OnelargeprawnI don’t know about you but I quite like a little “junk in the trunk”.
Weird Austrian Erwin Wurm seems to have a similar view, but for motor vehicles. By plumping up an existing car with styrofoam and fiberglass, his “Fat Car” is a chubby version of the original sporty model. He wants to offer a sharp criticism of our current value system, as the advertising world demands us to stay thin but to consume more and more – via Geekologie.
Tilt-shift photography is a technique where you manipulate a camera so that a photo of a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model. By shooting the locations from a high angle, it will create the illusion of looking down at a scale model. The example of Nice, France below by Flickr user therealjasonruff shows the technique off well.
There are a few ways for you to create tilt-shift photos:
This method involves obtaining a decent camera, a tilt-shift lens, and reading up on the details HERE, HERE, and HERE. Not recommended for people with ADD or those feeling monetary problems.
This method involves using a graphics editor like Photoshop or GIMP to alter the focus of the photograph to simulate a shallow depth of field that would normally be encountered when using macro lenses. This will make the scene seem much smaller than it really is. By increasing the color saturation and contrast, you can simulate the bright paint often found on scale models.
To make your own tilt-shift photographs with Photoshop click HERE for a tutorial.
TiltShiftMaker is an online site that does all the hard work for you in 3 simple steps. Upload your standard photo (jpeg format, 4MB limit), select the focus size, and get the tilt-shift equivalent.
Use TiltShiftMaker HERE and check out the Flickr TiltShiftMaker pool HERE.
More cool cartoons at Toothpaste For Dinner.
If today is your birthday, we at onelargeprawn wish you a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY. And it’s on a Friday – you lucky so-and-so – hope you got cool pressies and cake and beer and tequila and lots of other good stuff (and not a Lance Armstrong cancer bracelet).
Also born on this day were:
1908 – Simone de Beauvoir, French author
1913 – Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States
1929 – Dorothea Puente, American serial killer
1933 – Wilbur Smith, Zambian-British novelist
1941 – Joan Baez, American singer and activist
1944 – Jimmy Page, British musician and producer (Led Zeppelin)
1967 – Dave Matthews, South African singer and musician
1975 – Kimberley Ann Scott Mathers, former wife of Eminem
1982 – Kate Middleton, girlfriend of Prince William of Wales
Thanks for the info Wikipedia.
Let me know if you’d like me to add a friend, family member or little ol’ you to our daily birthday lists of (famous) people.
Mail me names, years of birth, and what makes you or them famous.
As you may have noticed Dear Reader, I am a great fan of satire, sarcasm, irony and all things dark and dangerous. Anyway the fabulous Zahidah (maker of superb pies and samoosas) pointed me in the direction of a very lekker local site that is jam packed with lovely juicy satire and sarcasm. Here’s a tasty tit bit:
After 15 years ANC thinkers make incompetence breakthrough
PRETORIA. After fifteen years in power the ANC has for the first time threatened to sack non-performing ministers, saying that the groundbreaking concept to stop rewarding incompetence went against everything the new South Africa stood for but was necessary if the ruling party was going to carry out effective purges inside its organization.
Speaking to journalists this morning ANC spokesman Yesman Mxenge said that the new concept, called “accountability”, had sowed panic and confusion among ANC backbenchers.
“The problem is that it’s a very high-end concept,” said Mxenge. “I’m not sure I understand it myself.
“In a nutshell, it’s basically that if you don’t do the job you’re being paid half a million a year to do, you don’t get fired.
“Wait, no, you do get fired. That’s the part that keeps tripping us up.”
For more full flavour fun and delicious belly laughs visit Hayibo. Oh and their polls are awesome too!
A wise Vulcan once said “Logic is the begining of wisdom not the end”, but enough about that weirdo. Take the 15-question Arm Chair Logic Test to find out how logical you are.
More from the crazy brilliant Toothpaste For Dinner man Drew. Check out Superpoop for your daily dose of sarcasm, satire and irony.
When I grow up I want to be a blogger like David Thorne (you need to mouse around a bit to find the way into his site but I promise it’s worth it).
Tampons
My son’s birthday is next week. When he was seven, I told him to draw pictures of what he wanted for his birthday as a visual list, when I inquired as to one image (which I first took to be a box of coloured crayons), I deciphered his explanations as it being tampons. In particular, the multicoloured brand. His only references to the product were the adverts featuring a girl jumping out of a window onto a tree which lowered her into a bmw convertible full of friends, an electric green street racing car with black flames and the ability to do a single handed handstand star-jump on a dance machine to crowd applause. I bought him a box and figured he would work it out. Yesterday I asked him what he wants for his birthday and he replied ‘not tampons’.
Riddick
While watching the movie ‘Chronicles of Riddick’ together last night, my offspring stated that he wished Riddick was his dad. When I asked why, he replied that Riddick is good looking, has muscles and is a good fighter. I told him that I wished Matthew (his arch-enemy at school) was my son because he is better at maths and has cool hair.
Girls that have said no #4
A lady (aged 190) at the counter at Myers in front of me yelled ‘my purse’ then looked at me and proclaimed ‘You took my purse’ so I said ‘yes, I took your purse, I collect them.’ and she started yelling at me and the department manager came over and I had to explain that I was not admitting to the theft, I was being sarcastic. Her purse ended up in one of the many bags she was carrying but she continued to glare at me without so much as an apology. When the girl served me she apologised and I asked her ‘why, did you arrange someone to act like an old crazy woman for me’ and she laughed and said that I was funny so I asked her out and she said no.
I’ve just been retrenched, and this is exactly what I feel like saying to these *@&£ers when I leave.
More absolutely brilliant cartoons at Toothpaste For Dinner.
Back in the day, authors didn’t have distractions like the Internet, TV, and shopping malls. This left them with a great amount of time to write books hone their bedroom quirkiness. Here are a couple of great authors and their intimate quirks.
Lord Byron (1788 – 1824) was more of a pimp daddy than Snoop Doggy Dogg. He kept lists of his lovers and apparently slept with more than 250 women in one year! STDs were obviously of no concern to to Mr “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Byron slept with the ladies, their cousins, and supposedly his own half sister. As trophies, he used to snip a bit of hair (pubic, not scalp – duh!) from each of his conquests.
Despite having a long and somewhat embarrassing name, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882 – 1941), wrote the landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and some extremely lewd letters to his lover, Nora Barnacle, expanding on the two things he specifically loved – being spanked, and women’s farts. In one letter to her, he sang the praises of her “arse full of farts.”
As odd as his full name, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900) swung both ways. Although this deviant was married to Constance Lloyd, with whom he had two children, Oscar had countless affairs with both sexes – and he preferred boys in the mid-to-late teens. How discerning, boning grown men was obviously not the right cup of tea. According to his old lover Lord Alfred Douglas, “He was hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard. He never attempted to conceal it.”
Read more about the bedroom quirks of other authors at Mental Floss.
Somebody smart once said never work with children or animals. This proved to be advice young Nathan Beavers of Jackson, Ohio really should have taken to heart.
Nathan was babysitting a bunch of kids in a trailer in Jackson when he clumsily trod on a four-year-old boy’s foot. This innocent bumbling act so enraged the injured toddler that he proceeded to grab a shotgun and blast it in Nathan’s general direction. Luckily for Nathan his wounds are reportedly pretty minor. The toddler has not been charged.
Nice. Trailer + Toddler + Shotgun = Only in America.
Read more.