Birth of a…

…chicken, panda, and Cecropia Silkmoth. Yeah nature is beautiful and amazing and the joy of life, blah, blah, blah. But you can’t help but be both entranced and balls out disgusted by these photo sets of the growth of these animals. The chicken one shows a chicken developing in what looks like a petri dish. The panda shows a panda developing after birth and going from butt ugly to kind of cute. The silkmoth is the craziest. This dude documented the growth of the moth from egg to full on moth. The moth looks like a butterfly and has some great colors. The caterpillar that is the middle stage looks crazy and pretty damn scary. The creepiest photos are when the guy opens up the cocoon to show whats going on inside. And just to gross you out some more, check out the parrot development. Weird how it goes from albino turd to Toucan Sam in just a few quick photos. Links to full photo sets (from haha.nu) are HERE: Chicken, Silkworm, Panda, Parrot

Thank god they didn’t have these when I was a kid…

…or else I might not have gotten away with Monday Morning-itis as much as I did.  These pills are called Obecelp and they are for kids who feel sick, and need something more than just a hug and a kiss from mom to make them feel better.  They act as a placebO (get it?) and are just cherry flavored chewable tablets for kids that need some science to get them to 100%.   Pretty good idea, and it would be great to see the look on a kid’s face when he is about 16 years old and remembers these pills and then finally puts it all together.  Priceless.  Check out the NYT article HERE

Most annoying videos of the day…probably of the month, maybe of your whole life.

Just what the title says. The first one is of a song composed using sounds from Windows XP and the second is someone who used user created Super Mario World level on SNES to accompany a techno song. I warned you.

Star Wars humor…reminds me of clerks

I always loved the scene in Clerks where the two guys talk about how awful it was to blow up the Death Star because of all the innocent people on board, like the janitors.  This picture reminds me of that.

In-fucking-credible….

This is straight fresh from the hi-tech news room.  This crazy company called Cam-trax has invented a new technology of the same name that allows you to use any webcam to track almost any device that is brightly colored.  It has lots of potential for video games as well as Minority Report-esque interfaces.  Check out the video and go to cam-trax.com if you want to sign up to be a beta tester.  PC only I think. Also, I think it was made by Israelis since some of the press they have gotten was in Hebrew newspapers.  Check out the video for some coolness.

New untooning

Pixeloo has finished his most recent untooning, this time of Stewie from Family Guy. He admits that it isn’t as realistic as the other ones because there are less textures on his face to make look real. Click on the picture to see it full size and see all the creepy details.  His site is HERE.  Even better though is the news that he has completed an untooning of Niko Belic from GTA 4 and it will be in Playstation Magazine (UK version) on June 16.  Should also be on the web somewhere, so look out for that.

Who likes calculators!?

Even if you couldn’t care less about adding devices, you can still appreciate the mechanical complexity and beauty of one of these handheld Curta calculators. It adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides, and can even do roots and some other operations with some tricky handling. It’s like having a Babbage difference engine in your hand! Don’t think about taking this on a plane, or if you’re in Boston, in public at all since it bears a slight resemblance to some sort of explosive device. But you better have some serious dough to get one of these bad boys. They are on ebay for upwards of $500. A little pricey when I can do the same thing with my cell phone. But then again, my cell phone doesn’t have a hand crank. Sweet! Google Curta to find out how they work…

Crazy article from the New Yorker

Ever see that Dove commercial about beauty where a below average looking woman gets transformed into a super model?  The guy that did all the touch up work is Pascal Dangin, the world’s foremost photo retoucher.  This guy does things with photos that are unreal.  Annie Liebowitz, great photographer?  Don’t forget about the great retoucher who does all of her work.  He is so good that over 20 celebrities keep him on retainer just in case they have any photo shoots that are coming up.  And, the guy started out as a hair dresser.  Crazy. Read the article HERE

(The Death Star + alphabet soup + a puzzle) / books =??

…the wikipedia logo of course.   Check out more logo equations HERE I think the guys is Spanish, so there are a lot of Euro logos.

What would a child’s drawing look like if it were painted realistically?

This question is the basis of The Monster Engine, a book and art exhibit created by Dave Devrie.  He takes children’s drawings of monsters and super heroes, and makes them into more professional looking drawings.  Check out his site HERE and a sample below.