My Celebrity Twin?

If you load in a pic of yourself at this site http://www.myheritage.com/, it'll tell you who they think you most look like.

I came up looking most like Emma Watson.
Then Juliette Binoche and Reese Witherspoon.

Uh... Emma maybe. The others. Not so much i don't think.

Solar Sun Printing Paper

This place sells the refill paper for cheap!

Lenticular Photography - 3-d animated pictures

How Lentitucular works

Place located in HongKong - large orders prolly

Manufacturer located in Fresno

A Museum To Museums

NPR's Story on the subject

Museum of Online Museums! - Great resource for online museums!

The Dime Museum - Be sure to check out their links sections!

Recommended Reading list of freaks

The Freakatorium in NY NY

Guide to Whistling Records!

In The Realms of the Unreal - Documentary

The other night we watched this documentary about Henry Darger, a solitary janitor, living in a studio apartment in Chicago. Rarely did he leave his house or speak to anyone. Over the course of 40 years, he wrote a 10,000 page book called "In the realms of the unreal".

The film brings Henry Darger's rich fantasy world to life with animation, prose and anecdotes from the few people that Henry spoke to over the years. It explores both the loneliness of his reality and richness of his fantasy in sensitive ways.

The filmmaker is Jessica Yu, who has done many other documentaries.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?"

"Who Killed the Electric Car?" The movie that asks what happened to the electric cars that were built in the early 90s because California had issued a mandate that by 2000 we'd have 10% of our vehicles on the road be 0 emissions.

Reading Wired's August 2006 article about Tesla Motors, a company in Santa Clara independently creating a really styley electric car. This of course is very exciting-without the big car companies tethered to big oil, they can pretty much do what the market wants. There are supposedly a couple of other companies out there doing similar persuits, but i haven't researched for them yet.

A couple featured in the film "Who Killed the Electric Car", Stanford and Iris Ovshinsky, were the original creators of the electric auto battery featured in the film. GM bought their company and put the battery in their electric car, the EV, then they killed the car, and sold their controling interest in the company to Texaco. It was a complete sham. But they're a hyper creative couple, who are now creating ultra paper thin solar panels that you can toss up on your roof and run plugs down into your house. Look in the R&D section.

Mortified - Diary Readings!

Phenomena sweeping the nation, where people are reading excerpts from their teen year diaries to hilarious effect. The people who have launched the movement http://www.getmortified.com/index.html

"This American Life" is taping a segment on this phenomena

Beautiful Performance Art

The Sultans Elephant - a show only the French could invent, it's larger than life, wimsical, fantastical puppetry.

Shadowlight puppetry - Balinese puppetry at its most luscious!

"Sad song"

A beautiful acapella "Sad song".
http://www.fredoviola.com/the_sad_song.html

Documentary on local Hero (?) Frank Chu

Documentary on local Hero (?) Frank Chu
http://www.eightyfourfilms.com/lunch_inside_the_12_galaxies.htm

Various Sites of San Francisco

I've found a great site with the various sites of San Francisco on them. They are complete with maps, suggestions of sites, and places to dine etc. I like the format of the items on this site.

http://www.mustseesanfrancisco.com/site-map.htm

Other San Francisco tours - walking tours of the city:
http://www.sfcityguides.org/

Events in China Town
Ghost Tours in China Town

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by Oliver Sacks

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
by Oliver Sacks

I'm currently reading this book and it reads alot like reading episodes of the twilight zone. Many of these true storeis are pretty eerie.

Some of the book can be difficult to read. Sacks is obviously very well read and he often illustrates his stories with obscure references or expects you to be acquainted with his Neurological and Psychological predecessors. It's often led me to consult the WWW to understand the references he's making.

Nopa Resaurant

560 Divisidaro (@Hayes), SF
415-864-8643
nopasf.com

A couple weeks ago Monica, Melanie and I went to Nopa Resaurant, the Western Addition's newest addition.

Instead of something conventionally starchy, like bread, they serve radishes and sea salt. The food was tastey, we sampled 3 appetizers and an entree split amongst us. However, I found the food and ambience (former laundry mat retrofitted with clean lines and sterile high ceilings) to be rather conventional in ways that you would come to expect from a yuppy urban hipster restaurant. I'd certainly go again, but in a city of similar restaurant types, there's little that differentiates this one from other yuppy hipster joints here in SF.

RocketBird

This guy straps a mini-jet engine to each leg, dons a special flight

suit, then jumps from a hot air balloon and flies until the fuel runs

out. (Then pops his chute.)

The video (if it doesn't load automatically) is named RocketBird.

http://www.bird-man.com/?n=windtunnel&nose=6

Smuin Ballet

Toby and I made a visit to the Smuin Ballet... It was the first ballet I'd been to in a while and it reminded me of how much I miss dance performances.

The pieces performed were the Bluegrass/Slyde and Zorro!
The Smuin Ballet proved themselves to be wonderfully technical and exceedingly original without being unapproachable. Wonderful set designs, and the use of a pole afixed to a lazy susanne which allowed the dancers to do maintain movement without exertion on the set. Background music was bluegrass banjoy and bass composed by Bella Fleck. It really was wonderful.

Flower Arangements

In preparation of creating some floral arrangements for Virginia's wedding, I've been doing some research.

• Floral Design Instruction 101

Oranguatans - Documentary

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation has been working in the rescuing of orangutans for several years now. http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/index.php

The BBC is currently working with them to put together a documentary on orangutan conservation. http://www.cockroach.org.uk/

This group is also working with both the SOS and BOS to dev a training video for plantation owners to help them figure out what to do when they encounter an orangutan.

More Museum Madness

Met a couple the other day who works in the museum exhibits creation industry! The company they work for is Acadamy Studios. Thousands of threads of conversations came out of this, which leads to some fascinating links:

• The International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago - http://www.imss.org/
• The Soane Museum, London - http://www.soane.org/index.html is a museum created by the victorian era collector, Sir John Sloane. Dusty and full of wacky stuff jam packed!
  
• Alexis Rockman - Fascinating artist who's mother worked at the Natural History Museum in New York . Following this thread led me to the Natural History Museum of New York reading about their diorama exhibits! There's a book about those dioramas and everything. From the books author : Stephen Quinn, Senior Project Manager in the Department of Exhibition, oversees all aspects of new diorama creation, and apprenticed under several diorama-art masters at the Museum such as Raymond deLucia, Robert Kane, and David J. Schwendeman. In the book, Mr. Quinn introduces the explorers, naturalists, painters, sculptors, taxidermists, and conservationists behind these three-dimensional marvels and explains how their collaborations make the displays so lifelike.
• Jessica Joslin - artist

Saving Sites

I'm always interested in finding ways to save.

These sites have great calculators and tips:

• http://choosetosave.org/
• http://dinkytown.net/

Nicks Band

http://www.freewebs.com/thewcb/