the Shaken Fist

8:50 AM

Logos with hidden designs

This is clever. There’s a bear shape hidden in the negative space within that mountain, symbolizing the city of Bern, Switzerland where the Matterhorn mountain that inspired the logo is located.

VAIO was originally just an acronym for Video Audio Integrated Operation – since changed to Visual Audio Intelligence Organizer. ‘VA’ represents an analog wave and ‘IO’ represents digital binary code, perfectly illustrating the integration of analog and digital technology. Awwww.

Well now, isn’t that a pretty… blob. But there’s more to the Museum of London logo than an artsy splash of watercolor; the various colored circles actually represent the changing shape of London throughout history.

8:21 AM

Finally, you can have a pet panda. Sorta...

It's actually a dog that has been bread to look like a panda. I don't care! It's cute. I assume this also puts panda fur back on the menu.

2:51 PM

Reputation Management

I have a feeling that my reputation is about to take a battering.

A friend of mine just started a better paying job around the same time as moving house. She says she’s feathering the nest, which is what led her to buy a vibrator online.

I imagine she was just Googleing Daniele De Rossi and I guess it was one of those impulse items…well, impulsing items.

Not wanting to be embarrassed at her new job, the device has been addressed to me and posted to my work. No doubt it will arrive in the ‘discrete packing’ those websites always promise, with which, the lack of branding is likely to cause the kind of suspicion that causes a well meaning receptionist pry it open.

I’m sure I’ll survive. I’ve been in far more embarrassing situations. Like the time I locked my keys in my car out the front of the Planned Parenthood office in Sydney, but was too scared to ask to borrow a coat hangar.

The only way to survive embarrassment, without permanent scaring, is to cut it off at the pass – own it before it owns you. It is in this spirit that I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my tampon brooch this evening.

11:39 AM

The World's Only Immortal Animal

The turritopsis nutricula species of Jellyfish has been discovered to be the first, and possibly only, immortal creature. Once the creature reaches its adult form (pictured) it can, apparently, use transdifferentiation to transform its cells backwards to the polyp stage of its life and begin the whole cycle again.

On the one hand, imagine living forever, on the other hand, imagine being a jellyfish? This creature might have seen dinosaurs, or Jesus walk on water, or the original Sugababes.

11:29 AM

‘The Brainstorm’ and why your umbrella of introversion won’t protect you.

I’m no fan of meetings, but I’m even less impressed with being called into a ‘brainstorm’.

Insultingly, I’m usually the kind of person who gets and invite too, I’m told it’s because I can give the Gen Y perspective, but I really think it’s because I’m the only guy who will spend more than $20 on a haircut - this being a primary indicator that you have the right cross section of opinion.

I’ve never been in a brainstorm where I’ve left radiating ‘think-tank’ satisfaction. When you conduct a meeting where any idiot has equal floor-time on a topic they might know nothing about, it is the word equivalent of paintball with Parkinson’s disease.

I found some tips for brainstorming. Let’s read them now…together.

1. Set directions. Describe the situation and define the problem.

Why are we here? Why can’t we leave? I would agree this is a good place to start to prevent busy people chewing through their own leg to leave.

2. Involve everyone. Encourage everyone to contribute.

Regardless of how unqualified I am to have an opinion on syncing your menstruation cycles with your diet, damn it, I’ve got something to say!

3. Encourage cross-fertilization. Build on each other. Let others' ideas take you somewhere else.

This sounds like a euphemism for plagiarism. Ensure all employees have up-to-date intellectual property clauses in their contracts.

4. Encourage outside-the-box thinking. Challenge assumptions. Be creative. Go crazy.

You do have to be a little bit crazy to be an innovator. I have that written above my desk. In faeces.

5. Suspend judgment. No ideas are bad ideas. All ideas are good ideas.

Isn't it likely that bad ideas are what gave rise to the necessity for a brainstorm? So yes, there are bad ideas and I’ll tip that the person who called the meeting is full of them.

6. Don't fear repetitions.

...Unless you have something besides a brainstorm to complete in your working day.

7. Don't fear repetitions

See? What a waste of time that was.

8. Don't stop and discuss. Go for quantity, not quality.

Yep, that’s right. Don’t explore the merits of a path of logic just keep firing off your innovation blanks into the air.

And at the end of it all, you’ll have wasted a day and I suspect time constraints will make at least one rotten idea seem doable.

2:34 PM

Graph for the day

12:58 PM

Sea Turtle Finds Lost Camera

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43sg-Ytt58

I just showed this to someone I work with who said "So, I assume they found the camera?" Well, yes. The turtle didn't pitch it to Dreamworks only to be rejected so uploaded it to YouTube. Still, with nearly 1 million views already, Michael Patrick King must be jealous.

9:32 AM

BP and truth in advertising

Chatroulette is working on a genital recognition algorithm to stop users being exposed to wankers. It's likely the software will also prevent Tony Hayward using the program.

On that note, check out this vintage ad from another oil company. Comedy gold.

9:17 AM

It's Miranda, divine!

Check out this cool chair made with gilded hair from Miranda Devine's face.

2:25 PM

All the single shoes, put your tongue up

I went to buy shoes today. The ones I’m wearing have almost completely fallen apart. I’m always surprised when shoes wear out after only 8 years of daily wear. It’s not like I’m hiking in them, or doing the Salsa, Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing or Nightclub Two Step…with any regularity. In fact, if I had to use one word to describe my lifestyle it would be ‘sedimentary’.

I’m like that tasteful joke where a cripple wheels themselves into a shoe shop and the attendant says “How’d you wear the last pair out?” I’m pretty sure this joke is set in an American Apparel store, I read recently they ask job applicants for full body shots with all resumes now so they probably don’t want crushed legs in their skinny jeans.

So do I have new shoes? No I do not. I went to Meyer, and after waiting fifteen minutes in a queue to get my size, the shop assistant came back to inform me he couldn’t find the other shoe to make the pair.

“What!” I said. “Why did you separate them in the first place?”

Clearly startled by my intelligent query - “um, so we can display more shoes?” I asked him if this was a regular thing…you know, to lose a shoe.

“Sometimes it happens. But they usually turn up.” He was speaking about it like he would a lost dog, which would wander off, maybe to explore the haberdashery department, but would always find its way home eventually, maybe you could encourage it home if you rattled a tin of shoe polish and left the lid of the box open.

I decided just to leave the store and walked into Zu Shoes. I chose two pairs of shoes to buy and lo and behold, they couldn’t find a partner for one of them. I considered removing a foot at this point, but decided I wasn’t the problem, it’s the splitting up of shoes that is the problem.

I imagined a sad looking bar full of single shoes. A shiny looking shoe with a synthetic-upper steps into the bar, all the shoes turn to look at it, but most are only into real leather. A sleazy looking loafer is sticking its tongue into a stiletto, but neither of them really feel any connection.

I still don’t have a pair of shoes, but I do believe I’m developing acute monophobia.