Bad Paintings of Barack Obama
July 16th, 2010
Someone has collected bad paintings of Barack Obama:
Possibly my favourite example
It’s a site that does exactly what it says on the tin!
Songsmith
July 16th, 2010
So Microsoft has been churning out lots of really crap stuff recently—as well as really good stuff like the ongoing work on IE9. But this post is about the crap stuff. A prime example is “Songsmith”, software that helps you create the most banal music based on how you’re singing.
We’re going to place Songsmith within the context of a big joke. First:
The Wind-Up
Then:
The Pitch
“Running with the Songsmith”, based upon the old Van Halen song. Seriously? That’s what it came up with to accompany the singing? I laughed until I cried.
You're Gonna Win!
July 2nd, 2010
Culled from my Facebook posts:
Back in the 1990s, Comedy Central did a series of fantastic interstitial ads called “Think Positive” with the Buddy Scott Trio. It was filled with the ironic 50s nostalgia that characterised so much of the US in the late 1990s.
The subject in each ad’s focus was always in a dire, impossible situation (my favourite was with the man on death row) and, when things seemed their darkest, the Buddy Scott Trio would strike up the song “You’re Gonna Win!”.
You’re gonna win
You’re gonna go
You’re head of the pack:
You’re king of the show!
You’re on the move
Straight to the top
You’re way out in front:
You’ll never stop!
You’re gonna win!
YOU’RE GONNA WIN!
This song is frequently in my head, particularly if something is going spectacularly wrong.
And the drummer: he is awesome.
The Successor to GTD
January 26th, 2010
It seems that GTD, that favourite of serial procrastinators, is being supplanted in people’s affections.
That should be reversed, so he could see it in a mirror.
Finally, a sentiment we can all get behind
January 25th, 2010
From the ever-fantastic Photoshop Disasters blog, someone from the Globe forgot to replace that trust standby placeholder text with the real content.
Republican Talking Point
July 6th, 2009
So Obama makes a speech at the University of Cairo (an excellent speech, in fact). You can always control what you say, but you can’t control who attends to your saying it:
Palestinian militants from the Popular Resistance Committee watch the televised speech of US President Barack Obama in Gaza City, Thursday, June 4, 2009.
Click on that link. You’ll not be sorry.
Separated at Birth: Respect!
June 16th, 2009
Well, I may like to dabble in the occasional Separated at Birth series, but Totally Looks Like has some particularly incredible juxtapositions:
Totally Looks Like nails the uncanny resemblance between Quentin Tarantino & Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley
Alas, poor Quentin. It’s been hard to take him seriously for a long time now, but this may be the final nail in the coffin.
Includes Reinventing the Wheel, Too (Probably)
June 12th, 2009
Could humans at any point in history, given the right information, construct an electronic communication network? To test this hypothesis, Substitute Materials will attempt to build a functional electric battery and telegraph switch from materials found in the wilderness, using no modern tools except information from the internet. The telegraph will be a first step towards an ahistorical internet.
What the author doesn’t say is that he’s doing this in the wilderness while wearing a business suit.
And that he couldn’t find any flint to make a good ax—he had to order it from the Internet.
I foresee much time spent reading this site.
When the Cliche is All You Have
June 12th, 2009
There are moments when I’m really happy not to live in the US any longer. This is one of them, because I simply know that if I lived & worked there, I’d have to make an eagle-based logo for a consulting company. Because, as I’m sure you’ve twigged, they’re keen-eyed consultants who know what’s what.
And not because they’re nearly extinct.
Best (Worst) Logo Ever
April 24th, 2009
Well, I do love logo design, but this one is unfortunate on so many levels. From the Shipment of Fail:
1973 Logo: The Catholic Church’s Archdiocese Youth Commission
How times have changed! Any priest holding this logo today would face some an angry throng of pitchfork-bearing laity.
A character of many (type)faces
March 6th, 2009
I recently Tumbld upon this somewhat festive oddity:
Each one is a single unicode character being rendered differently as indicated. The last one is Firefox on OSX.
This isn't really my area, but from what I saw in the markup I'm assuming it's different systems/browsers using different fonts.
As I quipped at the time, I'm surprised that Safari 4 (beta) does not look more like a slimmer relation of the Chrome snowman sporting a back-to-front baseball cap, neon mittens and disco snow.
Separated at Birth?
March 2nd, 2009
Fashionably late “a week is a year in politics” edition!
Erstwhile Presidential hopeful John McCain; and,
Erstwhile World Conqueror hopeful Dr Evil?
Bonus points for a video comparison between McCain’s acceptance speech at the RNC & Dr Evil’s reminiscences of his childhood.
Update: It’s already been done! Awesome (audio only):


