waveform of the audio and cuts it into the band itself, meaning you have the actual words on your finger all the time.  Really cool idea, and ripe for a remake.  Sweet!   Check out his site and link to the rings HERE.

idocopy





Awesome New TV Show…. Testees

4 11 2008

I have been watching this awesome show called Testees. It’s created by Kenny Holz who is one of the guys from Kenny vs. Spenny, which was a reality/doc show that had these two roommates trying to torment each other.  But besides that, this new show is HILARIOUS. If you watch It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the humor is along the same lines, and Testees airs right after that show on FX. The shows follows two lazy slobs who work as test subjects at a company called Testico (say it out loud…exactly).  Every week they test a new drug or product that completely messes them up.   It’s great. Watch the show, its amazing.  You can go to Hulu to watch them all.  Check the pilot episode HERE





Awesome Painting Technique

29 10 2008

Ok, ok. Yes, I stole this straight from Boing Boing.  If you don’t know of Boing Boing, then you need to go there NOW. It’s quite simply the best blog on Earth. WWW.BOINGBOING.NET There, now that that’s done… This painting technique was used by Emmanuel Guibert for his graphic novel Alan’s War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope. I have no idea if the novel is good or not, but check out this crazy video. It looks like he is drawing an image with a controlled water type pen and then he drips ink on it that runs only along the grooves made by the water.  Amazing, truly amazing.





Relive the Days of Beavis and Butthead with MTV Music

29 10 2008

MTV just released their new beta site called MTV Music.   Believe it or not, it is actually made up of music videos!  Remember those? They were weird videos that were made to be played on MTV back before MTV just aired The Hills, The Real World, and Run’s House 24/7.  Now you can watch all the awesome videos that have been on MTV.  It looks to be just about every single video they’ve ever aired, so it’s pretty darn cool.  You can even watch the one video Phish made for Down with Disease.  It’s amazingly awful, as are most of the videos.  Watch the videos, have fun, remember how goofy and unneccesary all of that stuff was.  Check it out HERE





Unfinished Swan…Painting Game with a Twist

29 10 2008

The Unfinished Swan is a crazy game that is totally unique in its design.  You are in a world that is totally white. No shadows, no other colors.  If you think about it, it’s just a white screen, so how the hell would you do anything in this game?  The answer… you have a paintball gun that shoots black paintballs.  You walk around shooting the walls and everything around you to expose the edges and shadows so that you can find your way around. Go to Ian Dallas’ website to check out more about it, but its pretty sweet if you ask me.  The link to it is HERE. Below is the YouTube video of the game being presented at the Tokyo Game Show, and HERE is a link to a Vimeo video that is higher quality and shows a little more of what you do.  (I can’t embed Vimeo videos just yet, sorry.)  It’s worth checking out, so do it. Now. I’m waiting.  That’s good.  Right there. Yeah.





Super Geeky Stories by the Geeks Who Lived Them

28 10 2008

Folklore.org is this cool site I found that tells all these geeky stories about the early development of the Mac.  These best part is that these stories are first hand accounts written by the actual people who worked for Apple at the time.  It’s an interesting look into the creation of Apple products and cool to see the characters that made up the company.  There are both positive and negative stories about the company, Steve Jobs, and the mission statement that drove everyone to create greatness.  Check it out HERE





Amish Craftsmanship

28 10 2008

I was watching an informercial last night about this thing called the Heat Surge.  It’s a standard room heater, but it comes in a nice wooden display case and it looks like a roaring fire. Nothing unusual about this…until they started talking about the Amish. That’s right, the cases are all handmade by the Amish.  Apparently the Amish are so proud of their work, they will guarantee this product for life!  Strange commerical about heaters and Amish.  And it was on in L.A., not really the cold weather capital that might need such heaters.  But at least I got to see some rocking beards!  No video of the commercial is online that I could find, but you could see those beards and read more about the Amish on their website.  HERE





The Japanese Think of Everything…

25 10 2008

MUST WATCH TV SHOW…but it’s only on the interweb in America. This is the Japanese Library show.  For some reason, six people sit down at a table and are given the title to the game they are about to play.  They then each grab one of six cards and flip them over. Whoever gets the X on their card loses and has to do the game. Did I say game? I meant some sort of weird torment.  Oh yeah, for some reason the whole thing takes place in a library and everyone has to be really quiet.  I don’t know why, but it makes it so much funnier to watch the contestants laugh at each other but try to hard to stay quiet.  My personal favorite?  Old Man Bites Tenderly.  And then, as if this show isn’t any weirder to my non-Japanese speaking mind, everyone sings karaoke at the end.  I couldn’t make this up if I tried.  Check it





Pop Up Goodness

23 10 2008

Yes, I’m a sucker. I saw a cool blog post on boingboing.net about a pop up book. And I bought it.  The Internet is evil. But awesome.  As is this pop up book. It’s a totally unique pop up book that just has all the letters of the alphabet. You can watch the video below and you won’t even need to buy the book. Or you can buy the book since it’s only like $16 on Amazon.  Either way, check it out, it’s pretty sweet.   Good gift for the kiddie in your life. Or the adult who acts like a kid (like me).