7.31.2008

art - fake out in grand central station

...on a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt...



Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Check them out here>>>

cool product :: green and cool reusable shopping bag

Green and efficient for your next trip to the grocery store (or any other store for that matter). There are alot of reusable shopping bags out there but I like this particular design from Flip & Tumble. Ball it up, tuck it in your bag, and your good to shop. It's small enough to fit in any handbag, sturdy enough to hold a meals worth of groceries and cool enough to keep up with your hip style.

the flip & tumble bag

From Globally Cute, a meager $11.95

food :: healthier, feel good fast food


What the heck took so long! Finally a fast food restaurant that delivers health conscious meals.
Hello, Zen Burger!



LA and NY based Zen Burger is a new restaurant serving up healthy tasty meatless fast-food. “It’s just like McDonald’s,” says co-owner James Tu, referring to his burger (Special ZenSauce and all), his free-range-egg sandwich with ZenSausage, and his chicken nuggets—all of them made from proprietary blends of vegetables, grains, and soy products. The soft-serve in the shakes is dairy-free, and the ZenTuna is mixed with Veganaise. There’s even a kids’ menu, with smaller portions and a toy included with every order (if that doesn’t work as an eat-your-veggies bribe, there are always warm chocolate-chip cookies for dessert).

Zen Burger claims to revolutionize the fast food world with natural, wholesome vegetarian foods that have the look, feel, texture and taste of meats without the negative effects that meats pose to your health or the environment. From breakfast and lunch to dinner, their "comfort" foods include ZenSausage breakfast sandwich, ZenBeef burgers, crispy ZenChicken sandwich, ZenTuna sandwich and ZenHotDog, as well as perennial favorites like our ZenChicken tenders, ZenShrimp, French fries, organic salads, non-dairy ice cream, organic teas and coffees, natural sodas, etc.

After googling Zen Burger and reading a few reviews, I see it's mostly a thumbs up for this feel good fast food chain. It's just too bad there are only two restaurants open right now and I have to drive for three hours to get to the closest one! But check 'em out here>>>> You can even order online!

did you see something cool????

Man Running with Light Bulb, © Images.com/Corbis, RF, 1, Adults, Business and commerce, Businessmen, Businesspeople, Carrying, Computer imaging, Conceptual, Eagerness, Education, Entrepreneur, Goals, Hope, Ideas, Illustrations, Imaging, Incentive, Inspiration, Invention, Inventor, Light, Light bulb, Males, Men, Motion, Occupations and work, People, Running, Solutions, Student, Thinking
Tell me about it! Send me a cool idea that you spotted and I will post it on JUST COOL with a link to you or your website. Linkage is a good thing and your ideas are JUST COOL TOO. So email me with them!

7.30.2008

weird - what to do with one million post-its

One million Post-its, 96,314 digital photographs, 4.9 kilometers of 35mm film, 3 weeks of editing, and 83 hours in Flame ... this is what happened


cool product - modern fans to beat the heat

Summertime and the livin' is ... breezy...



When you have these ultra modern electric fans to beat the heat! Modern design goes cool with (clockwise from top)
La Luna: A stylish honeycomb.
Swiss Propeller Fan: simple and sleek.
Henning Boegershausen’s Foldair Fan: a minimalist dream come true.
Propello: Made of an aluminum fan-body and soft natural rubber fan-blades.


Deals on Handhelds & Accessories at palmOne Store.

architecture - the house of staircases

Portugal's Tolo House spills dramatically down a steep embankment, hense its many MANY staircases.










Architect Alvaro Leite Siza took advantage of the breathtaking view yet awkward terrain, creating an odd work of art in this stunning structure. Read more at arch daily


fun - superhero yourself

Bored? Go over to Marvel Kids and turn into a superhero or better yet keep the kiddies occupied making superheros out of themselves.


This is me. How do I look? I even got a tail!




cool products - wake up!


Long overdue is this cool alarm that keeps you awake when awake time is precious.

It's a pretty typical situation. You've been gaming for sixteen hours and drank every energy drink known to man and downed every upper, legal and otherwise to stay awake, but the inevitable has begun to happen - you're starting to get the dreaded drowsy head tilt. Maybe this means it's time to quit your session and get some rest. Think Geek thinks not. The better answer is to put on your Anti Sleep Driving Alarm and keep on going.

Originally intended for truckdrivers this alarm has so many other applications. See how it works at Think Geek - the Anti Sleep Driving Alarm


7.29.2008

green - hemp and ford exposed


Was Henry Ford ahead of his time in renewable energy and sustainable design? In 1941 he recognized the utility of the hemp plant, and constructed a car of resin stiffened hemp fiber. He even ran the car on ethanol made from hemp! Ford knew that hemp could produce vast economic resources if widely cultivated.

When he told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925, he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."
Take a look at this interesting and entertaining video on Hemp - I didn't know all that!


weird - smoking rat caught red handed - it's fishy


This amazing shot of a smoking rat was caught in Oslo Sweden by sardine factory worker Karl Goram-Øiulfstad ! I don't read Swedish so I couldn't make out the exact translation in the article but it sounded like the photo was taken in the break room of the factory when apparently cigarettes were left burning in the ashtray and this mangy four legged taste tester tiptoed in for a smoke.The cigarette looks like a Marlboro but I can't be sure. Do they have those over there? I don't smoke.
Anyway, after seeing this, you won't find me in the canned sardine isle anymore... and I didn't know rats smoked. Did you?
Thats just WAY COOL!




furniture - Patricia Urquiola advanced seats are available

She's always designing something. Here are some comfy and stylish chairs from design diva, Patricia Urquiola.
the smock chair
volant
the glove seat

I hear she's into wire and emu's now. Check out her latest developments from Milano Salone 2008 over at Kim's blog

I still like the upholstered pieces for comfort...don't you just want to sink into one of these lovelies? They're JUST COOL!

7.28.2008

architecture - my island home

I wish...I wish...

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I saw this adorable cottage over at ReModelista and fell in love with it. A tidy 1000 square feet of breezy island bliss make up this sweet Victorian Carpenter Gothic house on Martha’s Vineyard - probably over a hundred years old and still alot of it original! It was recently given a facelift by Hutker Architects who, I think, did a fab job keeping all the cottage charm intact! Don't you?

I think Moxie Matilda would think it was the cats meow too!

Sea Cottage Cat by moi - buy it here>>>


art - watching Dali's clock melt

Persistence of Memory



Watching the clock won't be so boring when its watching these cool melting wall clocks inspired by Salvadore Dali's famous painting, The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931. You probably don't have a tree limb handy but anywhere you hang them (or place them) they will be the talk of your surreal decor. Pick one up over at etsy at Pragmatic Effects.













they are Just Cool!

weird - watermelon art and thinking inside the box

You wouldn't think that watermelons, decorating and painting a room would have anything in common, would you? Well they don't really, but this morning when I was playing around in photoshop (as i often do) with watermelon colors I made up these cool optical illusions. Look at them for awhile. One grows while the other shrinks...


Could this mean that painting a room dark with light furnishings will make it visually recede and appear larger, while painting it light with dark furnishings will do the opposite and make it seem smaller? Or the opposite?

But then which box looks larger - the light lime green or the dark magenta?? And then of course there are the factors of warm vs. cool colors, up lighting, overhead lighting or natural light, ceilings, floors, textures... Oh my, I'm confused. And plus these squares are starting to drive my eyes batty.

The whole concept of how we see color and how it affects everything around us, though, is amazing!
and of course... JUST COOL!
Wendy Presseisen Fine Art Print, signed - "Watermelons" - 11 X 14 inches - $18

Need a watermelon print for your kitchen? I have one and you can buy it here>>>

7.27.2008

cool products - AXON razorback, first anti-gravity racer - look ma, no wheels!

No wheels, just extreme air lifts The Axon Razorback - Anti-Gravity Racer. This radio controlled racing dynamo hovers above the ground for fearless racing up to speeds of 45 mph and more. This is the very first, one and only radio controlled hover craft / anti gravity racer from Axon Racing Systems. It will hit the market in early September so fasten your seat belts. You're in for the ride of your life! Check out the companies website for pre-order information here>>>




This innovative rc vehicle is JUST COOL!


art - eBoy posters - pixels that pop

What do you get when you mix legos and art with three talented graphic designers? You get eBoy.




Berlin based eBoy, a pixel art group founded in 1998 by Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital and Kai Vermehr creates pixelated objects to make it's amazingly complex artwork. The designers have created entire ultra cool and colorful cityscapes of London, New York, Berlin ,Tokyo and Los Angeles and I'm sure more cities are coming. Their posters are rich in detail, pulled from pop culture and commercial icons in a 3d lego like style, filled with robots, cars, guns and girls. Look closely and you can make out every little rectangular pixel that makes these images so unique.

Shown below at one of their exhibitions in June. They also have a line of toys, the Peecol edition - eboy action figures if you will.

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exhibit photos courtesy of www.concretehermit.com

Check out more at eBoy's website hello.eboy.com

weird - rice crispy treat beverage cooler



Don't we just love products that have more than one function? Over at my science project they did a weird experiment to see which carbohydrate made the coolest (literally) beer cozy. You know, that holder you set your beer in, to keep it cool (which btw should be called a beer cooly because any cozy I ever knew kept things warm, not cold).



So the candidates were: a clump of glazed donuts (I'm really plugging Krispy Kreme this week) , a stack of bagels, all cut to hold the can, and my favorite, Rice Crispies Treats, molded to hold the can. And the winner was: the Rice Crispies Treats!
They actually performed above the neoprene foam rubber can holders - keeping the beverage 2 degrees colder. Way to go, RCT! But the best part about these sweet sticky can holders is that when you're done drinking, there's always dessert.

Check out how to make your cool can holders and other cool experiments over at my science project

They promise to keep your beer JUST COOL ;)

7.26.2008

art - scrap metal robots ... recycled cuteness

Juan Carlos Federico turns metal junk into endearing robots in his whimsical digital collages. Even the mean ones look cute! Check out more of this Buenos Aires based Graphic Designer/ Illustrator's work at his website here.








 
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