Lopolis

Yup, I’ve got the biggest stocking, although my sister’s is surprisingly stretchy.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday! The best quote from this morning’s present opening came from my mother:
“Yay, a hammer drill! Now I can drill holes in rocks!”
Does anyone else’s mother buy themselves a hammer drill for [...]

So here I was looking up the weather forecast for the holiday week where I’ll be visiting my family in New Hartford, CT. The weather looked suspiciously similar to that in Seattle. Between these two forecasts, can you guess which is Connecticut and which is Seattle?

Seattle or Connecticut? Click for the full-size [...]

Silent Star Wars
Star Wars movies re-edited in black and white as a silent movie. (YouTube)
(tags: starwars humor video youtube)

Usability in the Movies — Top 10 Bloopers
Jakob Nielsen takes on many of the most common technology/usability bloopers in films.
(tags: film movies usability nielsen interface ui humor)

Every week during the winter months, a pizza place in downtown Seattle, Belltown Pizza hosts a trivia night. 5 rounds, 10 questions each, and 1 of the rounds being a music round (ie. name the song title and artist). Coworkers and friends have gotten into the routine of heading down almost every Monday [...]

Richard Dawkins speaks to Kindergarteners about the non-existence Santa Claus
Hilarious imagined monologue from McSweeney’s.
(tags: atheism dawkins humor mcsweeneys parody christmas)

The Alchemists Film Trailer
Documentary on some of the most influential advetising and marketing individuals.
(tags: video film documentary advertising marketing)

I don’t usually hop on these memes, but I’ve been tagged and certainly don’t want to be the one to break this modern day chain letter. The name of the game is to list 5 interesting/odd/unique things about yourself that most people may not know.
1. I play (or at least know how to play) [...]

Ray Harryhausen Creature List
4 1/2 minute compilation of all of Ray Harryhausen’s dinosaurs, monsters, aliens and mythical creatures. Impressive stuff from one of the big screen special effects pioneers. (YouTube)
(tags: video harryhausen animation film art effects)

Innovation is Imperative. Sleep is Optional
Kickass design portfolio of the newly liberated Corianton Hale.
(tags: design portfolio corianton)

Swivel
Sharing data sets [...]

Thursday night we had a little bit of wind here in Seattle. At about 4:15PM the rain started blowing sideways into my office building windows, and the walls were creaking a little more than usual. The high-rise bank of elevators stopped working and fireman arrived with sirens blaring. The bank of elevators [...]

Michel Gondry Solves a Rubiks Cube with his Feet
Subtle genius. Read the comments for the spoilers. (YouTube)
(tags: video gondry rubiks)

I’m happy to share that my Utility Fixtures photos have been featured as a project on FILE Magazine. You can enter the gallery from the project intro page here. The project gallery is just a subset (with most of my favorites) of my growing collection of 70+ fixtures. There’s also a [...]

Colbert Report – John Sexton Pt. 1
Frank Lesser (www.franklesser.com) on the Colber Report. He’s “the beard” at about 1:10. (iFilm)
(tags: colbert video ifilm humor)

I just received a phone call from an external party that I’ve been working with on a project. It started off like this:

Him: “Hi Chase, do you have a couple minutes to chat?”
Me: “Yeah, sure.”
Him: “OK, excellent. I have a question for you. Here, I’m sending you an e-mail with a couple [...]

Last night I attended the first Ignite Seattle event, hosted by Make magazine and O’Reilly Radar. I took quite a few photos of the bridge-building contest and there are plenty more photos of the bridges and presentations in the Ignite Flickr pool. There was plenty of hot glue flying and some impressive [...]