The Obama O, made from gum wrappers

I strictly ration my gum, and always have some with me (Don’t ask for it though) so I soon amassed a pretty hefty collection. It totaled about 30 pieces of normal aluminum plus Five’s red, blue and green wrappers. I realized the potential of these wrappers. I could create…art.

First I had to figure out what to make. It would have to be a simple image with not too many colors. The Obama O-bingo. Wrigleys wrappers for white, Flare red, Cobalt blue and Rain green letters.

How I converted the Obama logo into a 3-color pixelated was pretty sophisticated. I’m pretty sure I applied some saturation layers, created a grid, then created three duplicate layers of one individual square to replace squares with the right color. One square equaled one half of a wrapper.

I spent about 45 minutes figuring out how to draw the gird but eventually got it on the two pieces of posterboard, along with the gum wrappers. I had to chew more Big Red, and finished it up with “2008” made with Rain green.

Eventually my art was finished. This was my masterpiece. You know the Obama poster that says “Hope” underneath? Mine was cool like that. What to do with it though?

Great idea-frame it and put it in the nearest Obama HQ. One opens in my county tomorrow morning.

Click for bigger images…

More Obama art:
Lincoln-Obama fusion

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When you’re working, you do really dumb stuff to keep you amused during those slow times. Kinda like college, but safer.

The setting was my place of employment, Chick Fil A. Saturday nights are the slowest, and in my opinion, have the funnest people on the clock.

Our styrofoam cups come in long plastic bags that you poke open at one end. One employee was casually inflating one. Not only do we stock inflatable toys at Chick Fil A, we have helium for balloons.

Soon helium usage was spiraling out of control. We moved onto bigger and badder inflatable items, like gallon jugs.

Yes, you can inflate an empty gallon jug. Of course, the nozzle stays inserted for only about three seconds before the cap blows off. Have you ever heard a gun shot from fifty feet away? That’s what it sounded like.

Things quickly escalated to inflating garbage bags. We wrote our names on promotional materials for new menu items and taped them to the bag. It sounds dumb but you had no idea. This was momentous. We wrote the store’s number on one, then prepared to release the bag into space.

“Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we actually got a call from someone? ‘Yeah, I found a trash bag with this number on it.’”

We rushed out the trash door.

“Jake, get in the picture! Wait for Mandi Karen!”

We were making history.

“Hey guys, Mr. Johnson just pulled up.” He actually didn’t.

I took a picture on my horrible camera phone. It’s still my wallpaper.

The Pirate Bay does a Google

http://thepiratebay.org/
Found this when I went to the site 5 minutes ago:

The image is a link thats takes you to this website.

The website is apparently designed to combat this FRA. “Everything you do on the network will be monitored,
All your phone calls will be intercepted” is the headline.

Google translator says the title, StoppaFraLagen, means “Stop the FRA Law”

On Wikipedia it says it’s Sweden’s version of the NSA combined with the RIAA. It’s had a run-in with the Swedish Pirate Party plus conducts email and phone wiretapping. Hm. Not only does the Pirate Bay borrow the front page, now they’re using it for social and political issues. I’m looking forward to seeing the ship decked with Christmas lights.

9 OS 10.5 apps that changed my life

So it might be a stretch for some. We’ve all seen lists of great OS applications, but either I’ve done huge projects with these apps help, or I use them daily.

This list is in no particular importance.

1. IEatBrainz(Also PC)

As someone who gets a significant amount of music online, I like having the real name of the song and the album filled out. The tagger scans MusicBrainz’ music database and matches your songs with the official label.

2. FFmpegX

Got a video file in the wrong format? FFmpegX can convert practically any video file into practically any other video file. It’s fast and can do multiple files at once.

3. Shrook

Yeah, there are plenty of RSS feeders out there. I like Shrook because it’s super fast and simple, and can scan websites for RSS feeds.

4. TubeTV(Also PC)

Let’s face it, it’s a hassle downloading videos from Youtube. TubeTV is a slimmed-down web browser that downloads and converts Youtube (and other video sites) videos to mp4s.

5. iConcertCal(Also PC)

If you listen to a lot of music it can be hard to keep track of concerts and CDs. iConcertCal replaces your iTunes visualizer with information about upcoming concerts and CD releases, and even links to online ticket hubs.

6. You Control iTunes

Bulky name, small size. You can put a small iTunes toolbar on the top window. It’s super customizable, fast, and beats flipping through apps to get to iTunes.

7. Handbrake(Also PC)

Handbrake is your premiere DVD ripping program. You can select certain parts of the DVD and set all sorts of options, great for putting movies on your iPod.

8. Miro(Also PC)

Miro is a video RSS feeder. There’s some legit video podcasts and programs you can watch, but it’s even more useful when you utilize TV RSS and get your videos downloaded automatically, which you can then convert with FFmpegX!

PS-To properly use TVRss, find your show and copy the link. Then make a new Miro channel with the link. Free TV!

9. Songbird(Also PC)

Imagine that Firefox, iTunes and uTorrent had a three-way. The love child would be Songbird. Though the beta is a bit slow, the music player can browse the internet and features a search engine that scans music sites and blogs for hosted music. The downloads are rapid and the results huge-just compare the variety and speed to Limewire.

Compare with one of my favorite bands, The Polyphonic Spree
Limewire:

Songbird:

Tell me if you enjoy any of these.