Tiny Gigantic

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.

What I mean is: Spike Jonez is brilliant. Make sure you watch this in full screen mode.

Experience Zero Gravity from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

I love this because we mostly think of astronauts as super suave, manly-super-manly men from the 60s. You know, the kind who don’t cry, don’t feel pain, and most certainly don’t fall down.

Really inspiring and clever commercial featuring top-notch players competing against regular Joes, including the under 40 Jewish league, and a seniors league. Awesome!

This is super awesome. When you hear it like this, you realize that these noises are subconscious air-fillers, like “um” or “like”.

I don’t usually get all geeky and fawning over business card design. Mostly, I think that that sort of stuff is for design school students and designers who can’t see how little a business card actually matters. But this–if you’re gonna have a business card–this is kind of brilliant.

Ohmigod this is so awesome! Scientist Mohamed Babu from Mysore, India, has discovered that because ants have translucent bodies, they take on the color of what they eat. So he colored up some sugar water, fed it to them, and snapped some gorgeous pics. More here.

Man, this is way better than making a ceramic elephant lamp.

Experiment No. 1 – Skateboard Shades from Shwood Eyewear on Vimeo.

Wow. The guys over at Experiment with Nature are doing some next level shit. Sunglasses made out of old skateboard decks? Is that really possible? Sweeeeet.

Seriously. It’s a home donut maker made by a little company called Nostalgia Electronics. When I was at Language in Common, Bryan used bring in donuts every wednesday. That was bad enough. I think if we’d had this, we’d all have had happy coronaries before now.

Chris Sullivan brought a mike and an app to Union Square and beatboxed all day so that passersby could bust a rhyme if they felt like it. Awesome. You’ll also see a cameo by the ridiculously incredible Reggie Watts.

Here’s what I love about this: while the artists at Fastest Possible are likely super skilled sketchers, technically and otherwise, that’s not where the pleasure of viewing these drawings originates. For me, a forever lapsing creative, artist, and writer, these quick little drawings are a reminder that anyone can draw if they just take 30 seconds, a minute, 5 minutes, or whatever time’s available. Creativity doesn’t need to be a production–you don’t have to take time out of your day to do it. You only need a moment.

So you may have noticed it’s been slow around here lately. That’s because we just had a baby boy! It’s full of all kinds of conflicting emotion, from elation to exhaustion to euphoria to regret. And something thing I’ve been thinking about is that when you have a baby, you’re suddenly presented with a whole new set of opportunities for making. There’s always, and I do mean always, an unmet need. And, the market for baby stuff is one of the most stable around. Anil Dash has a fun writeup about how your baby is serious training for your next startup venture.

Here’s a taste:

-Sleep deprivation combined with constantly-changing schedules
-Performance of rote tasks, incorporating newly-acquired knowledge over time
-Breaking down of self-consciousness or a tendency towards embarrassment in the face of overwhelming responsibilities

Enjoy!

Yes, I know this is an ad. But it’s an ad for American Apparel, and quite different as those ads go. And, also, it’s awesome.

Oh wow. I’ve often been in a room with a client, trying to sell them on adding game cues to an app or an experience. And I always make this analogy: “We want it to be like a lab rat, sucking down nicotine. Press the lever, get your fix.” But actually, I’m beginning to think I was extraordinarily wrong. Because this brilliant little app, right here, is exactly that.

Wow. Really shocking and beautiful photo gallery in The Atlantic of Libyan rebels and their hacked-together, old-made-new-again, homemade weapons. It’s sad, inspiring, and also scary to note that the DIY spirit isn’t constrained to hipster geekery.

Awesome thread on Quora of famous people photographed either before they were famous, when they happened to be out of the spotlight, or simply unaware. Above, my favorite: Nancy Reagan sitting Mr. T’s lap!

Via Kottke.

These are the opposite of rose-colored glasses, coloring the world with a big “fuck you” Pretty fun. If you have a printer you can download and print your own here.

I know, I know. I’m showing my age here. But really, they did actually and fundamentally change how an entire generation related to music and performance and fame and celebrity. The strange part is that I was never a rabid fan of Nirvana, just an interested spectator who liked their most accessible songs. But still, when Kurt Cobain killed himself, I mourned with the best of them. GQ has a fantastic group of photos from the moment they went big. Apparently there’s an article too, but you’ll have to buy the print version to read it.

Oh wow. This might just have a chance at defining the direction of new media narrative in a way that doesn’t offend the sticklers for tradition nor those on the frontlines of emerging media.

More good discussion of it here.