My Maps. I has them.

Damnit. I didn't even know Google were having a competition.

Apparently I missed out on entering in the Google Australia My Maps Awards, where people were asked to submit their best user-created maps. The prize was a bloody MacBook. I know, I've already got one, but I could have had two. I could use one to swat flies whilst lying in a hammock.

Why the certainty I could have won? C'mon - one of the finalist put together a list of the best coffee places in Brisbane. I mean, who gives a shit!? It's Brisbane - it's not as if they can even make good coffee. My mapped list of free wireless spots around Australia would have kicked that ass.

Goddamnit. Someone give me a consolation prize.

Honest movie posters

Holy Tacos have ventured into the realm of honest movie posters. Love it.

I believe in me

At least, I will once I get my hands on the Cheers to You! DVD!

Happy Obama Day!

Today is the day America starts to right its wrongs. Personally, I will be at Federation Square in Melbourne at 3am tomorrow morning, watching this momentous event on the big screen. I only wish I had one of these t-shirts to wear.

Such is life

The West Australian gives me nightmares. As I've lamented previously, it's one of the worst media outlets in Australia. Not that I blame the journos - many of them are good, honest, hard-working professionals, who file their stories, get shat upon by editors and grimace as they see their name printed next to the pile of shit that was their story.

The West's obsession with drug-riddled Ben Cousins still shows no sign of abating, so it's no surprise that the front page of today's thewest.com.au has a story about good old Benny.

No, wait, it's a story about a painting of Benny. Half naked, in bed. Being submitted to the Archibalds.

Dear god, kill me now. At least editor Paul Armstrong is finally gone, and surprise, surprise, it seems he treated his staff badly.

Re-using calendars

Don't waste money on a new calendar for 2009 - re-use an old one. There are only 14 combination—including leap years—of months and days on the Gregorian calendar.
For 2009, you can use calendars salvaged from 1891, 1903, 1914, 1925, 1931, 1942, 1953, 1959, 1970, 1981, 1987 & 1998. And don't throw it out at the end of the year either - it will be useful in 2015, 2026, 2037, 2043...
Nice to think about it - if you can find 14 timeless designs that you really like, just make sure you write everything in pencil, white-out the holiday details and you'll never have to pick up a cute cats calendar again.

via Lifehacker

Dog. Walking on its hind legs. Up stairs.

The zombie dogs are coming! THE ZOMBIE DOGS ARE COMING!!!

Latest crop from vegie garden

I made a salad with this lot. Yum.

We know who you are

Proposition 8 changed the California state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, but as with all political donations, records are kept and publicly available. Normally, this would be a giant list of names, details and amounts.
But now, with the combined power of access to information and Google Maps - it can be easy to show the location of each and every nasty person who paid to push Prop 8 through.
Eight Maps does exactly that.

RIP Khan!

Ricardo Montalban, rest in peace.

Public access TV ROCKS

I don't know what's more exciting in this video clip - the intensity of the singer, the professional model or the exotic locations. No, it's the amazingly interesting musical score.

via BuzzFeed

Cats are jerks

Cats are jerks.

Domo Arigato, Mr Satchmo

And the award for most racially innappropriate YouTube clip goes to... Japanese Louis Armstrong impersonator.

Vote.

The 2008 Weblog Awards.

Best Australia or New Zealand blog - vote The Dawn Chorus.

That is all.

Save Tango

BEST CAMPAIGN EVER!

I love the British. I really do. They have a fantastic sense of humour. Perhaps it's because the juxtaposition from the stiff upper lip of the stereotypical British folk makes it all the more hilarious. It's like the comedy of Germans being nice, or Americans being smart and skinny, or DeLoreans not being awesome. Opposites are funny.

Anyway, the UK drink company Tango is being competitively forced out of the market by the big players like Coca-Cola. Capitalists say 'too bad - do better', Communists say 'too bad - should have nationalised the food industry' but real Britons say 'enough is enough, stay away from our Fanta rip-off!'

So the Save Tango campaign has been launched, and it's an all-out fight with very little humility to save the orange fizzy drink. It's fantastic.

Their YouTube ad sums up most of it:


But check out the site for more. An online game where you get to show your passion for Tango by clicking on the screen a few million times to make more Tango, downloadable posters & stencils so you can illegally plaster your town with the campaign, a blog documenting the progress, plus the ever-important Tangometer, where you can see the financial viability of the company in real time.

The levels of self-deprication that a British company will go to in order to save its brand is what makes this campaign so brilliant. It's sold me. When I lived in London I never liked Tango - I prefer Irn-Bru (who have a similarly awesome site, and are available in Australia), but I'm also behind the Tango crew on this one.

Save Tango!

Awesome product, awesome campaign

I love my Moleskin diary, notepad and address book. But I'm thinking I might have to switch over to Field Notes - the whole movement behind it is so cool.

First off, it's got Coudal Partners behind it - one of my favourite design/info/cool stuff blogs.

They understand their market, and write copy accordingly:

DID YOU KNOW:
Before the Internet, one could simply walk into an establishment, often built of simple bricks and mortar, and, standing face-to-face with another human being, exchange paper currency for goods and services. Happy days are here again, my friends! Buy local, save shipping expenses! Fine shops around the world that hawk our wares are listed below.

Love it. There's also an understanding of the intense power in viral marketing. Why waste time trying to spruik a good product? If it's that good, it will be marketed better by the people who use it. Field Notes understands that, which is why the Flickr group they've set up enables people to be part of the wider world of users. Even if you don't have people joining the group, showing all photos tagged 'fieldnotes' is a huge way of showing the spread of the product. Simple, but genius.

Finally, check out the products themselves. Simple, elegant, old-world charm with modern usefulness. My only negative? No eco-credentials (at least that I could see).

New puppy - home

Her name is Scout.

Hilarious. And true.

via B3ta

Mexico, the interwebs is spying on you

The Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition has deployed the Virtual Community Watch, a real-time surveillance program designed to empower the public to proactively participate in fighting border crime.

This comes in the form of a network of cameras and sensors along the Texas-Mexico border that feeds live streaming video to the website. Users will log in and directly monitor suspicious criminal activity along the border, reporting to the Sheriff's department so they can go in and arrest any possible border aliens.

Yay for Big Brother!

via Boing Boing

The Internet. History of.

Cool animation showing the history of the Internet. Not going to explain much for non-tech heads, but very good from the perspective of telling the whole story in icons.

The Athiest Bus Journey

The atheist bus journey is an experiment in freedom of speech, religious criticism and equality in advertising. The campaign was originally started as a positive counter-response to the Jesus Said ads running on London buses in June 2008. These ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell … Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire prepared for the devil".

800 buses are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", in locations all over England, Scotland and Wales.

Two hundred of the buses will run in London, an animated version of the slogan will appear on two large LCD screens on Oxford Street and 1,000 tube cards on London Underground feature atheist quotations from Douglas Adams, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson and Katharine Hepburn, alongside the original campaign slogan.

The atheist campaign has also gone international. Spain's Union of Atheists and Freethinkers are launching buses across Barcelona. Italy's Union of Atheist, Agnostics and Rationalists are also planning to roll out atheist buses, while the American Humanist Association have been inspired to launch a campaign, and buses carrying their slogan "Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness' sake" have now been running for over a month in Washington DC.

Sadly, Australians won't be treated to anything similar: the Atheist Foundation of Australia tried to place the slogan "Atheism – celebrate reason" on buses, but were rejected by APN Outdoors - Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company, responsible for advertising on most public transport.

via Guardian

Latest submissions for failblog

I might add these both came from my private collection.

Home grown vegies

I like having a vegie patch again. So far, we've got; rosemary, thyme, parsley, garlic, grape tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, beetroot, rhubarb, sweet corn, spring onion, leek, peas, pumpkin & zucchini.

First off, some itty bitty caterpillars tried to eat the broccoli, but the natural pest control of picking them off and asking them to leave nicely seems to have worked.



The grape tomato plant (which was a present from the people from whom we bought the house) has spawned into a giant ravenous beast, and is producing crops so fast we can't eat them.



I thought the carrots would die really quickly, but with the protective shade of the tomato, it seems to be doing really well. And tasty.



And finally, these aren't from the garden - they were tucked in the back of the potato drawer. Seriously - like a metre long. Each. Freaky.