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What Your Poop is Telling You About Your Body

prawn1 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:20:35 +0000

If you’ve ever watched Dr Mehmet Oz, you’ll know that he is quite serious about poop because it provides valuable information about the health of your digestive system.

The good doctor recommends examining not only your poop but the sound it make when it enters the water — it should hit the water as a diver from Acapulco would, with a swoosh. That sentiment that is echoed in this infographic, where the diver has been replaced with a torpedo. The infographic also provides information on the causes of the different colours and shapes of poop that you produce. And it details what your pee is telling you about your body. Be informed or sickened or both after the jump.

Click the image to see it bigger. You may have to click the “expand” icon on the top right of the image to see it in its original size.

[via @Jarrod_m | Kimberly Synder]

Lost in Tokyo

prawn1 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:30:40 +0000

Photographer Mark Bramley found himself in Tokyo, Japan for two days. He did what any good photographer might do — he created a time-lapse video of the things and people that he encountered in this most cosmopolitan of cities. Lost in Tokyo comprises 10,000 photos, all shot on a Canon 5D MkII. Check it out below.

[via Coolism TV]

This is Your Body Attacking Cancer

prawn1 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:55:50 +0000

Cambridge University’s Under the Microscope series takes a close-up look at the world through the lens of a microscope. The latest video shot by PhD student Alex Ritter captures the showdown between a dangerous cancer cell and a Cytotoxic T cell, a special type of white blood cell that is one-tenth the width of a human hair. Its mission in life is to destroy virally infected cells. Professor Gillian Griffiths of Cambridge University explains:

Cells of the immune system protect the body against pathogens. If cells in our bodies are infected by viruses, or become cancerous, then killer cells of the immune system identify and destroy the affected cells. Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or cancerous cells, without destroying healthy cells surrounding them. The Wellcome Trust funded laboratory of Professor Gillian Griffiths, at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, investigates just how this is accomplished. By understanding how this works, we can develop ways to control killer cells. This will allow us to find ways to improve cancer therapies, and ameliorate autoimmune diseases caused when killer cells run amok and attack healthy cells in our bodies.”

The video is filmed at 92 times faster than real time.

See more Under the Microscope videos on YouTube.

[via io9]

Apocalypse Tomorrow: A Pin-up Calendar fit for a Cataclysm

prawn1 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:45:05 +0000

Illustrator Andrew Tarusov imagines that our world that has undergone a cataclysmic event and has designed a sexy pin-up calendar as a pick-me-up for the hard times. Each month of the calendar features a different type of apocalypse and pretty lass suitably (un)dressed for the occasion.

Check out Apocalypse Tomorrow after the jump, be warned some months may be NSFW.

[via Ufunk]

The Blue Marble Through the Years

prawn1 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:31:33 +0000

On December 7th in 1972, far far above our heads, Apollo 17 blasted off from the Earth on its way to the Moon. About five hours into the journey, the spaceship was 45,000 kilometres away and at the point where it was facing the Earth, the astronauts onboard took photos of our planet. One of those photos (AS17-148-22727) which showed a fully-illuminated Earth looked like a glass marble to the astronauts, and is famously called The Blue Marble.

NASA has continued The Blue Marble series with similar photos in 2000, 2002, 2007, 2010, and the two most recent images date from just a few days ago. The initial image was captured by the Earth-observing satellite Suomi NPP and focussed on North and Central America. Due to popular demand NASA released a second image, this time displaying Africa, Saudi Arabia, and India to the east. Have a look at these two amazing images after the jump.

Western Hemisphere (Flickr)

Eastern Hemisphere (Flickr)

And here are some of the previous Blue Marble images.

2010 (Flickr)

2007 (Flickr)

2002 (Flickr)

2000 (Flickr)

1972 (Wikipedia)

[via Wired]

By the Light of Mother Mustang! It’s the Space Stallions!

prawn1 — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:10:40 +0000

If you’re a fan of space westerns like Saber Rider, Bravestarr, and SilverHawks, I think that you’ll appreciate the cheesiness that is Space Stallions.

As a homage to their favourite cartoons from the 80s, The Animation Workshop from Denmark tells the story of Sun Ray and his fellow Space Stallions as they battle the demon of darkness, Destructo. Behold the horsepower, keytars, and cheesy 80s beats!

[via The Awesomer]

The Most Beautiful Sea Jellies

prawn1 — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:45:26 +0000

It’s not the first time that we’ve posted about the Alexander Semenov. The marine biologist works at the White Sea Biological Station (WSBS) in northwest Russia and photographs the most wonderful undersea animals as part of his job. After four years at WSBS, Semenov is now the chief dive master and a camera is always on hand when he journeys into the depths of the White Sea.

When I first began to experiment with sea life photography I tried shooting small invertebrates for fun with my own old camera and without any professional lights or lenses. I collected the invertebrates underwater and then I shot them in the lab. After two or three months of failure after failure, I ended up with a few good pictures, which inspired me to buy a semi-professional camera complete with underwater housing and strobes. I’ve spent the following field season trying to shoot the same creatures, but this time in their environment. It was much more difficult, and I spent another two months without any significant results. But when you’re working at something every day, you inevitably get a lot of experience. Now after four years of practice I get a few good shots almost every time I dive.

There are over 1500 known species of jellyfish in the world and Semenov has photographed quite a few, especially the Cyanea genus of stinging jellyfish. After the jump you will find some of the striking deep sea jellies that Semenov has encountered, more specifically photos of Cyanea capillata, the lion’s mane jellyfish.

See more of Semenov’s amazing undersea photography on his website or on Flickr.

[via Design Taxi]

Samurai Star Wars

prawn1 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:23:28 +0000

Steve Bialik took us to feudal Japan in his set of Star Wars portraits, drawn as if they were woodblock prints. In a similar theme, US-based artist Clinton Felker draws some of the characters as high-stylized samurai warriors.

See his Samurai Star Wars drawings after the jump.

Storm Trooper

Storm Trooper Field Commander

Boba Fett

Yoda

Darth Vader

Felker’s art prints are available for purchase on eBay.

[via Ufunk]

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8-Year-Old Juliet Sings Her First Hardcore Song

prawn1 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:22:43 +0000

Juliet is a long-haired 8-year-old from Brisbane, Australia. She loves her little Dachshund and her tropical fish, and at that age, loves nothing more than to sing about them.

With help from a producer friend, Juliet’s mother recorded her child playing about with her pet and toys, and timed the video to a piece of heay metal music. The results are violent and adorably cute. Check out My First Hardcore Song below.

Juliet’s music video has been viewed over 18 million times on YouTube, her single is available on iTunes, and the tiny rocker even has her own range of t-shirts.

[via Times Live]

We Review: Quarrel

prawn1 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:11:25 +0000

Thanks to the ambiguous nature of the English language, a quarrel could be an angry dispute or a bolt fired out of a crossbow. It also happens to be the name of a rather interesting word-based strategy game that was initially released only for iOS devices in 2011. While there can be no Quarrel amongst Android and PlayStation 3 owners, (for they haven’t received the game on their platform) Scottish developers Denki sought fit to bring the fight to the Xbox Live Arcade.

Having played a variety of wordy games on Android—Wordsmith, Wordfeud, Word Search, Word2yourmother*—I eagerly jumped at the chance of playing Risk-meets-Scrabble in Quarrel. The war of words continues after the jump.

Presented in a colourful and cutesy style, Quarrel is played out on a set of tropical islands where you as the player start out with a set amount of territory. The main aim of Quarrel is to extend your territory by invading your neighbour’s turf, and eventually gaining control of the whole island. Instead of the usual guns, swords, and spells, it is your words that do damage to your enemy. At the start of each campaign, the territory is divided up evenly amongst the players. Each space contains a number of troops, and you use these troops to invade a neighbouring space. As players go up against each other in the fight for territory, they are presented with a random selection of eight titles, each displaying a letter and the score value of that letter. When you engage and enemy or another has a quarrel with you, the number of troops you have available on each space correlates to the maximum number of letters that you can use to make your word. Find the best possible (highest scoring) word from the jumble of letters in the fastest time possible, and you’ll beat your opponent. As you laud your lexical prowess over your enemies, your victories result in the growth of your territory while theirs shrinks into obscurity. It’s a supremely satisfying experience, and one that proves very addictive from the start.

Strategy comes into play very quickly in Quarrel. As you beat a player and take over their territory, your squad moves over to the conquered territory, save the sole trooper left over to watch over your original space. Because the number of troops you have on a space determines how many letters you can use, it becomes imperative to move troops between the territories that you have captured to ensure you have enough troops to make a successful attack/defence. Luckily there are ways to bolster your squad. Every word you make adds to your “treasure store” and filling it up gains you backup troops that you can call into action on an ad hoc basis. If you are outnumbered yet beat your opponent, you take their troops as prisoners and they’ll then fight on your side. And when you’re not directly in conflict, there is a “bonus time” round where you are presented with the same letters that the other opponents are playing with. Make the 8-letter anagram and you’ll win the big bonus treasure.

At the end of each round that you play, Quarrel displays the words that have been played, accompanied with their definitions. This is certainly informative and I’ve added a few new words to my lexicon, most notably priapism (children, please do not google this term). And after each island has been conquered—an exercise that can often take more than 20 to 30 minutes—you are presented with various statistics about the game, including your Word IQ. An average of 150 indicates that you’re good, and a maximum value of 200 means you’re the perfect word geek.

Depending on the size of your vocabulary and the efficacy of your war game strategy, Quarrel can become quite difficult from the early stages. The nine AI opponents that you butt words with have different playing styles, from the one who plays fast and loose with their letters to the “elite” players who not only decode the anagrams regularly, but seem to have an extremely thorough understanding of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. The strategy might not come easily to some players and the ruthless AI players in the later stages of the game might prove a little too much for some.

In the campaign mode there are 12 different islands maps that you need to conquer. Additionally, there is a Challenge mode that tasks players to complete extra mini-objectives within each word battle, and a Showdown mode that has the player in head-to-head challenges with opponents of increasing Word IQs. And your quest for further word domination can be taken to Xbox Live. When you can find competition that is.

While Quarrel’s online promises up to four player tournaments, I found it difficult to find people to play with, be it in either the ranked matches or even just a quick match. Yesterday I spent precisely 7 minutes, 55 seconds, and 834 milliseconds waiting for opponents in a three-player match. I don’t think I need to tell you that waiting for a seemingly interminable amount of time to find a match can become tedious, but when you eventually find other Quarrel-ers, the word battles become fun, intense, and absorbing.

Another little gripe I have is about the leaderboard. It only seems to register the statistics from the single-player campaign and it only does so if you happened to be signed into Xbox Live at the time. Any wins and words you make offline are not reflected in the leaderboard.

Despite the niggles, Quarrel is a compelling niche game. And I’ve neglected to mention one of its most attractive features—the price. It’s available on Xbox Live for a paltry 400 Microsoft Points. With its cutesy art style and quirky mix of strategic warfare and word play, Quarrel is sure to interest the budding (and domineering) logophile in you.

Score: 8 knowledgeable prawns out of 10

Detailed information:
Developer: Denki
Distributor: UTV Ignition Entertainment
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Release date: 25 January 2012
RRP: 400 MP
Age Rating: 3 (PEGI)

*Not a real app.

Ooh Aah. Hello.

prawn1 — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:28:03 +0000

Matthijs Vlot has become the darling of the supercut world. Vlot mashed together a multitude of scenes from other movies to create two of most cheerful mashups that you’ll see on the Internet today (if you haven’t seen them already that is). In Hello, he sources dialogue from a variety of films and syncs it to Lionel Richie’s love song of the same name. And in Ooh Aah, he uses exclamations from other film and cartoon characters to add to Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm scene from “When Harry Met Sally”. See Vlot’s masterful supercuts after the jump.

[via Live For Films]

The Page Turner

prawn1 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:34:58 +0000

Joseph Herscher from Brooklyn New York likes to build rube goldberg machines. In his latest long-winded contraption, he shows you how to turn the page of a newspaper, the Joseph Herscher way. It’s a 19-step process that even involves agitating a hamster. Have a look at The Page Turner below.

[via PS3ZA]

Pretty Paint Explosions by Nick Knight

prawn1 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:30:54 +0000

If there is anything we have learned from the likes of Nuit Blanche, Alexandre Farto, and Alan Sailer, it is that explosions can looks very beautiful. Fashion photographer Nick Knight hammers the point home in a series of photos that he took in 2005. What look like colourful abstract flowers are in fact paint explosions.

Have a look at Knight’s small set of pretty paint explosions after the jump.

[via @lostateminor]

Why This Kolaveri Di: The Tanglish “Soup” Song

prawn1 — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:07:08 +0000

Translated from Tamil, “Why this kolaveri di” means “Why this murderous rage, girl?” The song is taken from the sountrack to an upcoming Tamil film and is performed by playback singer Dhanush. What is more interesting than the quirky title is the tongue that Dhanush sings the song in — Tanglish, a mixture of English and Tamil. Why This Kolaveri Di is also called the Soup song, where soup is Tamil slang for young men who fail at romantic relationships.

The music video has been viewed over 38,000,000 times on YouTube! For more about the song and its history, Wikipedia has all the details.

[thanks Salma!]

No Budget Sci-Fi: “Archetype” by Aaron Sims

prawn1 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:25:58 +0000

You may recall Jesús Orellana’s ROSA and wonder who else may have made amazing, no-budget short films. In his labour of love, conceptual artist Aaron Sims explores the trope of ridiculously human robots. His 7-minute sci-fi short, Archetype, mixes CGI and live action to tell the story of RL7, a bi-pedal battle machine that starts acting outside the parameters of its programming.

RL7 is an eight-foot tall combat robot that goes on the run after malfunctioning with vivid memories of once being human. As its creators and the military close in, RL7 battles its way to uncovering the shocking truth behind its mysterious visions and past.

I’m sure that was the creator’s intention, but Archetype certainly leaves me wanting more. Here’s hoping Sims can find the funding he needs to complete the project.

[via Live for Films]

The World Covers Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”

prawn1 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:21:34 +0000

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then cockney-twanged singer Adele should feel exalted. Her single “Rolling in the Deep” has reportedly been covered over 350,000 times on YouTube! Luc Bergeron has created a music video for “Rolling in the Deep” containing clips of other YouTube users singing “Rolling in the Deep”.

Bergeron gathered together 71 of best attempts to create his mashup, “World Covers – Rolling In The Deep”. Check it out below.

[via Huffington Post]

A Cappella “Thong Song”

prawn1 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:45:57 +0000

Matt Mullholland never fails to amuse. After raucous The Matrix lobby scene and the Back to the Future skateboard scene, the musician and comedian from New Zealand does his a cappella thing once more. This time, Mullholland creates a multi-track cover of Sisqo’s 2000 hit single, Thong Song.

[via The Awesomer]

The Bark Side

prawn1 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:13:12 +0000

When I got married many years ago, I had a grand idea for my bride’s entrance. I imagined a pack of dogs — some small, others big — all dressed up in bowties, and in unison barking out the tune to the “Here comes the bride” march. My wife thought it sweet, albeit a bit silly. It never happened, but that didn’t mean that it was a bad idea.

Roll on 2012, and Volkswagen have created a super cute commercial with 12 dogs barking out the famed Star Wars Imperial March theme. An AT-AT walker appears in the video too, in an costume that looks similar to the one worn by our favourite AT-AT dog, Bones Mello. Check out The Bark Side below.

[via @jessjorgensen]

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Minimalist Movie Motors

prawn1 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:41:30 +0000

Graphic designer Brandon Ortwein championed the cause of the humble van in his It Would Have Been Cooler As A Van series. Kevin Henry (Boomerjinks) over at DeviantArt is also putting vehicles in the spotlight with his set of posters. Henry takes famous motors from films and TV and illustrates them in the minimalist style.

Have a look at some of the images from Henry’s Movie Car Racing Posters series after the jump.

See more of Henry’s minimalist movie motors on DeviantArt.

[via Unreality]

Operation White Widow

prawn1 — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:30:02 +0000

In this animated short film by Jacek Mazur, a team of soldiers aboard an aircraft prepare to launch an assault on an enemy encampment. As they jump from the plane, they’re met by a barrage of anti-aircraft fire from the ground. The soldiers skillfully and silently dance their way around the bullets as they descend to their target. But all is not what it seems…

Have a look at Operation White Widow below.

[via ufunk]

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