I’ve seen this kind of thing before and always loved the inherent grace that these people have. While many standard jugglers are admittedly amazing in that they can frantically keep x amount of balls/fruits/knives/whatever in the air at the same time, I’d have to say that practitioners of contact (or tactile) juggling are much better value for money.
While your focus is concentrated on the solitary glass ball, the act can then become almost balletic or even narrative.
Witness, then, this Japanese fellow, courtesy of (of all places) Failblog.

Want to learn more about the history of contact juggling? Why not drop by the snigger-inducing Ministry of Manipulation.

See this?

Fairly crude piece of sculpture, wouldn’t you say? Well, I think you need to cut Dalton Ghetti some slack, because he’s carved this entirely out of pencil lead. Yep. He’s whittled away the wooden casing and then painstakingly shaped the graphite (not lead, folks!).
If you thought that was good, take a gander at these:

How much patience does this Connecticut-based artist have? I mean, one of his pieces, involving interlocking hearts, took him over two damn years.
Go see more of his work over at I New Idea.

According to the vimeo page the video’s creator put an ant colony in his scanner and this video is the result of scanning it at regular intervals for 5 years. True or not, it’s a great video.

via The Daily What

Like many folks my age, I had a Rubik’s cube when I was a kid. Also like many kids, I spent hours in frustration trying to solve the damn thing before taking it apart with a screwdriver and putting it back together ‘solved’.

The thing is, that made me feel uncomfortable, because I knew that what I had done was wrong. I was a bad puzzler. Then I was introduced to puzzles where the aim was to put the pieces together or dismantle them. These, I loved.

This one, however, scares the crap out of me.

The Intimidator is – technically – a piece of artwork designed to sit on a desk and look good. However, if work slackens off a little,* then you could waste a little(!) time on attempting this. At 8″x5″x4″, and handcrafted from blocks of cast metals, it’s no lightweight. Never mind it falling on your foot though, there’s a far more dangerous aspect; Inside each Intimidator are certain pieces that, when put together correctly, form a small working handgun!

Go see more over at GarE Maxton’s site.

*Well, when I say ‘a little’, I think that you’d need to be more concerned about the state of your job than the puzzle on your desk if you have that much free time at work…

Today, my friends, we go… through the keyhole. You’ll have to imagine Lloyd Grossman’s horrible twang as I have no inclination to replicate it here.
Having said that, I don’t need to. Just watch this clip, in which someone with one of the oddest French accents ever gives you a tour of his humble abode.

It’s certainly an interesting way to advertise a house that’s on the market, right? I’m just gutted it has been sold, because I wouldn’t have minded it myself.
On the other hand, this is what it looks like on the outside:

Ignore the model shop – everything else, from the door just to the right and all above belongs to this guy’s amazing place. It’s just a shame it’s situated in one of the naffer areas of Eastbourne’s nightclub scene.
Ah well.

Oh hi! Is this on? 1, 2… 1,2 …  Nod if you can hear me. Anyone?  Ok then lets do this stuff.

Chris was good enough to allow me to inflict my genius on the visitors of his site. Not sure if he will foot the doctors’ bills as well but what do I care?

Anyway for my first outing I decided to link you to something with absolutely  no other value than it is pretty and seems to be worth a few clicks. And this you will have to do, click that is.

Ouch owl

Keep a look out for the owls because I hear they bite or is it snap? What do beaks do? Peck…no peckers do that? erm.. I need a thesaurus. Brb

Fer those that know me over on Facebook , I posted a picture of a conceptualisation. Essentially, someone had sat down and tried to figure out what a 1970s Atari iPod would look like, and then created a mock advertising poster for it:

I thought it was a good job done, and other people liked it too. End of story.
Well, no.
What I thought had been a one-off image was simply one part of a whole retro-imagining of current tech by a guy called Alex Varanese. Not only has he worked wonders with the iPod, but he has also managed to successfully rework hand-held gaming consoles, laptops and even mobile phones. In fact, I’d have to say I really, really love the slogan he came up with for the ‘phone…

Go and see the whole lot over on Behance Network (and check out the rest of the posts while yer there.)
Via Acid Cow.