Five for Friday

Should I eat this shit? A website that tells you if you should eat something. 

To celebrate getting 1 million followers on Twitter, Lonely Planet have released their Best Travel 2013 guide free for download. 

Brisbane's latest mobile food enterprise, following in the very successful footsteps of the Bun Mobile: Wandering Elephant. 

Gucci releases new leather handbag line with a passport detailing the life of the cow it came from. The accessories version of 'meet the meat'?

The Australian Writers' Centre have opened their annual Australia's Best Blog competition, so if there are blogs out there that you really enjoy and value, nominate them for an award. This is a great opportunity to give recognition to people who put a lot of time and love into a project that brings enjoyment, help or entertainment to others as well as themselves.

 

Happy Friday

Following up on B's post about how awesome Post-It notes are - which they are, I'm a big fan - the internet has shown me something wonderful.

Toast Messenger - Burn messages on your toast

To which I say: would you call these TOAST-IT NOTES?

Interactive world map of literature

This is amazing. The Book Drum World Map is a multimedia map of 150 books. You can spin the globe and find the locations of books such as Perfume, Midnight’s Children, Lord of the Flies and Wide Sargasso Sea. You can learn about the real life-locations of some of the world’s best-known and most enchanting works of literature.

Or else, look up the map to see if your next holiday location was the scene of some great fictional drama.

You need to download Google Earth to join in the experience but it’s just too nifty to pass up.

Five for Friday no. 21

On May 25, it was International Towel Day. A day to honour Douglas Adams, author or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and other pieces of marvellousness. In honour of their hero, Douglas Adams fans organise events all around the world and carry a towel with them for the day. Here are a list of 10 cult literary traditions.

Towel Day in Innsbruck, Austria.

Some sports that are over-due for a return to the Olympics. I vote for 'Duelling Pistols'


Texting your ex in 5 easy steps.


Google Doodles have an archive. It's pretty nifty.


Firework Fails!

Where do you fit in the world?

As we all know, this week the world reached a population of 7 billion people, re-igniting all the usual debates about growth, economy and sustainability.

As part of their reporting on this momentous or terrifying occasion, depending on your view point, BBC News have published a sort of calculator on their website, whereby you can enter your date of birth and find out just what number you are in the world’s population. I’m in the 4.7 billionth area. The number is too long for me to remember.

It does a few other nifty tricks too so have a look.

An infographic on Twitter

I suspect most people who look at this blog - and thank you to all of you who do - don't use twitter. But for those of you who do here's a nifty long info-graphic representing a visual history of twitter.

I love info-graphics on a Monday morning.

Aftersocks!

Last Sunday night I got some of the niftiest socks ever!

Aftersocks! Care, share, wear a pair

Aftersocks are a fundraising project from the Rural Women of New Zealand. Made locally and with 50% local Merino Wool, all funds raised go to support communities in Cantebury and Christchurch to recover from the Earthquakes in early 2011.

Not only are they for a good cause, they look freakin' cool!

I love my new socks, which arrived courtesy of my fabulous sister in law. Chuck also got a pair, so if you see him wearing them, compliment him on his nifty charity-socks.

If you'd like some Aftersocks yourself, then go to the website and buy some immediately.

Polymorphic: a kinetic Installation

This is madly cool. This is a park bench that is a sculpture and a glorious testament to the fact that engineering can be fun – even if it isn’t most of the time, and that there is very little in this world that must be mundane.

This bench is a kinetic structure that moves and shapes as the persons on it move, get up, sit down, lie down – anything. It is built to consider both ergonomics and safety, so it’s comfortable and you will never get crushed if you climb into it.

I can’t say anymore with repeating the whole, very brief website, so go check it out yourselves...

Photos courtesy of Polymorphic, taken from their website.

I want one. I would need to move to a cooler house in a cooler city to justify owning it but I don’t care. I would do that.

US design company Moxy Creative House has re-imagined 10 classic movie posters (last year – I’m so behind). I think they’re just cool! You can buy them too, they’re not that expensive.

The Dress Memory project

Freelance writer and editor Lorelei Vashti is an avid collector of vintage clothes, on indeed, clothes. She began this project when she realised she couldn’t clear out her over-stuffed wardrobes because the clothes in them were too full of memories that would be discarded along with the dresses.

This project or website is all about her reliving those memories and sharing the stories.
As we all know, clothes can be so evocative and full of memories. Whether they are the obvious associations that come with a piece of clothing or jewellery handed down to us from a parent or grandparent, the wonderful find you bought at an op shop and had a great night in, or the cheap t-shirts you bought online and wore for 6 months of travelling. Clothes gather stories and associations as much as the next thing and this is one woman sharing her clothing memories in a sweet and funny way.

There are going to be a total of 24 dresses and stories, shared out over 6 months. This is dress 13, the most recent one. If you want to look at it yourself, go to Dress Memory.

You'll have to go to the website to read the story.

Photograph by Lee Sandwith and taken from the Dress Memory website.

The lost love of letters

I love letters. I love the romance of them, that personal touch and the thrill of receiving something through the post. I have a box of letters and postcards that I've kept so I can get them out and re-read them over the years of my life.

Emails just aren't the same. It is still thrilling when you get a much-anticipated email – say the first few from the boy / girl you've just been on a successful first date with. But in most cases they're dull and uninteresting and blah and always tinged with the aura of work and the 362 emails you have in your inbox after a holiday.

As much as we love our new technology and the latest, fastest niftiest of everything, I am not alone in lusting after the old-fashioned. You only have to look at the craze for vintage clothes that has gripped fashion and the high street in recent years to see that. Old cameras are back, old clothes are back and old forms of communication are back.

Some clever-clogs in America, also fed up with emails have started a 'community art project' Snail Mail Your Email. You send them an email and they will hand-write it, address the envelope and post it for you to anywhere in the world. With stamps and everything. I adore this idea. The idea is to spread warm-fuzzies around the world and re-ignite an appreciation for the lost art of letter writing.

Brain Jam

Cool packaging sells.

This idea behind the packaging makes me slightly nauseous, but it sells itself so well, I want to order these ridiculously expensive overseas products.

Photos courtesy of Hoxton Street Monster Supplies.

Harry Potter as Anime

I discovered this through twitter and it seemed appropriate to post it during my temporary Harry Potter obsession. Even if you didn’t like Harry Potter, it’s still a cool piece of art.