These horse masks are kind of awesome
Lazy, freaky, and awesome.
[photo via somethingawful user deftcleft]
Quick fix
Sometimes I love closing out work orders in our system.
Work order: "The bulb for the light in the kitchen over the sink is out"
Maintenance closing comment: "Resident realized switch on light was off"
Work order: "The bulb for the light in the kitchen over the sink is out"
Maintenance closing comment: "Resident realized switch on light was off"
The Realm of Darkness Riddle Answer
Alright, so Karen and I went out to The Realm of Darkness in Pontiac on Thursday since it is supposedly the best haunted house in all of Michigan.They had some really great special effects and had things pretty well planned out. They had spikes that looked like they were going to crush you, faces that appeared out of nowhere, bookcases that looked like they were going to fall down, a hall of mirrors, and all sorts of other neat stuff.
For me, one of the coolest things was the gimmick that they run where if you answer the Wizard's riddle at the end, you get double your money back. Supposedly only twelve people have done it, and unfortunately we weren't one of them. We didn't even get to see the wizard.
How it works is, there will be different things that happen throughout the event. Someone asked us what the phone number was at the beginning, and we remembered that and got a magic gem/glass bead. Then later there was guy that was like "stick your hand in this corpse" and I did and there was a gem in there. We failed at a part where there was a guy that asked us what his name was so somewhere we must have missed seeing a labeled picture of him or something. We got a third gem from a treasure room and then turned them in to a sea hag who sent us on through the exit (where someone chased us out with a chainsaw). I'm assuming if we had the right number of gems, we would have gone to the wizard to get one final riddle.
We had a lot of fun though despite not besting the wizard. We were in a group with a high school guy and two girls, so me and the other guy covered the front and back while everyone else squeezed together in the middle. All participants made it out alive.
I think it would be fun to conduct the interviews for the haunted house actors where you say "Ok, now you're in an asylum and there's someone that's breaking through that door. Give me your best terrified scream." I'm not sure how they have any voice left after screaming all day.
YellowPage Fax Scam
We got a scam fax today. Not from Yellowpages.com, but from YellowPage-Michigan.com. The top of their fax has the logo at right, a clear knockoff of the actual yellowpages logo at left.Usually these companies call us as telemarketing calls where they say that they are "just calling to update your listing". "Are you still located at [Address]?" they ask, "Is your preferred phone number still [phone number they called you on]?".
If you put up with them that long, they're very careful to try and get you to say that you're the owner of the business or able to act on behalf of the owner and then they tell you that the call is about to be recorded and then they transfer you to someone that talks very quickly. All so later, when you say, "I didn't sign up for your service!" they can play the call back to you.
I, of course, realized what they were doing and said that I wasn't interested. "But updating your listing is free!" they protest. "Click" says my phone.
Anyhow, so now we have this fax that came in under the guise of "hey, time to update your listing!"
Excerpts from the fine print: "The company listed about gives approval for the above given date and orders registration at YellowPage-Michigan.com by Yellow Publishing Ltd. Registration in the directory is for a term of two years at a cost of $89 per month payable one year in advance with 14 day payment terms. [...] This agreement automatically renews for one year if it is not terminated at least three months before the agreement end."
And then twice they want to remind you "Yellow Publishing Ltd. is not responsible for any errors, omissions or other erroneous data appearing in the company's directory listing. All errors are the sole responsibility of the customer."
Then they go on to say how payment is still required even if you ask to be removed. Not only that, but if you sue them, you're responsible for their attorney and legal fees. That's even in there.
No amount of doublechecking will fix that
The other day I had someone come in to sign their lease. One of the first things I have them do is to make sure that their name is spelled correctly on their lease. She pointed out that her name was spelled wrong.
I felt bad, especially because I thought I had double-checked the spelling.
After she left, I checked her application. It turns out, printed very clearly on the application, she had spelled her own name wrong.
I felt bad, especially because I thought I had double-checked the spelling.
After she left, I checked her application. It turns out, printed very clearly on the application, she had spelled her own name wrong.
The Nest
Firstly I’d like to congratulate John McIlduff and Brian Irvine for winning one of the 12 Artists Take the Lead awards (commissions totalling £5.4 million) with their proposed Nest project - and secondly I’d like to thank them for using a blown-up image of my Junk Metal Nest sketch for the recent press conference here in London. After the conference John told me that he’d seen my sketch appear on Channel 4 News. It’s probably more like 15 seconds than 15 minutes of fame, but hey, I’m easily pleased.
John contacted me about using my drawing after he came across it on the internet. Although I’d already heard about the Arts Council England and London 2012 award (with money like that up for grabs, what artist hadn’t) it was the first that I’d heard of their Nest project. And once they told me about the similarities between their work and mine I immediately agreed to let them use my sketch.
Below are a few paragraphs about the project that I found on -
http://www.artiststakingthelead.org.uk/northern-ireland/brian-irvine-brian-irvinejohn-mcilduff-dumb-nest
But you can also find out more about the project at –
http://www.artscouncil-ni.org/news/2009/new221020092.html
and at -
http://press.artscouncil.org.uk/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=880&NewsAreaID=2
THE NEST invites the people of Northern Ireland to create art on a massive scale through the simple act of donating an object. These will be collected and assembled into a gigantic creation to be built in Belfast by a team of artists and designers. THE NEST will become a focal point for a large-scale music and choral event, composed, written and directed by Brian Irvine and John McIlduff - inspired and performed by the people of Northern Ireland.
This huge multi-media project will have a presence throughout the towns and villages of the nation, as artists and volunteer teams travel to collection points to find out about and gather in the objects that people wish to donate. A multitude of items, small and large, will be collected from donors who will be asked to attach a baggage label illustrating how they are connected to their donated object. Donors will be filmed with their objects and the objects will be photographed, catalogued and under the direction of an artistic design team, take a single shape that will become THE NEST.
Words from these baggage labels together with film footage of people making their donations will be transformed into a large-scale musical work that will be performed by an orchestra and large community chorus made up of people from all over Northern Ireland: professional and unemployed people, young and not so young, farmers, doctors, bankers, shop-keepers, and people with disabilities amongst many others.
With thousands of objects and labels and hundreds of singing voices and musicians, THE NEST will be a far reaching, all embracing, sonic and sculptural landscape that examines and questions relationships between people and the things that we surround ourselves with - the things from which we make our own nests.
In case you haven't seen it, this is kind of a classic internet video
Invisible octopus! The video is from a longer TED talk that shows more animal camouflage
And a lesser-known video: turns out a 600lb octopus can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter
And a lesser-known video: turns out a 600lb octopus can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter
Poorly-photoshopped house from Lovely Listing
As they point out on their post, some of those supposed flowerbeds look as much like .50 caliber browning machine gun cartridges as they do flowers.
The realtor also seems to have found a variety of flower that can hang onto windows where there aren't window boxes.
The realtor also seems to have found a variety of flower that can hang onto windows where there aren't window boxes.
Spidey Pods @ Orbital Comics
Incase any of you eagle-eyed comic fans hadn'd noticed, I thought I'd mention that my Spidey Pods prints are now on sale at Orbital Comics (a framed copy can be seen up on the wall behind the first counter). Orbital recently moved to 8 Great Newport Street, just round the corner from Leicester Square tube station. If the adddress sounds familiar to anyone it is probably because it is the former location of that fine institution, the Photographers' Gallery (now relocated to 16 - 18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW).
Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7JA. Tel: 02072400591
When is good? Tuesday at 3pm. [quick link]
Blurb: "Meeting scheduling service When is Good looked at 100,000 responses to 34,000 events logged to their service over 2 years and found that 3pm—specifically Tuesday at 3pm—seems to be the most agreeable time for a meeting."
Check out the full lifehacker post to find out how they figured this out and other stats:
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/fD6YNZvi-Mk/tuesday-at-3pm-is-the-most-agreeable-meeting-time
L33t Cafe
In looking for a place to eat for our anniversary on Yelp, I stumbled upon this cafe. Sadly, the menu isn't nerd-themed, but the guy gets credit for the restaurant name at least. I'll definitely have to check it out just for sake of going.See also: Yelp page | Explanation of what l33t means
One Sentence Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five
This book is like The Little Prince for grownups.In related news, I'm currently reading: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett [a book about building an 11th century cathedral] followed by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith [Pride and Prejudice with zombies added in. I'm too curious to not read it].
South Bank Graffiti
Here's a short video montage of what we all recently got up to at Ctrl+Alt+Shift's 'Writing On The Wall' event at the South Bank, London.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
