zodomatica

Barbie Girl in a Barbie World

This little video is just... bizaar. But fun. Warning: contains barbie doll parts and rock music. ;-)

Food rescue in the Lower Mainland

If you're like me, maybe you walk by the homeless with a bit of a knot in your stomach, not sure how to help. One thing you could do is give your time or resources to Quest Outreach Society.

Quest rescues food from being sent to the landfills and redistributes it to those in need. They rescue 236 tonnes of food every month to serve over 45,000 people. All this rescued food translates to a reduction of nearly 270 metric tonnes of co2 per month that would have been produced if it were sent to the landfill.

Processing that much food takes a lot of work, space, and equipment. Here's their current wishlist. They will give tax receipts for new or used items.

• commercial kitchen grade vegetable peeler/slicer


• convection oven


• commercial coffee grinder


• hand-pump pallet jack


• cardboard bailer


• bug zapper lights


• 20' ladder


• 3-tonne trucks (c'mon, I know you have a spare one kicking around!)


• racking for their cooler


• bread racking and storage shelf


• digital camera


• sturdy & powerful canister vacuum


• projector


• software: Adobe CS


• Windows NT Server


• color laser printer

Beautiful Logo

I think this logo by Ryan Ford, for the Collaborative Conservation Network, is perhaps the most beautiful logo I've ever seen. (I would link to it on his website but the site's all in flash so every page has the same URL. *sigh*)

Fastest thing on four wheels?

The Ariel Atom looks like so much fun. Check out how distorted this guy's face is. Funnier to watch it in action. He's got a good sense of humor too.

Interesting sites by the interesting people I work with

I figured there were a lot of folks on my web team at work who, whaddaya know, maintain personal sites. So I asked them to send them to me, and here it is. A list of websites by the great folks I work with:

• Bill Stilwell is a master of code who has gotten me out of so many binds when I get in over my pseudo-geek head. He has a blog marginalia.org and a flickr page (do you call it a page when it's so much more?)


• Braden Hoeppner is passionate about optimizing business value and the user experience by leveraging metrics info. Plus, he has cool hair.


• Bill Wren is a writer/editor on our team. Writes so much he has a few websites! He asked me to list this one: WriteLife


• Briana is a new and welcome addition to the team who I'm still getting to know. She has Breebop and a flickr page

Did I miss anyone?

Pick a ball, any ball

...and watch it's path. Enjoy this goofy little time waster. You needed to waste some time, right? That's why you're here, isn't it? :-) (via Eyes on Creativity)

Amazing juggler

Chris Bliss must have been a very hyper child. Watch him juggle to Beatles. (Via BrainFuel.)

Art by Number - Generating Dynamic Art with Flash®

Presented by Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH:

A session on Generative Art with Jeremy Thorp of Blprnt.com and Gary Stasiuk of Liquidjourney.com.

Wednesday March 29, 2006 at 7:30 PM

Vancouver Film School
420 Homer St. (corner West Hastings)
Members: free / Non-members: $5.00

Register online.

Some of those experimental works are freakin cool.

Advertising 2.0

If you're tired of the Web 2.0 buzz, maybe Advertising 2.0 is of interest. Paul Beelen talks about the effect of the shifting media landscape on the role of advertising and ad agencies in this paper. (He wrote the original in Spanish, you'll notice "mayor" where he means "major".)

The crux of it really is this:

Instead of fake, artificial commercial messages people can now get real life comments from peers on anything they want.

I don't completely agree with all of his perspective. He says the creation of the brand will always be the role of advertising, and refers to some blogosphere critique as 'damage' to a brand. I think brand creation is much more multi-faceted than advertising - especially in a world over-saturated with media. Brands are created in every interaction your customers have with your employees, your product, your web site, etc.

I also found this interesting:

But it is not only print media that is suffering. One of the world’s most popular videocasts is called Rocketboom, a show that is made for about US$20 and reaches about 120.000 viewers daily. The show is available through Apple’s iTunes and other Videocast directories. Of course, it is delivered through RSS which means people can subscribe to it and receive the show automatically every day, on their PC or on their iPod Video. December 2005, TiVo signed a deal with Rocketboom to start offering the show on TiVo boxes as well. This means all TiVo users can now record Rocketboom on their digital video recorder, just as they would record a ‘normal’ television show. Now, the twenty dollar rocketboom show competes directly with shows broadcast by CNN, Universal and Fox. Media democratization at its best. Rocketboom recently sold one week of ads at US$ 40,000 in an online auction. (emphasis mine)

With margins like that, maybe I should be in the micro-media publishing business...

Jason McElwin's Big Moment

This video is amazing. Autistic teen Jason McElwin helped to coach his school basketball team for years. In the last game of his final year, his coach let him play. Full story at CBS. (Warning: tear-jerker...)

Old posts

You might notice old posts are closed for comments. I've been closing them whenever the spammers bring them to my attention.

If I was supersticious, I might think the spammers are trying to tell me something. Recently spammed posts have been about "carpe diem" and life being too short. Like this one and this one. Hmm...

Why would anyone think the word "Pimp" is cool?

I was just reading a very constructive, useful discussion about styles of portfolios and resumes (online, PDF, etc.) on the IxDA Discuss List. An otherwise useful contribution contained this:

I find that a website w/ portfolio is very useful to the whole pimping-oneself process.

It makes me cringe when I hear the word "pimp" used for things like this. "Pimp your ride" is even worse. Let's face facts, people. Pimps are evil parasites that prey on the weak. OK, so that's more opinion than fact. But it is true that the definition of pimp is One who finds customers for a prostitute; a procurer.

I'm not generally a language purist. But I think this is one of those words that should just stay way out of the realm of "cool".

Update: closed for comments. Spammers are evil.

Well Whaddaya Know

Since by and large the comments I get are from spammers, and since most friends never mention they've been on my site, I figure I'm often just talking to myself here. Easy to think that if you never check your stats. :)

So I took a look for a change. Seems somebody's visiting...

Who are all of you, and what brought you here?

Seth Godin: Marketing is Storytelling

Seth Godin, marketing guru, spoke recently at Google. They've put a video of his lecture online. 48 minutes but worth it - he's very engaging.

If video isn't for you, a lot of the ideas he talked about seem to be in this eBook: Flipping the Funnel.

Threadless

I just discovered Threadless. This is a brilliant use of the web for a commercial venture. They've gotten people excited and connected in a community built around their product, in fact, the community designs the products.
When I first found Cafe Press ages ago I thought that was pretty cool. But this just takes it to a whole other, exciting level. These folks clearly understand the power of social networks.

Cool Art stuff

Webesteem Art & Design Magazine has this cool art by Jessica Joslin. (See also Jessica's site.)

Thanks to Suzanne G I also found Toyky Plastic, creators of this great musical pooch and Opera Dude. This is one of the rare times you'll see me highlight a link to a flash site... though you'll notice I didn't link to Opera Dude because it's not easy to find the url the way they've built it.

I didn't promise to mention a flash site without throwing in a bit of a rant, now did I? ;-)

Blendie

Kelly Dobson at the MIT Media lab created Blendie. The video is hilarious. I think Blendie could be strangely cathartic.

I wonder, is a good sense of humor a requirement at MIT?

Update: Closed for comments.

I am fascinated...

...by the strange things you can find on craigslist, like this guy's homepage with a purpose, and activist-type postings.