For my final blog post, I am going to leave you with a very interesting website that highly surrounds design, much more so than the other websites I have discussed. The Movie Title Stills Collection gives you pretty much what it says it does, a collection of movie title stills. It's like a trip down memory lane for movies dating back all the way to the 1920's. While this might seem a bit boring to some people, the website has actually added the functionality to be able to compare the movie title of a certain film with the title found in the trailer/poster of the film. This comparison is often times quite enlightening as to the difference in the generational promotion of a film in the previews versus the actual film itself. Some commentary is even provided by the websites author as to the differences in design, although I don't think the person really grasps the significance in why the designs of titles are different in the trailer or poster than in the film itself, because they keep insisting that it should be the same throughout. At the very least, it is quite interesting to see the different designs for movie titles and previews over the vast generations of filmmaking. It does prove one thing though, that since the 1920's, design of film in general has come quite a long way to arrive at the state it is in today. We should all appreciate websites like these that visually point out how design has really changed over the last century. So with that, I leave you and I leave this blog to sit and age itself. One thing for sure is that 100 years from now, while the style of design may have completely changed from what I have discussed here, the core elements of design will always stay the same.

Thanks for reading!

As my blog comes to a close, I thought I might point you to another one that is about a thousand times better. It's simply called, WTF Comcast. I'm sure we all know how much comcast sucks about now, but this blog has managed to highlight the one possibly redeemably genius quality of the company- original movie summaries. Like the brilliant summary you see above, the entire blog is just composed of pictures like these that will always be even more clever than the one that precedes it. You've got to wonder who writes these things, but you know that they intentionally put their own little spin or design to make it interesting. This is the exact kind of thing that make companies intriguing to me. Unfortunately, comcast is already such a bad company that even a genius idea like this could not save them. Hence, the blog is accurately named what we have all exclaimed, WTF Comcast.

I'm sure many of you have either heard of or played fantasy football. Well, this is better. It is basically just fantasy football except the football is a theater and the coach is you. Like it says you manage a theater where you predict the box office by submitting how many virtual screens you want to show a movie. Each week you get like 7 screens, so you have to choose wisely and know the trends of the box office. So with the more points you gain you move up from the bottom division to fight your way to the top where there are prizes awaiting first place. There have been other websites like this such as Movie Mogul, but Flick Picks has drawn me in in a way that none of the others have. I think this is probably because of the design itself, the smoothness of a websites design is usually what draws me to a website in the first place and this is no exception. They have set it up to where you easily see the rankings, score for the week, and a nice place to pick your screens for the week where is lets you look at the IMDB page within the website. I must brag a little bit that I am ranked 68th overall and am #1 in my division which is the second to best. Overall, the website and design are very intriguing to me, which is why I keep coming back every week to play. It hasn't gotten boring to me, which is the sign of a good design in my book.

Living in a world almost completely dominated by google, it is tough to seriously consider any other search engine out there. It is clear that google has beat yahoo, bing, msn, and any other company like it. However, there is one company I think that they have yet to surpass, and that is Wolfram Alpha. We have all dreamed about a search engine that you can simply just type in your question and it gives you a straight forward and correct answer, even though they boasted this capability this obviously did not come with Ask Jeeves, but it has become a reality with Wolfram. It couldn't be more correct in stating that it is a computational knowledge search engine because you can literally type in any question and it will give you an answer, without having to look through a bunch of of worthless search results. Just as amazingly, if you type in any subject, it will immediately give you the lowdown on whatever you desire. Type in "Apple" and it assumes the most popular result, Apple computer, so it gives you the stock results and other various information. Not to worry though, if you were looking for the fruit apple, it anticipates such and places links to varying compounding subjects at the top of the current results. Needless to say, the design for something as complex as this would be extremely mind numbing to really understand, but they have managed to wrap into such a delightfully simple package like that of google. I have been following this company even before the engine it was released as a beta as my biggest complaint is just that more people don't know about it. It's kind of this hidden gold mine on the internet that absolutely no one knows about, but hopefully they get the word out to more people soon enough. Straight forward answers? That is something that Google just can't compete with.

Ok, so I know that what I am about to talk about isn't really a website, but it was just too amazing to pass up talking about it. The picture that you see above is what is small part of Howard Hallis' master work called The Picture of Everything. It is pretty much just how it sounds, he is attempting to draw a picture of everything. Apparently this all happened when he was trying to draw a picture of spiderman, then he realized that he should probably draw all of the super friends, and then he expanded that to all superheroes and cartoons which just blew up further into this massive piece of artwork. When I first heard about this I couldn't believe it was real, but then I checked it out for myself and it just blew my mind. The design considerations alone in pulling off something like this is completely amazing. I doubt he will ever be done drawing this picture, as he shouldn't be, because there will always be new things he will need to put in the picture. This is one picture with endless possibilities and endless relevance, you don't see too many designs like that nowadays.

Piggybacking on the last post in the realm of buying things, this website has completely revolutionized the way I think about online auctions. Listia, as it is called, has a business model that is beyond genius. It uses absolutely no money to facilitate its auctions, and instead uses credits. This makes it so that, provided a certain auction has free shipping, you can get the item absolutely free. Like the tag line says, "auctions for free stuff". Now technically the credits are free, but since they can be bought at 10 cents a piece, that is their actual market value in my opinion. They give you 50 credits when you sign up and then 50 more credits when you first list an auction, so it is designed to kind of force you to get involved in the community. And the stuff on the website isn't crap either, I've gotten some pretty good items from there, and if you play your cards right and sell things to get more credits, you can get stuff you want absolutely free. I did a tutorial for N100 on how to start using the website if you are still confused, which you can check out here. I would really urge you to check out the website, because really, who doesn't like free stuff?

I am a convicted DVD addict. There is no getting around it. I have bought so many DVD's over the past years that I need a second bookcase to display them all. It is bad, I realize this. This website, Glyde, has only made it worse. However, that is not going to stop me from buying them. When I found this website about a week ago, I had to pump my fists in glee. Finally! A website dedicated to selling DVD's- at the cheapest price!! And boy- if the website were any easier for you to use, it would probably buy the movies for you. The design itself just beckons for you to purchase and purchase from their website. I definitely have stopped wasting my time checking for cheap prices on ebay, amazon, and google, from now on this is my one stop shop. A DVD addict such as myself really couldn't ask for anything more.

When it comes to considering design in today's world, nothing really beats the artistic expression that is provided to you with t-shirt design. Threadless revolutionized all that when it launched it's company. From the moment I discovered this website three years ago, I was hooked on the idea of t-shirts as fashion statements. To this day, my t-shirt collection in which I bought so many over the years remains one of my most prized possessions, just under my DVD collection for rank of importance. Needless to say, the design of the company and of course the website is flawless. When you enter it for the first time, you are immediately acclimated into the world of t-shirt design. It not only allows you to purchase them, but also critique upcoming submissions and even design your own with the incentive of a huge chunk of cash if yours gets accepted. I will love threadless until it dies, which it never will. So I highly recommend it for anyone who has ever worn a t-shirt as something more than just clothing.

The next website gem I can going to cover is what is called Gnod. I discovered this about a couple years ago, and at that time it was completely amazing to me, still kind of is. For those of you wondering what gnod stands for, well is stands for "Global Network of Dreams". It isn't far off with this statement either, because it recommends media that you might enjoy in the areas of movies, music, and literature. It's recommendations are based on the input you give them, and once you search for you favorite to match with recommendations, it send you to a page like the one you see in the picture above and spreads out your recommendations with the closest to the middle being the highest recommended. It really does a good job in designing an interface that it easy to follow, you can learn a whole bunch about new media from just staying on that website. So I would really recommend check it out if you like discovering new things.

For the final posts in this blog, I will be reviewing some of the most design conscious websites that I have come across. This would include websites that just catch my eye when I first come to it and furthermore implement functionality that is overall unique for the nature of the content of the website. The first of these websites that has actually just last week been launched called MovieClips. Basically it's just like a YouTube for movie clips. It plans to catalogue as many movie clips as possibly and it has started out with over 12,000 clips at about 2 minutes a piece. I think it could really explode in popularity over the next couple years. Not to mention it has a completely solid design in which it exhibits the movie clips. The possibilities for a site like this are timeless and it could prove an extremely useful tool for film and new media students alike. I have already found great use in it.

The last post I am going to cover on music is going to be about an album in which you probably aren't very familiar with. It's called Hazards of Love by the fairly old band called The Decemberists. However, this isn't just any album, it provides something in which really no-one has explored since the 70's, the rock opera. The album strings all together like one track, and the fact that The Decemberists have always added a story line to their albums makes this one all the more brilliant. You may be saying to yourself, "so what? big deal", well the truth is that albums like this require alot of complex logistics and musical design to make it even somewhat effective and engaging. As you can imagine, when I heard they were actually performing this album live in my area, I quickly bought tickets. The preceding concert turned out to be one of the best concerts I have ever seen in my life. They really treated it as if it was a play production. The men came out in tuxes, and the women came out dressed to the hilt in old victorian fashion and without even saying so much as a "hello", they started singing and didn't even take a second to break until they were completely finished with the album. I can't even imagine the amount of design that goes into pulling something like that off. In normal concerts, the sound designers have much needed breaks in between songs in which to prepare for the next song. The sound designer must have been brilliant in this concert, because they have virtually no break and have to prepare on the fly while keeping everything stable for the current song. It's just amazing. Concerts have always been an experience to me, and this concert was one experience in which I know I will never see again. 

A lot of you probably have never heard of Spotify, and frankly I don't blame you, but it is pretty much the best thing ever. Or at least, it is the best thing ever if it is available in your country. To sum it up, Spotify is pretty much the iTunes Music Store, except instead of having to listen to an excerpt, you can listen to the whole thing, as many times as you want. Needless to say, the design and everything that goes into is is quite flawless and amazingly easy to use. Unfortunately, the reason very few people have heard of it is because it is available in pretty much every country except the US. The rest of us who have been dying to use it have been forced to use fake accounts that act like they have been set up in one of the acceptable countries, but of course, nothing is that easy. After about 14 days, Spotify gets wise to your scheme because it notices your IP address is not coming from the country you say you are in and subsequently locks you out. This can get quite frustrating, especially when you have done this 3 separate times, like me. But it is not like Spotify hasn't had a good reason for launching it stateside yet. I'm sure you can imagine all of the copyright laws that would go into making something like this marginally legal in the United States, especially with how the RIAA has been cracking down lately. However, with that being said, it looks like there is actually hope for us all to be able to be able to experience it legally. The word on the street is that Spotify is in talks with US record companies and will hopefully be launching it here as early as January 2010. This is quite exciting for someone like me who has been following its progress ever since it first launched. When it finally comes within our grasp, I can safely say it is going to blow Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker, and even iTunes completely out of the water.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the brilliant site Musopen, but let me take a couple minutes to detail it for you. This site is so amazing that I can almost guarantee that everyone trying to achieve a degree in new media will use it at least some point or another. It's purpose is to basically provide music as public domain to the world. If you are wondering, the way they go about this is since the music itself is public domain but the performance is not, they hire people to play all this music in which they subsequently sign off on all the rights to make it public domain to everyone. While it is mostly just classical music, it is still extremely useful for those looking for free music for their projects. I have used this on several occasions for my projects, and I couldn't have been happier with its existence. It has greatly expanded its music reach since it launched and I can see them even expanding beyond the single genre of classical music in the next couple years. That's the brilliant thing, it is an idea that will always have a place of validity and will never cease to be useful as long as there is music to be made.

Continuing with my series of posts on music, I am going to talk about an artist in which I only wish I would have discovered before. I had always heard about them, but until I heard them mentioned again on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night, I had to check them out. The artist they mentioned- Bon Iver. I proceeded to get out my laptop and start researching this guy at 2 am which I had heard so much about but never really listened to. Over the next hour, I really took in his back story and what caused him to create his first album- For Emma, Forever Ago. For those who aren't familiar, let me sum it up for you. After a troubling time in his life in which he went through a broken relationship, band, and dealing with mononucleosis, he decided to up and move to his father's cabin in the northern woods of Wisconsin for 3 long months. It is exactly this isolation that helped him get through his troubles and developed his first record, even though he was never planning to make any music. Incidentally, he had with him some basic recording equipment when he had moved there and just starting recording music. In an interview later he said, "All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stock piled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song." I personally think that the result is absolutely stunning for reasons that speak directly to my soul. Over the course of history, isolation is one thing that has had such a profound impact on so many artists, and this is another perfect example.  This same album would not been nearly as good if he had planned it and if he hadn't isolated himself from the rest of the world. I can safely say that there will never be another album like it, because it was created under such authentically heartfelt circumstances. It is artwork like this that I really and truly respect. That which comes without intention and without planning, but just flows from the soul and the hearts emotion. 

I haven't really talked about design in music a lot in this blog, so let me take the next series of posts to do so. A couple days I came across this great website called Stereomood. It's pretty simple actually, you put in the mood that you are feeling or an activity that you are participating in and the website creates a playlist that should fit your perspective mood or the feeling of your activity. While sites like Pandora and Last.fm have dabbled in this before, there is one monumental difference between those websites and this one, and that is that this one really works. As I have been testing it out the last couple days, inputting my mood, I have found that it really does have a good sense of discernment in what it plays for you. I have always picked music that I want to listen to based on the mood I am in or the mood that I want to reach. So I really appreciate this because it is obvious that music plays a great deal into your emotions. Frankly, without emotion in music, it would just be people droning on in monotone voices.

When I look at my computer setup I have in my room, there is always one problem I notice, cable management. I have too many cables as it is, and when they are grouped together they always seem to form a life of their own and tangle in many unimaginable ways to the point in which they are almost impossible to separate. I have always had a problem with cable management, so whenever I come across a way to organize my cables in a neat and orderly fashion, my eyes get wide and I get excited. Which is pretty much what happened when I came across this photo of a cable management design by Maisie Broadhead. While it may trick the mind at first, it is pretty much exactly what you imagine it to be, one long cable fashioned into a very neat form to where it looks acceptable. Even though this seems like an extravagant solution for the problem of just one unsightly long and obtrusive cable, it does make a couple very good points about design. Such is that, if you can't find a way to hide something in which you can't get rid of regardless, your best bet is to make it look pretty with the means you have available to you. So the long and the short of it is that you must be resourceful to find ways to make things work, and this is especially prevalent in design. In this case they are killing two birds with one stone, making the cable look like it belongs there, and also filling the very empty void that sat atop the fireplace. This has certainly inspired me and when am I am such a situation next, I think I just might follow along in their design footsteps.

Certainly something you don't hear about everyday, a backyard deck being turned into contemporary art. Apparently one executive at Apple wanting a deck that really looked mind bending. So he called on architect Thom Faulders to do the job. I thought when I first looked at this photo that these lines were just carefully drawn on, but actually they are plastic blocks specifically cut to make the weird shapes that make up what looks like a carbon sucking vortex. It also doesn't look like it from the photo, but I'm sure once you stepped on it you would be getting a bit dizzy because the Apple executive apparently said, "I wanted someone to barf when they look at it". From the design standpoint it is definitely top notch and really emphasizes the one lonely tree, which I'm sure they meant to do from the start. Needless to say, it would be pretty fun to get a look at it in person, which is probably the only effective way to get to experience it.

Taking a break from the videos a little bit, I am going to be talking about something I found last night. Now, I had come across this painfully clever illustration about a year ago and had posted it on my other blog that I run about a year ago as well. However, when I was going through my old blog last night, I happened to click on this photo which brought me to a whole gallery of artwork in this type of manner. The artist, Wilhelm Staehle, called it Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre. The things I like about this artwork is that it is very elegant, simple, original, and they are quite clever for that matter. I have never really thought of artwork like this which blocks the main subject of the art into a silhouette because it allows them to standout more while also allowing you to focus on the background instead of the character in more detail. It would seem as though the background plays a much more vital role in the task of setting the surrounding than the main subjects do, thus allowing the subjects to appear almost out of place even though they fit in perfectly. These designs are surprisingly comical, and yet they are something I might be willing to hang on my wall as actual art. At the very least, it is a breath of fresh air, which is always refreshing in the world of art.

So apparently someone has taken the time to extract every Kramer entrance from the show Seinfeld and put them all together chronologically in one video. When I first heard about this I immediately laughed because it would take so much time to do this. I even attempted to watch the whole thing, but about three-quarters of the way through I had a violent seizure and Michael Richards appeared to me telling me I had three wishes. Of course I am kidding, but I do have some thoughts on the character of Kramer. It is obvious that his entrances are unmatched throughout the entire history of television entrances, however if you watch most of this video you will realize that his entrances are 90% the exact same thing. While I am a big fan of his entrances in general, I am personally a much much bigger fan of his exits, which are extremely underrated. Kramer and Jerry Seinfeld's door have a sort of relationship throughout the series, he interacts with it in a way that no other character does on the show, making it almost a character itself. So it would seem that with Kramer's exits, he interacts much more with the door than he does on his entrances. Plus, most of his exits are completely original. For example, say he is standing on the other side talking to Jerry from his half of open door, then he suddenly decides to go back to his apartment, but he is stuck and it appears the door won't close after him, then Kramer realizes that he had his foot blocking the door the whole time. Here it is obvious that Kramer has a much more hilarious interaction with the door than he usually does on his entrances. It is small and usually unnoticed comedic moments like these that make the show so special to me. It was simply put, a show about nothing, much like this blog post however.

I'm sure all of you are familiar with Mr. Bean played by Rowan Atkinson, however you may not be familiar with this little bit of stand-up comedy he has done in this video. It is pretty much just as it sounds, Mr. Bean finding an invisible drum set and the hilarity that ensues. Now you may think that this is not a hard feat to pull of, but I think that few could do what Rowan is doing here. First of all, you have to always give off the impression of being oblivious while knowing exactly what to do next, such as the entire drum beats that he had to memorize to make this act believable. While it may seem like the simplest thing in the world, a fair amount of rehearsing must go into making this act effective. Certainly the sound guys must stay on their feet in order to keep up with Rowan's erratic talent. This just goes to show you that even while you are watching someone fool around on stage, there is a good amount of design that has been involved and is currently involved in what you are witnessing.

Don't know if you have ever seen this next video, but what it is is a segment from something that was featured on public access TV and it was called Let's Paint TV, hosted by John Kilduff. Now the concept of watching someone paint on television alone is hysterical. Who would actually tune in to see a man paint on television? Well apparently some people did, because he continued to do it, and eventually added more activities. Then you get a segment like the one you see here where he is exercising, cooking, painting, playing chess, and taking calls all at the same time. Needless to say, this provides a completely hilarious outcome as he is trying to balance 5 things all at the same time. Some might think that this guy is just a goofball, but personally I think he is a genius. He has found a niche in which he can do ordinary activities that normally people wouldn't want to watch, but since he has created a following, he can pretty much do whatever he wants. So he has the liberty to do anything crazy in any combination he wants, and people will still tune in to watch him do all this crazy stuff. This is fascinating to me because the show has almost no production value, and yet the things he does on the show is almost as engaging as anything else you might see on TV today. My hat goes off to John Kilduff.

The next video I will be talking about centers on a skittles commercial that aired pretty much almost exactly 2 years ago. When I am watching commercials, the one quality that I search for is simply originality. While I do this with all forms of media, I do it even more so with commercials because it must catch my eye in order for me to consider the product it is advertising. The commercial that I have posted above is one of the few that have really made me laugh out loud from the actual cleverness of the commercial. There is no getting around it, this 45 second spot is almost painfully clever. While providing a very serious demeanor to the commercial, it allows the commercial to have a quite hilarious outcome. For something as small and usually insignificant as a commercial to accomplish something such as that certainly makes me take a second look. Ultimately, this has become one of my favorite commercials of all time because of its immense cleverness while still managing to convey and advertise the product at hand. More companies should take note of this and follow in its footsteps. It would be nice to be able to look forward to the commercials at another point in time besides during the Superbowl.

Following along with my series of posts on online videos, my next will be focused on the popular long running children's show, Sesame Street. Personally, I think that overall the show is not just for children, but has always been meant to be viewed by adults as well. From watching some of the sketches recently, it is quite obvious to me that there are jokes which would simply just fly right over the head of the average child. One of these sketches happens to be the infamous Monsterpiece Theater with cookie monster. The whole point of the sketch is to teach children something in the range of the alphabet or numbers with the use of a movie. However, the movie's they use are actual titles in which most child would not know. For example the video above uses a french film titled The 400 Blows, of course they make it a play on words for children and show a sesame street character blowing out the candles with 400 breathes. It's things like these that make me appreciate the quality of writing that goes into  even a children's show. So the long and the short of it is that it would seem as though my respect for Sesame Street has grown largely due to the appeal it could actually have if parents were to watch it. Ultimately, it is really a fairly witty show no matter who the viewers are. 

For the next series of my posts, I will be exploring the design of internet videos, most of them found on YouTube. This first one is one that I had found a couple years ago, and it still amazes me every time I watch it today as it did two years ago. Like I have said, I always respect people who spend a good deal of their time doing one thing, all for an outcome that might not be seen by many people, yet they realize this and still do it anyway. This video is certainly not exempt from my respect. I can't even imagine how much time it took to catalogue onto video all the small and various little actions that went into making the video mesmerizing. Although, I must venture to say that if this was just repeated with a bunch of other songs, it wouldn't be as amazing and it especially wouldn't be as original. That being said, I defy you to watch this and not be amazed. So sit back and check it out.

Following along with the design of books, I found this other literary gem by designer Sheldon Hui. What this is is simply a recreation of the original shooting scripts that Alfred Hitchcock used for his famous films such as Psycho, Vertigo, and several others. As you can see, the design was really a big concern as they made sure to include fake coffee stains and even wrap the books in sealed manila envelopes which are addressed to the main characters of the script/film it contains. Those are just design concerns on the cover, the writing and text is spot on, it really looks like an old script. I can safely say that I would absolutely love this as a gift. I don't even like Hitchcock that much, but the sheer originality and detailed design alone would earn it a deserved spot on my shelf. This kind of design should certainly be explored with the print of old style shooting scripts, in which I think there is definitely a market for.  

For this post I am really going to try and reach back towards the simple elements of design. Now it is obvious what the design of the book is trying to accomplish being Fahrenheit 451 and all, but there is just simply no getting around the genius of the design. For the original pages and cover of books already being completely flammable, this is like adding insult to injury. My hats off to the designer, Nicholas Acemoglu, because I have never seen a single cover so embody the book it shelters as much as this one, which is what immediately caught my eye. Frankly I am kind of sad this is just a private design and isn't commercially sold, because I think this is a design possibility that should be explored for classic literature.

As a web designer at heart, whenever I visit a website I always appreciate much more the work that goes into making it, but in the same respect I also deplore the lack of care in bad design. The above is pretty much somewhere in between the two. When I first looked at it, it kind of bended my mind because as the digits change, the scroll bars move to reflect the digit it is turning into. Then I realized that every single scroll bar actually works, which blew my mind as a web designer. When I looked at the code it revealed very neatly arranged CSS and Javascript, I was impressed to say the least. If nothing else, it has a very interesting and original take on presenting the time. I only wish that all those scroll bars actually effected the scrolling of the page itself. Check out the scroll clock here - http://toki-woki.net/p/scroll-clock/

Whether you have ever been to Walmart or not, it is a proven fact that if you venture to America's favorite superstore at any given time, you are very likely to see an interesting person. I can safely say that anyone reading this has been there at one point or another and have subsequently seen someone they most likely wouldn't have seen anywhere else. Now imagine all of these interesting people, and imagine that they have all been catalogued on the internet for the world to see. The outcome happens to be at www.peopleofwalmart.com. I have always wished that something like this was available, because one of the main reasons I visit Walmart is for the incredibly interesting people. Thus this website is exactly what I thought it would look like. It has a simple design, isn't too hard to figure out at all, and is completely hilarious. I especially enjoy the Love and Hate tabs which of course feature feedback that comes in either tone. With an executed concept such as this, it is bound to receive hate mail arguing that such pictures are hurtful and cruel. However, I submit, do they deserve it? With anyone who purposefully chooses to go out into the world dressed like most of these people do, do they not think they will be made fun of? It's almost as if these people think that Walmart is a safe haven for wearing any combination of clothing imaginable. I really don't think they are trying to be cruel in any manner, because it plainly says on their About Us page that they don't want pictures of the handicapped since that would be obviously crossing a line. So if you happen to be amused by the creatures you see in Walmart, go check it out for yourself. Although I would beware since sometimes the pictures can be borderline NSFW.

Troll 2

Ok, there is absolutely no way that I could run a blog and not bring up Troll 2 at some point. For those who have never heard of this little cinematic gem, you are missing out! It is by far, and I mean BY FAR, the worst movie ever made. The director was czechoslovakia, and just to give you a little hint of how terrible it is, my friend described it as though they took the foreignly written script, copied the whole thing into an online translator, and spit it out as a shooting screenplay in english. Despite the fact that this is undoubtedly the worst thing ever put on film or rather most likely because of it, it is also one of the funniest things you will ever see. It is almost as if they purposely tried to screw up the acting, directing, cinematography, and all the other parts in order to make it side splitting hilarious. I defy you to watch it and not instantly love it. In fact, it has grown such a cult following that there are teams of people who would agree with that logic. You would be quite surprised to find out all the events that are centered around this movie. And why not celebrate the worst movie ever made? It has earned its name as the Best Worst movie, and actually a documentary of the same name was just released this year exposing the public (and most of the movie's aged actors) to the cult following itself. I got to experience it this past summer when it aired at the Indianapolis International Film Festival, and it's almost as good as Troll 2 itself. It is thoroughly amazing to sit back and witness the difference that this little movie has made within the cult community, and it certainly goes to show that even though a movie may be excruciatingly awful by all senses of the word, that doesn't make it any less recognized. 

For the record, let me say that I hate Blockbuster. They have become a terribly outdated company, and to add insult to injury they have absolutely no sense of customer service. A few months ago I rented a couple movies from Blockbuster and I even managed to return them in on time. However, the "fail safe" inventory system indicated otherwise and 3 weeks later I got a call saying that I still had them and if I didn't return them soon, I would have to pay for them. Obviously, since I didn't have them and had distinctly remembered that I had turned them in, I pleaded my case, but the only logic they could offer was that just because their system didn't show I had turned them in, I would have to pay for them or else they would notify the collections agency. Seeing as I was backed into a corner, the only recourse I had was to pay the $28 fee, which I did. I was absolutely positive I had turned them in, so there was ultimately nothing I could do, but I expressed to them that I wanted the money back if they found the DVD's. Sure enough, one week later I get a call saying that they had found the movies and that they wanted me to come in to put the money back on my card. Needless to say, I wasn't very surprised when I didn't get as much as a simple apology from them. Anyway, sorry for the incredibly long tangent, but my story parallels story of this one guy who had the very same encounter. However, this guy was a little more sneaky in order to get what he wanted. In every argument that is had, there is a fair amount of design that is factored towards manipulating the other person to get what you want. Such is seen in the conversation had between the Blockbuster store manager and this guy who apparently had 4 overdue movies. http://www.27bslash6.com/blockbuster.html To make a long conversation short, he wears the store manager down by continually sending her nonsense that has nothing to do with the missing movies since he thinks he did in fact turn them in. She eventually drops the late fines and says that all he owes is for the movies that are missing. Surprisingly, after the 10th email or so, he reveals to her that he had them all along and didn't even know it. He said that since they had already dropped the late fees he would drop them off that night and they could call it even. You would think that the store manager would stick to their guns and enforce the fines, however by this time they are so annoyed with this guy that they just agree and end it. By the time I finished reading this, I busted out laughing, because it is this kind of unintentionally manipulating design that I wish I had had in order to fend off the 'trollish' Blockbuster store managers. However, I can safely say that if I find myself in such a bind again, I am going to employ some of this guy's brilliant tactics to get me out of it. It worked for him, it could certainly work for me too.

This blew my mind when I saw it yesterday. At first glance, everyone is going to assume that this image has been photoshopped with a bunch of giant tapes. If you tell them it isn't then they will reason to say that they are either real or painted, but if you tell them that both are wrong, they will arrive at one big question mark as I did myself. Apparently they are bas-relief mosaics made with old wood cuts. Now I had no idea what this was, but a google search on the subject revealed it to be "a form of sculpture in which a solid piece of material is carved so that objects project from a background, almost as though they are trapped in the stone, metal, wood, or other materials used to make the bas-relief". Of course from far away or looking at a low resolution picture such as the one above it looks amazingly real, but if you look closer at a high resolution photo, things will reveal themselves to be not all that they seem. The outcome is nonetheless stunning, leaving you to wonder how it was accomplished, even though you technically know how. The artist responsible for all this, Ron van der Ende, has quite an extensive collection of such amazing art work. I would encourage you to check it out, it plays with your mind. http://www.artbbq.nl/ron/menu-eng.htm

So I came across this the other day, and the simple fact that something like this even exists cracks me up. I had never envisioned the possibility of combining obsolete technology with cutting edge new media, but apparently someone did. This is simply put, a Twitter application for Macintosh operating system 9 and below. Even though in most people's minds this application would seem far fetched, however you have to provide the thought for the possibility that someone still uses such an obsolete operating system and subsequently uses Twitter as well, thus this application would be quite useful for them. Granted, it is a small possibility, but there is nothing to say that it doesn't exist. So if there is use for combining one old technology with one new technology in one sense, think of all of the many possibilities that could be combined to make something original. Just off the top of my head, what if they created a Final Cut Suite to be compatible with Mac OS 7, it would certainly be interesting to see. That is just one example of possibly thousands of combinations that could be created and is none the less useful than creating a Twitter application to run on an old Mac OS. At the very least, the tweets from someone who would find use for such an application would be quite interesting to follow.