Offbeat posts

“Steve Jobs has his own idea and he’s a brilliant guy,” says Yoko Ono of that guy with the sweater. “There’s just an element that we’re not very happy about, as people.” She’s referring, of course, to the Beatle’s continued absence from the iTunes Store. It’s almost ludicrous that the band’s catalog hasn’t reached the store – this is the goddamn Beatles we’re discussing. But Yoko doesn’t sound very optimistic. “Don’t hold your breath… for anything,” she says. Frankly, one has to wonder: it’s safe to say at this point that the Beatles’ appearance in the iTunes store would primarily benefit…

I don’t own a printer because, frankly, I don’t want to deal with the cost of ink. Ink is hella expensive, and besides, if and when I need to print, a pro will generally do a better job than the streaky bullfart a home inkjet produces. Imagine my chagrin at these Epson employees, who have taken it upon themselves to print a 1:1 scale model of an Acura NSX Super GT racecar. The ‘car’ is, of course, sponsored by Epson, and when built, actually looks pretty bitchin’. But I can only imagine the printing cost wasn’t much less than the actual car. More pictures after the jump! Personally, I’ll continue to limit…

I’ve always found SteamPunk a little bit of an enigma. Who are these people combining antique items and old world look and feel with cutting edge technology? Is it art or science? Do I need to follow the Antiques Roadshow to understand the whole thing? Either way, it’s awesome to see some of the contraptions, particularly when it’s not just contemporary computer equipment dressed up in a corset. This thingamajig actually works and actually combines old world and new world. The video shows the work so far, which is basically a globe tied into Google Earth using RFID tags. The man responsible for this…

This is plain silly, and not entirely relevant to, well, anything. But it’s fun to see people destroy expensive things for little or no good reason. The washing machine was apparently faulty and beyond repair, but after many years of loyal service surely our electronic devices deserve a more dignified end than this. Faulty or not, when the dullard throws the brick in and the machine goes haywire, it’s almost as if a million washing machines cried out in pain and were immediately silenced. Or slowly and agonizingly silenced….

Nobody likes the companies the RIAA and MPAA are using to chase Peer-To-Peer file sharers, but I was particularly tickled to see this pop up in my RSS feed. The US Copyright Group has filed more than 14,000 lawsuits against P2P users, but apparently they’re not above a little copyright infringement themselves. Their own website is shown to be a rip off of a competitor’s website, Copyright Settlements. TorrentFreak details the story, no doubt rubbing their hands together with glee at the same time. So what does all this mean? Well, obviously the organizations suing consumers on behalf of the RIAA…

Straight outta the wish-I’d-thought-of-that department comes François Vautier, a video artist unafraid to sully precious technology with soil and insects. After filling his scanner with ants, Vautier proceeded to scan the colony each week for five years. The result is a fascinating time-lapsed trip through an almost-surreal biotechnical landscape. Personally, I don’t understand how he shot the video from BELOW the scanner, but life’s full of questions….

Both closeted and outed Star Trek geeks can now enjoy the Star Trek Captain’s Log app for the iPhone 4. The new app from Paramount integrates with Google Maps and Facebook to allow you to add photos, GPS mapping locations of your travels, and to either share your logs with other Captains or keep them private. Access to your own personal Captain’s Log will only cost you $1.99, and the divulging of your personal information to Paramount. I say if I can add a funky Star Trek logo to everywhere I’ve eaten at in the past week, they can know as much about me as they want….

You know what the internet loves? Nostalgia. Seriously. I mean, have you ever heard of Tumblr? It’s full of people posting ads and pin-up girls from 50 years ago. You know what else the web adores? Mash-ups. Mix-up anything online, whether a Ke$ha track or a cat and a parrot, and people will go nuts for it. So really, this new camera app from those crazy kids at MIT should, in theory anyway, make the internet explode. It’s still in its prototype phase at the moment, so it currently requires a laptop connected to a camera, but what it essentially does is direct your camera to the exact co-ordinates of a pre-existing…

Maybe you’ve heard of Harrison Krix. But you probably haven’t, so let me give it to you straight: this man is awesome. A prop designer based in Atlanta, Krix’s work speaks for itself. And frankly, no one will ever be able to say he isn’t one of the biggest Daft Punk fans currently among the human population of Earth. Taking 17 months out of his life to develop the ultimate homage, Krix has built an Arduino-powered working replica of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s trademark blinky-shiny LED helmet. If you’d like to know how to make your own, simply watch the video and, as Krix himself advises, “don’t…

Oh man. Guys. Check it. I’ve wasted too much of my morning on this already, and hopefully, you will too. No one’s quite sure when YouTube decided to add this easter egg, but it doesn’t work with the oldschool player, so it must have been no earlier than April. Hit up YouTube, and pause any video you like. You can also pause one you don’t like, I guess. Just find a video and pause it. Paused? Great. Now press the up and left arrow keys simultaneously. Assuming you don’t have the dexterity of a sea cucumber, you should be playing a YouTubian recreation of the classic arcade game Snake. If you’ve ever owned a…