Do you ever say to yourself, "I wish that I could just stay at work all of the time and never go home"? Surely you can use your time more productively than commuting or spending time with your family. To make that dream a reality, the Japanese company King Jim invented the Wearable Futon Air Mat Set.
You don't have to waste time by changing clothes or making your bed. Ever. You're always wearing the only clothing and bedding that you'll need. The suit (which really needs a tie for professional office settings) weighs about 1.5 pounds and inflates for a comfortable evening.
Doors obviously have a utilitarian purpose, but additionally they often hint at the aesthetic that lies within. Or they impress the observer with an air of mystery about what could be beyond such an exotic barrier. Featured here are examples from "30 Beautiful Doors that Seem to Lead to Other Worlds."Check them out and see which portals capture your imagination.
James Myrick is a master beard artist. He's rather secretive about his methods, but my guess is that, by precise mental concentration, he can grow his beard into different shapes. The results are amazing, such as this hypnotic spiral.
Myrick, like all of us, needs money to live. But he lives in order to beard.
Myrick once tried to shave with a kryptonite razor. The blade broke.
In the X-Men universe, Myrick would be considered an alpha level mutant. He would teach bearding at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Wolverine would seek out his advice on how to manage his mutton chops.
As a serious Breaking Bad fan, Myrick suggests that we look upon his beard and despair.
But he's also a romantic and sentimental person at heart.
It took me several months, off and on, but my latest carpentry project is finally complete! It's a hanging cupboard that looks like Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
The door is made of 0.25 inch birch plywood. The body is made of 0.5 inch birch plywood. The box has exterior measurements of 12.5 inches high, 10.5 inches wide, and 4.5 inches deep. The door is, at its furthest extent, 20 inches across and 19 inches tall.
The box is held together with 16 0-gauge wood biscuits. The door is attached to the box by hinges to a 1x1 inch strip of pine which is glued to the door. The door is held in place with a magnetic clasp.
I used this image by DeviantART member Vexorb as a template for Pinkie Pie’s head. I painted it on with acrylic craft paint, then applied a clear matte spray paint as a protective coating. I used a latex house paint for the back of the door and the box.
Overall, I am pleased with the results. But there were some difficulties. For one, the box fitting is imprecise. Although I've used my plate joiner on 3 other projects, this is the first time that I've used it on anything other than 0.75 inch wood. It's built to slice evenly into this thickness, so I had to improvise to cut into 0.5 inch wood.
I select my carpentry projects in order to teach myself new skills. This is the most demanding painting job that I've had and the only artistic work that I've done since high school.
The door turned out well. A bandsaw would have been ideal, but I have only a jigsaw. It was surprisingly adequate. The hardest sawing task was the eyelashes. I managed to smooth out the spaces between the eyelashes (where the jigsaw couldn't reach) by slicing narrow strips of sandpaper (about 0.25 inches across) and flossing them back and forth until the eyelashes were shaped properly. I was worried that the eyelashes would break off, but they're actually quite sturdy.
This and my other carpentry projects are a part of an ongoing, deliberate effort to teach myself practical building and repair skills. I live in an apartment, so there is a limit to what I can do. I've mostly built wood furniture. As a result, I've learned a lot about carpentry that is applicable beyond cabinetmaking.
Now it's time for me to tackle an electrical project. I have almost no experience with electrical work, so it's a skill void that I should fill. I haven't settled on a firm idea, but I'm thinking about building from scratch an 8-way variable lamp. Since I'm a fanboy, I may design it to reflect the art of my favorite comic book series, Ninja High School.
We've teamed up with Dailymotion and will be bringing you a new, animated Twaggies short cartoon each month. Some will feature a few tweets by one hilarious Tweeter, others will use tweets by different folks, unified around a theme.
Check out this month's premiere episode, cooked up special for all you Grammar Nazis! It features a couple tweets, one by Steve Martin!
Please take a moment to follow us over on Dailymotion, too! They're like YouTube, only East! :-) (reference anyone? anyone?)
I kiss my son goodbye and I stand at the fence watching him as he enters into the kindergarten school yard. I hope for another wave, but he pays no more attention to me. He drops his backpack near the place he is supposed to line up. Almost instantly he is greeted by a bevy of girls who chat with him for just a moment. Then he is off running wildly through the grass with another little boy. He is a citizen of his class and school. I am but a privileged outsider. I remain his confidant at home, but at school he is one of them. He must navigate his way through the Kindergarten Tribes on his own.
From eight in the morning, until two in the afternoon, five days a week, he is part of Room 3. They march together, break bread together, and learn together. Their life is regimented. Each moment inside the classroom is accounted for. Structure is imperative. Without structure the class would break out into chaos. Even with structure there is sometimes chaos.
Twice a day, during recess and lunch, however, the children of Room 3 are permitted free play time. Of course they have some play time in the classroom, but for safety and sanity that must be limited and more structured. I don’t think you can really call it true free play time. The true free play time comes when the children are released from the confines of their tiny classroom and marched to the wide open space of the kindergarten playground and set free.
I think it is only fair to note that my understanding of the playground tribes comes purely from my son’s accounts and perceptions. In the quiet of our kitchen he sits and tells me about his other life. He animatedly describes his adventures as a citizen of Room 3. He especially likes to talk about the playground tribes, but he swears me to secrecy. The information he relays to me is classified. The tribes pride themselves on protecting their secrets.
The story he weaves is about two tiny neighboring kingdoms known as Room 2 and Room 3. Each kingdom houses about 25 citizens. Twice a day these kingdoms merge on the playground. From this melding 5 main tribes with 5 distinct leaders have arisen: The Diggers, The Minecrafters, The Ballers, and The Superheroes and The Girls.
The Diggers
The Diggers are comprised of students who like to dig. They spend all or most of their free time in the sand area digging and building sand structures. There about 7 members of The Digger tribe.
Christopher Bill, a 21-year-old student at the Purchase Conservatory of Music, not only performs Pharrell William’s “Happy,” but also demonstrates the magic of looping by computer. He goes from a simple beat to sounding like a full orchestra in no time at all! If you enjoy this, there’s a ton of other Christopher Bill videos, including trombone lessons. -via reddit
During the American Civil War, Confederate commandos and agents launched small attacks and engaged in clandestine activities from British Canada. Most famously, they robbed three banks in St. Albans, Vermont in 1864.
The Confederacy wanted to strike deep into the enemy heartland whenever possible. The industrial and economic centers along the Great Lakes were appealing targets. But reaching them was very difficult.
There was, however, an opportunity. In order to avoid an arms race on the Great Lakes, in 1817, the United States and Britain agreed to demilitarize them. In the Rush-Bagot Agreement, both nations agreed to maintain only a handful of small armed vessels on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. By 1863, there was only one American warship on the Great Lakes: the 14-gun steamboat USS Michigan, which is pictured above.
If the Confederate Navy could hijack the Michigan and crew it with skilled sailors, it could ravage Union infrastructure on the Great Lakes unopposed by the United States Navy.
That is precisely what Lieutenant William H. Murdaugh of the Confederate Navy proposed to do. Below is the letter that he sent to Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory detailing his scheme. I’ve added numbers to it and on an 1858 railroad map to illustrate his plan.
The art of seduction is generally lost on the classic monsters of filmdom, but when they’re asked to get in touch with their tender side and let it all hang out these sexy beasts don’t disappoint.
Luckily artist Erika Deoude was there to capture these baddies striking a seductive pose, pin-up style, and she put all of her illustrations together in The Calendar of Sexy Monsters- a set if 12 giclee prints featuring Godzilla, Zuul, the Predator, King Kong and more like you’ve never seen them before. They’re perfect for brightening up a dank cave, haunted house or swampside cemetery.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City owns this embossed steel helmet. It dates back to about 1530 and probably originated in the German city of Augsburg. A rooster protrudes from the visor, ready to peck and squawk at any foe who dares to approach. The helmet is six pounds and six ounces of pure meanness.
It’s perfect for brave Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Remember the days before Google instant search, where you still had to speculate about what strange searches people performed? These days, we all have experience typing in the beginning of a Google search only to get a suggestion popping up that makes us wonder "what the heck?"
And that is precisely what makes these hilarious illustrations of odd auto-searches so darned hilarious. They not only feature some seriously strange searches, but also help visualize how hilarious the ideas behind these searches are.
Very impressive. Yes, very impressive. This man has mastered the craft of moving plates over the sink quickly. Within seconds, an entire stack of plates has briefly passed through water.
If you recall, we brought you the story of how Adam's great-grandfather Aloysius Koford created the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats in 1912, which became the inspiration for what we today call LOLcats.
The new book is self-published, which not only gave Koford more control over the project, but also means it doesn't cost as much as it would otherwise. The 144-page paperback has over 200 comics, including a few new renderings of some of John Hodgman's 700 Hoboes.
What's the turkey say? Apparently, meowbble and goof according to this fun Foodbeast article filled with all kinds of cats and dogs all decked out in their best turkey costumes. If you still haven't started feeling the vibe of Thanksgiving happiness permeating the air, this list will certainly help get you in the Turkey Day spirit.
Of course, this article might not get you ready for the physical demands of the food consumption required or even peak your appetite towards that purpose, but don't worry, we'll keep posting delicious food posts up until Thanksgiving so we have you covered there too.
It was 1917. Miss Ruth Worden, a librarian at the Missoula Public Library in Missoula, Montana, wanted to bring a world of knowledge and literature to lumberjacks at logging camps in her area. So she carted a few books into a camp operated by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.
The camp boss, Kenneth Ross, was annoyed. His men were fighters, drinkers and gamblers--not readers. But he let Miss Worden distribute the books to his lumberjacks. To Mr. Ross's surprise, they hungrily embraced the idea. They checked out the library books and asked for more. So he built a library for his camp in a railroad boxcar:
Ross saw the results – 4,000 checked out in the first year and, to his “great surprise,” a good number in the camps.
“The next thing I heard was that one of the men at the bunkhouse had been reading up on industry and economics, and got out of one of the books an argument that shut up one of these fellows that always seems to think it is a crime to give a day’s work for a day’s pay,” Ross told another reporter in 1922.
He was a convert, and when Worden came around again with the idea of a library car to circulate among the lumber camps, Ross was sold. He had one built – 14 feet wide, 40 feet long – and it was put into action in 1921 in the Ninemile camps, rotating to the next one usually on a weekly basis.
(Photo: Missoula Public Library)
The boxcar library had about 1,400 books, newspapers, magazines and a victrola. It was a huge hit and regularly circulated among the logging camps, generally spending a week at each camp. During one 7-month period in 1926, it had 5,010 visitors.
Where the library went, so did the librarian. One end of the boxcar consisted of an office and bunkroom where the librarian worked and slept.
The boxcar library was actively used until the late 1950s, when the logging company turned it over to the University of Montana's forestry department. Then, for many years, it served as a storage shed and bunkhouse for art students.
Amazingly, the boxcar library is still in good condition, as you can see from the above photo. It's been partially restored and is now on display at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. The skylight roof and exterior steps reflect the original style. It has wheels and is back on tracks intead of wooden timbers.
But that's only the beginning. Don Spritzer, the librarian pictured above, hopes to equip it with furniture, a woodstove and books appropriate for the 1920s. He and his colleagues hope to complete the restoration by July 4 of next year.
