2.25.2006

Words, words, words. Etc.

Everyone and her great-aunt has posted a thumbnail from Snap Shirts, which has probably attracted some quite large number of vain bloggers and sold some quite small number of actual t-shirts. In case this is actually the first time you've seen this, what they do is make a pretty word cloud out of common words from your blog or site, then hope you'll want to buy a t-shirt of it. It makes a very nice little blog-thingy. Here's mine, which I finally managed to produce after many failed attempts to pass the human test. I had actually given up for a while.




Another fun toy is What's Up?, which bills itself as "an indispensable tool for the global newsjunkie," but might be better filed as "a slick, shiny plaything for the bored blogger". It's a techno-cool dot-matrix map of the world with blinking hotspots and fun bubbly pops flashing headlines of breaking news. I'm not sure about its indispensability as a news source, but it does make you long for a future world when real utilities might be this sleek and attractive.
Via orangeblog.




I've unfortunately lost the referrer, but Cabinet Magazine has a very nice Timeline of Timelines detailing the development of timekeeping and and representations of time through time. With pictures!




From another missing referrer comes a link to a delightful post at winterson.com, showing us what happens when Star Wars Episode III is translated from English into Chinese and back into English again. I'm a sucker for trans-linguistic obfuscation, and some of these are really howlers. Even better, each of the fifty-odd caps includes a comment or an explanation of what went wrong from the original, which is pretty interesting. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you the movie's title -- it's "Backstroke of the West."




Found is a neat site that collects found objects and the detritus of everyday life. Their statement: We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes... I didn't see a way to browse the whole collection, but there is a featured Find of the Day, plus a search feature, in case you happen to have a special interest in shopping lists featuring cheese, or some other such specific need.




I'm unaware of its provenance, but hosted among random other files at janpeters.net is a nice little animation showing the evolution of the English alphabet.

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3 Comments:

Blogger mernitman:

Hi, I just came to your site for the first time via Bibi, and just want to say a) great site! and b) given your amusement at the Chinese Star Wars stuff, are you familiar with Engrish.com? I believe you'll enjoy...

19:24  
Blogger Jess Haskins:

Hi! Welcome!

I am familiar with Engrish.com...actually, I was familiar with it a long time ago, when it seemed to be a lot bigger and to have a lot more material. I'm not sure what happened to it since. I seem to remember lengthy text files full of stuff, instead of these pictures. Maybe they decided the visuals were better, and replaced all their old material? Either way, the site was and remains hilarious. I do adore that sort of thing.

23:17  
Blogger mernitman:

Gave your blog a shout-out at the end of today's post, since I used a "word-cloud." You may be amused:
http://livingromcom.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/03/emptying_a_fold.html

15:38  

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