As a fan of both typefaces and silly time wasting flash games, I feel a certain responsibility to show you Helvetica Vs. Arial.
Start A Fire Using Coke and Chocolate
I stumbled upon an interesting site that explains how to start a fire using a pop can and some chocolate. I’ll have to try this sometime.
I Am 8 Bit
Even though it’s kind of old news, I stumbled upon a selection of photos from the i am 8-bit video game art show opening. Too bad all the cool stuff happens in California.
Snopes on NPR
The NPR has a short interview with David Mikkelson, the co-founder of Snopes.com. (Snopes is my favorite site for information about Urban Myths and other rumours).
Implicit Attitude Demo
While reading Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, Blink, I learned that sometimes we have subconscious biases that are not exactly politically correct. A research team at Harvard University has come up with what they call the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report.
Take the test and it may surprise you what your subconscious mind thinks about:
- Age (‘Young – Old’ IAT)
- Gender – Science
- Race (‘Black – White’ IAT)
- Presidents (‘Presidential Popularity’ IAT)
- Sexuality (‘Homosexual – Straight’ IAT)
- Gender – Career
- Arab-Muslim (‘Arab Muslim – Other People’ IAT)
- Weight (‘Fat – Thin’ IAT)
- Religion (‘Judaism – Other Religions’ IAT)
- Disability (‘Disabled – Abled’ IAT)
- Native American (‘Native – White American’ IAT)
- Asian American (‘Asian – European American’ IAT)
- Weapons (‘Weapons – Harmless Objects’ IAT)
- Skin-tone (‘Light Skin – Dark Skin’ IAT)
I took the tests both on Age and Gender and it was calculated that I do not appear to have either an age bias or a gender bias. Sometimes a person’s results can indicate a bias and in retaking the test it may still be hard to correct that bias even though you know you have it and are trying to avoid it from showing.
The Fringe
I’m back from my trip to Drayton Valley and Edmonton. I saw Jackie and Glen’s new house and played with my nephew Ryker. He’s so amazingly cute!
In Edmonton we went to the Fringe Festival to check out the street performers and had a great time. We wanted to see one of the plays but couldn’t get through dinner and get down there fast enough after we decided which play to see. The thing about the plays at The Fringe is, they are selected based on a lottery system, so just because a play is selected to be performed, doesn’t mean it will be good. But that’s part of the fun – finding a good play. Based on the reviews we thought we had a winner.
The only other Fringe Festival I’ve been to was in Adelaide, Australia, and I think the one in Edmonton is a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit better. We had a good time anyway.
Empty Spaces Backwards
This morning I received the following email about my backmasking page:
Hey Jeff,
Just wanted to let you know that your backmasking site rocks. Just one thing you’ve probably heard before, but when you play Empty Spaces backwards there’s a bit more to the lyrics than what you have on your site. The full lyrics are:
“Congratulations, you’ve just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont – ”
“Roger, Carolyn’s on the phone.”
The first guy speaking is bassist Roger Waters. I have no idea who the second guy is, but the ‘Carolyn’ he refers to is probably Roger’s wife of the time, Carolyn Christie. Roger claimed that Carolyn often saved him from going crazy by forcing him to communicate with her, even when he didn’t want to, so that’s probably what the backwards message is referring to. But I’m rambling. Take care and keep the site going, I really love it.
-Carmen
Thanks Carmen. I have received a lot of email about the missing line “Roger, Carolyn’s on the phone” but this is the first time that anyone has offered any kind of explanation as to what it means.
I’m Off to Edmonton
I’m just finishing up my packing for a weekend trip to Drayton Valley and Edmonton. No new posts until I’m back on Sunday night.
Mickey Mouse’s Suicide Attempts
A recently discovered old comic strip set from the 1930’s shows Mickey Mouse repeatedly attempting to end his own life when it appears Minnie has fallen for another mouse.
Update: Barnacle Press has removed the comics, here’s their explanation:
“Mickey Mouse is gone because, even though those strips were terrific, in the Public Domain, and easily the most popular material on the site, we didn’t really feel comfortable with the attention they garnered from sites that linked to them. We didn’t want to be known as the novelty site where you can see Mickey try to kill himself!”
Money Spider
I found a site with a tutorial on how to make your own spider out of five $1 bills. I never tried it, but it looks pretty cool all the same. Plus I don’t have five American dollars just lying around and don’t really feel like folding up five Fives.