Categories
Uncategorized

Tired: Cup Holders. Wired: French Fry Holders!

French Fry Holder, for sale at “Improvements”
“Even has a clip-on ketchup cup!”

The French Fry Holder pictured above is in Improvements’ catalog. It’s currently not in stock, but I’m sure with enough demand, they’ll restock this life-changing apparatus!

Here’s the description from the catalog:

French Fry Holder

Hold Your Fries In Your Car’s Cup Holder And Make Driving Safer.

Cars now come with several cup holders, and this innovative accessory helps you make the most of them! French-Fry Holder holds one order of fries (and its cardboard container) close at hand! Even has a clip-on ketchup cup! Can also hold snacks or crayons. Fits into virtually any-size cup holder, with a no-slip rubberized base grip to help it stay in place. Also fits in a child’s car seat’s cup holder. Dishwasher-safe.

Categories
Uncategorized

Help Remedies’ Clever Packaging

The blog HealthBolt (one of the blogs in the b5media network) has an article about Help Remedies’ cool packaging for things like aspirin and band-aids. The aspirin package is labelled “Help / I have a headache” and the package for the band-aids says “Help / I’ve cut myself”:

“Help” brand aspirin and band-aids
Click the photo to go to Help Remedies’ site.

Here’s a closer look at the aspirin packaging, complete with reassuring message:

“Help” brand aspirin
Click the photo to go to Help Remedies’ site.

On the outside of the aspirin packaging, it says:

As you can see, these pills have 500mh of acetominophen in them. They don’t contain Red Dye #40. If you enjoy Red Dye #40, you will have to eat it separately.

Opening the package not only gives you access to the pills, it also reveals this message:

Hello. I’m sorry about the headache. Don’t be embarassed.

It doesn’t mean you’re dim-witted. Maybe it means the opposite. Maybe your thoughts are so radical they have astounded your brain. You ought to be proud of your headache.

“I have a headache,” you should say to your boss. “You’re promoted,” your boss will say.

But you probably want to get rid of your headache. That’s probably why you purchased this package in the first place. So sit down on a cushiony object, and swallow two tablets.

“Help” brand band-aids
Click the photo to go to Help Remedies’ site.

Opening the band-aids package reveals this message:

Hello. I’m sorry you cut yourself. It could be an isolated incident, or maybe you are a very clumsy person. Don’t worry. The clumsy are much more lovable than the graceful. The graceful are always busy ballet dancing, and doing incredible feats on the trapeze. The clumsy are always busy being coddled, rubbed, and cared for.

So if you’re not too busy having attractive persons ravish you with attention, take a minute to care for your injury. Wash it, and lay one of our pretty bandages on top. In a matter of moments you will be able to return to your clumsy affairs.

In addition to these clever messages, Help Remedies come with two added bonuses:

  • The packaging is made out of compostable, recycled paper pulp, with just enough plastic around the pills to meet FDA requirements.
  • Help Remedies plan to give 5% of their profits to charities that will help people without healthcare get it.
Categories
The Current Situation

It’s the “Judean People’s Front / People’s Front of Judea” All Over Again

Toles comic on Clinton/Obama

(If the “Judean People’s Front / People’s Front of Judea” reference is new to you, see this scene from Life of Brian.)

Categories
funny

I Always Thought that Speed was the Trucker Drug of Choice

Trucks at a gas station with a sign in the foreground that reads “LSD ALL LANES”
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

(In this case, LSD is short for Low Sulfur Diesel.)

Categories
Work

Are You Sure You Want to be in San Francisco?

San Francisco Downisde #1: Damned Hippies.

Over at Signal vs. Noise, 37signals’ blog, David Heinemeier Hansson asks Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco? Here`s an excerpt:

If your idea for a web business is more along the lines of the mundane “product * price = profit” (3P) variety, I think the culture of San Francisco and that famous 20-mile radius around Stanford is anything but helpful. I might even go as far as say it’s downright harmful.

The flush availability of other people’s money is simply too tempting. When you’re not spending your own money, it’s easy to splash on a big open office on day one, a staff of 10+ in no time, and have few worries about paying the bills on the 1st of the month. It takes away much of the urgency to make money that I think is critical to build sustainable businesses. It gives you too many resources to be satisfied building simple tools for niche markets. Everything becomes about catching that huge wave.

I can vouch from personal experience that the line about what happens when you’re not spending your own money is so true. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you about it.

Naturally, the question comes up: “If San Francisco, the Bay area, and Sillicon Valley aren’t good places to start a web business of the 3P variety, where is?”

David provides a quick list of cities where some interesting applications are being developed, which includes:

I’m highlighting Toronto not only because it’s the city I call home, but also because there’s a strong small development shop community that’s been building up here over the past few years: we hosted one of the first BarCamps to follow the original, and created DemoCamp, CaseCamp and TransitCamp as well as the upcoming RubyFringe conference, which promises to be quite unlike any other developer conference out there. Toronto also offers some serious quality-of-life bonuses to techies, a very livable city with lots to do at night, Asian food aplenty (including three or four Chinatowns, depending on how you count ’em), a smart workforce and proximity to major cities in the United States (we’re about an hour away by plane from New York, Boston and Chicago).

[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]

Categories
Uncategorized

Unintentional Onanism

The smart-alecky UK-based technology site The Register noticed something about the new logo for the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC), picture below:

OGC logo, normal orientation

If you rotate it 90 degrees clockwise, it looks like a stick figure engaging in the act of…er, pleasuring himself:

OGC logo, rotated 90 degrees clockwise

Come to think of it, considering how government initiatives related to business typically end up, the logo might be appropriate.

While the unintentional onanism — the term is derived from the biblical character Onan — in the OGC logo is subtle, it’s screamingly obvious in the Iron Man “Knuckle Buster” (really, that’s the brand name it’s being sold under) t-shirt pictured below. Maybe it’s screamingly obvious to everyone except the t-shirt designer. Imagine what this shirt looks like when it’s being worn, and you’ll see what I mean.

Iron Man “Knuckle Buster” t-shirt

Categories
Uncategorized

I Feel Like Annoying Typeface Nerds Today…

…hence the graphic below:

Helvetica Serif (a.k.a. Times)

You can also call it “Arial Serif” if you like, because Arial and Helvetica are the same thing.