Will's Bookmarks

How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves

2010-01-12T09:51:00.002-06:00

Bagels and Möbius strips have way more in common than you thought. Here's the proof and how to make a mathematically correct breakfast.

View the Mathematically Correct Breakfast

60 Second Recap

2009-11-03T20:32:00.003-06:00

"The 60second Recap wants to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today's teens. Through our 60second Recap video albums, we seek to help teens engage with the best books out there ... not just to help them get better grades, but to help them build better lives."

Check out these books in 60 seconds:

Animal Farm
Fahrenheit 451
Frankenstein
Great Expectations
Hamlet
Jane Eyre
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Pride and Prejudice
Romeo and Juliet

Learn about these books in sixty seconds.

Trademark Search

2009-10-30T14:33:00.002-06:00

Trademarkia claims to be the "largest, most accurate, and most complete free search engine for U.S. federally registered trademarks... ...[with] contextual information about the current use of interesting business names, slogans, and logos through pictures, commercials, and conversations from Flickr, Google, Youtube, and Twitter for each U.S. trademark filed in with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) since the year 1870."

View Trademarkia site

10 Ways to Look Good in Photos

2009-08-31T16:07:00.002-06:00

How to put your best face forward and pose like a model.

By Karen Lee, former model handler at the Elite modeling agency and head of the Karen Lee Group.

From Reader's Digest

1. Focus your eyes just slightly above the camera lens, move your face forward a bit, and tip down your chin.

2. Put your tongue behind your teeth and smile, which will relax your face.

3. Keep your arms by your side—but not glued there. To look natural, they should be a little away from your body.

4. Test-drive clothing against a white wall, with an indirect, natural light source (under a tree, indoors near a window)—it will show whether blue really is your best color.

5. As a rule, avoid patterns.

6. Photos exaggerate everything, so go easy on the makeup. For women under 30, a little mascara and lip gloss; over 30, add a touch of concealer.

7. Practice the classic model pose: Turn your body three quarters of the way toward the camera, with one foot in front of the other and one shoulder closer to the photographer. When you face forward, your body tends to look wider.

8. For standing photos, belly in, buttocks tight, shoulders back, spine straight.

9. Study photogenic people as well as photos in which you think you looked best. Look at your best angle. You’ll probably see that you were laughing or having a good time. Capturing someone when they’re relaxed or most animated usually makes for the best results.

10. To feel at ease, try closing your eyes, then opening them slowly just before the photo is taken.

View Source

Shadow Art Created From Junk

2009-06-30T11:30:00.002-06:00

"British-born and -based artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster skilfully skirt the boundaries between beauty and the shadowier aspects of humanity, playing with our perceptions as well as our notions of taste. Many of their most notable pieces are made from piles of rubbish, with light projected against them to create a shadow image entirely different to that seen when looking directly at the deliberately disguised pile."

View more junk shadows.

Your Logo Makes Me Barf

2009-06-17T19:24:00.002-06:00

"YourLogoMakesMeBarf.com is intended to be a humorous look at what can go wrong when an unskilled person (your neighbor’s brother’s uncle’s friend anyone?!) designs a logo. Good logos require time and involve great forethought. A good logo should be a financial investment but also something that will benefit the long term growth of a company.

So leave the designing to the designers and browse through some of these fine examples of what not to look for in a logo. Barf bags recommended."

View more barf here...

Best Airplane Seats

2009-06-11T11:16:00.002-06:00

The best seat on the plane is what you'll find here. Seat Guru has a database of thousands of seat reviews submitted by flyers like you. They also conduct independent research.

Please Take a Seat

Convert Files - free online file converter

2009-05-20T08:44:00.002-06:00

"... free and easy to use online file converter that supports a wide range of file types. It can convert almost any type of documents, archives, spreadsheets, audio and video files from one format to another. This service is absolutely free, and there's no need to download any software! Just click on BROWSE then select your file and upload it. When the file has been converted, you'll receive an e-mail message in the mailbox address, provided by you in the conversion request form."

Try it out.

Indexed

2009-05-18T15:36:00.002-06:00

Caption: “I’m not here to make friends.”

"Started in August of 2006, Indexed has been noted around the web—much to my continued shock. Thank you to everyone who has shared the link and joined the party.

Originally, I described this site this way: “This is a little project that allows me to make fun of some things and sense of others without resorting to doing actual math.”

Today, I’d have to take the word ‘little’ out of that line."

Get Indexed!

The Sticky Note Experiments

2009-05-06T20:23:00.002-06:00

"Fritz & Stephen, the madmen behind the Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments, now cause chaos in the office with over a quarter of a million sticky notes! From waterfalls to wheels, all this craziness is made out of nothing but sticky notes -- the zigzag pads made from pop-up dispensers."

View The Extreme Sticky Note Experiments

Wordle for generating "word clouds"

2009-04-04T13:41:00.001-06:00

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

View Wordle

Advertisements from 1930 to 1969

2009-03-19T14:18:00.001-06:00

This site claims to have every single advertisement in all major magazines from 1930 to 1969.

View the database of ads.

100 Most Beautiful Words In English

2009-03-12T14:34:00.003-06:00

"Here are the 100 most beautiful words in English. How do we know we have the most beautiful? They were chosen by Dr. Goodword (Robert Beard), who has been making dictionaries, creating word lists, and writing poetry for 40 years. For five years he wrote the Word of the Day at yourDictionary.com and since 2004 he has been writing the series, So, What's the Good Word? at alphaDictionary. At this site is a select list of his favorite poetical words that he used in his poetry—or wishes he had."

Visit 100 most beautiful words in English!

Sign Generator

2009-02-17T21:32:00.004-06:00

Create a short line of text. Add 49 possibilities for placing that text in a scene: on a marquee, a street sign, a hot dog, a...
Express yourself, make a sign.

Public Radio Kitchen

2009-01-26T14:03:00.003-06:00

"FOR PASSIONATE PUBLIC RADIO FANS & HOPELESS GOURMANDS...And featuring recipes and cooking tips & opinions on all things edible served up by You, Our Listeners. From locavores to omnivores, professional chefs to local food bloggers, all are welcome!"

Start your burners...view the kitchen!

Sleeveface

2009-01-21T13:27:00.002-06:00

"Sleeveface: One or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion." The concept may sound stupid but the results often leave you shaking your head in wonder at the world's creativity.

View Sleeveface

The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

2008-12-10T20:03:00.002-06:00

"The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies... where tools of the trade that have died or have just about died a slow slow death are cheerfully exhibited."

View Source

Give a laptop. Get a laptop. Change the world.

2008-11-25T14:44:00.004-06:00

View Larger Map

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie

2008-10-22T20:00:00.002-06:00

"This site is dedicated to spreading the word about the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie and how it can help the average human. Here you will find a description of AFDBs, how to make and use them, and general information about related subjects.

What Is An AFDB?

An Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie (AFDB) is a type of headwear that can shield your brain from most electromagnetic psychotronic mind control carriers. AFDBs are inexpensive (even free if you don't mind scrounging for thrown-out aluminium foil) and can be constructed by anyone with at least the dexterity of a chimp (maybe bonobo). This cheap and unobtrusive form of mind control protection offers real security to the masses. Not only do they protect against incoming signals, but they also block most forms of brain scanning and mind reading, keeping the secrets in your head truly secret. AFDBs are safe and operate automatically. All you do is make it and wear it and you're good to go! Plus, AFDBs are stylish and comfortable."

What are you waiting for? Make one today!

Bad Haiku

2008-10-20T15:55:00.002-06:00

"There are many rules to take into consideration when writing formal haiku, but the advantage of bad haiku is that you don't really have to follow any of them. On this site, most people do 17 syllable haiku structured in a 5 / 7 / 5 form.

So, basically, if (so ba si cally if)
you can speak in syllables (u can speak in syl la bles)
you can write haiku. (u can write hai ku)

The Bad Haiku site has been on the internet and accepting poetry since 1996.

View the bad haiku site!

Get Cash for your Gadgets

2008-10-02T19:38:00.002-06:00

"Gazelle wants to change the world – one cell phone, one laptop, one iPod at a time.

It is our purpose – and our promise – to provide a practical, rewarding way for people to finally rid themselves of all those old cell phones, digital cameras, and gaming systems that they no longer use, but can’t seem to find a way to let go of.

Too often when people think of recycling, they rush straight to smashing things into bits for parts. We believe that reuse should always come first. If your GPS unit still works, why not keep it in circulation AND get paid for it? If reusing isn’t in the cards, then let us recycle that vintage camcorder. We think of it as ReCommerce."

View the Gazelle website

The Pop Vs Soda Map

2008-09-20T19:54:00.003-06:00

"The map details the areas where certain usages predominate.

• coke: this generic term for soft drinks predominates throughout the South, New Mexico, central Indiana and in a few other single counties in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. ‘Coke’ obviously derives from Coca-Cola, the brand-name of the soft drink originally manufactured in Atlanta (which explains its use as a generic term for all soft drinks in the South).

• pop: dominates the Northwest, Great Plains and Midwest. The world ‘pop’ was introduced by Robert Southey, the British Poet Laureate (1774-1843), to whom we also owe the word ‘autobiography’, among others. In 1812, he wrote: A new manufactory of a nectar, between soda-water and ginger-beer, and called pop, because ‘pop goes the cork’ when it is drawn. Even though it was introduced by a Poet Laureate, the term ‘pop’ is considered unsophisticated by some, because it is onomatopaeic.

• soda: prevalent in the Northeast, greater Miami, the area in Missouri and Illinois surrounding St Louis and parts of northern California. ‘Soda’ derives from ‘soda-water’ (also called club soda, carbonated or sparkling water or seltzer). It’s produced by dissolving carbon dioxide gas in plain water, a procedure developed by Joseph Priestly in the latter half of the 18th century. The fizziness of soda-water caused the term ‘soda’ to be associated with later, similarly carbonated soft drinks.

•Other, lesser-used terms include ‘dope’ in the Carolinas and ‘tonic’ in and around Boston, both fading in popularity. Other generic terms for soft drinks outside the US include ‘pop’ (Canada), ‘mineral’ (Ireland), ‘soft drink’ (New Zealand and Australia). The term ‘soft drink’, finally, arose to contrast said beverages with hard (i.e. alcoholic) drinks."

View Source

Five Hoaxes that Fooled the World

2008-09-11T12:38:00.000-06:00

"Long before Bonsai Kittens and the tourist guy, hoaxsters have been wreaking havoc on the gullible to amuse themselves and maybe gain a little notoriety. Here are a few hoaxes that pre-date the Internet, in some cases by centuries."

View the Hoaxes

Play with a Spider

2008-09-08T08:50:00.003-06:00

An experimental project to make a natural spider in Flash, combining math and graphics. If spiders give you the creeps, don't click on the link. But it really is a very well done flash site. It loads an interactive spider and lets you control various characteristics of it, drag it around by the leg, and give it bugs to eat!

Go and play with a spider!

The Condiment Packet Gallery

2008-08-02T13:28:00.002-06:00

Chris Harne began collecting condiment packets in November of 2003. Initially the purpose of the collection was a more practical one. He came to the conclusion that ketchup was no longer a reasonable thing to spend money on. A handful of packets here and there would do just fine. He began to pick up other condiments as well. He stopped at a variety of locations in order to gather new types of condiments. It was around this time that he discovered how many different condiment packets existed. A collector by nature, the only logical thing for him to do was attempt to get every different packet design he possibly could. The Condiment Packet Gallery is the result, an archive of flexible portion control condiment packets. Who knew there where so many and so colorful to look at!

View the Condiment Packet Gallery