bookofjoe

Talking Mona Lisa

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Man builds car from 956,000 matchsticks

 
From IT Acumens:

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Man Builds Car From 956,000 Matchsticks

Michael Arndt is a man of matchsticks. Over the course of six years,

using 956,000 matchsticks, 1,686 tubes of glue, and at least

three different varieties of moustache, he built a full-scale replica [above and below]

of a McLaren 4/14 F1 car at a cost of around €6,000 ($8,725).

The giant model takes up Arndt's entire kitchen. And probably his social life.

It can be broken down into 45 parts for easy transport to various matchstick builders conventions.

[via Milena and Moolf]

File under 'no good deed goes unpunished': the starling in America

"Had the Bard not mentioned the starling in the third scene of 'Henry IV,' arguably the most hated bird in North America might never have arrived. In the early 1890s, about 100 European starlings were released in New York City's Central Park by a group dedicated to bringing to America every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare."

See what happens when there's no Internet to occupy people?

Full Washington Post story from which comes the above-quoted paragraph here.

From UpNorthGuides.com:

"Starlings, in effect, talked their way into North America. Members of the same family as the more renowned talking myna bird from India, starlings too have impressive vocal abilities and commonly mimic the calls of other birds as well as cats, dogs, flutes, chimes and machine sounds. They were originally grassland birds and became commonplace around the farms and cites of the ancient world, where they were taught by the Romans to speak Latin words and phrases, with proper gender and tenses. In Shakespeare’s "Henry IV," after the king forbids the name of his rival, Edmund Mortimer, to be uttered, the defamed earl’s ally, Henry Percy, malevolently jests:

I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him
To keep his anger still in motion.

This brief mention on stage bought the starling a ticket to America. In 1890, a wealthy drug manufacturer, Dugene Schieffelin, released about 60 imported starlings in New York’s Central Park in his project to establish all of the birds mentioned in the plays of Shakespeare in the United States. It was a classic example of romantic human ignorance resulting in ecological disaster."

No Lock Out Door Prop

It costs $2 but my Chinese isn't good enough to figure out how to buy one.

Maybe you can help.

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Note added Wednesday, September 9 at 1:03 p.m.: These are also know as "finger pinch guards" and "slam stoppers" and can be purchased (not as stylish as the one above, true) for $2.47 here.

Thanks to commenter Safranit for the heads-up.

TechnoDolt™ Credo: I may not be bright but I make up for it by being slow

I'm still trying to figure out how Twitter works, stuff like all those @xyz tweets I see on people's Twitter pages that seem to be responses to messages/Tweets to those people.

I look in vain most of the time for a link that lets me "message directly" so I decided maybe you just begin a tweet with "@" and then post it and somehow that person gets it.

Especially since when I clicked on the "@bookofjoe" on my own page (top) all of a sudden a new page came up (above) slugged "Tweets mentioning @bookofjoe," with what appear to be several messages a day to me from people I follow or who follow me.

I pride myself on responding to emails the same day I get them so I felt kind of like a failure for not acknowledging any of these, no matter that I hadn't realized they were there.

So I went back and responded to each one, and promise to check there daily and get back to anyone who takes the time and trouble to get in touch/ask a question, etc.

Snuffy Smith on why we're here

'Me at the zoo' — uploaded at 8:27 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, 2005 by Jawed Karim, it's the first video ever uploaded to YouTube

True.

Karim was one of the founders of YouTube.

[via Virginia Heffernan and the New York Times]

Ingo Maurer Limited Edition OLED Lamp

"The first of its kind...," according to Eric A. Taub writing in yesterday's New York Times, it uses "... 10 OLED panels in a table lamp in the shape of a tree."

Called "Early Future," it was introduced last year at the Light & Building Fair in Frankfurt, Germany.

According to engadget, "Each OLED tile measures in at 132mm x 33mm."

25 of the €25,000 ($35,800) lamps will be made.

Apply within.