Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988
Web design and development for small and large business, e-commerce, b2b, b2c, SAAS, and community websites. User experience design and usability testing.
Google Earth Tour of Sierra Pacific Industries’ clearcuts in California’s forests
Do you know where the town of Arnold, CA, is? Media coverage of logging in California died down a decade ago, and most people don’t realize the clearcuts have been going on ever since. “I wake up at night at 3:30, hearing the logging trucks and knowing what’s happening,” says Arnold resident Susan Robinson. “It makes me sick...I’m the daughter of a forester myself. I am not anti-logging. SPI [Sierra Pacific Industries] should be able to log its land. But it shouldn’t have the right to obliterate everything.” [from an article in the SFBG: “The Harshest Cut”]
Okay, those first three were a little depressing, so here are a couple more light-hearted selections:
NightLife at the Cal Academy of Sciences
“Every Thursday, the Academy is transformed into a lively venue filled with music, provocative science, mingling, and cocktails, for visitors 21 and older. Activities and performers change week to week.” Tonight (September 17) features my friend Laura Stec, among others. NightLife takes place every Thursday from 6 to 10pm; tickets are $12 ($10 for Academy members).
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 4:59 AM |
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Cory Doctorow’s Makers Tor.com is serializing Corey Doctorow’s upcoming new novel before its November release, with a new installment every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.
This art is junk Literally. Artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster make shadow art out of piles of trash.
NPR Road Trip station finder NPR has relaunched a redesigned site and there are lots of improvements and new features. One I like is the ability to find NPR stations for a road trip, plotting between two points. You can also find local stations and the map gives you an indication of their signal strength in the area. They haven’t redone the NPR Shop or the Music section yet, but the overhaul of rest of the site must’ve been a tremendous project and I suspect the other two sections will come in time.
“The Trooper Believer” by DJ Schmolli Austrian DJ/remixer DJ Schmolli has mashed up of Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” with The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer.” [via Dave W.]
Walmart’s sustainability index assessed Joel Makower’s sober assessment of Walmart’s much-talked-about new Sustainability Index indicates that it may be a good first step, but it leaves much work to be done. For example: “...they don't mention toxic materials used in manufacturing or in the products themselves. They don’t talk about the energy efficiency of products or their recyclability or other disposition at the end of their useful lives,” writes Makower. They also “don’t address most worker issues, like wages, health care, and the right to air grievances.” And while Walmart is asking all suppliers to answer the questionnaire, the Index at this point only assesses companies, not their individual products.
“Her Morning Elegance,” by Oren Lavie
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 2:10 PM |
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
Thursday Top 5
From Comic Book Panel to Screen Just a week after I watched Hot Fuzz (hilarious, 5 stars) and learned that the director is the guy who’s adapting my favorite comic into a movie (Edgar Wright, who also did the amazing Shaun of the Dead), I randomly came across a film site featuring a video from the shooting of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. They’re regularly posting videos (nine so far) at ScottPilgrimTheMovie.com. Bonus points on the one above, since it also features Chris Murphy of one of my favorite bands: Sloan! I can’t wait to see this film.
Wreckage of My Past: The Story of Ozzy Osbourne trailer A documentary being produced by a company started by Ozzy’s son Jack, due in 2010. Directed by Mike Piscitelli, and written and produced by Jordan Tappis.
Take On Me: literal video version Awesome parody of an ’80s modern rock hit by A-Ha.
Flying with a Cat: From Sweden to SF Anders, who works at Dogster.com and Catster.com recently moved from Sweden to San Francisco, and brought his cat Tailer along. He produced a six-part series about his experience flying internationally with a cat, including tips and an interview with a vet.
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 8:15 AM |
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Resonance This is a really interesting and well produced video on design strategy, made by product design firm Continuum in LA. I couldn’t embed so you’ll have to go to their site to view it.
Street Sweeper Social Club, “100 Little Curses” I guess I haven’t been paying attention, because I didn’t know Tom Morello and Boots Riley started a band called Street Sweeper Social Club. Pretty good song.
Possibly the best complaint letter ever A passenger on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Mumbai to London wasn’t exactly thrilled with the in-flight meal, so s/he wrote a letter to Chairman Richard Branson: “...You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left...”
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 7:45 AM |
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
Thursday Top 5
New Gay Pride flag designs Public radio program Studio 360 asked listeners to submit a new design for the Gay Pride flag. They also asked the progressive design and marketing firm Worldstudio to come up with some new designs. I like Worldstudio’s circle flag as a pure design, but the concept behind listener Carl Tashian’s flag is compelling: Each state’s star would be added to the flag when it passes a law allowing same-sex marriage. Finally, one day, it would become the U.S. flag.
Deadline Post It stop motion. Very cool.
“Dance Anthem of the 80s” If you don’t know Regina Spektor by now, you oughta.
Baron Vaughn I was watching this bit by comedian Baron Vaughn and he mentioned going to the KKK’s website, so naturally I had to go check it out. It features such gems as WhitePride.tv, T-shirts, ceramic KKK statues, jewelry, bible prophesy books, creationism science [sic] books, and other “novelty items,” under headlines like “America, Our Nation is Under Judgement from God!” Seriously. While I’m not particularly happy giving them Google juice by linking to them, I think all Americans should be informed about the sort of ingrates we continue to breed in this country.
Posted by espd at 7:29 AM |
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
Thursday Top 5
The origin of the “Amen Break” You’ve heard it before, probably millions of times. You just didn’t know it had a name. The “Amen Break” is a six-second drum break from a 1969 B-side by a band you likely never heard of, The Winstons. But you’ve undoubtedly heard this drum beat sampled in everything from songs (like NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton”) to DJ mixes to commercials. [18:09 min]
Views from the International Space Station While astronaut Don Pettit was living aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he used some of his off-duty time to make time lapse videos of what he was seeing outside of the ISS window.
“Stand By Me” sung around the world They recorded musicians around the world singing the classic song, and mixed them all together. There’s a CD of songs and a DVD documentary. [5:27 min] Learn more at PlayingForChange.com.
Drink Pussy A strangely named energy drink from Italy. Gotta wonder what it tastes like. Hm...well it’s only €1,99...
Enter Kazoo Man Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” performed on kazoo. [3:17 min] [via Jesse K.]
Posted by espd at 1:37 AM |
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Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Thursday Top 5+2
Last night of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” I haven’t watched Leno for years, and he was never my favorite, as I preferred the wacky ’80s and early ’90s era of Letterman, but Leno’s not bad at all. Last week was his final night on “The Tonight Show” before Conan takes over the reins in L.A., so I decided to watch it for history’s sake. They did about ten minutes of “Jaywalking,” the man-on-the street comedy segment where he just asks simple questions of normal, everyday Americans on the streets of L.A. (assuming there is such a thing in L.A., I suppose), such as “Who was the first president of the United States?”. This segment has always struck me as funny and excrutiatingly painful at the same time, as it shows just how terribly stupid Americans are. Worse yet, on this last show Jay tells us that they don’t even have to work hard to compile the funniest/dumbest moments after each outing. They only go out for about an hour, he says, they talk to a dozen or so people, and they use nine or so. That means over half the citizens of the republic are so retarded they can’t tell you which countries border on the U.S. or name any of the Founding Fathers. Oh, cry for our future! [43:29, 5 commercials]
First night of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” Meanwhile, across town at the Universal Studios lot, the finishing touches have been put on a new studio for Conan, who took over the reins from Leno the very next week. Andy Richter returns as the show announcer, Max Weinberg and the band now get to call themselves The Tonight Show Band, and Conan was in fine form for his first time hosting the legendary show that’s been around since 1954. Musical Guest was Pearl Jam. [43:31, 5 commmercials]
Schwarzenegger answers real people’s questions The member communities of CNN.com’s iReport and Digg Dialogg teamed up to interview CA Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger on May 27. In an unusual example of democracy, the Republican actor-turned-guv answers questions posed by and voted on by the Digg and iReport users. Showing a little more moxie than even the traditional press can sometimes muster, there were a few hard-charging queries, leading off with “Do you support same-sex marriage and do you think the GOP should become more gay-friendly?” Of course, there were some softies too, like “Does the term ‘Governator’ bother you?” All questions and video here [30:31 min].
BART swingers Apparently a few weeks ago somebody surreptitiously installed swings on a BART train. And thus the fun did ensue. More pics...
New Yorker cover created on an iPhone Artist Jorge Colombo painted the cover illustration using the Brushes app on his iPhone.
Beatles come to Rock Band Apparently Microsoft has been able to make inroads where Apple hasn’t, since the two remaining Beatles and the widows of the other two members joined various tech and gaming notables to announce that the Beatles are coming to Rock Band this fall. The animation sequence at the beginning is cool enough to merit watching in HD, but the rest of the long presentation isn’t probably interesting to you unless you’re into gaming. I watched the whole thing, though, and as a non-gamer I’m always impressed at the continually-improving, nearly-cinematic quality of the visuals in today’s games. In fact, if you’re really into seeing where the entertainment and social media technology is going in the next few years, there are some pretty amazing things unveiled in the last 25 minutes or so; look for Steven Spielberg’s appearance to tip you off.
“We Didn’t Start the Flame War” Warning: nsfw. Gotta hand it to the CollegeHumor folks, they nail the ridiculousness of the internets (including self-satire) in this one. [2:44 min]
Public acceptance of evolution
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po