Roots

Jelly


Link

Lunch


Link

Landy


Link

Skeletons

Hawking


xkcd

P.O.V.






Big Picture

Two Words

OK, sports fans. New rule: By day I spend my hours writing copy and editing copy and cutting copy and reworking copy and generating copy and fixing copy and tweaking copy and I'm not loving the idea of creating any more copy by night.

So I'm going limit my blog posts for the next few months, and I'm going to limit the ones I post to a maximum of two words – and those words will be the source of the link.

Let's see how this goes.

Big Event


How cool is this? Via Paste magazine, we present the awesome website Every Day Posters Every Day – where, through smartly designed posters, they turn the most mundane of everyday events into a... well... y'know... EVENT.

Vee Dub

Maybe it's because I pretty much grew up in an old Volkswagen Kombi. Who knows? Whatever the reason, I have a bit of a jones for VW advertisements. Wherever you go in the world, you're pretty much guaranteed that you'll pick up a magazine with a sharp, smart VW ad.

Like this one from China, where the copy promises: "It will go fast."



Or this one from Norway, advertising the Lane Assist technology.



Or this one from Australia, promoting one of VW's sporting sponsorships.



And this one from South Africa, crowing about VW's Dakar Rally win.



Then there's this one from Germany, calling the Cross Polo "an offroad car, not necessarily for offroad people".




And this one from France, which is as much about VW owners as it is about VWs.

National

I've had this song stuck on Repeat since I heard it on NPR a couple of weeks ago.

Mud


Get your grayscale on. It's the Boryeong Mud Festival, brought to you by The Frame.

Forsooth


Verily, xkcd.

Talk About The Weather

While I'm freezing my toes off in the southern hemisphere (although that probably has more to do with the broken aircon than with the weather), the folks up north are either sizzling in the summer



or watching the storm clouds gather.



Either way, it makes for great photos at The Big Picture and The Frame.

Tree


What a treat! DesignCrave has a gallery up of 15 Spectacular Treehouses From Around The World. I want one.

Hangover


Zapiro says it all...

Innovation


Driven by the Innovation Insanity initiative, Trendwatching.com has a list up of 67 new innovations that could change your world.

The ideas on the list are amazing and inspiring, and range from bamboo bicycles to windows that collect solar energy, vending machines that sell fragrances (in Paris, of course), keepsake stamps of babies' feet and hands, and a project to transform Rio's favelas by giving them a new, colourful lick of paint.

Day


I'm just going to keep on givin' 'em shoutouts... This is the photo of the day at A Photo A Day.

Hurt Locker


Getty Images photographer Justin Sullivan spends time on patrol with US Army soldiers, seeking and destroying IEDs in Afghanistan... and the Sacramento Bee's The Frame blog is there with the pictures.

Shoes


There's a great collection of 25 Cool Print Ads For Major Shoe Brands up at Best Design Options. I'm loving these Nike and Converse campaigns…

Game Over


And like that!... it was over. The Big Picture has a collection of photos from the final days of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

Suits You


I'm quite liking this shoot with Dev Patel in the latest US issue of GQ. They sure do know how to shoot fashion...

Go Anywhere


Loving this new Jeep ad.

White


The Big Picture has a sobering gallery of pictures by Reuters photographer Finbarr O'Reilly. It's a look at a squatter camp populated by white South Africans – and while it's no different to any Kentucky trailer park, and no less depressing than any other squatter camp, it does at least get you thinking.

In my case, thinking about how lucky I am to have a job.

Awards

While I (and the rest of South Africa) recover from my post-World Cup blues, other people are gathering their thoughts at the end of a low-expectation/high-delivery tournament. Football365 have some amusing awards to hand out, while Al Jazeera's Andy Richardson has some interesting observations in his own Top 10.

His Top Understatement:

"The Dutch guy I met who, along with about 40 other like-minded souls, had driven from Amsterdam to South Africa. "We hit a sand storm somewhere in Sudan, the windscreen fell out and the front of the car was buried in a dune. But the worst thing was knowing we were out of cigarettes."

Boots


Spotted these boots at Fashion Indie. They are colourful, they are expensive and they are Nike's idea of what Wellington boots should look like.

Waves


Here's a shoutout for the Surfrider Foundation – it's a grassroots non-profit organisation in the States that aims to protect the Earth's beaches and oceans. As someone who lives by the sea, it's a cause that's dear to my heart... and you gotta admit, they do have some pretty special advertisements.

Summer


Great gallery up at The Big Picture, welcoming in the northern hemisphere summer. (Meanwhile, down south, we're wearing thick socks and wooly scarves...)

Evolution

Paste magazine are running a list of their 10 Best Animated Music Videos. Included in the list is the unpleasant clip for Do The Evolution by Pearl Jam, which reminds me a little of that cheesy Métal Hurlant movie.

Day


Another great image up at A Photo A Day, this one by Scott Bort. Of course, it'll be gone by tomorrow...

Neighbours

Following Brazil's World Cup elimination on Friday evening, only one thing could possibly make the samba nation's soccer fans feel better...

That is, if their bitter rivals Argentina could somehow be eliminated as well.

Here, for your amusement, is a screenshot of the front page of Brazilian sports site Globo Esporte after Argentina's 0-4 humiliation against the Germans on Saturday.




Even if you don't speak Portuguese, I think you'll get a sense of what the headline means.