Iambic 5 Poetry is the standout track from this 1999 mini masterpiece from Tom Jenkinson. This record is also from his jazzy, saccharine sweet phase, complete with soft pianos and tinkling ting-tings. The whacky and the weird rhythms and the pointless, insular ramblings are still there, they’re just eveloped by a nicer, newer combination of digital and organic music.

Available now as a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, this crossover game features characters like Baraka, Jax, Kitana, Raiden and gang against DC Comics stars Batman, Superman, Wonder Women, Catwoman and the rest. Once Hollywood has milked all the comics’ characters in a few years time, I am sure they will turn to the world of crossover stories to try and make more money. Just wait and see…

Another great street art project called Inner city snail, from the same guy who brought us the awesome Little People. Speaking of which, I think I will go buy the Little People In The City book soon.

The most unusual of clocks, one rotation of the Life Clock is equivalent roughly to an entire lifetime and each number represents age. It is a regular clock mechanism which is electronically slowed down to match the life length of (presumably European) women.

I think I’ll stick with a regular clock at home, thank you.

Threadless is having a $5-ish sale now – time to go get some tees!

I’m also digging their new URL structure that allows me to link directly to their $5 T-shirts, $10 T-shirts and $15 T-shirts. Nicely done…

There was a time when iTunes was a (relatively) snappy and meagre 10MB download and it played back music well enough. Nowadays, Apple’s free audio player software (now at version 8.0.2) is a jukebox, store, sync software and video player all rolled into one that weighs in at a grand 60MB. There are times when I wish there was an iTunes Lite option that did not have the extra features I don’t need and just played audio.

I can’t wait for Songbird 1.0 to come out — with iPod support baked in, it can completely replace iTunes for most people (on Macs and Windows).

Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

›› Howard H. Aiken

An incredibly dedicated and talented dad draws on his kids’ lunch bags everyday. Way to go, dad dude!

The Chocolate Pie Chart is 70% milk, 20% dark, 10% white chocolate and 100% recommended for those whose investment portfolio charts don’t look as sweet in the current economic climate.

This is only the second Coldplay record I have in my possession. Someone gifted me the sappy, moody but not-really-that-bad Parachutes album many years ago, and I bought Viva La Vida, Or Death and All His Friends because the cover invoked a bizarre feeling of optimism in me. Even more bizarrely, I also bought it, despite not really liking Coldplay, because I wanted to see if there was any new musical reason to like Chris Martin and Co.

Sadly, I have to say that they still sound like they want to be U2. The guitars sound like a homage to The Edge, and the epic atmospherics of the album sound very Joshua Tree-like. They have Brian Eno as a producer which probably doesn’t help. I’m sure there are definitely U2 fans out there who dig Coldplay but I obviously am not one of them.

My theory is that Coldplay figured that since they were incapable of rivaling the cutting edge Radiohead stuff, they might as well try and fill be the biggest stadium rock band mould created by U2.

As a consolation, thanks to Coldplay’s massive fan base, at least I know I can get a good price at Cash Converters for this CD next week.

Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It’s more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? Am I supposed to compare it to conventional horses? To a rhinoceros? Does its pre-existing mythology impact its actual value, or must it be examined inside a cultural vacuum, as if this creature is no more (or less) special than the remainder of the animal kingdom?

›› Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy

Millions of photos from LIFE magazine are now archived on Google Images. And the large-resolution versions are available for purchase as prints, too. I found a slew of Singapore-related images and they are awesome (if you’re a nostalgia/history buff) but I just wish there were more information on the images’ locations and context. Maybe Google and LIFE could extend the Google Image Labeler to this outstanding resource one day and make it even more useful.

Interesting promo site for IKEA — upload your own MP3, play with a keyboard-driven drum kit or shout into your computer’s microphone and see the action. Pretty fun, even funny, and beautifully executed but somehow seems a pointless: I really don’t see how sound will make all the difference if I am buying a cupboard.
But, hey… you know… it’s really nice.

Who would have thought Elvis would look this good on a PEZ dispenser!

Apparently, rearranging the letters of ‘William Shakespeare’ gives us some real gems.

• I am a weakish speller.
• I’ll make a wise phrase.
• Hear me as I will speak.
• Alas! I’m shrew-like ape.
• Wise male: ah, I sparkle!
• I make Lear’s wish pale.
• I shape warlike males.
• A wee phrase? I am skill!
• Lame Swahili speaker.

[Via Anagram Genius]

An absolutely stunning piece of film-making for this Toshiba commercial by Grey London. Honestly, I don’t know how the heck this advert sells Toshiba’s Upscaling technology in particular, but the jaw-dropping technique is just fantastic. You can’t really go wrong with a Crystal Castles track for the music either.

The scale of the production is massive: 200 Toshiba camcorders, 2.5 million individually named frames and 20 terabytes of video.

[Via Heavy Backpack]

The XO Laptop, despite all the criticism, is for a noble cause and is a wonderful product. I bought it last year and I’ve had hours of great fun on it – it’s got great battery life, a superb screen that works great outdoors and it’s (almost as) hard as nuts. I can’t wait for our kid to grow up and bang away on it!

Yes, the violence in the video may be a little disturbing but The Kills are pretty awesome, so it’s OK.

This beautiful coin won a Dutch contest to design a 5 euro commemorative coin. The winning designer, Stani Michiels, (actually, it’s more the winning architect) has a nice detailed process story about the winning design. The stunning thing for me was that the entire process of designing the coin was all done with free software — Python, SPE editor, PIL, pyCairo, Gimp, Inkscape, Phatch — on an Asus Eee PC that ran Ubuntu.

Absolutely stunning work and a glowing tribute to the versatility, quality and cost of Linux in a ‘production’ environment. If only Linux and most other free software were easy enough for more people (like our parents) to access and use on their desktops, the world might be better, freer and less energy-hungry than it is now.

[Via Design Oberserver]

The weird, ridiculous lyrics and John McCrea’s lazy, deadpan delivery are why many people dislike Fashion Nugget, and CAKE’s music in general. The weird, ridiculous lyrics and John McCrea’s lazy, deadpan delivery are exactly why I absolutely love this album, on top of the excellent and wide ranging influences and ability this band has. This album spawned two radio hits (The Distance and the cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive) for this alternative rock band from Sacramento and it’s very high on my list of albums I hope to somehow have in my possession if I find myself marooned on a deserted island. (It goes without saying that I must have a CD player on hand if I find myself marooned on the said deserted island, but I digress…)

Match Day Football Programmes is a collection of match day programmes from the golden era of British football (before all the commercialism, professionalism and all that) published by Fuel Design. It features English league (and a few non-league) clubs from 1945 to 1991. At £18 a piece, this pocket sized book is an excellent window into the simpler (albeit amateur) days of the beautiful game.

It seems I am not the only one who Googles my symptoms before heading to the doctor. Google Flu Trends tracks search terms to predict when the flu will hit certain areas within the United States — an epidemic indicator, if you like. While it’s a good idea and could be extended to pseudo-prediction of epidemics and pandemics, this kind of ’searchsourcing’ will only be useful if Google remains insanely popular.

Ink Tape is a font designed by Merci Bernard, an art director from France who has a nice collection of work.

Now for being stupid and believing in witchcraft you will have to work much harder to recoup the money you gave us.

›› Columbian pyramid scheme crooks taunting their victims

Please pardon the radio silence over the last couple of days because I was busy becoming/being a rookie dad to a baby girl called Eliza.

Baby and Wife are now safely home after a couple of days in hospital. It’s been great fun so far but a lot of hard work, too. One may be adept with Photoshop shortcut keys and dexterous with CSS shorthand selectors but I am fast finding out that there is no easy way out with this parenting thing.

And yeah, there is no Command-Z (or Control-Z) for things like midnight tantrums and unexpected bowel movements during nappy changes either.

Well, the truth is […] we can’t solve global warming because I f***ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective.

›› Barack Obama letting it out before the elections

What a historic moment: Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. His margin of victory will probably be absolutely stunning — as I write this, he is routing McCain 338-15 in the electoral vote count. While his election to the highest office might be a national catharsis of a failed Bush administration, it is just awesome that Americans voted for someone based on perceived ability and not on the colour of his skin. The real work, though, begins when his terms starts in January 2009; the huge international goodwill towards Obama will surely help America.

Oh yeah, I am so going to buy this poster as a memento. As do a lot of people outside the US, I too feel some strange excitement about what seems to be an upcoming new world order.

Teaching children to use Windows is like teaching them to smoke tobacco — in a world where only one company sells tobacco. Like any addictive drug, it inculcates a harmful dependency.

›› Richard Stallman rips into the One Laptop Per Child project

Yeah, I am almost a day late on the news but I just saw the repeat of the Brazilian Grand Prix and what a fantastic moment for Lewis Hamilton! Winning the championship at the last corner of the last race of the season must have been a nerve-shredding experience, to say the least. (Note to Hamilton: Now that you’re a true rock star, please ditch that tranny-looking girlfriend for another.)

But let’s also spare a thought for…

• Poor old Filipe Massa, who must be feeling awful, and the entire Ferrari team, who thought they had won and were jumping for joy before realising Hamilton’s final position.
• Poor old Timo Glock who is probably being vilified in Brazil for ‘throwing the race’. The thing is, he would have lost the position anyway if he had pitted for wet tyres.
• Poor old David Coulthard who, on his last race, crashed out on the first lap.

Very nice photography for British Airways but what’s the point when BA’s staff can’t hold their shit together, eh? But great photography nonetheless from a team of about five photographers — see the other images here.

Designed bar codes can be a good, even powerful, idea for branding — someone should do it soon! I already have a massive number of ideas and executions in my head after seeing this.

Actually, it’s more a nicely edited ad using an Obama speech and good music rather than a speech itself. But it’s powerful stuff nonetheless.

In any case, I just hope our dear American friends won’t let another screw up happen again this time.

A true case of being lost in translation. An error of this magnitude must be both laughable and infuriating.