The Batcycle

     One man's endless quest for perfection continues as he attempts to realize his dream of having a reproduction of the TV Batman's "Batcycle", complete with sidecar.

Make-a-Flake

     Make your own snowflake, by cutting out a paper one in Flash. There were fifty-thousand made, last I checked, in their gallery of user-created flakes and some of them were pretty good, too.

     If you're feeling more industrious, however, and you'd like to make a real snowflake from good old water and cold air, you can go here and do just that.

An Ad Man, I Am

     The advertising work of Dr. Seuss. Link via Boingboing, by the way, as was the arcade cabinet project, it's about the only page I've had the time to browse tonight. I'm about to fall asleep over here, as you can tell by the really lame article title.

So...You Want to Play Donkey Kong?

     Two guys are building an ultra-sweet M.A.M.E cabinet, with all the extras. You can see pics of their arcade dream machine and read the logs they're making of their project's progress here.

Your Name in Chinese

     Calligraphic Chinese representations of many common names for wallpaper or screensavers.

Mirror Sytes

I Say Ketchup, You Say Catsup

     In yet another example of the fact that for every oddball obsession there is in this world, there's a website devoted to it, in this case, that obsession would be ketchup. I'm guessing that whoever made this site is probably one of those nuts who'll douse a perfectly good steak in the stuff, something that always makes me cringe when I see it.

Hurt

     In case you haven't seen it, Johnny Cash, who's been in very poor health recently, did a video of his cover of Nine Inch Nail's song, Hurt. You can see it here, on Mark Romanek's website, along with several other award-winning videos he's directed. Although the pairing of musical sensibilities sounded a little odd to me at first- NIN and Johnny Cash- it's a perfect fit and a really moving piece of work I highly recommend seeing.

Should We Be Happy or Worried?

     Well, big news in blogging land: Pyra Labs, the company behind this whole Blogger show, have been bought by Google, the internet search behometh. Maybe this will be a good thing, I'm not sure, but I'm thankful, at least, that they didn't sell it to AOL or Microsoft or something, that would have been really scary.

For All you Valentine's Day Lovers Out There...

     I'd just like to say this: the chocolate industry is driven by child slave labor and diamond's are over-valued rocks ....enjoy.
     As for myself, I plan on spending the holiday as always, curled up under my covers in the fetal position, lights off and curtains drawn, The Doors' song The End playing in an endless loop on my Winamp. Now that's a good, old-fashioned V-Day, if you ask me.

Exotic Sodas

     Outlaw Hemp Butterscotch? White Tail Birch? These are a couple of the out-there sodas profiled here. Only one of the bunch I've ever tried is Vernor's Ginger Ale, which I grew up on. Great stuff and I hadn't thought about it in years, but the stuff does tend to make you sneeze, like they mentioned in their review. Good, good stuff, wish I had a bottle of it. Incidentally, it's the oldest soda in the United States, first produced in 1858.
     It's funny, with all the choices out there as far as soft drinks go, it seems that 9 times out of ten I'll just grab a Mountain Dew. I like a lot of different sodas- the occasional root beer, the cherry-flavored stuff, cream soda- I guess my brain's just so hard-wired by advertising that, when faced with a myriad of choices in the convenience store cooler, I'll always unthinkingly grab whatever the media wants me to drink at the time and go along with the rest of the herd.
     Next time I'm faced with the prospect of buying a drink, I'm going to make it a point to take a moment, look around and go for something different.

Happy Valentine's Day...Do You Feel Lucky?

     Smith and Wesson unveiled their largest handgun ever this week, the .50 caliber Magnum. You have to wonder if this merely a coincidence or a case of shrewd marketing?

Mind Reader

     A neat little mind-reading trick.

More Pencil Carving Craziness

     I put up a link to this type of thing a few months back, but here's another page of carved pencils I saw on MeFi awhile ago that's even more impressive. Someone's got a whole lot of patience. I wonder how many of these carvings get broken and tossed out before a finished one is completed?

Just In Case Anyone Out There Ever Wondered What I Looked Like...

     The person above is me. Never talked much about myself on here or felt the need to put up pictures, but I photoshopped this pic the other night and since it sort of fit in with the scheme I figured "what the heck?".
     In case anyone's into that sort of thing and is curious about the filters I used for the spacey-stuff, the background was done with Glitterato and the Earth was made with Lunar Cell, same thing I made the one on the top of the page with, two filters by Flaming Pear. I've been playing with PS a lot lately and maybe I'll start putting up a few pics here and there.

Knowing Poe

     A look at the literary genius that was Edgar Allen Poe, his life and times, his letters and more.

Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman

     It's a rare artist that kicked the kind of ass Leonardo kicked and his work as an illustrator is showcased nicely on this site.

Hat Tricks

     No, we're not talking about hockey, we're talking about tricks you can do...with hats. Yeah, I know, who cares about doing tricks with hats. For some reason, though, I can see my friend Bill getting a charge out of this one as some of the tricks might fall under the category of juggling, although indirectly, at best.

Time Passages

     Playing With Time takes a look at the world around us in an unusual way, slowing down events too fast for us to perceive- like the blink of an eye or an exploding firecracker- and speeding up gradual processes, like the change of seasons, so we can appreciate what's really going on. The site, which is an offshoot of a travelling museum exhibit, has a lot of amazing Quicktime footage that puts time in a unique perspective.

Web Zen

     Lots of really great stuff here. This current page focuses on retro-goodies like Pong and other early videogames, old computers, 80's nostalgia items like the Cube and more. Tons of good pics of early machines and some humorous stuff as well. There's more fun to be found in the site's archives, though, so poke around awhile, you can waste some serious time here, great site. (via Boingboing...where I also picked up the previous Grover is Bitter link)