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Australian director and writer Darren Price has created a beautiful short animated film about a Russian bear that loves vodka. Potapych, as the film (and the bear) is called is inspired by true events.
More info on the bear from Pravda online and on the film here
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We thought we would never link to any story from Pravda but this one is about a bear and has nothing to do with politics….
Every year the magazine New Yorker provides us with one of their excellent cover pages for Thanksgiving. This year they have decided to top that. Chris Ware drew four different covers plus a comic page for the 2006 Thanksgiving issue and all of them are just great.
There is also a five minute interview online with Chris Ware discussing his cover work.
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There are many so called weird site lists or directories on the web. Most of them when we had a closer look are rather lame, historic or just point to some picture sites. So we did our own.
And we found many interactive, crazy, wacky, nonsense sites that are fun to watch (and are not on these lists). Have a try.
screenshots and links after the jump
Many identify Africa with less-developed countries, disease and war ridden. They think of words like poverty, malnutrition and corruption. Others romanticize it and talk about her beauty and nature. Or they just see an enormous profit to be made from her natural resources like diamonds, gold, oil and minerals.
There are many stereotypes or clichés used (see our earlier post on this) - but what almost all forget is the sheer size of that continent that will never allow one-size-fits-all approaches.
The map below provides a better understanding of the size by overlaying it with some of the largest countries in the world and whole continents.
Canadian agency john st. has come up with a great advertising idea for divorce lawyers.
A business card perforated in the middle - see the picture
Over the years most of us have gathered at least two printers at home and some of us got quite a collection of them.
Latest since prices have drop so much it often does financially make no sense to get that old boy going again.
And with that new printer you have it’s most unlikely that you would go back to half the resolution of the old one. So it’s collecting dust in your closet since quite some time - but what to do with it?
Our three suggestions to you:
1. Get rid of it - meaning bringing it over to the nearest recycling center
2. You could clean it up and get it back running and give it to charity
3. You can turn it into something else
I guess for option one you don’t need any further tips or advise from us, that’s something you did know since long. But for the other two options we would like to point you to some step by step instructions over at the great Make: Blog. Both obviously will only work if you have some tools and enjoy taking things apart. If your printer is still within the warranty period you might think about these steps twice as they most likely void the warranty.
(A) Cleaning and getting your printer back running:
HOW TO - Clean a dirty old printer
Instructables: Clean Old Deskjet
(B) Turn it into something else:
DIY: Strip an inkjet printer for parts
Old printer = bread box
There are lots of pictures, step by step instructions and further information at these links. Below the picture of an old ink jet turned into a bread box. Some have created other things from their printers (it of course depends on the model). You can also just take it apart for fun to see whats inside if its not working anymore and you want to dump it anyway.
Please be advised that some printers have sharp edges inside that could cause injuries. And ink stains have a tendency to last on your most loved shirt for very, very long…
Besides that, have fun and enjoy doing something.
Click on the image for the jump
British designer Tim Parson has created a glass version of his well known Half Pint Mug design. The Half Pint Mug created as a Royal College of Art project, has two walls so the outside never gets very hot. The profile of the mugs and glasses is borrowed from the standard British pint glass, known as nonic.
The Half Pint design glasses and mugs are available through Innermost and online from Firebox for about GBP 10 (mug) and GBP 14 (glass) the twin-pack.
More information on Tim Parsons projects and design at his web site.
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An incident happened last night on the UCLA campus when, as reported, a student was shot down with a taser gun multiple times by University Police officers for not showing them his ID immediately. There is a full report of the incident at the Daily Bruin web site.
Multiple students documented the incident with their video phones and cameras. The video (link below) was taken off the site as seemingly to many people where watching it and the web site stopped running. It’s now on YouTube.
A link to the statement from the UCLA Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams has been put onto the front page of the UCLA official web site. The statement only mentions that the incident is now being investigated.
click on the image for the jump (multimedia)
Some (subjective) notes from our side:
A few things are quite astounding when you watch (the little you can see) on the published video.
1. The whole area is full of students and the only thing the most of them do is watching or taking pictures.
2. It takes more then 5 min in the video until some of the other students finally start acting and trying to help or stop the activities of the “University Police”. The report provided by “Daily Bruin” quotes some of them telling that they then were as well threatened by the “officers” with tasers.
3. We identified at least 3 times within the 6 minutes of the video that the security personnel must have used tasers against the student (who most of the time was lying on the ground). Given the body volume of the student as shown in the movie this not only would be considered as excessive use of force (with following disciplinary plus legal actions) for “normal” police officers, depending on the type of tasers used this can be fatal (and has been in the past) for the “victim”.
4. The “officers” are using two of the oldest tricks to cover themselves - (a) don’t attack us; the person lying on the ground in pain after being tasered is physical not able to do this; - (b) stand up; after being “treated” a few times with high voltage that’s the last the person can do - you see two of the “officers” carrying him around in the video.
Even when taking into consideration that the officers themselves might have felt that they are “loosing authority” when faced with a crowd of more and more students becoming interested and surrounding - at no point there was reason to use force at such level. The use of (excessive) force in such a situation - if there would have been a threat to the officers from the crowd what seemingly never was the case - would have just had the opposite effect and to our knowledge police officers are trained to de-escalate in such situations…
We hope that the “management” of the UCLA is not just trying to brush the whole matter under the carpet. By only watching this video there are many points of action to be taken. We would suggest to start with looking into who your stakeholders are …
Post scriptum: It is completely untrue that students at UCLA from now on will have to wear orange jump suits and shackles when entering the computer lab during night hours.
If you like great animation clips, good advertisements or short films head over to
Rokkit. It is actually a well known agency in London but they have dozens of high quality videos online. Try out our suggestions below or go to their director page for a start.
There is one you absolutely must see - the video for Zero 7 (Crosses) - It is just outstanding.
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Direct links to the clips in the image:
Humans
Madonna “Get Together”
Zero 7 (Crosses)
Hewlett Packard “Pharell”
Some more suggestions:
Beck “Girl”
Cathedral
(a bit weird) Ricochet
