Flickr user m4calliope has a great ongoing project called The 365 Toy Project in which loads of great vinyl figures are placed in various scenes. Lots of notable figures in there - including the likes of Domo and Invisible Creature creations. It is a huge onslaught of content but well worth the immersion.

I think you're in for a treat with this weeks playlist.. enjoy!

• Nashville Invocation - while the legitimacy of praying before a race is certainly questionable you have to enjoy where this guy takes it. He's obviously a Talladega Nights fan.
• Dancing Squid Bowl Dish - supposedly the squid is dead but the sodium in the soy causes the legs to move. So, yea, very weird but worth a viewing.
• Spit Takes: Advanced - I think The Dribbler or the Randy Pope may be my favorite. Do a slow scrub through and catch The Naked Whale.. so good. Via Casey.
• The Dark Knight Rises Trailer - NMA created a trailer for the new Dark Knight film that's even better than the actual teaser.
• Apple Store Challenge - what will Apple employees put up with from customers. You'll be amused where they draw the line.
• The Splendiferous Barfing Cup - I think this is hysterical and wish it was ten minutes longer.

BONUS

• Dance Mix Smash Up - Todd has a series of phenomenal videos made for Big Freedia.. I never get tired of watching them.
• Deleted "Lost" Scene - Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse present a new scene that explains a lot of what you were hoping the finale would cover.
• Paineilmakitarakisa Siurualla - this guy has nearly 1,200 videos.. many of which seem to feature him thrashing and rocking out in rural locations. The internet is a very strange place. Thanks Invisible Creature.

Have a great weekend.

I'm absolutely loving this selective portfolio of Brooke Shaden. Her images are surreal, somewhat tragic, ethereal and entirely engaging. There's more to see on her official site and Flickr stream. I'm entirely smitten with this image.

HT FlavorPill.

Seems like that This American Life piece on the insane world of software patents (remember?) has really got the Internet talking about the state of the industry.. from a legal standpoint. It's a great topic, worthy of much discussion. One such take on the topic is from Timothy Lee and his article The Supreme Court Should Invalidate Software Patents. Here's a great quote from said article:

In my view, the solution is straightforward: software shouldn’t be eligible for patent protection. That might sound simplistic, but there are good reasons to think abolition of software patents is the right reform. Software is fundamentally different than other types of inventions. For starters, software is virtually alone in being eligible for both patent and copyright protection. This makes patent protection mostly superfluous. Second, writing software is an individual, expressive activity at least as much as it is an engineering discipline. We don’t expect novelists to hire patent lawyers, and computer programmers shouldn’t have to either. Finally, the “software industry” is radically more diffuse and diverse than the typical patent-eligible industry. Every business with more than a handful of employees has an IT department producing potentially patent-infringing software. No other category of patents has this characteristic.

- Timothy Lee The Supreme Court Should Invalidate Software Patents

The point comparing writing software to writing novels is, in my mind, right on the money. I mean, Spotify's been open in the US for about a week and they are already in litigation because of this very issue. That's absurd. Something needs to change. Invalidating the patents may not be the best solution but at least it's a great way to get people thinking on the issue.

via Jed.

Yesterday, I launched the full site for SoundLand 2011 - the latest incarnation of Nashville's ongoing music festival (previously known as Next BIG Nashville). The logo was done by Andy Vastagh and the main site structures were put in place with last years site creators, project83. That is to say, it was more of a collaboration and reskin than it was a full site build - I can't take all of the credit. Regardless, it's good to have it launched and, potentially, getting people excited for the event. The extended lineup has been announced and I'm happy to see a number of great Nashville locals being intermingled amongst the bigger national acts. Hopefully this is another successful step forward to establishing Nashville as a legit Music City - not just a Country Music City (a branding that is next to impossible to shake).

Thanks to the fine folks at the Next BIG Nashville Head Council™ for giving me this opportunity and I hope to keep improving the site.

Daniel gave me the heads up on this great Flickr pool - The Noise and Dust Through the Viewfinder. It is, as you would guess, a collection of images of the dust, scratches and textures that can be found on old analog cameras. Aside from being strangely beautiful creations in and of themselves, they could easily double as potential textures for other means. I'm particularly fond of these that have the triangular holding pins visible and, often, a reference grid as well. So good.

The Dentsu Network site is nuts! They took the parallax effect to the extreme - making multiple layers of content and design elements respond as you scroll. I'm particularly fond of the people count in the Talent portion of the site. Overall, it might be a bit overwhelming but I love the effect and it certainly makes the site memorable. Filed for "things to try on a project."

As far as portfolio sites for design agencies go, I'd put Sullivan NYC in the upper echelon of impressive. I love the full browser experience, the color scheme, the abundance of diagonals and the great use of grid style layouts. The subtle animations on the homepage are a nice touch too.

via Jamie.

In 1998, an archeological team led by French professor Francoise Dunand discovered around 60 mummies from 50 tombs at Ain Labakha, a Roman fort in southwestern Egypt, including this 10 year-old girl pictured here, freshly exhumed, resting on the desert sand.

The entire gallery of images is fascinating but this image is particularly haunting. As Radiolab points out, the perfectly preserved hair is just too bizarre.

Reporters Without Borders recently launched a new ad campaign entitled Censorship Tells the Wrong Story. I wonder if the campaign would be more effective if it used images where you didn't immediately know that what you were seeing was totally inaccurate? Regardless, it's amusing and I'd be willing to bet someone involved in its creation is a fan of Jimmy Kimmel's This Week In Unnecessary Censorship.. but maybe that's just me.

via Wreck and Salvage.

Recently, Jed asked me to collaborate with his place of employment, Measured Voice, to create a site that shows the tallies for government url's shortened by 1.USA.gov (powered by USA.gov and bitly). I've always been a fan of the work that Jed / Measured Voice does with the US government and jumped at the opportunity. The resulting site - GovClicks - is a clean, simple presentation of the most clicked government links from the previous day. It turns out NASA gets the majority of traffic when it comes to government agencies.

I'm happy with how it turned out and I'm extra pleased to have collaborated on a project with a friend that came out so well. Visit GovClicks.

Have you been feeling like your freetime spent acting like a werewolf has been a bit subpar? Well, then by all means, please take some time to reference this WikiHow article on How to Act Like a Werewolf. You will receive such sage advice as:

Always move. Werewolves are supposed to be constantly in motion, so always move - whether it's just jiggling your foot or actually running around. When pretending to be a werewolf, develop an aggressive approach - move with more power than you usually do, and approach from the side, as if you're following wolf hunting tactics.

And, most importantly:

This is pretending. Make this clear to anyone watching, as otherwise they can be disturbed or even call the police.

Big thanks to Joey for the tips.

Maybe this is old news but the work of Strange Native (Russ Maschmeyer) is really grabbing my attention this morning. His Fold Up type layout is great - not only for the look and feel but for the underlying code as well. I'm smitten, to say the least.

via Jamrog.

I often get tired of redux movie poster exercises but, occasionally, you encounter an incredibly clever take on the notion and you just can't deny it. Such is the case with these Neon Posters from Mr. Whaite. There are a load of examples on his Tumblr (though the guys at Public School did a great job of selecting a great collection - at least for my sensibilities). Be sure not to miss the Beetlejuice and Inception examples as well.

Hopefully from the name you can tell that Sexy Fingers is a NSFW site - lots of breasts, testicles and other such sexual material in heavy abundance. I tend to stray from posting "racy" material on here but I think the illustrations and animations contained throughout and too phenomenal to be missed. And, frankly, we're all adults here, right?

If you're not comfortable with exploring the site and interacting with all the animations at least take a moment to watch the advertisement.. an amusing way to garner awareness about rapid AIDS testing programs.

Thank you Ezra Shaw for capturing these images of divers expressions as they catapult into the water. Absolutely hysterical.

HT Chad.

I'm not sure why (or how) but Keegan has been sending me the absolute motherload of pre-made Javascript packages and they're all worth checking out and bookmarking for future needs.

• Isotope - very robust layout and filtering scripts.. similar to Masonry (same developer involved) but seems to be more.
• jQuery Waypoints - very simple way to integrate Infinite Scrolling, Sticky Elements, Scroll Analytics and Dial Controls. Absolutely love the Sticky Elements option.. this one goes in the bookmarks fer sure.
• Modal Alternative - at this point a modal shouldn't be all that difficult but I'd love to see some standardization across the web. I'm not sure if this is the script to do it but it's a rather sleek solution.
• Simple Tooltips - tooltips are built into the browser so I often don't bother with scripts like this but, occasionally, it can be very nice to have a little extra info. It's tasteful and the tech has come a long way since the initial release of jQuery.

Many thanks to Paige for this writeup: I'm a Social Media Rockstar.

Everyone in our company is super creative. Most of the men have beards and the women joke about how lonely they are. Last week, Karen, our producer, said that she saw a pacifier on the sidewalk and burst into tears. I know that doesn’t sound like a very good joke, but the way Karen said it made everyone laugh really hard. I don’t even think we noticed Karen walk away. One of us was just all of a sudden like, “Hey! Where’s Karen?”

That's just but one gem of a countless many contained within the posting. Fortunately I don't ever really encounter people with this personality but I know they exist and I'm happy to steer clear.

Today marks the official release of The Features latest release Wilderness. I've been following this band for approximately fourteen years and can barely think of any other artist that's been around that long, much less continuing to create phenomenal music. Please take some time to listen to Wilderness and pre-order the vinyl! Or, if you prefer, get it on Amazon or iTunes.

I've mentioned the work of Jon Contino before (and absolutely love it) but haven't really ever read much about his process or his background. Thankfully, DefGrip has posted a great Q&A with him explaining all that. I'm fascinated with great type designers in general but Contino takes it to the next level and does a majority of his work without the aid of a computer. I realize this is how all typographic layouts used to be executed but it's much more impressive in this day and age.