Something Else to Stare at.

When you're all done staring at Sally give this illusion a try.

Stare at the flashing green dot in the center of the image.
The yellow dots will disappear, the lousy bastards.

Click the image to go see the illusion.

Stare Down Sally

Here's a 'fun' game called Stare Down Sally.

"DO YOU HAVE THE POWER TO STARE BACK...
...and NOT BLINK?"

Whoa, that would be such a totally awesome power.

NOTE: You'll need the latest in modern technology: "Sally recommends Netscape 2.02+ or MS Internet Explorer 3+." If your system supports these types of softwares, go check out Stare Down Sally!

Refrederator — Cartoon Podcast

Refrederator features one old cartoon a day, Monday through Friday, in podcast form. The quality is hit-or-miss. Some of them just seem bizarre to modern eyes. Most of the Looney Toons ones are great. Still, they are always interesting, even as a history lesson.

Voice Candy

Voice Candy is an incredibly simple voice recorder that automatically records and changes your voice to one of nine preset effects, from Chipmunk to Darth Vader, or just normal. You can change effects in the middle of recording, so you can simulate a conversation. Pretty amusing. You can set it to automatically save the recording to iTunes, or record a message that will play back at a specified time. And it has one of the best icons I've seen in a while too!

There is one downside. You can only save out the files in .mpg format, which you can't save to your iPod. Well, maybe a Video iPod. (Update! Howard pointed out that you can convert the file to .mp3 from iTunes.)

A trial download is available at Potion Factory.

You're Jackson Pollock!

Without the debilitating alcoholism!

Click the image to be Jackson Pollock.

What was Jimi talking about?

Jimi Hendrix's Spanish Castle Magic is a really great song, but what is it about?
Most people think the song is about getting high, but, it turns out, he's really referring to a club where he used to jam: the Spanish Castle Ballroom. Of course, it's probably a little bit of both. Here's some more info from historylink.org:

"One other notable young Seattle musician who developed a fondness for the Castle was a teenaged guitarist named Jimmy Hendrix. Between 1957 and 1961 Hendrix earned a local reputation for consistently showing up at various gigs and asking if he could sit in and play along. He attempted this with the Wailers, the Dave Lewis Combo, the Playboys, the Adventurers, Dynamics, and other local bands.
Many years after Hendrix had changed his name to “Jimi” and become an international rock star, his father Al would recall that his son would “go to the clubs and ask the guy could he sit in with him. He used to do that right here in Seattle when he was coming up. He used to go to the place on Old [Highway] 99, the dancehall, the Spanish Castle. He used to go there and hang around the stage and try to get in and play with some of the groups.”

You can read more history of the Spanish Castle here.

If you don't already have it, grab this song on iTunes, from the amazing album Axis: Bold as Love, here.

Lots of Stunning Images

The site that has the guinea pig photos from my previous post has a lot of other great photos.
Check out the whole site!
These images of China are amazing.

Guinea Pigs

Strangely dramatic photos of guinea pigs.
This one doubles as a wig!

Color Illusion Variations

OK, just like I promised, here's a list of variations on the spanish castle illusion that people have sent in.

Akiyoshi Kitoaka
Wohba
Mighty Illusions
Illusions Etc
gavinjoyce
Nothing Project
Sean Bell
Brandon Lawson
Chris Roberts
Vili Maunula
Logic High
Cinnamon Thoughts
Sandra Denio
bsm.sk
Florian Sander
Indrek Haav
Soep Kip
Hiroshi Yuki
Dave Kaplan
1,2,3,4, by Farmer Chris

If you create your own, post a link in the comments section of this post so everyone can go see it.

Don't forget that there's a photoshop tutorial!

Globulous

This is a painting from last year, 2005 A.D., it's called "Globulous."

The Crazy Monkey Project

At first glance this has 'scam' written all over it... but... I'm not sure, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. Looking at the comments, a lot of people feel the same way. I think I will keep an eye on this (I have a whole jarful anyways), just to see what they do even if they only raise a couple bucks the first time.

The Strange Tale of the Chips

Click the image to read a tale of hope and heartbreak by my daughter.

Infrared Turtles

Infrared turtles. What more can I say?

The Imaginary World — Old Candy Labels

This site brings back a lot of memories of candies long gone. My generation was very lucky in the candy department, there was a seemingly endless supply of new and weird sugar-based delights. Well, some of them were less than delightful. Did any body actually like those wax bottles filled with warm multi-colored syrup?

I'm a Mover and/or a Shaker!

I'm having a hard time deciding if I should be a mover, or a shaker. I like moving things, but I really like shaking things too.
Can I be both?
Maybe I can move stuff in the morning, and shake stuff in the afternoon.
I definitely need evenings off.

You Only Live Once

This is the video to The Strokes' "You Only Live Once," which is the best song from their new album.

I'm not sure of the legality of these music videos on YouTube, Google Video, etc.

I think the quality of online video these days is pretty horrible, except for iTunes. It's like looking at a bunch of lowest-quality jpeg images. Can't you set a white point & black point in video? In about five years bandwidth pipelines will be a lot bigger and we'll be seeing these videos the way they were meant to be seen... (hopefully!)

Horror, 1784 style

This page has a collection of images from a 1784 Japanese anatomy lesson that shows how a human body decays. Don't click if you're squeamish. Do click if you're in a death metal band and looking for new album cover ideas.

These are probably NSFW.
Courtesy of the University of Kansas Medical Center.
(That's also where I found those Chinese Health Posters)

7-Up + Pac-Man Commercial from 1982.

This video shows an alternate reality in which Pac-Man and his ghost friends run around drinking 7-up.
I don't remember seeing this at all in 1982. I must have been out at the arcades the whole time.
Playing Pac-Man and drinking 7-Up! Eerie!

UPDATE: I just realized, the song in this video is a rip-off of "Bette Davis Eyes."

Hallucigenia

This would make a great pet.

Hallucigenia grew to three centimeters (a little over an inch) long. It may have made its living crawling around on the sea floor scavenging whatever it could find.

Click the image to watch a little movie of this amazing prehistoric creature!

Star Wars Kid Victorious

1. Watch Star Wars.
2. Make a video of youself performing various lightsaber moves.
3. Let someone post the video to the internets.
4. Become famous.
5. Find a personal injury lawyer.
6. Profit!

Via the Globe and Mail:

"According to court filings, the video first appeared on the Internet on the evening of April 14, 2003.
About a month later, one U.S. Web blog that had posted the video said it had been downloaded 1.1 million times already.
Mr. Raza's lawyer said in a court filing that the video was so widely circulated that one Internet site solely dedicated to the two-minute clip recorded 76 million visits by October, 2004.
Mr. Raza conceded in his examination that he didn't express much anguish when he spoke to Mr. Mukerji in May of 2003 about his sudden fame.
He said he was cautious because "everything I said was textually reported on the Internet. I signalled in more or less subtle fashion my unhappiness."

A Thousand Favicons

There are tons of great favicons waiting in these images!
These are sprites from Yoshi's Island.
Here are some characters from Super Mario Bros and Kirby.

You can find lots more Nintendo sprites at saphiria.net.

Check out Aidan's Website.

My son Aidan thinks you should check out his site.
I think you should too!

Eidolon

Here is a painting from 2005, called Eidolon.

Purple

Seriously, I have no idea.

The Earth, from Mars.

Looks a lot like Mars, from the Earth.

Via splasho.com.

Color Illusion Tutorial

I put up a tutorial for the Spanish castle illusion.
There's a PhotoShop action on there too.

Push th' Little Daisies Video

Somebody posted Ween's video "Push th' Little Daisies" to YouTube.

This is from about ten years ago, but it's still the funniest video I've seen.

Lunar Chunk

This is a small little artwork, goes by the name of "Lunar Chunk."
It's a scanned drawing, slightly altered with Photoshop.

Click the Bunny.

I don't know what is is or what it means, but it makes me happy!

The Monkey Chow Diaries

See the guy in this photo? He's holding a couple bags of ZuPreem monkey chow.
What do you think he's gonna do with 'em?
That's right, he's gonna live off of it for a week.
Of course.

(p.s. check out the blog that goes along with it.

Whiteflow

Here is a painting I did in 2004, it's called Whiteflow.

And by the way, I am still working on my artwork gallery.

So hang in there.

Spanish Castle Magic

This little illusion brought me a lot of traffic from Spain for some reason. Thanks guys! Here's a special one just for you. See if you can guess where the photo is from.

Stare at the black dot in the center of this image for 30 seconds.
Then, without moving your eyes, move your mouse over the image.




The image looks like it's in color until you move your eyes.

(by the way, it's a photo of this)

UPDATE: If you subscribe to my RSS feed you may have noticed that I went a little overboard and originally had a huge image for this post. You can go see that one here if you're so inclined!

UPDATE II: The tutorial is up. Go forth and make thine own illusions.

Bad Gods! Amusing little movies.

Bad Gods is a new site which looks like it's gonna be a bunch of funny little movies. Right now there's only one, "Hangman."

If I know Lore Skoljberg, and I don't, you should keep an eye* on this. He's a funny guy. He's Probably used to people spelling his name wrong too. (I know there's at least one ümlaut in there! Skøuljberg maybe? Sköulberg?)

*RSS!

OK, I am back!

Sorry the site's been down, this post ate up my whole month's bandwidth in three days.
In celebration of getting 100,000 visitors I'm turning comments back on! Rejoice! Or not.