Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

Friday, March 31, 2000

Keep physically fit as you

Keep physically fit as you defend yourself against attackers.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:11:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Have a math problem you

Have a math problem you can't solve? Ask Winnie Cooper for the answer.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:08:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The only thing worse than

The only thing worse than being Mahir is being a Mahir wannabe.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:56:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, March 30, 2000

Stefan Jones says: "In addition

Stefan Jones says: "In addition to the kick-in-the-gut gustatory abortions of the Gallery of Regrettable Food, James Lileks's Institute of Official Cheer ('helping tomorrow feel superior by scoffing at yesteryear') features annotated scans of old motel postcards and stock certificates. The Bureau of Corporate Allegory matches elaborate engravings with snarky commentary."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:54:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here are a couple of

Here are a couple of "The Cat" cartoons from Gene Deitch. "The Cat" ran in a jazz collectors' magazine from the 1940s called The Record Changer. Later Deitch went on to become the art director of UPA (the studio of Gerald McBoingBoing) and created Tom Terrific for Captain Kangaroo. Deitch's son is Kim Deitch, a well-known underground cartoonist.

I had the pleasure of meeting Gene a few years ago when he was in San Francisco (he and his wife visit the US from their home in Prague every year). One of these days I'll transcribe my long and fascinating interview with him. Now in well into his seventies, Deitch is still working on a lot of projects, and has taken to the Web like a natural. Look at his latest project, The Unknown John Lee Hooker. He is also selling his autobiography on this site.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:59:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, March 28, 2000

Hey -- you can Read

Hey -- you can Read Chick Tracts online.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:50:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, March 27, 2000

Bruce Sterling just sent me

Bruce Sterling just sent me the URL for the Unusual Museums of the Internet Webring. It is, as he says, "truly an embarrassment of riches, d00d."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:07:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The eboy design group in

The eboy design group in Germany creates some swell-looking stuff. I like they way that they transform 72 pixels-per-inch from a liability to an asset. eboy has a new collection of monster trading cards I like.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:46:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, March 24, 2000

Salon article about author Daniel

Salon article about author Daniel Pinkwater.

"Pinkwater's writing reminds you how easy it is to sneak out of the ordinary world. All you need to do is take the bus to a different neighborhood, catch a midnight movie, walk to the end of an unfamiliar street and you're somewhere else: Tintown, Mars, the Waka-Waka plane of existence. What you find there is unexpectedly beautiful."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:24:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Pantheon of Idols is

The Pantheon of Idols is a page of the literary and musical heroes of Chaleon I.O. Myme, a neurologist at Brandeis University. His detailed accounts of meeting The Amazing Kreskin and Kate Bush are so full of giddy joy and keen insight that I know I'm going to spend at least $100 buying the books and CDs he raves about. On my wish-list: Karel Capek's War With the Newts, Paul Krassner's Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut, Raymond Smullyan's This Book Needs No Title, and Daniel Pinkwater's, Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:52:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, March 22, 2000

Interview with Chris Ware, another

Interview with Chris Ware, another cartoonist I really like. Ware does the Acme Comics Novelty Library.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:39:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with Seth, the creator

Interview with Seth, the creator of one of my favorite comic books, Palookaville.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:37:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, March 21, 2000

"A Pakistani judge yesterday convicted

"A Pakistani judge yesterday convicted a man of murdering 100 children and sentenced him to be strangled with an iron chain, chopped into pieces and dissolved in acid in front of the parents of his victims." -- from News Unlimited

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:53:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Lost Decade is a

The Lost Decade is a 50,000-word history of the Pogues. In the mid-80's I was living in London, playing in a band called The Elephant Boys. We played a lot at the same club The Pogues did, so we got to know them. One night after a show, singer Shane MacGowan was standing in the street, holding a bottle of whisky. He backed up and a car whammed into him. He flew 10 feet through the air and landed on his butt, but somehow managed to keep the whisky bottle from falling out of his hand. He stood up, took a swig, and walked onto the sidewalk as if nothing had happened.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:27:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, March 20, 2000

Furniture porn.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:04:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My friend Alberta Chu is

My friend Alberta Chu is an incredible documentary filmmaker, who focuses her work on the blending of technology and culture. She recently finished a short film called ELECTRUM, about a fantastically wealthy weirdo rancher in New Zealand who commissions the erection of a gargantuan Tesla Coil next to his house. The artist enlists the help of a gang of meticulous engineers and subterranean gearhead culture jammers in San Francisco to build it. You can find out more about the video, and the other stuff Alberta is interested in at her site, Future Culture.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:49:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, March 17, 2000

Now that Wired News has

Now that Wired News has been redesigned so they can throw up more banner ads, I'm going to read it this way.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:31:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, March 16, 2000

Want to play with a

Want to play with a wireframe robot animal?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:01:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alisa Sanada alternated school years

Alisa Sanada alternated school years between Japan and the US. Here's her take on Japanese youth culture.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:37:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, March 15, 2000

Tell me who I have

Tell me who I have to kill to own Marc Newson's 021C concept car? Here's a good shot of the dashboard.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:03:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"The Fair Division Calculator finds

"The Fair Division Calculator finds approximate envy-free divisions up to any precision for the following problems: cake-cutting (division of goods/desirables), chore-division (division of burdens/undesirables), rent-partitioning (allocation of indivisible goods mediated by divisible payments) "

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:37:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A nice little piece by

A nice little piece by Teller (the quiet guy from Penn & Teller) describing his visit to the Gardner Gathering, an annual get-together for mathematicians and magicians. I want to learn how to put together six business cards to form a sturdy cube, as one attendee demonstrated.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:28:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, March 14, 2000

I wrote a long article

I wrote a long article in the March 2000 issue of Wired about people who like their old computers and don't ever want to upgrade. It's called Retroactivists

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:23:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The April issue of Wired

The April issue of Wired has a long essay by Bill "Mr Java" Joy about the potential extinction of the human race in the next 50 years as a result of technological progress.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:55:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, March 11, 2000

Take the Porn Star or

Take the Porn Star or My Little Pony Quiz. I scored 6 out of 12, which means I could have done just as well flipping a coin.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:53:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, March 10, 2000

Here's another miniature camera site.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:21:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I dare you to read

I dare you to read this article about Minox spy cameras and not covet one for yourself.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:17:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I wrote an article for

I wrote an article for Digital Living Today about how I use my Palm V to read articles. Unfortunately the site is laid out so that you can't read the entire article at once -- you have to keep clicking on a "more" link. Those things stink.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:08:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Somebody is launching an encyclopedia

Somebody is launching an encyclopedia based on the Open-Source model. The open source method has a lot of merit, but sometimes I wonder if stuff created by quirky individuals isn't more interesting, even if it is buggier. Web logs are a good example. The ones maintained by one person are usually much more fun and flavorful than the ones that allow a bunch of people to contribute. Long live the lone weirdo!

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:01:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, March 9, 2000

This guy added funny comments

This guy added funny comments to a few old print ads for baked goods. It made me snicker, which is about as hard as I can laugh while using the Web.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:23:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, March 8, 2000

Has anyone created a better

Has anyone created a better fiction genre that Carnival Sideshow Noir? Not that I know of. Here's a short bio of one of its best authors, Nightmare Alley's William Lindsay Gresham.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:22:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I came across jazzbo hepcat

I came across jazzbo hepcat illustrator Tim Biskup's page while searching for Jim Flora album covers on eBay

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:38:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm doing three comic strips

I'm doing three comic strips for web sites now. This Guru For Hire is a weekly strip about freelancers, that my wife, Carla, co-writes with me. (Here's an archive of all my Guru comics). I do another weekly strip called Artificial Life for New Media. The site uses a lot of Java and Flash, and it won't work on Mac's using Explorer. I don't know how to find the direct URL, either. If you want to read it, just go to the site. And I just started a new comic for a site called Digital Living Online, which is edited ny my friend, Gareth Branwyn. Gar is the creator of another wonderful site called Street Tech.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:28:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, March 3, 2000

Ninety-seven-year-old Leni Riefenstahl, who filmed

Ninety-seven-year-old Leni Riefenstahl, who filmed the 1936 Olympics for the Nazis, survived with injuries after her plane crashed in Sudan.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:32:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Who Was Jim Tully? Novelist,

"Who Was Jim Tully? Novelist, journalist, lecturer, Hollywood columnist of the 1920s and 30s, road kid, chainmaker, boxer, circus handyman, tree surgeon; an inheritor of the tradition of the literary wanderer, and father of another, the school of hardboiled writing." -- From the Jim Tully page on Dennis McMillan's site.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:20:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, March 2, 2000

Slow news day, for Wired

Slow news day, for Wired News to make an article out of Jorn Barger's instructions on how to change the URL of an Amazon Associate a hack. (Jorn's Robot Wisdom is my favorite Weblog, btw.)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:26:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, March 1, 2000

William M. Gaines was the

William M. Gaines was the publisher of Mad, as well as EC Comics, which included Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science. This transcript from Gaines's memorial service includes photos of Mad's Usual Gang of Idiots. I always wondered what they looked like.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:22:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Daniel P. Mannix wrote some

Daniel P. Mannix wrote some great books in the '50s and '60s, including an autobiography about his years as a carnival sideshow performer, called Memoirs of a Sword Swallower. The Half-and-Half is an unpublished chapter from the book. The first two sentences are wonderful:

"Even though she was very attractive, I never could really fall in love with Frances-Francine because I didn't know if she was a man or woman. Finally I asked her and she told me frankly, 'I don't know myself, Slim.'"

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:14:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments