kirabug’s idea files

First, do not start playing Fallen London on Echo Bazaar. It’s a deliciously dark choose-your-own-adventure-style text adventure set in a steampunky Neverwhere-like underground London (which is quite a different thing than the London Underground).

You don’t want to play, because it’s weird and warped and fun and addictive and you only get 70 turns a day. You most certainly don’t want to look for me (@kirabug), because then you’d also be following me on Twitter and I post weird stuff and complain all day.

I’ll see you there.

Second, some neat links:

• Twitter FailOhmu (which probably makes more sense if you’ve seen Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind)
• The art of cause and effect in a solitary comic panel via Scott McCloud
• A tale of two focal points by Aaron Diaz, also via Scott McCloud

Third, here are some weird videos.

Japanese tea advertisement:

100 Greatest Movie Insults of all time WARNING: NSFW

cows & cows & cows

Kirabug.com: destroying your teen years one video at a time.

Also, awesome simple desktops.

Edited to add: This one won a Webby.

One of the side-effects of doing most of my web surfing from mobile devices is that I don’t spend a lot of time watching videos. On the other hand, when I do, and I want to share them, it’s a real pain in the ass to copy the embed code into WordPress on the phone.

Which leads us to this — a day where I post a whole pile of videos.

Let’s start with a kitten and a mirror:

AT-AT Day Afternoon makes us see these gentle giants as mere puppies.

Now a bit to freak you out — here’s a giant spider crab molting. All I can think is that this thing must have one heck of a headache right before it crawls out of that shell.

Animal the Muppet has a staring contest with one of the band members from OK Go

• Weeding paths and rocky areas?Try boiling water.
• I’d like to eat at the Conflict Kitchen. For a long time I’ve had a theory that no people who make decent food can be all bad, and I’ve yet to find a culture where I couldn’t find anything I could eat. These folks are pretty much saying the same thing. Too bad it’s in Pittsburgh – that’s a 5-hour drive.
• In the 70s, when a method for separating male and female sperm was developed, making the ability to choose the sex of your child possible, there was a fear that doing so would only make America more patriarchal. Now there are good reasons to believe that patriarchy is being destroyed altogether, and a matriarchy is on the horizon.
• Art made of Rubik’s Cubes
• Design for readability first. I tried to do this here, but I might take another swing at it now that I’ve got a better idea of what “readability” means with each passing day.
• When tabbing through forms on your Mac, would you like Safari to highlight drop-down menus as part of the tab flow, the way Windows does? Here’s the solution.
• Have a Mac and Keynote? Do you wireframe for a living? You could use Keynote for your wireframing. (I wonder if this would work on my iPad version of Keynote!)

And now: Kittens riding a Roomba.

Via Fark (again), here’s how to pronounce the volcano: