Behold the genius of Accidental Penis! I’ve actually been sent quite a few of these over the years, but it’s good to see they’ve all found an appropriate home now :)
Cheers for the link Nicky.
Sanjay Patel
Pixar animator and illustrator Sanjay Patel has been keeping himself busy in the evenings working on his illustrated books. My favourite is The Little Book of Hindu Deities, those little deities are too cute, £6 from Amazon.
Also Ramayana, Divine Loophole looks pretty impressive.
Via: Grain Edit.
Selleck Waterfall Sandwich
Ha ha, I have a bit of a soft spot for internet absurdities and Selleck Waterfall Sandwich delivers on that account. The man, his mustache, a waterfall and a sandwich for good measure, strangely entertaining..
Via: Neatorama.
Preserve – hand painted signage
Mark Spurgeon is collecting photos of old hand painted building signage on his site – Preserve. Most shots are from New Zealand and Australia so far, so if you have anymore, send them over »
Lots of great stuff on there, but I’m really taken by these massive numbers painted on doors above and below :)
Spot The Tiger
Normally I would have a blind spot to web polls like online advertising, but not these from Spot The Tiger. Each week a new poll is illustrated by a guest designer and put up for vote, there’s some great designs and interesting results.
Pictured above: Nuclear weapons by Nazario Graziano, Smoking by Ed Nacional and Alcohol minimum price by Adam Morris.
Feltron’s 2009 Annual Report
It’s that time of year when designers across the globe check out what Nicholas Felton has been up too the previous year in his annual report. As always, meticulously recorded data and beautifully put together. Letterpressed print version available from his shop (only 2000 copies).
Square
Wow, this thing looks set to be massive – Square is this tiny little dongle that fits into any device with an audio input jack, and turns your iPod (for example) into a credit card money taking machine. They are giving out the dongles for free, there’s no transaction charges, only a $1 fee to install the application on your device! It’s the brainchild of Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey, currently in beta and will roll out to everyone next year.
Where’s the Catch? Well I’m not sure if you can use you Visa or Mastercard on it, you might need to get a some sort of Square credit, debit or pre-paid card, suppose they’ve got to make there money somewhere? Sorry got the wrong end of the stick, just noticed the image above has a Mastercard logo in it… These days when everyone hates bankers and loves Twitter, I think there could be a lot of people happy to make the switch.
What I like about it, well as a freelancer who once a year has to try and find some receipts to offset against my tax, this is a dream come true, everything stored digitally online where I can’t lose it and I can access easily from anywhere. Also this is going to be a massive help to small independent businesses which is always going to be a good thing.
Via: Matthew Buchanan.
kickstarter
While I’m on the subject of adventure film making, I’ve been meaning to blog about this site Kickstarter for a while now. It’s not about film making, but it is about raising money to do stuff.
I’ve seen this sort thing before, but the interesting angle about Kickstarter is you have to supply tiered ‘rewards’ for the people giving you cash. People get quite creative not only with their ideas they want to get off the ground, but also with these rewards that they give back. Brilliantly it’s working, check out and see how many projects have already been funded and how much money they’ve raised.
Problem is you need an invite to post a project and I don’t have one :( So if you have a spare invite to Kickstarter please sent it my way, Cheers for the invite Lisa Yao, you are a legend :) Ok so here’s my pitch:
I’m planning to walk 1900 miles across New Zealand from the Northern most point to the southern tip next year, the trail is called Te Araroa and it officially opens next year. Problem is I’m spending too much time these days planning/mapping, rather than earning money for it.. So the concept of Kickstarter instantly appealed to me :) But I think my work could be worth while rewards for would be pledgers.
Pledge $5 or more and you’ll be able to download all the route maps I’ve been making and use them for your own hike.
Pledge $25 or more and I’ll mail you the finished DVD once we return and edit it. Here’s an example of last years video of my hike across America. Plus all the maps on a separate disc, and hey shit I’ll stick your name in the credits!
Pledge $50 or more you’ll get all the above plus beautifully screen printed A2 poster of the route, maybe some sort of date planner thing like this.
Pledge $100 or more and I’ll leave your name (obviously nothing permanent) along the route somewhere, write it out in rocks, draw it in sand on a beach, piss into snow, chips on my plate, whatever! Promise to do something interesting and send you the hi-res photo.
Pledge $1000 or more Ha ha, this is the big one and it was Nicky’s idea so unsurprisingly involves me making an arse of myself.. but It could be pretty funny so – donate $1000 or more then at the end of each month you decide what I have to do with my facial hair.. It’s a bit of a tradition that you grow your beard on a long walk, but I’m giving you the chance to style it for me – Big Lamb chop side burns, down to the moustache, shave half off vertically… (Only six available, 1 each month).
180° South
A commenter put me onto this new movie 180° South, specifically it’s a film about surfing, sailing and climbing, but generally it’s a remake of a legendary trip and film from 1968. Interesting slide show of the trip here too (narration over photos, so simple, so good, can’t believe I haven’t seen this sort of thing before?)
Trailer:
It’s this original trip that has really caught my imagination – Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia & Black Diamond) and Doug Tompkins (founder of The North Face), plus three other chums set off in an old camper van to surf, ski and climb their way through South America, on their way to be the 3rd team to climb Mt. Fritzroy (Cerro Fitz Roy) in Patagonia (it’s that iconic granite slab used on the Patagonia logo).
Unfortunately I can’t find the original film (Mountain of Storms) online other than this short clip (voice over is hilarious), but just ordered the dvd from the Patagonia store.
But the fascinating story continues today as Doug Tompkins (with a bit of help from Yvon) is buying up huge chunks of wilderness in Chile and Argentina and creating his own national park which on completion will be given back to the government. Apparently he’s now one of the top land owners in the world, with an estimated 2 million odd acres!
Side note: The first person to climb Mt. Fritzroy was legendary French climber Lionel Terray (with Guido Magnone in 1952) and interestingly the title ‘Conquerors of the Useless’ references the title of his autobiography.
More awesome wedding invites
Stumbled onto Studio On Fire’s blog Beast Pieces. Plenty of gorgeous letterpress work, but particularly taken by the collection of wedding invites they’ve printed. Loving the ligatures on the invite above by (the groom) Jefferson Perky.
It’s interesting that they print a whole set of cards, invites, RSVP’s, thankyou cards etc all in one go – “One of the things that we do to make printing them affordable is run all of the pieces on the same press sheet. Our presses are big enough to run several different cards on the same press sheet, then trim them down to size. This represents a huge cost savings over printing individual cards, setting up the press for each form on each card”.
Lovemix Boombox:
Great old school boombox with the love dial set to max, designed by Adam Ramerth. This design is even available for customisation if you’re interested.
Lovely set:
Loving all the colour combos and mix of paper stock & printing techniques. Great all together set with nice envelope labels, perforated RSVP’s and even tiny little envelope to send it back in. Designed by Erin Jang.
I love New Zealand
Haven’t actually been there, but I am planning to go next year, only fair since they’ve named a mountain after me ;). Linz (Land Information New Zealand) just released a new series of 1:50k today, so I headed over expecting it part with a fair amount of cash to buy all the maps I needed to walk the 1800 mile Te Araroa. Much to my delight you can download them all for free!
Good work New Zealand, I only wish more countries would make their maps available for free :)
Kevin Cyr
Kevin likes painting an unlikely subject matter, generally derelict old vans. But boy does he paint them well, rust, dents, graffiti, every imperfection and sign of age. I’m bloody love by ‘em.
Via: Dinosaurs and Robots.
Your name & the internet
Up until today I wished I made a more unique name than Simon Cook, there’s shit loads of them out there! I could never get near the top of the google rankings, although I’m now slowly making my way up there, currently 5th :)
But I’ve seen 2 things today that made me happy that I’ve got loads of other namesakes. First up is this Personas site by Aaron Zinman from MIT it searches the internets for you and your namesakes and creates a visual aggregation of their online identities. I think the final result is a bit of a let down (I’m sure Jonathan Harris could do some much more interesting with the data). But watching the other Simon Cook’s and things they are up to flashing across the screen was quite fascinating.
Then I randomly went to see what Craig Robinson (Flip Flop Flyin’) was up to. He’s snapped up CraigRobinson.com when it became available, and rather than use it himself, he’s made a site linking up all the Craig Robinsons out there!
I love the idea, I think there should be a law that ‘name URLs’ should link up everyone that shares the name. I would definitely do the same if SimonCook.com ever became available.
The Movie Stills Collection
This movie title site is a pretty massive labor of love by web designer Christian Annyas. All the films are in chronological order, in nice big scrolling pages so you can quickly scan through, interesting to see how styles change for year to year.
Via: Ace Jet 170.
Day 1 – Weather not so good..
Heading up to Surenenpass, the first pass of the holiday. The first few hundred meters of climbing were pretty easy because we took the cable car to Brusti :)