Bakers make cake with image of flash drive instead of image in flash drive

Person orders birthday cake, gives baker a flash driver containing image. Baker makes cake with image of flash drive. (Thanks, Stefan!)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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zuzu

@8 Angsum

The territory is not the map. Or something like that.

This is not a flash drive?
gtron

maybe there is a need to realize that about 90% of the folks out in the real world are not up to speed on all/most matters tech… most here keep up, but this is a small population, and tech moves too fast for the masses. i’ve made award winning websites, and have NEVER used a flash drive! OMG! there’s too much info out there and it becomes tiresome to those who don’t need it – i know a guy with a 2500$ macbook pro – he only uses it for email.
TheChickenAndTheRice

I hate those kids who yell “F4KE!!11″ as much as the rest of us, but it strikes me as more likely this was a deliberately made cake by some funny people who then had a funny idea to post a funny story on the interwebs.

Just sayin’.
Anonymous

This exact thing happened to me and some friends a few years back at a Wal-Mart except involving a computer disc.

They were advertising their big ‘we print photos on cakes’ and when we asked if they could read a disc and get the image off that she went back to check and then came back and told us she could.

We then come back to a cake printed with a scanned photo of the disc.
heydemann3

As a professional baker I can easily relate to this-the counter staff had some odd methods of telling us what was supposed to be on the cakes. And the decorator was probably working on a different shift, etc.
As for the ink-jet printed images, the system is kind of pricey, and the paper used is an edible rice paper that basically melts into the frosting. If it doesn’t melt it can be peeled off. It’s just about tasteless.
I just hope the poor recipient was able to laugh about the situation, not throw a tantrum.
heydemann3

Actually having read the post at Cake Wrecks-a wonderful site-it’s even more understandable. The counter person couldn’t even be bothered to make sure the decorator knew which image to use, or what was going on. Not uncommon at all, alas. Still pretty dang funny.
Nawel

WONDERFUL! hahahahahahhaha!

(mmm… fake? maybe the story, the cake might be real and made for a super-geek dude)
TongBei

To quote Hank Hill – “Do I look like the kind of person that knows what a jpeg is?”
rollerskater

pure rofflage.
Ned613

I hope it didn’t ruin the party.
Anonymous

That flash drive is ENORMOUS!
JohnMc

I can’t believe that no-one is making the connection with this classic of digital-custom-cake failure, one of my favorite BB posts ever:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/19/cake-printer-barfs-u.html
Xopher

I think somebody musta been baked. So to speak.

Don’t they have edible-ink inkjet printers for cakes now? Don’t you HAVE to give them an image electronically for them to use one?
Paul Merrill

This reminds me of when I brought a disc into Kinko’s a few years back to get some business cards printed. When I came to pick them up, they handed me a black and white photocopy of a business card. Pure genius!
Anonymous

Thing I don’t get is how come the flash drive is so massive and the cake is so tiny?! Barely a mouthful, surely.
Boeotian

#9, #12: imagine if instead you got from them CDs with ISO 9001 files!
Brainspore

Funny mix-up, but who shows up to a bakery with a digital storage device instead of a printout? It’s a confectionery, not a Kinko’s.
angusm

The territory is not the map. Or something like that.
Stefan Jones

In turn I credit Dr. Rob Downes for sending me the link.

There are all sorts of variations of this debacle. Once an employer ordered a batch of CD-ROM discs. We sent the fulfillment house an ISO file . . . a disk image.

They were delivered with the fancy label done up right . . . and the ISO 9660 file as the only contents.
Gary54

I am reminded of the movie “Spinal Tap” and the stage prop plans for Stonehenge drawn on a napkin.
LB

There is no need to realize anything – read the OP. The bakery told them to bring in the image on a jump drive. Period.
JoeKickass

@Brainspore
What would they do with a printout, glue it to the top of the cake? Yummy.
Perhaps you should read blog post associated with the picture.. the bakery asked for the file on a datastorage device.
eclectro

This is complete awesomeness, it has to be better than the image on the flash drive!
TheChickenAndTheRice

Nawel – yes, that’s what I meant. I don’t doubt the authenticity of the cake. The story, on the other hand, is a little too cute.
Orky

#8 posted by Stefan Jones Author Profile Page, February 3, 2009 1:57 PM

> … and the ISO 9660 file as the only contents.

I got some CD-Rs that way from some IT guys once…
adam

As someone who occasionally has digital workflow handoff issues, I nearly fell off my chair.
dross1260

At least he didn’t ask for it to “scale”. Would have missed out on all that “grey” icing. ANd where’s the original file? Did it go well with the green piping?
DukeOGlue

They should just connect the flash drive cake to the PC cake and get the actual image cake from inside it.
cfurrow

Reminds me of the time I was getting a t-shirt printed, and had special instructions in the email message. So, in the “notes” area, I wrote “see email”. When I got the shirt, weeks later, it only had the words “see email” printed on the front.
Bloodboiler

How many iPhone cakes have you seen on blogs?

What if these stupid misunderstandings happened because of the number of strange cakes that are ordered.
Maybe cake makers write so many strange inside jokes and obscure quotes on cakes that writing “It is a grill” on a cake is just another day at the bakery.
cory

#8, #11: This mistake actually isn’t all that hard to make. Lots of CD burning software has different behavior depending on whether you double-click the image or drag it on top of the project. Drag, and you might get that result.

This is where some sort of QA process would have come in handy.
Matt Deckard

@26 – my thoughts exactly.

How hard would it be to go take a picture of the flash drive, take it to the bakery and tell them that’s what you want on the cake. Then make up the backstory and generate untold lulz.
Phikus

Zoolander come to life.
Scuba SM

Whoa whoa whoa, Cory. QA costs a ton of money. Besides, we haven’t had any issues before.

:p
dagfooyo

I had a similar experience as a kid. My 5th birthday party was Knight Rider themed. My mom brought a paper plate with a picture of Kitt on it to the supermarket to make a cake. The lady took down the information and wrote “Car – plate” as instructions. So the baker made a cake with a licence plate on it.
Big_Bollocks

I have a new word for this poor baker: Technodolt