I don’t know if it made the world a better place, but it certainly made my day. Jon and Duncan make an Earth Sandwich.
Previously, my own look into making the earth a sandwich.
A Creative Advertising Idea
A new kind of interactive advertising allows consumers to plug their headphones into posters to get a short music sample. So if you’re mp3 playlist doesn’t happen to be doing it for you, you can check out what’s playing on the nearby posters. Right now they are promoting their Pepsi Access website. Seems like there is a lot of potential here—taking it one step further it would be a creative and extremely clever idea if the advertising firm teamed up with Apple and had an interface that you could, “park” your iPod on and download movie trailers, tv ads, or other advertising media that geeky consumers won’t be able to resist.
BBDO created a subway poster that has a fully functional headphone jack imbedded in it, which plays samples of various exclusive tracks available at pepsiaccess.ca. There are close to 100 posters playing 12 different tracks running in Toronto and Vancouver from now until the end of summer.
Pepsi’s got the right idea here. It seems to me to be a lot smarter than the Coke ads that continually scream “GOAAAAAAAAAAL” in celebration of the World Cup. I haven’t actually heard one of these myself but World Cup fan or not, it seems like it would get irritating pretty quickly.
(via)
Turn your $60 router into a $600 router
The Make Blog has a link to the nice step-by-step instructions on how to upgrade the value of your router by 10 times! I’ll have to try this when I get back from my sister’s place.
Some of the features available after the upgrade include boosting your wireless signal and throttling your bandwidth by program.
Update: I just hopped downstairs and found that the particular model of Linksys router that I have isn’t on the list of supported routers. Too bad, I would have liked to try this.
The Great American Road Trip: Cancelled
I had some big plans to go down to the States this week and drive all the way to Indiana. However, due to the way things just work out sometimes, the trip is cancelled and now I’ve got to make something with this pile of lemons I’ve been handed.
So I’ve decided instead of the beautiful Red, White, and Blue, I will head north to visit my kid sister again and her, ever-so-cute, kids. Life seems to be an allusive adventure lately. Hopefully we’ll spend some time at the lake and besides the drive will be a good chance to practice my French. Only twenty more days until I leave for Quebec.
Pixar’s New Movie a Winner
I just read a “review on Cars” by Michael Howe and in case it’s hard to tell, I’m so excited to see this film I’m about to explode!
From the review:
It’s been over 1 ½ years since Pixar released their last film and — if anything — that last extra half-a-year has probably added to a growing eagerness to see this film. In this day and age, it’s difficult to find decent films, let alone those that will leave families feeling that their hard-earned money was well spent. For those who may be wondering, “Cars” is definitely worth it and more. Pixar has never talked down to their audiences, and it shows. The parents will get some of the jokes, and the kids will laugh at some, and then later — when they grow up — they’ll go “Oh, that’s what he meant.” I’m already planning to see it again with my friends when it comes out, and I know they’ll enjoy it as well. Personally, this is the first time this year I’ve been so eager to put down $9.50 to see a movie again!
Update: Ok, I went to see the show last night and I absolutely loved every minute of it. Actually there was one thing I did not love but I’ll get to that in a moment.
First off the technical aspects of the movie, (ie. the rendering and animation) are brilliant. Pixar has really outdone themselves on this one; if it wasn’t a great story, this movie would still be fun to watch just for the amazing imagery. The animation was also extremely well done. I love how something as stiff and inflexible as a car normally is can be turned into a living personality with feelings and emotions all the while keeping the cars realistic by not turning them into some kind of mushy mess.
You’ve also got to love the personalities in this movie. They all have their perfect place and I didn’t feel that any one character was overdone. I agree with Michael Howe’s review that Paul Newman did a particularly fantastic job as Doc Hudson, The Hudson Hornet. It was a magical moment seeing Doc race around the dirt track hitting that turn just right.
But the thing about this movie is that it’s FULL of magical moments. Every character has their moment and their chance to shine.
Now for the one thing that I did not love. I’m the kind of guy that occasionally likes to stay and watch the credits after a movie I liked has reached the end. For a Pixar movie, it’s a given that you’re going to stay to watch the cute “extra” jokes they through in at the end. I was particularly looking forward to it as I’ve heard from some of the early reviews that this movie has some good ones.
The credits came up and before they could even get going—SQUEEEEEEEERTCH! The focus went really bad as the film either jumped off its track or started to bunch up in the projector. Either way the show was over and I didn’t get to see the “post credits” jokes. I guess I’ll have something to look forward to the next time I watch Cars, because it’s worth seeing again. Seriously everyone who goes will love this movie—and if you don’t, well then, it’s time you started to let yourself feel again.
Oh I should also add the One Man Band short, while cute wasn’t nearly as memorable as the Boundin one from The Incredibles. Having said that, one pre-movie bit of entertainment that really stoked my fire was the sneak peak at Pixar’s Ratatouille (Apple Trailer) coming out in 2007.
Links O’ Plenty
The following are a couple of the things I’ve been checking out lately:
No Tolls on the Internet by the brilliant Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney. I can hardly believe that American legislator’s are even thinking about ripping control of the Internet out of the hands of the people and bequeathing it to the telecoms.
Guy from the Train Effect is a good read on creating environments that juxtapose ideas and images not normally associated with each other creating a positive and memorable experience. I think Flickr does a great job of this.
Do it Yourself Impeachment, since I’m not a US citizen I can only watch from the sidelines, but for those of you that are, here’s your call to action; now is the time.
A New Member of the Family
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, my sister phoned my mom to let her know the new baby is on the way. Still no word if it’s a girl or a boy but we’re all very excited. I’m off to Edmonton to meet the newest member of the family.
Update: It’s a boy! Eric Robert was born Sunday, June 4th, 2006 weighing in at 9lbs 9oz and measured 22 inches tall. I’m so excited for their family.
Here he is, about 6 and a half hours old. He was pretty quiet and very tired. He did wake up for awhile and check out the people around him.
Seeing as he was such a big baby, I’m sure Jackie is glad she didn’t have to wait a day longer. I can’t wait until he gets older, it will be so cute when he is big enough to play with Ryker.
Convocation Day
Today I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in New Media from the University of Lethbridge.
My time spent at the University passed by like the blink of an eye (with the exception of my last semester when I was only taking one class—that took an eternity.)
But alas I’m really done and now that I’ve got my piece of paper I’m free to go out and do whatever I want. The world is my oyster. (Here’s hoping I don’t choke on a pearl).
If the Earth Were a Sandwich
I’ve been watching ZeFrank’s The Show for a couple of months now. I think he’s a brilliantly witty guy and I’m amazed at what appears to be the very little effort he seems to exert in coming up with clever and humorous shows on a daily basis.
A couple of weeks ago he discussed the possibility of “making the earth a sandwich” by placing two pieces of bread simultaneously directly opposite each other on the globe. I didn’t even bother investigating the “find the opposite tool” because (I thought) I knew that from here it was all just ocean on the other side of the world.
Now for the good news.
It turns out that near the small town of Manyberries, AB (just a short drive from Lethbridge) there is an area of land that is situated exactly tangent from a small island on the other side of the globe that google has labelled as French Southern & Antarctic Lands.
Do you know what this means?!!! Ladies and gentlemen there is a good chance that I’ll be able to help in MAKING THE EARTH A SANDWICH! I just need to discover who in French Southern & Antarctic Lands reads my website, and then see if they would be willing to lay a piece of bread on the ground at these coordinates: 49.34843 by 69.4363? Both pieces of bread need to be sitting there simultaneously for the sandwich to exist so one of us might have to go out in the dark, which I’m totally willing to do.
Is there anybody out there on French Southern & Antarctic Lands? Hello? Anybody?
And In Twenty Minutes I’ll Have Pizza
A short time ago, the bake element in my oven decided it would prefer to experience its existance as a sparkler rather than the key component in the “heating up Jeff’s food” process.
An interesting thing happens when good elements go bad. It’s not uncommon for the metal to start shooting fiery sparks in all directions travelling around the whole element or until it snaps apart due to the breakdown of the material. It’s fun to watch but a little scary at the same time especially if no one has warned you that it’s not unusual for old elements to self destruct in such a manner.
Ok, here come the boring (but important) life lessons:
- Always put something under your food — the oven is not a barbecue. I’ve caught room-mates doing this on several occasions. Luckily we’ve so far never had a house fire ensue (maybe that’s why the bottom of the oven looks so bad). There are some exceptions to this rule of course, like the pizza that is currently rising to delicious perfection as I write this—I always say, “they’ve come a long way in frozen pizza technology”.
- Replacing your old element is easy. Follow these straight-forward directions.
- Clean your oven before you take pictures and post them on the Internet or the world will think you’re lazy. I’ve chosen not to clean it just to prove a point. Think about how right I am by how apathetic you’re judging me to be.
I guess that’s it. Now I’m off to enjoy some gourmet frozen pizza. Oh and I did clean the oven after I got the old element out—Mr. Muscle you are my hero. I just hope that now my pizza won’t taste like heavy duty oven cleaner.