Planning a weekend brunch? You're in luck! The new Mountain Dew Kickstart is a crowdfunded highly caffeinated pseudo-juice that PepsiCo is marketing as a great breakfast drink. Then, swing round to your local county fair and get Chicken Charlie to sell you a nice takeaway package of his deep-fried cereal to accompany things, and well, you've got yourself a(n insulin) party!

(via Techdirt)

Francesco sez, "A Japanese company has released a plastic figure of a tuna fish. The figure is 33cm long and features a working table and the traditional 'Maguro bōchō' knife to cut the tuna. This figure costs ¥29,000 (USD292) in Japanese hobby stores."

I love that it's themed for the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, which may be the most memorable place I've ever visited.

Maguro Figure: il modellino perfetto per gli amanti del Sushi! (Thanks, Francesco!)

I'm very taken with Klaus Weber's 2011 sculpture Veggieanatomy, which includes real vegetables in its makeup.

Veggieanatomy, 2011 (via Neatorama)

Years and years ago, I saw Heather Gold's innovative, interactive baking comedy "I Look like An Egg, but I Identify As A Cookie" in San Francisco. It was fabulous. Now it's about to have its debut in the East Bay:

While baking chocolate chip cookies with the audience and special guests (Bakesale Betty), Gold combines heterosexuality (DRY), lesbianism (WET), and the Left (MIX). "Cookie" is a story of first kisses, rugby drama, Mrs C's secret honeycake recipe and slow dancing to Air Supply. Gold transforms the coming out story, making mincemeat of the identities that keep us from our whole selves and each other. "Cookie" is a show of sweet and simple truths.

Heather's making two pairs of tickets available, all you need to do is tweet you favorite secret ingredient with #eggcookie and she'll get in touch. Oh, and here's a great post Heather made explaining why she uses CC licenses in her performances.

I LOOK LIKE AN EGG, BUT I IDENTIFY AS A COOKIE

The "Polar Bear Ice Tray" is a sealed bottle that makes icecubes and then facilitates their easy removal. The sealed container keeps freezer flavors away, and once it's all frozen, you can dislodge the ice by giving the bottle a whack on a countertop and then pour it out of the mouth. Looks like a clever way of solving an old problem, though I haven't tried it myself.

polar bear ice tray (via Red Ferret)

Andre Torrez has a cute and simple recipe for making your shell prompt into a hamburger (or other whimsical emoji character). Just type

export PS1="\w 🍔 "

into the terminal to try it out. Apparently some Macs ship with an Emoji font installed; if you need one, you can get a free, excellent one from the Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts page, by downloading the Symbola font (.ZIP file) and installing it with your font manager.

To make the change permanent, you need to add a line to .profile, .bash_profile or .bashrc (depending on your *nix flavor). There are lots of other ways to customize your prompt enumerated in the article, too.

happy notes* / april 2013 / put a burger in your shell

Here's an unexpected use for a dead hard-drive: use its motor to power a candy-floss machine:

A Chinese engineer who operates a data recovery and hard drive repair center is being hailed as a genius after inventing a DIY candy floss machine made from a used hard disk. According to the instructions, all that is needed to create your own candy floss maker is a hard drive that can still power up, a round flat metal tin, six bicycle spokes, an aluminum can and a plastic basin. A series of photos demonstrating how to create this candy floss machine have made some sensation across China internet …

The key to the improvised cotton candy maker is the hard drive’s rotating platter. Most commercial cotton candy machines spin at around 3,450 rotations per minute, while modern hard drives operate at 5,400 rotations per minute or higher. We’re really admired this kind of DIY creation from a technical nerd …

Turning an Old Hard Disk Into a Candy Floss Machine [English, MicGadget]

技术宅拯救世界：用旧硬盘自制棉花糖机(图) [Chinese, tt.mop.com]

(via Neatorama)

Just look at it.

I Broke my Banana (Thanks, Philip!)

Zack sez, "Artist Brad McGinty (the "Xenomorph Anatomy" T-shirts) has a new website celebrating the fake history of Glorp Gum, best described as Bazooka Joe by way of Rat Fink. The site includes an elaborate narrative for Glorp Gum, tons of merchandise (including T-shirts, stickers and yes, actual gum) and this hilarious animated commercial that parodies the classic "Mr. Owl" spots for Tootsie Roll Pops"

GLORP GUM! The only gum that comes with a free T-Shirt! (Thanks, Zack!)