Chemical Cake

Pepperoni Pizza Sweatshirt

tim — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:53:33 +0000

This pepperoni pizza sweatshirt looks like it’ll be hot inside and out! As seen on Craphound.

Jellyfish Make the Perfect Pet

tim — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 06:32:17 +0000

If you’re looking for a pet, but find that dogs to require too much effort and sea monkeys don’t have enough of an edge, then jellyfish may make the perfect pet. Jellyfish Arts created a specialized tank that maintains water flow to keep jellyfish in the middle, and an air diffuser that shields jellyfish from lethal bubbles.

The desktop package includes the aquarium, filtration system and air diffuser, rocks, multicolor LED with remote (!), and live, non-stinging moon jellyfish and food packets, and costs $500. Jellyfish will live for about a year.

The desktop jellyfish tank started as a successful Kickstarter project, collecting over $150K over their original funding goal.

(via Jellyfish Tanks from Jellyfish Art)

Whiskey Blender: Create Your Own Custom Blended Whiskey

tim — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 05:26:44 +0000

Whisky Blender is an online store based in Scotland that provides a simple way for you to craft your own custom whisky blend using up to seven different single malts. Once you’ve finalized your blend, you can name it so that it’s easy to reorder or, if necessary, tweak.

Whisky Blender creates their own single malts and provides detailed, if subjective, tasting notes for each. You can create your blend in 10 ml increments to fill a 700 ml bottle. Single malts are separately priced, so the total cost of your custom blend depends on your recipe; typical per bottle price averages around $75-100.

(Photo: Courtesy Whiskey Blender)

Weegee’s Night Walks: Walking Tours of Weegee’s New York City

tim — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:58:18 +0000

One of my favorite museums, The International Center of Photography, is offering walking tours of Weegee’s gritty New York City, called Weegee’s Night Walks, every Friday night in March from 8PM to midnight. Weegee is the great photojournalist who is best known for groundbreaking, graphic photos of murder scenes in the 1930s.

Each tour is led by great street-scene photographers, including Nelson Bakerman, Edward Keating, Andrew Lichtenstein, Richard Sandler and Lynn Saville, and explores Weegee’s ‘subterranean world’ of alleys, back streets and night spots.

Tours are being held in conjunction with an impressive show of his work, called Weegee: Murder is My Business, currently at the museum until Sept 2, 2012. The photographer’s estate left the bulk of his work to the museum.

“Weegee’s Night Walks” tour admission is $75. Each tour starts in a different New York City neighborhood and ends in an appropriate bar or restaurant.

The Most Common Cooking Mistakes Explained

tim — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:31:02 +0000

This list of 10 common cooking mistakes is a great summary of simple errors we all make when cooking or baking. Cooking Tips and Cooking Questions Answered – Cooking Light.

Create Your Own Giant Head Sign with Build-A-Head

tim — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:21:08 +0000

For 12 bucks, Build-A-Head will print and ship an oversized 12″x17″ face sign using your photo. They suggest that this could be used for team fundraising, political campaigns, parties, and marathons.

The real winner is the Huge Big Face Cutout. Dig deep for this 3-foot monster: the Huge Face will cost you $60 plus $5 shipping.

Blast Radius Calculator

tim — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:51:42 +0000

Calculate the effect of a nuclear blast by setting the detonation point and blast yield in this Google Maps application. The fun is in figuring out where to drop a large enough bomb to take out your enemies while keeping you and yours safe and radiation free. You can calculate your own blast yield, or pick a previously used or popular one (crude dirty bomb, “Little Boy“, “Ivy Mike“).

Of course, this application actually illustrates the futile destructive stupidity of the nuclear arms race.

How To Make a Proper Old Fashioned

tim — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:37:08 +0000

Fascinating and opinionated web site focused on one thing: how to make a proper Old Fashioned. Author Martin Doudoroff believes that a lot of “bad ideas” have corrupted the modern drink.

Old Fashioned Recipe

Follow the easy original recipe to make an Old Fashioned. In a glass, put:

A little simple syrup or other mild sweetening syrup
A dash of aromatic bitters (Angostura bitters to start)
A measure (2 oz) of bourbon, straight rye or Canadian whisky
If necessary, a little water to taste and/or ice
A twist of lemon or orange rind

There is no soda, fruit pieces or juice in or shaking of an Old Fashioned.
This is an Old Fashioned:

This is not an Old Fashioned:

(via Kottke)

Photos: Old Fashioned – A Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from John Rodenbiker’s photostream; Not Old Fashioned – A Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from Rochelle Hartman’s photostream)

Really Awful Lindsay Lohan-Inspired Art Can Be Yours

tim — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:40:25 +0000

If you have some spare cash, some really awful fallen-celebrity-inspired artwork can be yours. Well, actually, it can’t, because some jackass already bought it from ~~Jean-Michel Basquiat~~ Domingo Zapata for $100,000.

(via Animal NY)

Cutting the Cable: Receive Local TV Stations on the Internet

tim — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:31:40 +0000

One of my ongoing projects is reducing my cable TV bill. I receive my internet and television service from my cable provider, and pay extra for high-definition channels but otherwise do not receive subscription channels like HBO, Showtime or sports. For this service, I pay about $140 a month but really only watch a couple of shows a week (an occasional Daily Show and Colbert Report); my wife sometimes catches a random movie on the Hallmark Channel. A couple of times a year, I might watch the last quarter of a big game like the Superbowl. Our light viewing hardly seems worth the monthly cost.

Over the air (OTA) broadcast channels is a roadblock that prevents us from cutting the cable. I live in an area with historically poor reception and hesitate to spend money on a big roof antenna without knowing for sure if it would work, however local stations aren’t available on on-line services like Hulu+ (to which we subscribe). Local stations hold the exclusive rights to distribute shows locally, and have found it more lucrative to have cable companies pay them to carry shows over cable than to provide direct service to the public, other than via broadcast to your antenna.

A new company called Aereo aims to address this by offering broadcast channels via your internet connection. The secret is that they say they’ve developed a dedicated, thumbtack-sized antenna. When you sign up for the service, they install this new antenna at their location and set up for you, along with a TiVo-like, cloud-based digital video recorder (DVR) service. You can watch whatever local stations you want on your internet-enabled device of choice.

The company relies heavily on a legal decision, where Cablevision was allowed to provide their customers with a remote, dedicated DVR to record what they wanted without special equipment or hardware. The big media companies who were suing Cablevision lost, and the US Supreme Courtdeclined to hear their appeal.

The service is projected to cost $12 a month and launch in New York City on March 14. Broadcast and cable companies have not responded to the announcement. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the coming months.

Photo: Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) Nick J Webb http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickwebb/3968701223/