mindtoss - musings, stylings, rants

Bueller? Bueller? The Ferris Bueller extended Super Bowl ad (Ahem, I mean the Matthew Broderick Super Bowl Ad)

stephen chip — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:16:42 +0000

In Honda’s new Super Bowl commercial, Matthew Broderick revamps one of his most famous roles – Ferris Bueller – in the latest commercial for the all new redesigned Honda CR-V. According to the press release:

The new Honda CR-V commercial features Matthew Broderick as himself, skipping out on a day of acting work and living it up in his all-new CR-V. Relive movie history with Honda’s fresh twist and wonderful homage to this ’80s classic.

I’ve always been a big Ferris fan and even imagined what a sequel might look like here: Ferris Bueller’s Next Day Off.

Broderick ends the spot with the classic movie quote – Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Another surprise at the very end of the spot stays true to the original movie as well. A nice touch.

Transfer traditional freehand drawings to your computer with Inkling by Wacom

stephen chip — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 22:28:37 +0000

For illustrators, the Inkling by Wacom is the missing puzzle piece. You can now draw on paper and transfer all of your drawings to the computer and they will be editable as vector drawings in Adobe Illustrator. Amazing!

It will retail for $199.00.

Best science project ever!

stephen chip — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:32 +0000

Back when I was a freshman in high school, I created a science project on the life cycle of fish. Plenty of time and planning went into this project. Weeks of breeding fish in an aquarium along with detailed charts and graphs. I remember painstakingly setting up the aquarium along with the charts the night before the big science fair. There was some concern on my part because initially I didn’t have access to power to run the filter. That was later worked out and I was ready for the big day.

The next morning at school everybody headed to their projects. The teachers were walking around inspecting and grading the projects. When I arrived at my project, to my shock and horror, all the fish were dead floating on top of the aquarium. I panicked. The first thought that went through my head was “How do I bring these fish back to life?” The only thing I could do was wait until the teachers passed by. They took one look at the dead fish and bam, instant “F.”

After the science fair I was called down to the Principal’s office. As it turned out, a couple of Seniors poured Drano in my aquarium killing the fish instantly. When I arrived at the office, all of the responsible Seniors were there. Each one had to apologize to me one by one. After they apologized I asked “Who the hell is going to pay for my fish?” In hindsight, probably not the smartest thing I could say being a Freshman. Anyway, in the end I received an “A.”

Instead of working on my science project for weeks, I could have grabbed some milk, food coloring, dishwash soap, and a bowl as I made my way out the door the day of the big science fair. I could have dazzled the crowd with my phenomenal milk trick.

When someone does you wrong, don’t get mad, send them poop!

stephen chip — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 18:31:24 +0000

That’s right, poop. With all the creative startups out there, along comes Poopsenders.com which actually mails poop to the person of your choice. You have to admit it’s quite ingenious but at the same time a bit disturbing. Poop can be sent by the quart or gallon and the choices are Cow Dung, Elephant crap, or Gorilla Poop.

photo credit: Alex Schweigert

Each package contains a business card right in the poop which reads:
“YOU’VE BEEN POOPED ON. WANT TO KNOW BY WHOM? [OVER]“

When they see the front of the card they will have to open the bag releasing the nasty aroma and dig it out of the poop only to find this on the back
“WE’LL NEVER TELL. WWW.POOPSENDERS.COM” Very clever.

I can’t really tell if the prices are reasonable or not since there is nothing really to compare it to. However, if you compare it to actually going out and collecting and shiping the poop yourself, it’s VERY REASONABLE!

An important element of any business are the testimonials. Here are some from the Poopsenders.com site:

We have a neighbor that lives across the street who walks his dog and lets it crap all over everybody else’s yard even those who don’t have a dog like me. I decided to give him a dose of his own medicine and sent him the big bag of elephant crap. About 5 days after I ordered it my wife saw the bright yellow truck stop at their house with a delivery in the early afternoon. When I was home cutting the grass later that day I saw him come home from work, about 5 minutes later I saw him come back out of the house with a disgusted look on his face and a big bag of crap in his hand headed for the garbage cans. Mission accomplished. The best part is it sat in their house all afternoon while his wife was probably wondering what it could be. Great! Great! Great!
Jim – Detroit, MI

I sent my ex-boyfriend a pile of cow dung about 3 weeks ago and last week one of this friends came up to me in a club and told me about it and asked if it was me who sent it. I said that’s sick and no it wasn’t me. I asked if he was mad and his friend said he’s really pissed off and it’s driving him nuts trying to find out who sent it, he’s going around accusing everyone. He’s pissed off and going nuts accusing friends, you could say that’s like a two for one sale. FANTASTIC!
Amber San Diego CA

I have two idiot neighbors across the street they’re both such idiots that they don’t even like each other. I couldn’t decide which one to send a poop package to so I sent them both one. I hope they think that they sent them to each other. Let them fight it out. Love your service.
Jeff from New York

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to Poopsenders.com and send that package of poop today!

Crowdsourced social product development

stephen chip — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:01:00 +0000

Most of you have heard of websites such as Threadless, CafePress, and Zazzle. In a similar fashion comes Quirky, a phenomenal social product development site. The basic premise is that anyone can submit ideas that may be selected for product development. If your idea get that far. So how does an idea get selected? Here’s an excerpt from Quirky:

There are two main steps to idea selection: community evaluation and staff evaluation. During the community evaluation, members of our online community vote, rate, and comment on all the ideas submitted. The top 5 ideas go on to our staff’s deep dive evaluation, where they get thoroughly analyzed in three areas: design potential, marketing potential, and viability. Each idea will receive a score (out of 100) and the idea with the highest score becomes Quirky’s next product! Whew, that was exciting.

Not only is Quirky exciting but they have incredible innovative products as well. Usually innovation comes at a price. On Quirky everything is fairly priced.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Cordies cable organizers

PowerCurl MacBook Cord Wrap

Contort Flexible USB Hub

Wrapster Headphone Cord Organizer

Of course some of my favorites are all based around Apple products. What did you expect from a so-called Fan Boy. In addition, you can also find a slew of innovative products that range from Dustpans to Rubber band hooks.

As a fan of user interfaces, Quirky also hits a home run. I love the way the shopping cart works. Items placed in the cart are alway visible by rolling over the shopping cart icon in the logo box located in the top left hand corner.

Head over to Quirky and check it out.

Mmm, fresh bacon breath

stephen chip — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 22:09:15 +0000

Toothpaste has been around for thousands of years. It is thought that the Egyptians used a paste to clean their teeth as far back as 5000BC. The Romans and Greeks improved the formula by adding crushed bones and oyster shells to the paste for more abrasiveness. The more modern toothpastes were flavored with peppermint, mint, and spearmint. Other flavors were later added, cinnamon, orange, etc.

Until now, there have not been any good meat flavored toothpaste. Get ready to fire up that toothbrush with some bacon sizzled toothpaste. From the pan to your pearly whites. Perfect for a first date or any important occasion. Here is the product description on Archie McPhee:

Brushing your teeth with a strip of fried bacon is tricky. If it’s too crisp it will break apart as you brush and if it’s too limp you won’t be able to remove any of the plaque. So when it’s time to brush your teeth, leave the bacon strips for breakfast and try this Bacon Toothpaste. It’s the perfect way to keep your teeth and gums healthy while coating your mouth with the delicious flavor of smoky meat!

Who hasn’t tried brushing their teeth with bacon. I once tried raw chicken but that also proved very tricky. In a pinch you could always use soap or dirt from the bottom of your shoes. If the above description doesn’t have you whipping out your credit card, I can’t imagine what would. Doesn’t everyone clamor for the the delicious flavor of smoky meat on their breath?

For some strange reason, Pickle toothpaste seems more palatable. Maybe not in the general sense but compared to the Bacon toothpaste, it may prove a better choice. Of course Cupcake toothpaste would seem like cracking open one of those store bought frosting and brushing away. It’s probably less expensive as well.

Archie McPhee sells the tantalizing toothpastes on their web site. I love their tagline – “Slightly less disappointing than other companies.” Now that’s my kind of company!

Bacon toothpaste
Pickle toothpaste
Cupcake toothpaste

Starbucks ‘Trenta’ holds an entire bottle of wine

stephen chip — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:06:56 +0000

Why is it that Starbucks has to put their own twist on the standard coffee sizes – small, medium, and large. Anytime I’m in Starbucks I can never for the life of me remember the equivalent – Tall, Grande, and Venti. I always say “medium” or “large” when ordering. The Barista usually never bats an eye. Sometimes they’ll say “You mean Venti?” I’ll usually shrug my shoulders and say “Yeah, I guess.”

Starbucks has now introduced a super size called ‘Trenta.’ How big is it you ask? It’s large enough to hold an entire bottle of wine as evidenced in the video. Do we really need a that much coffee? Welcome to the world of super size it.

See you later alligator, in a while crocodile …

stephen chip — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 02:40:31 +0000

Several years ago, anytime I left the house, my daughter would say “See you later alligator” to which I would reply “In a while crocodile.” Who knew there were so many other ways to say goodbye with animals. The “Goodbye Shirt” at " target="_blank">Threadless captures many of these sayings, most of which I’ve never heard before. I’m sure there are a couple that may have been missed.

All of the sayings featured on the Goodbye shirt:
See you later alligator – Keep it real, Spotted Seal – In few Cockatoo – Adieu Caribou – Take care Black Bear – Bye bye Fruit Fly – Good luck, silly Duck – See you soon, big Baboon – Another time, Porcupine – Best wishes, little Fishes – Peace out, river Trout – Gotta go, Buffalo – Have a good day, Sting Ray.

Two Door Cinema Club brings the 80s video back with ‘What You Know’

stephen chip — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:41:24 +0000

The 80s were a wild time for fashion – Parachute Pants, Leg Warmers, Acid Wash Jeans, Stirrup Pants, Chuck Taylors and the like were all the rage. Back in the 80s everyone was searching for an identity. The easiest way to shine, or should I say glow, was to wear obscenely bright colors. The music scene was burgeoning with New Wave, Synthpop, Rock, Pop, and Hair Bands. Looking back, few pulled it off better than David Bowie, Madonna, and Robert Palmer.

“What You Know” by Northern Irish band “Two Door Cinema Club” really gets it’s 80s on. It borrows from Robert Palmer’s – Simply Irresistible and it pulls together the 80s vibe incredibly well. Take a look at those bright red shorts and blue tank tops. Fantastic! The girls are a bit more campy than the Robert Palmer girls and lack that sophistication. The dancing is the best – totally out of sync. The girls dance as though they had two maybe three rehearsals at best. I imagine they were kicked off the synchronized swim team and were way to eager to answer the ad on Craig’s List to star in a music video. Well played girls.

My favorite part of the video is when the guys jump off the pedestals (2:16 mark) and run over to the doors where the girls proceed to hand them their guitars complete with a kiss. Yes my friends, pure cheese. I can’t stress enough how much I love the goofy dancing. The more you watch it, the better it gets. The only thing missing is a band of misfit midget circus performers.

In all seriousness Two Door Cinema Club has a fantastic sound. ‘What You Know’ is very catchy and has a solid hook. Brilliant song writing and a high campy 80s video to boot.

[via Changethethought]

Display all of your Flickr sets on one page

stephen chip — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 23:37:04 +0000

Flickr recently changed the way sets are displayed. Instead of seeing all your sets display on a singe page, pagination was added and sets are now limited to 30 per page. Since all my photos are listed in chronological order, it used to be easy to see all of the photos I’ve taken over the past 10 + years by scrolling up and down on a single page. With the new pagination, guessing which page number the set is located on is nearly impossible and the only way to really know is to click through the pages.

The good news is there is a hack to restore the ability to see all of your sets on a single page. Go to your “sets” page on Flickr. At the end of the URL add ?page=1&per_page=500.

The URL to view my sets looks like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindtoss/sets/

Simply add “?page=1&per_page=500″ to the end of the URL:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindtoss/sets/?page=1&per_page=500

Voilà, your sets are all displayed on a single page! Be sure to bookmark your sets page with the hack already appended making it easier for future browsing.

via Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection