I would like to propose legislation which will require that certain websites post a prominent Time Sink Alert banner: If you’re likely to hit the site and get lost for two hours, it should warn you in advance.

The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things would bear such a banner, along with a sub-head indicating particular risk to those of us with darker leanings. The first page alone includes tiny coffins found in a Scottish cave, vintage advertisements for leeches, and a dozen photos of a shirtless Picasso.

Their About page elaborates:

The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things is not a physical place, but an online collection and discussion of the art, objects, ideas and history that contemporary curators, artists and critics find deeply, genuinely, thoroughly, RIDICULOUSLY interesting. It is a slightly tongue-in-cheek anthology of the marvellous, bizarre, exciting, intriguing and inspiring things of the world, paired with conversation around contemporary art and its institutions.

You can find jars of pickled moles and toast embroidered with a fried egg. There are taxidermied seagulls with guts made of pearls, vintage mug shots from New Zealand, and straitjackets embroidered by asylum inmates. Thank goodness the site is fairly new or I’d still be stuck there.

(There’s also the occasional nude photo, so the standard NSFW caution applies.)

It probably goes without saying, but the blogroll on their sidebar is full of additional neat stuff. If you’re looking for a collection of ridiculously interesting things, this is definitely the place to go.

(Hat tip to Cookie)

Amanda McGinnis, known online as LadySnip3r, loves video games and fashion. The obvious thing to do was combine them, and the results are splendid. Console to Closet is a collection of outfits inspired by video game characters.

So she might take the dragon Alduin from Skyrim:

and put together an ensemble like this:

This outfit is inspired by Alduin of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I chose a black cocktail dress with tons of textures that imitate his scale-y exterior. I also chose dark grey accessories that compliment the dress’s texture. Lastly, I chose silver hoop earrings with a tooth on each which reminds me of dragon’s teeth.

Each ensemble is accompanied by a description of how the elements pay homage to the original, and also includes information on where to purchase the clothing and accessories.

Her inspiration is wonderfully far-ranging, covering everything from a World of Warcraft Night Elf to one of the Sunflowers in Plants vs. Zombies. (As a long-time Monkey Island aficionado, I also love her take on Guybrush Threepwood.)

Despite many items being inspired by male characters, the collections are currently female-only; her FAQ apologizes for gender lopsidedness, citing a lack of “guy clothes” on the sites she uses to assemble her outfits. Also, although she doesn’t accept submissions of the Polyvore-esque collections that she posts, she does welcome photos of people in their own game-inspired outfits.

Since the emphasis is on fashion rather than cosplay, this is a splendid, subtle way to incorporate an appreciation for gaming into one’s everyday wardrobe.

(via BoingBoing)

One night Justin Johnson was chatting with his friend Delbert Shoopman, thusly:

I was regaling him with the tale of my previous night, in which I had been up very late watching Michael Jordan videos from 1996. It made me feel so awesome deep down inside … like it was Sunday afternoon, and I was 14, sipping on a milkshake and watching my fav team play. That Jordan-fest lurched into a 4 am search for Primal Rage videos, and countless other mid-90s stuff.

I realized then, that it wasn’t specifically Jordan or Primal Rage videos I was searching for … it was 1996 … the feeling of being in 1996 …the intangibles of that year fascinated me, but getting bogged down in the specifics and having to make CHOICES eventually spoiled my quest.

So they decided to build a Website where you can wallow in nostalgia without having to make those choices. YTTM.TV features thousands of YouTube videos, with a timeline reaching back to 1860 (the first sound ever recorded). You can find everything from the conference where Steve Jobs introduced Halo to a trailer for Heavy Metal. In addition to selecting a particular year, you can also choose the type of videos you’re interested in: Video Games, Movies, Current Events, and several others. Toggle the content, choose a year, and a matching video will play at random.

Choose your favorite year and in no time you can relive the Howdy Doody test pattern, a trailer for Cheech and Chong, or a news report about Hurricane Andrew. It’s really kind of eerie.

Do you have a stack of books that you aren’t likely to re-read? You can do something a lot more interesting than just sending them to the local thrift store.

BookCrossing is essentially a catch-and-release library. The site’s stated aim is simply “to connect people through books,” although reviewers have described it as both “a modern-day message in a bottle” and “an unlikely global sociology experiment.”

Participation is simple: Register a book (it’s free), print out a label with a unique ID, and stick it inside the book. Then release it into the wild: You can check if other site members are looking for your particular book and send it to them. You can give it to a friend. Or you can just leave it on the table in a coffee shop. Whomever finds it can enter the label ID at the site to track the book’s progress, and you will also be alerted as to where your book has turned up.

The site also supports “hunting,” where users who release books into the wild can enter field notes describing the general location where the book was left. Other members can then go looking for it; it’s sort of like geocaching but with less math. You can also register your place of business as a BookCrossing-friendly “Zone,” meaning that site members know they’re allowed to release and/or hunt for books there (which may be an interesting way to drum up extra clientele).

The site offers a lively community of bibliophiles, and has a truly worldwide reach, so you can connect with other bookish locals. It’s also interesting to browse their stats: The top book at the moment is one in Germany that’s made 575 hops so far.

I learned about this site from a comment someone left on an article about the death of Maurice Sendak; the commenter said he would honor Sendak by purchasing a number of his titles and releasing them into the wild via BookCrossing. I think that’s a lovely way to pay tribute to an author.

Like to play with makeup? Check out MakeupBee.*

MakeupBee was created to celebrate makeup artistry, it is the community for sharing looks and discovering beauty products. Get inspired from looks created by makeup enthusiasts just like you and learn how to recreate them. Read reviews and recommendations from your favorite fellow makeup lovers around the world.

Members can post their “looks” and browse others’ ideas. There’s all sorts of inspiration, such as black glitter eye makeup, silvery lipstick, and leopard nail polish. The products used to create the effects are listed, and the members frequently link to more detailed tutorials on their blogs or YouTube channels. They also note their skin and hair coloration, skin type, and other useful information for those interested in re-creating their looks.

The site also features product reviews, and has sponsored competitions (which are interesting, but somewhat vague; the current one is “Sparkle for Prom,” and some entries are nail polish-only, some are just eyeshadow, and a few are a full makeover. I have no idea how they’d judge something like that).

If you’re looking for beauty inspiration, there are all kinds of interesting ideas here.

(Hat tip to Jessica)

*Link goes to an internal page rather than the index because the main page features an obnoxious popup insisting that you sign in or register before continuing. Boo, hiss. You don’t have to do either to just browse.

As I’ve mentioned many times previously I’m a fan of steampunk; I love the vibe of mass-produced mixed with one-off craftsmanship in the alternate-history technology that’s such a hallmark of the genre. If you’re similarly a fan, here are some links you might enjoy.

Steampunk Couture – Hand-crafted clothing focusing on “Neo-Victorian, Sci-Fi and Shabby Chic fashion.” (They also have a Facebook page)

Ruffled recently featured a gorgeous steampunk wedding with heaps of drool-worthy photos. Offbeat Bride also has a number of steampunk wedding ideas, including clockwork cakes, thematic invitations, and much else.

Girl Genius is a “gaslamp fantasy comic” penned by Phil and Kaja Foglio.

The Steampunk Home is a blog is devoted to home décor that combines “the scientific romanticism of the Victorians with our real present and imagined future.”

Aether Emporium bills itself as a “onestop resource and archive for all things Steampunk.” It’s a splendid resource, and it appears that they’ve recently switched over to a wiki format.

Steampunk Pics is no longer updating, but their archive is still available. There are images of steampunk items (such as “ray guns”) and real vintage photos with a steampunk feel (like Zeppelins floating over cities).

The Steampunk Workshop offers some great project ideas, plus resource links and lots of photographs.

Antipodean Steampunk Adventures is a personal blog: “Follow the adventures of the maduncle as he endeavours to make contact with the rest of the steampunk universe from the outer colonies.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Intrepid reader Linda Frances sent me a link to the Art of Darkness Scavenger Hunt taking place in DC next month, commenting that from the title she’d wondered if I were involved with it. Sadly I am not, but I’m thrilled silly to find out about it.

It turns out that this event is only one of many worldwide. Obscura Day takes place on April 28 and is organized by the people behind the Atlas Obscura. It is, “an international celebration of unusual places….a day of expeditions, back room tours, & exploring hidden wonders in your own hometown.”

Planned events so far range from the scavenger hunt in DC (exploring “strange and ominous” artworks at the National Gallery) to a tour of street art in Berlin; a discussion of rare books in Boston (entitled, wonderfully, “Bound to End Badly”); a look at automata in Forres, Scotland; and a discussion of tissue preservation (called “Pickled People”) at the Museum of Human Disease in Kensington, Australia. Linda Frances herself is organizing the Evening in Jail event in Warrenton, VA.

The site has a search feature and map of events so you can find stuff in your area, and if there’s nothing near you they can help you plan something of your own. If you’ve ever wanted to lead a ghost walk around your city or organize a tour of the local funerary museum, here’s your opportunity. (Incidentally, they’re also asking for photographers to help document all of the events, so if you don’t want to gin up your own event you can volunteer to attend one and take pictures.)

(Thanks, Linda Frances!)

Edited to Add: I swear I was completely sober when I wrote this, yet I managed to misattribute the submitter throughout. I blame the elves. (Sorry, Frances!)

What’s one of the items that every successful supervillain seems to have? No, not a fluffy white cat: A big computer console displaying all kinds of up-to-the-minute data. Designer Joel Friesen has given villains who are just starting out in this illustrious field a cut-rate solution to a shortage of minions.

Henchman’s Helper consolidates dozens of live webcams, continuously-updated weather graphics, a large, ominous-looking infrared satellite image of North America, and a useful Evilometer (helpfully calibrated in metric) to make sure you’re reaching your full evil potential.

The code is free under a Creative Commons license, so you can customize your own console to fit your style of world domination.

For as much whinging as I do about the inapt use of Flash on Websites, it’s lovely to find an example of Flash being used really well.

Designer Patrick Galbraith worked with a music historian to create the Map of Metal, an enormous and detailed map that illustrates the interrelationships of various genera of metal music. You can grab the map and drag it around to view different areas, or use the navigation slider in the upper corner. Clicking on a node will display a description of the features of that particular style of music, plus a list of representative songs. Click on a song, and its video will start playing in an adjacent window.

So if you’ve ever been curious about the origins of Deaththrash or want to know how Drone Metal is related to Funeral Doom, this is the place to look. They also sell an attractive poster of the full map.

(Bonus Link: Did you know there was an Encyclopaedia Metallum? I didn’t until I saw it referenced on the Map’s “About” page. Neat.)

(Hat tip to Beth)

April 15, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Sounds like an excellent excuse for a themed dinner party. (Or at least a cocktail party; you could serve gin and titonics.)

The theme could go a lot of different ways. You could have a fancy dinner or tea where everyone dresses in period costume (there are some good ideas for invitations here and here); you could take it a step further and make it a role-playing party (make your invitations look like boarding passes and assign each guest a passenger whom they’re supposed to play), or send waterlogged invitations and tell everybody to show up drowned.

Decoration will depend largely upon your theme and could range from refined Edwardian to nautical. Guests might enter on a red carpet–assuming you’re allowing them to be First Class passengers rather than the wretches in steerage–and you might also designate various rooms in your house as an observation deck, lounge bar, wheelhouse, etc. If you prefer a more disaster-y theme, you can decorate with plastic life preservers and netting and strew seashells and dried starfish around as well. Either way,an ice-sculpture centerpiece would be a nice touch.

The Titanic Historical Society sells a number of reproduction items that might be useful as decorations, and they even have a subsection devoted to themed dinner parties.

A list of the menus (First and Second Class Breakfast, Luncheon, and Dinner; Third Class Bill of Fare) on the day the ship sank is here, and an expanded discussion of the First Class dinner menu is here. There are also at least two cookbooks devoted to these menus, Last Dinner On the Titanic and RMS Titanic “Dinner Is Served”.

For authentic music, check out Music Aboard the Titanic, And the Band Played On, or Titanic: Music As Heard on the Fateful Voyage.

If you’ve been feeling the urge to dress up and have a party, this is an excellent opportunity.