Project-Webthings

Honest logos

2012-02-26T05:51:00.000-03:00

What if, and this is a question with no philosophical intent being used just from introduction, what if, companies of the world had logos that would reveal who they really represent or what they really are? Well, that was the idea of Mr. Viktor Hertz, from Sweden, when he got some logos and changed them to make this true.

You can check below the ones I liked the most, however if you are not so sure that my opinion is one opinion that one could say “wow! what a opinion!”, no problem, in the links at the end of the post you can check all the logos he made and other works from him.

Anheuser bier

Camel

movies!

facebook

Harley Davidson

IMDb

MTV

Nintendo

porsche

YouTube

--- Links
All the logos
More works from Viktor Hertz

The Scale of the Universe

2012-02-25T05:34:00.000-02:00

Cary and Michael Huang of the website HTwins.net are famous for creating a great number of interative application to the internet of many kinds, like a virtual message board where you can go and write anything you want and the next person who gets into the website will see what you left there and will be able to change it completely, to some small games, in fact some very eccentric I should say.

Their most recent work is the second version of some type of “comparative simulator of the size of the things of the universe”, called “The Scale of the Universe”. It is like look to the universe as if it was in a microscope and to change the magnification you use the scroll. If you click on the objects you can also get information about them.

Click on the image, take a look and tell me if this is not just perfect to put an end to any delusion of greatness of anyone, yes? *tu du dum, pish!*

Rapid Calc - a portable calculator from the 50's

2012-02-25T01:01:00.000-02:00

Once in a while someone send me some old technological things and ask me to find out where it came from, how it works and so on. Well, this little thing below came to me some weeks ago, take a look.

It is a portable calculator able to add, subtract, multiply and divide, using as principle a ruler with numbers which is moved up and down depending of the calculation you want to do.

This model was produced in Brazil in the 50’s, but there are similar models produced that are old, even ones produced in the 20’s in other places of the world.

Even with the manual, I don’t if it is because the way people used to write was much different than I expected, or if it was a bad manual (or I’m stupid), it was not so simple to understand how it worked. However, playing around here and there I could figure out how to use it.

I made a video showing how to add and subtract. Take a look.

The video shows that the calculator has 3 areas, one at the top, other at the bottom, and one line on the middle that is used to register values. All the areas have columns with numbers and each number has a hole where the moving stick can fit in. Using the moving stick, once inside the hole of a number, you can slide the column and then registering the number in the middle area. The bottom area is used to register positive values, the top area for negative. So, to make a calculation first you register the value you need, at the video I registered 3, then, to add you select a number at the bottom area, at the video I selected number 2, and slide it. To subtract the process is the same, but using the top area.

And now, what about multiply and divide? Well, the answer is: it is not possible, you were fooled, yeah!....

Yes, in my opinion I think it is a little exaggeration to say this calculator can multiply and divide, the manual even say that to do this kind of operation you need paper and something to write on it. What the calculator really does is to use some mathematical tricks to multiply and divide using only sum and subtraction. To give one example, to calculate 3 x 7, you would have to sum 7 + 7, then to the result you would have to add 7 again, making three sevens.

If it was a multiplication with more numbers than you would have to do it one by one, but instead of me trying to explain with words, take a look at the image below.

To multiply with 3 numbers the only change is that the third number would have to be moved two columns, the second number would still be moved one column and the first number would be the same. To multiply with 4 numbers, the fourth number would have to be moved 3 columns, the third number two columns, the second number one column and the first one stays the same. And that is the idea if the number was even bigger.

The last one, to calculate a division, it is a little more complex, but the basic idea is to calculate successive subtractions and then count how many where needed. The image below can help to understand.

Observing now this 4 operations we can say that the calculator can do it all, yes, ok, but the way it does is demands much, much, much, much, much more time, right? Well, that was when I became intrigued with this calculator.

If it makes the job more complicated and slower, why does it exist?

I think the answer is that people are stupid and eventually will commit some mistake while doing some calculation for whatever reasons, like lack of sleeping, worries with something, an ingrown nail, stress, I don’t know. The mistake, depending of the situation can cause serious problems. Using the calculator the result does not rely on someone thinking, making associations of things to “remember the result”, this way, since the result is mechanic it will always be correct, no matter what the user is feeling that day.

Not only that, but the way the calculator is used allows that a person that doesn’t know how to multiply or divide to do this kind of calculation and considering this we can also imagine why this kind of portable calculator disappeared during the years. Maybe it was because, firstly, the level of instructions that a regular person could have has grown considerably, more people went to school and learned better mathematical basics. Secondly, and this reason is more obvious, make calculations that are always correct and doing them very fast became something easy and cheap during the years with digital calculators and computers.

Whatever is the truth, if my explanations have made you cry, or if my theories are completely wrong, it is always fun to observe this technologies of the past and understand why someone did that, why that was useful and the most interesting of all, why that was forgotten in a way that we, today, need to stop and think to understand why it ever existed and why it disappeared.

We don’t like to think about it, but one day will be some people from the future, looking to us and to the things we use today, asking themselves the same questions. And before I stop to write, just a curious interesting fact that connects everything, did you know that this logic to multiply and divide is the same behind the operation of the first digital calculators? Yeah, to them, even with a few more calculations that could even look as a bad decision to make calculations, the answer is much faster than ours.

Nintendo Cereal System

2012-02-20T23:30:00.000-02:00

Did you liked? Want one? From time to time one appears in ebay, there was one, still unopened, which was sold for 207.50 dollars.

And if you wanna know more about this amazing world of foods with videogame characters in the 80’s, take a look at the canned Pac-Man pasta and at the Donkey Kong Cereal, showing a bizarre Mario that looks like a rapist.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure what bother me the most in the promotional image for the cereal bellow, if it is this Mario with no neck or if it is the slogan “if you can’t beat’em, eat’em”, which makes *attention* NO SENSE AT ALL.

3 videos of people in a tsunami

2012-02-19T03:20:00.000-02:00

These three videos bellow are from that earthquake that happened around one year ago in Japan. If they don’t save your life one day, and this time it is not a joke, at least you can have ideas to make one of that movies about the end of the world.

The first video was recorded by someone walking on the street, then suddenly people start scream, run and in a second everything changes.

The second video was made by a reporter from CNN, he was waling in a park in Tokyo when the earthquake happened and it shows some cracks that appeared on the ground, how they move and some water coming out of it.

In these kind of videos of tsunami is common to see cars being dragged. Well, the last video was recorded by someone who was inside a car who as dragged. Oh, despite the fact the video has 10 minutes, the part that will be interesting to you, unless you speak Japanese, is much shorter than that.

Bioshock

2012-02-19T01:29:00.001-02:00

Can you imagine how was it like to live at that time after the World War II? All that ideologies we just know through history books, applied for real, being written in history itself, the world changing in many ways. New scientific progresses, new philosophies, new discoveries and a very strong will to build up a new world that is known only by those who faced war and lived to tell.

Imagine now a huge city, built up around that time, carrying great ideologies of freedom, of this will to create a new world, leaving behind capitalist governments of far-right politics, totalitarian governments dressed up as protectors of freedom, communist governments and nazis. A city built up by artists, philosophers, scientists and all kinds of people who had a great believe that they could create the world of tomorrow, leaving behind what all the wars had proven to be wrong and insufficient.

Imagine that this town was built up at the bottom of the sea and, just like they say, a city that was not only impossible to be built under the sea, but a city that was impossible to be built anywhere else.

Welcome to Rapture. The year is 1960 and you get there after a plane crash at the middle of the ocean, being you the only survivor. Because of luck, or because of destiny’s irony, your plane fell close to one entrance to this utopian city. There, you will discover that something went wrong with that society, and, while you try to survive and find a way to get out, you will travel through the history of that place, of its characters, its scenarios, its mysteries, and will know why everything ended up bad.

This is the plot to the game Bioshock, launched in 2007 and I really doubt that it didn’t got your attention, even if you are one of those who doesn’t like videogames all that much.

Bioshock can be described as first person cinematographic narrative about survivor, mystery, horror and exploration.

This game represents a maturity in videogame design. The same way a well made movie can be fun to anyone, this game can succeed as an experience so well produced that anyone who try to live it will enjoy in some level and take something of value.

As a game, I could easily talk about something like 10 moments where the combination of music, light, environment, the amazing voice acting of the characters and the action at the moment, were stamped in my memory, as very few entertainment pieces ever succeeded to be, considering movies, books or whatever else.

And speaking just a little more about the voice acting, if you ever played Resident Evil 4, you probably can remember until today of the “um forastero!” or “atras de ti, imbecil!”. Here, what the characters say, what the vending machines say, what the propagandas from the city government say, or the tapes you find with recordings of thoughts and stories of characters and places, all that, will be in your memory for a good while.

In fact, I believe that the world of Bioshock as whole will be with you for a good while.

Being you a gamer, or gamer from the old times who thinks that the good things were done until the Playstation 1 era, being you a person who likes history, or things about World War II, being you a frustrated revolutionary, or a cinephile with green shoes, being you a normal person, this game can be (and should be) enjoined by everyone.

Produced by Irrational Games, with the design of Ken Levine, the game is available to Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Mac and Windows, and because it is a old game you will can find it a good price. Go try it, if you regret or if this game cause nothing on you, write to me and I will take you to a nice psychologist and we will take care of this amazing nice head of yours, yes?

Do you want to study for free on MIT?

2012-02-15T02:35:00.001-02:00

It may sound like a lie, but distance education, before made by mail and now through the internet, exist since the end of the18th century. In these last years, many universities all over world have opened their classes by putting them on the internet to anyone interested in watch. What never happened before was one of this big teaching institutions taking the decision to not only open their classes, but also to offer at the end a graduation for real.

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), one of the most respectful teaching institutions of this little blue planet, opened enrollment to a course which will serve as an experiment to evaluate how this new possibility of teaching may work.

The course to this first test is called Circuits and Electronics, it covers the study of electronics circuits and operation of some electric components. Inside of MIT this course is part of the curriculum to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. As requirements they ask an AP level physics course in electricity and magnetism, knowledge of basic calculus, linear algebra and some background in differential equations. They offer an optional remedial differential equations component for those who need it.

This first course will be free, it will start now on March 5, ending in June 8. They believe a student will need to dedicate 10 hours per week to follow the program.

Personally, I really like this kind of initiative and I believe it can have a huge impact in the future, since it removes distances and borders making accessible a level of knowledge that will push universities all over the world to reach one same level of teaching.

Click on the image bellow to know more and enroll to the course.

Meet Captain Action!

2012-02-14T03:12:00.000-02:00

If you wanna know more about this amazing toy just click here to read its story in Wikipedia.

600 million years of movements

2012-02-13T03:11:00.002-02:00

The video bellow shows what is believed to be the movements of the continents starting from 600 million years ago. In case you are wondering, the planet Earth has 4,54 billion years, so, in other words, the video tries to tell what would be only 10% of earth's history.

A human being, with much luck, live 100 years. Think about it, yes?

A camera in a rocket taking off to space

2012-02-12T21:56:00.001-02:00

My favorite part is when the module is separated and falls down spinning.

Robots to chat

2012-02-12T18:22:00.000-02:00

I don’t know when people started with this zany idea about creating something that would look like a human being, but there are stories of more than 2 thousand years about it. We are not there yet and, even if the researches in robotics already show that create something able to move like we do is much more complex than imagined, the challenge goes beyond the mechanical side of it. The other side is to develop something with the ability to communicate, to be smart. Create an artificial intelligence that doesn’t feel artificial.

If the mechanical part people already tried to do with clay, with wood and who knows with what else, the intelligence part only became possible do be done with the arrival of computers and computer programming. In fact, since the first softwares created, there were always attempts to simulate intelligence. Just to give you a historical fact (and make me look like such an awesome specialist), the first recognized software able to scare people, who could not believe it was not a person, was called ELIZA, in 1966.

Today a great number of new ideas were born and much of that original logic behind ELIZA has grown. Siri in iPhone 4S from Apple, the first voice controlled smart TVs from Samsung, or Kinect from Microsoft, are just a small sample of what will come in the next years in what concerns control and communication using voice and which will change the way we use our cars, cellphones, TVs, fridges and even houses. All that, of course, if the world doesn’t end in December, yes?

If you don’t have nothing better to do and want to help the development of this technology, the internet has many “artificial intelligent characters” called Chatterbots and you can talk to them. There are special profiles, like attempts to create a telemarketing attendant, a love advisor and even a Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.

I talked to a lot of them and selected 4, that are not specialized ones, and I found them to be the most capable of simulate a conversation about anything. At the links bellow there is a website with a big list with many chatterbots and also a link to some MSN accounts that are chatterbots, but specialized in something, like one guy who loves ETs, a drug advisor, a girl who helps to create a template to a blog in Windows Live Space and others.

Visit, talk to them, get impressed, have fun and take your conclusions.

≫ Cleverbot
≫ Jeeney
≫ Jabberwacky
≫ Elbot (this one has facial expressions!)

--- Links
Chatterbots list
Chatterbots on MSN
ELIZA in Wikipedia

The shoe is mine and I do with it whatever I want

2012-02-06T03:22:00.001-02:00

The video below is the making of one part of a campaign to a new shoe from Nike which has the slogan “The shoe that keeps life going”. Their idea was to get one of those shoes and make an aquarium from its shape.

Then, there are some pictures of a project of the designer Alex Nash, that for some reason decided it would be nice to transform a pair of shoes in an amp to play guitar.

The last thing is more photos. The first 3 (the sandwich, the banana and the ballerina shoe) are creations of Max Berliti, all the other ones were created by Daniel Reese. This last ones, if you really like them, you can buy them all at Mr. Reese’s website, they ship all over the world, and in case you decided you want to finally have that pair of shoes you always dreamed of, Mr. Reese is open to special requests. I selected just a few creations of him, but I liked that he uses as inspiration videogames, TV series, comics and even music bands.

Find out about some crazy things some even more crazy people are doing with shoes may not save your life one day, but it’s nice to see something from everyday transformed into one thousand different things with much more personality than we are used to believe they can have. Yes?

--- Links
Alex Nash's website
Max Berliti's website
Daniel Reese's website

Iron Sky and Wreck-a-Movie

2012-02-03T17:28:00.001-02:00

Before I say something, take a look at this trailer bellow.

If you ever have the curiosity to talk to some “Cinema tendencies analyst”, if something like that really exist, I’m pretty sure he is going to say a thing or two about “crowd funding”, which is nothing more than a way to obtain money to do something (movies in this case) through donations of variant sizes made by people who simply believe in the idea. The collaborations can be a 2 dollars donation via PayPal, or a T-shirt and a pen you buy. There are also bigger donations that may give a share on the movie profits and participation on the production of the project itself.

Another tendency with a similar vibe is called “participatory cinema”, which is when people contribute not with money but with work and ideas. A very famous website about it is the Wreck-a-Movie, over there a bunch of projects post their needs, it can be a writer to write a nice release, or some animation artist, soundtrack composers, editors, producers, set builders, translators, make-up artists, lawyers, well, anything that movie production may need.

Iron Sky is a movie who got a lot of support from Wreck-a-movie to be done and see this final result, without considering if the movie will delivers to its promises is quite nice. I really like to see this kind of initiative working, if a bunch of people get together with the same intention it is possible to make what they want, even inside the world of movies, a millionaire industry that demands huge investments. Oh, and we should not forget to mention that this kind of initiative open possibilities to new talents and specially to new ideas that would never see the light of the day if their approval was up to business heads with a gigantic tendency to only believe in self reference, sequences and remakes.

The movie has other trailers, you can find them all on the links at the end of the post, it even has a comic book that is prequel to the story and was also made on this mindset of “I wanna help this and that is what I can do”. The movie is set to hit theaters on April 4 of this year and at their website, besides learning more about the production, help if you feel like, see some pictures and all that, there is a form you can fill to request the movie in a theater near you.

If you decide to fill this form for request, remember that your request will only count after you confirm it by clicking on the link in the e-mail they will sent you.

Well, now we have to wait, the first opinions shall pop now in February when the movie will be first seen at the Berlin film festival, like the director of the movie already said on the video. But, before that, go visit Wreck-a-Movie, how knows maybe you get involved in a movie that end up being the next Star Wars, yes?

--- Links
Wreck-a-Movie
Iron Sky Trailer 1 2 3
The comic prequel to Iron Sky
To request Iron Sky in a theater near you

Last month in everyday1music.com (as video!)

2012-02-02T22:35:00.001-02:00

jan.01 - ♫ Aaron Wright - Ill be fine
jan.02 - ☺♪ Gorillaz feat. De La Soul - Feel Good Inc
jan.03 - ♪⚡♥ Brad Sucks - I Command You to Be My Woman
jan.04 - ♫ Soundgarden - Fell On Black Days
jan.05 - ♪ The Black Ghosts - Full Moon
jan.06 - ♫▒ The Black Keys - Lonely Boy
jan.07 - ↺♪ Paul Weller - Around the Lake
jan.08 - ♫ Aimee Mann - Save Me (From the movie "Magnolia")
jan.09 - ♫ MONDRIAN - A kiss a day
jan.10 - ♪♪ Film School - Two Kinds
jan.11 - ♫ The Muffs - I'm Here I'm Not
jan.12 - ♫ Freelance Whales - Hannah
jan.13 - ♫ Editors - Munich
jan.14 - ♬⚡ Ladyhawke - Magic
jan.15 - ♫ Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - I Just Dropped in to See What Condition My Condition Is In
jan.16 - ⍟♪ Bloco Bleque feat. Gabriel, O Pensador - Só Tem Jogador
jan.17 - ♫ The Zolas - The Great Collapse
jan.18 - ♬ Datarock - Molly
jan.19 - ♪⨆⊃ Garbage - Cup Of Coffee
jan.20 - ♫ Wir Sind Helden - Nur Ein Wort
jan.21 - ♪ Kenna - Freetime
jan.22 - ♫ Jon Fratelli - Dancing in the Dark (live)
jan.23 - ♬ Fischerspooner - Never Win
jan.24 - ✚♪ Norrda - Remedy
jan.25 - ♫ Dewey Cox - Guilty as Charged (From the movie "Walk Hard", performed by John C. Reilly)
jan.26 - ♪ Jen Wood - Zeppelin
jan.27 - ♫ Harvey Danger - Save It For Later
jan.28 - ✩ Just Jack - Starz In Their Eyes
jan.29 - ∧♪ Supertramp - The Logical Song
jan.30 - ♫ Mumford & Sons - Winter Winds
jan.31 - ♫ Shocking Blue - Good Times

Another month and here we are again.

If you watched the video you saw me saying that this month everyday1music completed 2 years and the amount of stories that happen when we decide to do something everything, no matter if it is raining of or if the sun is shining, at the good days and also at the ones that are not so good.

In December last year, my mother who was having some problems on her leg, ended up falling and breaking her femur, at the region it connects with the pelvis. From that day on it was a sequence of things happening to recover the leg and all the problems that appear when a person stays on bed in a hospital for a long time. She was getting much better in the last days, but in one of those things of destiny, at the morning of January 28 her heart stopped beating, what was unexpected to her conditions, and unfortunately she died.

At the day before it rained a lot in Sao Paulo, really a lot, at that way that you get stuck in traffic jam and without you notice it takes two hours more than it usually takes to do your everyday route. The tiredness of a Friday, the fact that she was much better and all that traffic which could me make get there only after the visiting hour, almost made me decide not visit her that night at the hospital, on contrary of what I was doing every night since she was hospitalized. However, in one of those moments when we do something and we don’t know why we are doing it, I decided to go, even if get there at the last minutes of the visiting hour, what ended up happening. I really could not imagine that was the last time I was talking to her, that that was the last “I see you soon”, the last “I see you tomorrow”. But it was.

When something like that happens inside our heads there is a voice that tells you to look to your life, to your routine, to everything we dedicate time and then to see with great strength how true it is that things may change in one day, that today can really be the last day to do something, that today can really be the last time you talk to someone, that life never stops and nothing is forever. We tend to evaluate how we spend our time and where we let our drops of life pour.

Among all the things I have evaluated were my websites, which includes the everyday1music (about the other ones I will talk at some other time) and all the work it is to do it, if it was really right to keep going with it and so on.

The answer was more simple than I expected. I saw that I had to keep going simply because it is true, it has no pretension and the intention it has is good. The website brings something good to people, on the song you listen and then remember some place, some time, or someone, on that on the song you listen that embraces a moment your living, that pushes you to keep going, giving you strength or comfort when you realize we are not alone in any feeling we may have, on the musician on the other side of the world sending me his songs and then feeling happy to see that someone else recognize that, likes that and see value on something that needed so much effort to produce. One of the most important things that keeps the world working is the capacity to inspire people and music is probably the best way to do that.

There are a great number of bands and songs over there and I like when I find a real artist, who does something true, either being from the past or from the present, and which is not recognized as I see he, or she, should be. In some sense I feel responsible to find these musicians and make their messages reach the greatest amount of people possible.

This 2 years of the website had many moments that helped me to see how much music is important to the world, to people and how it is important to me to be a little part of it every day. So, to sum it up, ladies and gentleman, illustrious members of the jury and our beloved intellectual hamster, always present as a infamous joke, as long as I can, everyday, at the good and at the not so good days, one music will be there. Happy birthday everyday1music!

And that’s all for now, next month we have more. Bye.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is Hercules in New York

2012-01-27T03:13:00.001-02:00

Yeah. Sure. Of course.

What Google says about those professions?

2012-01-25T00:15:00.000-02:00

Some time ago I posted here some searches I did using the auto complete from Google. If you had something better to do and ended up not reading, or if you just forgot, the auto complete from Google suggests what you may be trying to type in the search bar based on what other people have typed after they typed what you already wrote (yes, that is a lot of typing, I know). In other words, we can use this to know how something is usually searched in Google, giving us one idea of what people may think about it.

Last time I did searches to see what Google would suggest about people of some countries, this time I decided to do the same but with professions.

Once again some weird things appeared like “analysts are wrong about ayurvedic system”, “chemists are gangsters” or “Bankers are the dictators of the West”. If on the other searches was common to see suggestions about the ethnicity of people of some country, this time it was common suggestions about the salary, if professions were underpaid or overpaid. It is interesting to notice that there was no suggestions about the average salary of any of the professions I tried to search, what could tells us that people are more worried if some profession is paid more, or less, than it should than in how much that is in fact paid to that profession.

Well, that is it, have fun, try some professions yourself later and if you wanna read the post about the countries just click here. Soon I will have another idea to do this with Google again. Just wait.

■ Analysts

■ Writers

■ Musicians

■ Translators

■ Actors

■ Actresses

■ Bankers

■ Biologists

■ Scientists

■ Comedians

■ Dancers

■ Game designers

■ Fashion designers

■ Designers

■ Engineers

■ Photographers

■ Lawyers

■ Diplomats

■ Mathematicians

■ Priests

■ Politicians

■ Psychologists

■ Chemists

Man proposes to girlfriend using MEMES!

2012-01-25T00:06:00.000-02:00

It happened at the end of last year, in Malaysia. The title of the post says everything, but if after watching the video you still wanna know more, just click here to go to the blog of the lady to know the whole story.

Good ideas glow in the dark

2012-01-22T18:14:00.000-02:00

At that place called internet I found some interesting chandeliers, lamps and light bulbs.

Te first images are from “Martyr the energy saving fundamentalist”, a character (or something like that) created by the collective of designers “The Play Coalition”, except for the last one that is from the studio EnPieza, from Spain, that resembles a lot Mr. Martyr becoming a martyr, if you know what I mean.

After that, there is chandelier by Studio David Graas, from Netherlands, made with paperboard.

Then, from Austria, created by the studio mischer’traxler comes some lamps which use that fluorescent lamps in a different way.

The last images are from something that is not exactly a lamp, a light bulb or a chandelier, is a annual report of a company from Croatia called Adris Group (?!). In 2008, we saw that economic crisis which affected the whole the world, this company, however, at that time had a great year and accordantly to them it was all because of the good ideas their employees had. In short therms, the idea is that good ideas glow in the dark and in times of crisis these ideas make the difference, that’s why their report have all the information it needs to have, but it also glows in the dark.

If you wanna know more, there are some links at the end of the post.

--- Links
The Play Coalition | Studio EnPieza | Studio David Graas |
Studio mischer’traxler | Adris Group

The book of the end of the world - story 2

2012-01-19T04:20:00.003-02:00

If you speak and write in portuguese, there is a contest called “The book of the end of the world” that may interest you. To be a part of it you just have to go to their website and send one or more stories (in portuguese). They will select the ones they like the most and sometime in 2012 will publish a book. These are the rules:

1 - Do not reveal the reason for the end f the world. Your character may know it (or not), but you should not explain precisely the cause in your text.
2 - The world will end at 5:15 PM in 12/21/2012 and your character will know it one hour before, at 4:14 PM.
3 - You have 20 thousand chars to tell your story (spaces included).
4 - On the website you will find a workspace to save, read, analyze and publish you story.
5 - Last rule, and the most important of all: let your imagination flow so the writer inside you may come out.

I wrote two stories, this is the second one, to read the first just click here. If you tend to like more comedic like stories that I write this one may be your favorite, on the other side if you prefer the more serious one, you may like more the first story. However, there is always the possibility that you may hate it all hahahahaha. So far, my two stories were "pre selected" and are published on the book's website, now we just have to wait for the selection of the stories which will be on the book. If you have some time (and speak Portuguese), take a look later there, there are good stories.

Well, that's all for now. Enjoy.

-----------------------------------------------
A guitar, a knife and Mario Kart

- I’m here to get my guitar.
- Your guitar?
- Yes, man, I come here to get my guitar, the world is going to end and I need it.
- Whatta fuck is that of “the world is going to end, I need my guitar”, are you crazy?
- Gimme my guitar, the world will end and I decided that I want to end playing my guitar.
- I’m not giving you any guitar.
- Fuck, why not?
- Because not, fuck you.
- But you saw on TV, one hour from now everything will end, so don’t fool around, gimme my guitar, yes?
- I’m not going to give you anything, the world can end and I ain’t gonna give you that shit guitar.
- You are not understanding, I...
- No, you are the one not understanding! So much things to say, after all this time and you show up here asking for your guitar, don’t say hi, or ask how I’m doing, giving me orders, talking about the end of the world. You are drunk, right?
- No, man. It is serious, it was on TV just now, the world will end in one hour.
- Yes... I know... I was just kidding. That’s is fucked up, isn’t it?
- Yes, it is. I’m happy you understand and if it is for lack of hi, then hi. I’m sorry I have not showed up before and stuff, and sorry again for show up just when there is no other way, you understand it, I know. So, can you give me my guitar now?
- No, dude, I not giving you any guitar.
- Fuck, why? It is mine!
- Look, do you think I forgot what you did to my sister?
- Oh... Wait, no, you are mixing up stories. Sisters are different business. I just want my guitar, I’m not going to bother your sister or something.
- You broke her heart, dude. That is also fucked up.
- What do you mean? Are you insane? She is twelve, what you wanted me to do?! Oh, yes, yes, sure, of course I will marry you, littler twelve years old sister of my friend of the band!
You didn’t had to marry her, even more because in this crazy world we live today this marriage things are fucking complicated, but you didn’t needed to throw her in the pool, right?
- She was chasing me with a knife! With a fucking knife, screaming she was going to turn me into a girl, after I told her I was not interested and things would not happen between us, and etc. Fuck, what you wanted me to do?
- Look man, the truth is, without any intention to be a dick, to any situation in life, any, there is always a way to get out of it as a gentleman. Got it?
- Man, really, get me my guitar, the world is going to end and you are here saying that I had to let you little sister stick a knife in me or marry her!
- No, no, no. Calm down. I didn’t said you had to marry her, I even said that in this times we live this marriage things fucking complicated. And you didn’t have to let her stick like very deeply the knife and such, but throwing her into the pool was not nice.
- I didn’t, she fell down into it! You were there, you saw it! She was running like a crazy viking with that blondie braids flying in the air, then I moved aside quickly and she went straight. In fact, it was lucky that the pool had water.
- Yes, but it was dirty and smelly. Come on, dude, that is not the attitude of a gentleman.
- Man, fuck the gentleman. Really. Gimme my guitar. I’m sorry for everything that happened, etc, many things, I never wanted to be bad to someone, you know it, but man, it is the end of the world, I need my guitar, the clock is ticking, I’m sorry for everything. Everything. Do you understand?
- Yes, I do.
- So, you gonna give me my guitar?
- No.
- No!?!??!??
- Don’t get me wrong, I understand, bla bla bla, end of the world and all, but... well, it happens that...
- That what?
- Well... at that day, when you escaped, jumping over the gates and all, while my sister was getting out of the dirty pool, all soaked, screaming that there was no tomorrow for you, she noticed that you had left you guitar behind.
- Oh no... don’t tell me that she...
- Yes, she...
- She, what?
- She stabbed you guitar completely.
- What????? What you mean by stabbed completely?????? How?????? And it was a kitchen’s knife, not a samurai sword!!!!!
- I don’t know, dude. By the way, to be honest, there are times that she scares me a lot.
- What you mean?!? Where is the guitar??? Let me see it!
- I think you better not.
- Why not? It is mine, the world is going to end, your crazy sister made some holes over it with a knife and you won’t let me even see it?
Yes, dude, I was thinking about it, you know? I think you should stop playing the guitar, I mean, don’t take it badly, but you suck at playing guitar, maybe it was all a signal of the universe saying that you must stop with this music idea, before someone get hurt really badly, I don’t know. You understand?
- Man, no more talk, gimme my fucking guitar now. I don’t care about what you think of my musical talent, the band is over anyway, the other guys have no more courage to show up here because of your sister, they even avoid to walk close to your street, and also...
- Tsc, Tsc, an exaggeration, we should say. She is just a little twelve year old girl, come on, this youth of today, there all a bunch of pussies.
- ...
- What?
- ... Nothing, man, never mind... Well, time is running, you here talking nonsense and I need my guitar.
- Jee, you really like music so much that with the end of the world and stuff, so many things you could do, call someone, I don’t, run around naked or whatever, you really want to end playing guitar?
- No, no, I came here just because I’m stupid!!!!! I will even say it again: BE-CAU-SE-I-AM-STU-PID!!!!!!!! I came here taking the risk of being killed or scape like an animal, chased by you freak little sister just because I’m stupid.
- ... Was it irony?
- No, it was abstract German poetry.
- ...
- ...?
- Listen up, dude, you are my friend and all, we have been through many shit together, that time I shat on my pants on the subway you helped me, that other time when that girl dumped me you let me cry on your bed, get drunk and throw up, and etc, but I don’t think it is correct to call a child, that is in love, a freak. This is not the attitude of a gentleman.
- Man, she made holes in a guitar with a kitchen’s knife!
- It is this milk they sell today, when we were kids it was different. Today kids are more stronger and stuff.
- Ok. All right. Enough. Really. It’s over. Forget it. Fuck it. I’m tired. You know what? I’m going back home and I will pretend my bed is a gigantic drum and I will play it until the end of the world, fuck it. Bye.
- No, no, no, no, dude. Calm down. I’m sorry. It happens that... well, I will tell you the whole truth.
- Whole truth? What do you mean?
- Well...
- Welll?
- Sisteeeeeeeeeeeeeer, guess who is here!!!!!
- Son of a bitch!
- Hahahaha, relax, I’m just kidding, she is not here.
- No?
- No, but your face made it worth hahaha.
- ... Yes, I’m sure it was very funny to you.
- Yes, I would say so.
- But where is she? The world is going to end and you let her out, this is not a, quotes, attitude of a gentleman, quotes.
- Going to make fun of me know, hum? You were the one who invented this gentleman thing, remember? And she left before they say on TV it was the end of the world. I don’t even know where she is, and that is precisely the problem.
- I don’t understand.
- She left with your guitar and some other things saying the world was all wrong and she was going to solve it all, that she was going to end the world.
- Wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that your sister and my guitar are somehow responsible for the end of the world??!
- Yes, we could say it is possible...
- WE COULD SAY IT IS POSSIBLE????? How she would do that with a guitar?????
- I don’t know, dude, I’m drummer, I know nothing about guitars.
- ....
- .... Why this face again?
- Drummer, right?
- Yes.
- No, no. You are not a drummer, you are a son of a bitch! A son of a bitch!
- Yes... Maybe, my mom is weird, who knows what she may have done some day in her past. But I think it would be much more fun if someday she suddenly said I was born after and alien abduction, like in that story we invented once, remember?
- ... yes, I do, heheheh
- You are laughing now, hum?
- There is no other way, you are still crazy the same way.
- Yes, but I don’t think it is something bad.
- Yes, I agree. Well, I don’t know, fuck it. I’m sorry for screaming and all. It’s over. The world is going to end and everything is probably chaos, so I won’t be able to go back home anymore and won’t be able to have my guitar.
- Don’t worry, it was for the best.
- Why?
- I don’t know. It is just something that people say when something that can not be avoided happens. In many ways, everything can always be worse. And, no kidding, why you wanted to end playing guitar?
- I don’t know, I just wanted to end up doing something that would let me not think that the world was going to end in just a few minutes, or something that avoided me to have that thoughts about all the things I did or did not, my mistakes in life, and all this shit. Do you remember before a date with the girls of the time of the band, we used to play some songs before the date, so we would be more relaxed because we were not thinking to much about the date and all the ways things could be wrong and stuff? I wanted to do the same, I mean, I would play, the end of world would come and I won’t even notice, or something like that.
- I guess I understand. But you say I’m still crazy, but you continues to be Mr. Depression, holy fuck.
- Not all the time hehehe
- Well, I got one idea then.
- Which one?
- Since you are going to stay here, won’t be able to go back and so on, and we still have some minutes until the end of the world, it is not the same like playing music, but it also helps to forget things, get distracted, lose track of time and all.
- What?
- Do you wanna play some Mario Kart?
- Mario Kart?
- Yeah.
- ...My end will be playing Mario Kart?
- Yes, playing Mario Kart with that friend of yours who was part of the most fun and important stories of your life. Much better than end up alone playing depressive music like you would probably do.
- Yeah, I really was thinking about playing some depressives ones hehehe.
- See? I know you.
- ...
- ...So, let’s play?
- Nah, fuck it, ok, let’s do it.

-----------------------------------------------

To wrap many gifts

2012-01-14T05:27:00.001-02:00

Taking as inspiration crosswords and the fact that humans are commonly lazy, Fabio Milito, in collaboration with Francesco Guidotti (both from Italy), designed the wrapping paper bellow.

It contains 20 messages, going from “Merry Christmas” until “Happy Retirement”, passing through “This is not a perfume” and “I love you”, all you have to do is circle the message you need.

There is also a greeting card version and the possibility to order one with the words you may need. At the end of the post you can find all the links.

--- Links
Fabio Milito's website
To buy the paper, or the card or to order one you always dreamed of

A ghost car

2012-01-13T03:51:00.000-02:00

Clicking around I found this image bellow:

Like that time when I found the gigantic clothespin, at first I was not sure if it was some Photoshop trick or if some crazy man had done it himself. Doing some research I found that it is a real car, built around 1939 by Pontiac, a division of General Motors with a logo that could be in that movie Metropolis, with the objective to show the use of new materials to built cars and to show how they could be in the future. It received the nickname of Ghost Car, for obvious reasons (yes?).

Last year, the car was sold in at an audition for 308 thousand dollars. I don’t know if I’m being easily impressed, but to me it was a cheap price, don’t you think?

To eat and write, but on the contrary

2012-01-12T03:30:00.000-02:00

Wandering over the internet I found two interesting ideas about pencils. The first one transforms a pencil into something to eat and the second one transform something to eat into a pencil (?!).

Have you ever imagined how nice would be if we could buy pencils made of parmesan cheese? Yeah, neither did I, but some crazy Germans of the agency Kolle Rebbe thought that it would be a good idea. They made 500 units of a set containing a sharpener and 3 pencils in three flavors: truffles, pesto and chilli. They sold it at The Deli Garage, a website that sells this kind of different food. The image bellow gives a better idea of the delicacy which was sold out in 2 weeks.

And you probably know that China receives many criticism about their dictatorial policies, torture, for not respect human rights and so on. At the Christmas of 2010 the agency Saatchi & Saatchi (which is present all over the world), on a partnership with the Amnesty International, put up in restaurants all over China, among the traditional chop sticks, a version of them that could look the same to distracted eyes, but the package and the content were different, like the image bellow shows.

In one side the package says in English and in Chinese “Isolation, despair, loneliness and torture”. On the other side, this time only in English, it says “Tuck under thumb and hold firmly. Write the Chinese government to help end torture. Take further action at amnesty.org/china. Don’t let human rights violations by the Chinese government give China a bad name.”

The idea is very good, since it can be easilly disseminated, can be in many places not being easy to detect, what is important considering the dictatorial policies of the country, and because it reaches population directly.

However, at the same time that I admire the idea, it kind bothers me a little to see that the main message was only in English, because, like we all know, this is not the language that people speak in China, right?

Maybe I’m overreacting, but it gives me the impression that the main concern was to tell the world something, or to show to the world “look how evil the Chinese are”, much more than a real concern about the rights of the Chinese population who were, in theory, the main target of the whole message. Going a little further and playing “I see a conspiracy” man, don’t you think that the way it was made shows much more a fear that other countries may have to see a country, that does not respect the same human rights that they do, becoming rich and powerful, than a true concern about the sufferings of Chinese population or if they care about China having “a bad name”?

Whatever is the case, good ideas are good ideas and, even if it don’t save your life someday, it is important to recognize good ideas, even when their objectives are kind hard to see clearly.

--- Links
A Amnesty International in Wikipedia
A Amnesty International website
The website of the German agency Kolle Rebbe
The website of the agency Saatchi & Saatchi
The website of The Deli Garage

Alice in Wonderland, in 1903

2012-01-10T03:33:00.000-02:00

The video bellow was launched in 1903 and is the first movie adaptation of the book “Alice in Wonderland”, wrote by Lewis Carroll. I don’t about you, but to me is always impressive to watch this films if the early days of cinema and imagine what that people would think they were doing and if they had any idea of how movies would be today.

Take a look and pay attention to the special effects and, if you get to the last scene, to the amount of extras at the end.

Video Games vs. Real Life

2012-01-08T07:11:00.001-02:00

The English designer and illustrator Aled Lewis is one of those who played games when he was a child and this is present in many ways in his works today.

The first image is from a series of photos that he does with real toys and text balloons. The other ones are from a set called “Video Games vs. Real Life”, which recreates “scenes” from old games, using the same graphics to the characters, but real life scenarios to all the rest.

Take a look and, if you wanna see more, at the end of the post you can find the some links.

--- Links
More images of the series “Video Games vs. Real Life”
More images of the series with toys and text balloons
Official website of Sr. Aled Lewis

Single women and cats

2012-01-08T05:01:00.000-02:00

The vídeo bellow finally solves the mystery. Or maybe not.

My favorite part is when it cleans up the wall hahaha