Category Archives: fun links

animated boinking on furniture

Matt wrote the most hysterical entry about Brazilian furniture store Tok&Stok’s furniture selection interface which focuses on how you can have sex on various furniture items. Not only can you choose pre-selected positions, you can create your own sexual favorite and animate it (complete with hearts).

Presumably they created their Valentines Book of Styles after receiving too much icky returned merchandise or witnessing too many unmentionable incidents on floor demos. “Try before you buy”? Not so much. “Um, yeah, Union of the Tiger isn’t compatible with these arm rests. Oh, sorry if the cushions are stuck together.” — Matt

The humor in this overrides the heteronormativity that Matt rightfully points out. (Ah, fellow Brownies…)

off to see the wizard

It’s that time of the year. The time when my city drains itself of bottled water, rebar and fuzzy furry items and heads off to create an alternate reality in the desert. As a self-diagnosed workaholic, i love Burning Man because it’s a guaranteed opportunity to goof around with my friends in 10 days of prescribed play time. Plus, i get to wear ridiculous items and build dome-like things. I haven’t seen much of my friends lately so the opportunity to see them in the desert is just heavenly.

I will be camping with False Profit. My previous camp (Monkey vs. Robot) was acquired by False Profit:

For the first time ever, False Profit will have a corporate presence at Burningman in 2005. The rampant success of the Monkey vs Robot venture in 2003 and 2004 proves that this emerging market is ready for the cultural advancements and life-quality enhancements pioneered by FP here in SF. Be on the lookout for exciting new products and services brought to you by False Profit on the playa this year, with Zero Percent Financial Return Guaranteed as always.

Expect to see corporate branding, tree-grown money and perhaps a few exploding market bubbles.

I will be offline until September 6, locatable only in dust. I suspect it will take me a while to get back to email. If there are any emergencies, call my mom.

Ambidextrous Magazine

I just received the first issue of Ambidextrous Magazine:

Ambidextrous Magazine is the design journal of the nascent Stanford d.school. It is a magazine for the wider design community, which includes engineers and ethnographers, psychologists and philosophers. Rather than focusing on promoting product, Ambidextrous exposes the people and processes involved in design.

Ambidextrous is a forum for the cross-disciplinary, cross-market community of people with an academic, professional and personal interest in design. The magazine is geared toward high subscriber participation and interaction. It is expressly designed to be informal, irreverent, and fun to read.

It’s a fanstastic complement to the O’Reilly Make. Instead of focusing on how to make things, it focuses on the design of things (with a science/tech emphasis). The first issue covers everything from vibrating razors to Graffiti Archaeology, HCI sketches to a review of Gladwell’s “Blink” for the design community. If you’re interested in design/tech, definitely check it out!

reshelving project

I love Jane. She just announced The Ministry of Reshelving and she wants your help:

How to Serve the Ministry of Reshelving

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print “This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving” bookmarks and “All copies of 1984 have been relocated” notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell’s 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as “Fiction” or “Literature.”

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as “Current Events”, “Politics”, “History”, “True Crime”, or “New Non-Fiction.”

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

6. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate them.

7. Please report all reshelving efforts to the Ministry. Email your store name, location, # of 1984 copies reshelved, and any other reshelving activities conducted, to reshelving @ avantgame.com. Photos of your mission can be uploaded to Flickr, tagged as “reshelving”, and submitted to the Ministry of Reshelving group.

dr. toast : oz so late – music to chill to

In prep for vacation, i’ve been organizing my iPod. I went through the hellish process of creating genres for everything and generating Playlists. One of my favorite genres – psychill – was sadly lacking. It’s the genre that i listen to the most because it’s ideal calm music to work to. Yet, i only had three artists there – bluetech, Shpongle and dr. toast. Part of the problem is that i honestly don’t know what else belongs in this genre.

So, i approached Toast to ask for good things in his genre and, bless his heart, he made me a mix of vacation music to chill by. In return, i wanted to do a shout-out for anyone who’s looking for good music to chill or work to. His album oz so late is just beautiful and i’ve listened to it perpetually since it came out. Click here for some song samples.

Rent a German

Drop in by a German by chance will surprise your friends, neighbours or family. During Shopping, at a bar, nighclub or at home. They will be impressed.

Here’s a site where you can Rent-A-German for various needs: business, family, holiday.

David U., 82 (Denver):
I hadn’t seen a German since my time in World War II. I cried, it was such an emotional experience. We ate “Heidelberger Bergklosse” together every evening and have been writing each other once a month since he left. He’s become a real friend to me.