It’s a Saturday and the sun is shining here on this beautiful spring day in Maryland. The temperatures are set to rise into the mid to high 80′s, our first real taste this year of the summer to come. I am willing to be that that many Marylanders are breaking out their barbecue equipment and cooking out for the first time this season.
What goes with warm weather and a cook out better than beer? Nothing, that’s what. So being in a beer frame of mind I thought what better time to share some vintage beer ads with you.
Look it’s Leon’s VK test scene from Bladerunner performed by the new Kindle 2 and the iPod Shuffle both of which have text to speech capabilities. Tickles my somewhat geeky funny bone.
Dreamed up by Scott Amron of Amron Experimental, Inc. this is one of those simple, yet brilliant, ideas that I adore. Take old soda, water and beer bottles clean them up and put new liquid soap and cleaning products into them and you have New Soap Old Bottle.
Hand soap in old Coke Soda bottle
All-purpose cleaner in old Sprite soda bottle
Not only is the idea friendly to our environment the pricing is pretty darn wallet friendly as well. In addition to being able to purchase the filled bottles you can buy child safe tops to transform your own bottles at home.
There is even an opportunity to invest in New Soap Old Bottle by buying 5% ownership. See the details on the website. I like this idea so much I’d be hoping on the chance if I could afford to. For now I’ll have to settle with buying a few bottles instead.
PS – For you business owners, organizations, or institutions New Soap Old Bottle offers a recurring order option that would make it easy to make the switch to this environment friendly option.
Credit for the invention of papermaking is given to a Chinese eunuch by the name of Cai Lun who in AD 105 standardized the papermaking process for the first time. The first type of papercutting design, Jianshi, followed in the 6th century. Chinese women made the cuttings out of gold and silver foil to wear in their hair when going to the temple and the men used them in religious rituals.
Over the centuries the craft developed and the paper cuttings began showing up in windows (known as ‘Window Flower’ or ‘chuang hua’ ) and in doorways as decoration during festivals and times of celebration. The folk art still enjoys an enthusiastic following in China, having become very popular among the rural Chinese.
This week I stumbled upon some gorgeous examples of the art reinterpreted. Hong Kong born artist Bovey Lee combines all the traditional elements of her native home’s papercutting artform and adds a timely modern message. The result are beautiful and powerful pieces made entirely of ricepaper. Her work manages to tell a story and make a quiet statement while remaining true to its traditional Chinese origins.
I know I know another post about Twitter. But I was once again reminded this evening about just how extraordinary the openness and access we have to others lives through Twitter is.
What set me off this evening? A simple post by Brent Spiner of Star Trek the Next Generation fame. Brent was a late bloomer when it comes to Twitter and his former costars LeVar Burton and Wil Wheaton avid Twitterers. But Brent caught a mild case of the Twitter bug and keeps us fans entertained with posts about what he is up to.
No doubt you have heard the term Web 2.0. In fact you have probably heard it at least several times a week for the last year or so. Depending on what you do for a living perhaps even dozens of times a day. But if you are like many, the term is still a bit of a mystery.
Every once in awhile I like to create a word cloud of my Twitter or blog just to see what emerges. Seldom does the cloud that emerges meet up with my own impression of the content I am producing or things that I am talking about. But more than anything it’s usually just an exercise in curiosity. In some ways it is words as art. And at best it is insightful and revealing.
My favorite easy to use tool is Wordle. Wordle allows you to add a chink of text, any site with an RSS, or a del.icio.us user name.
Below is a cloud of this blog (click on clouds to see a larger image):
Skyblue-pink.com Word Cloud
Here is one of my Twitter stream (curious little snapshot in time):
My Twitter Word Cloud
And finally is the one I find the most relevant and interesting. This is a word cloud pulled in from the CNN top stories RSS for today April 5, 2009:
CNN Top Stories for April 5,2009 Word Cloud
I am saddened to see the word nuclear so prominently displayed but buoyed by the fact that both the word love and smile made it in.
