Link roundup

1. Vexin Classics: classic books like Huck Finn and Frankenstein, but with naked women on their covers? Via.

2. A look at The Pie Hole, a new restaurant in downtown LA.

3. A new law in Louisiana makes buying used goods with cash (at certain locations) illegal.

4. Brothers.

Link roundup

1. Cocktail umbrella design contest.



2. Skull face paint. (Part of a super hero-themed bodypaint gallery that's probably NSFW.)



3. Animated gif of a mosquito getting blown out of the air by a laser. Via.



4. FYI, I randomly chose these three of my Tumblr followers to receive Threadless credits. They should have received the credits.

Link roundup

1. Chewy Black Forest Cookies recipe.

2. Tron Bit animated gif.

3. The BBTS posted preorder links for several 2011 SDCC exclusive toys including the Republic Commando set.

4. Craft book giveaway.

5. The Quiznos chain might be running out of money. (I love Quiznos as an alternate to Subway, and the rare chain to have Diet Mountain Dew as a fountain drink.)

Slow motion portrait

Ghostly slow motion portrait by Veysi.

*Previously: How to create "cinemagraphs."

Link roundup

1. Top 10 NBA Draft Busts.

2. Creepy animated gif from this creepy Tumblr. Found mostly because I wanted to know what Edith Zimmerman looked like after reading this article she wrote about Chris Evans. (The first link is from her Tumblr.)

3. Penny Arcade on the fear of even mentioning hackers.

Link roundup

1. How to create "cinemagraphs" (animated gifs that look like photos with subtle movement). Via.

2. Big Sister maquette. (Bioshock 2.)

3. Sounds like this former AOL worker has quite an axe to grind, but read this if you're jealous of professional bloggers.

Link roundup

1. There are some incredibly vibrant subtle animated gifs at Mike Pecci's site. (They're huge, so be patient while they load.)

2. The sleazy trick that launched Anthony Weiner's political career.

3. Well, this is timely in light of what I'm reading: "Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions is set to produce a six-season, open-ended series, American Gods, for HBO."

4. The recipe for a USA channel show:

For USA, it’s three things: Is there a slightly flawed but likable lead character? Is there a strong drama with a dollop of humor? Is it blue skies? I mean that literally and figuratively. Exterior shots showing blue skies add a levity and brightness to each show. You also have to be able to describe it in a single sentence: Royal Pains—it’s Marcus Welby in the Hamptons.

Via.

5. Half-albino peacock. Via.

Link roundup

1. The Big Lebowski and Predator animated gifs by Paul Robertson.

2. UPS is testing out trucks partially made out of plastic to save on fuel costs.

3. Not quite as exciting as a new miniature, but there's now a card game based on the world of Smog.

Link roundup

1. Blade Runner cityscape animated gif.

2. From a long, somewhat rambling, but quite interesting article on the ongoing failure of Square:

it's no secret that seven out of ten game pitch documents here in The West are plastered with concept art pulled shamelessly from Deviantart.com, with asterisked captions under every tenth or eleventh image: "This art is copyright Some Talented Individual From The Internet—she or he is not our employee, though this is definitely the sort of thing we would want an artist to do; in fact, we might hire this person." I don't see anything wrong with this method. Well, in Japan, they do: You can't photograph your friend hugging a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders without a representative of Kentucky Fried Chicken theatrically weeping and groping his face at you. It's confusing and weird.

So what I'm driving at is this: they say Japan is on the skids—re: games, anyway—and they say that The West is on the smooths. I tell you what—the smooths are pretty smooth, up in here. And I tell you what again—in Japan, they wouldn't use some kid's art in their pitch document. They'd have to offer the kid a lifetime contract first. So, in this manner, I present you with a hypothesis that Square-Enix has accumulated—through numerous expansions, attempted expansions, and maybe-superfluous conglomerations, so many artists that a nuclear physicist wouldn't feel wrong assuming that they were probably—and definitely—the most important members of the company.

3. Fingerprint scanner that works from several feet away. Via.

Link roundup

1. Animated gifs of Kirsten Dunst reacting to Lars Von Trier declaring his Nazi sympathy at Cannes. Via.

2. Threadless has a Phineas and Ferb Design Challenge.

3. And speaking of t-shirt competitions, Timothy Lim (who I feature regularly) has a Transformers-themed tee up for vote at Qwertee.

Link roundup

1. Good article about Taco Bell and how much effort is put into getting reliable food to customers fast. For example:

Every Taco Bell has two food production lines, one dedicated to the drive-thru and the other to servicing the walk-up counter. Working those lines is no easier than wearing the headset. The back of the restaurant has been engineered so that the Steamers, Stuffers, and Expeditors, the names given to the Food Champions who work the pans, take as few footsteps as possible during a shift. There are three prep areas: the hot holding area, the cold holding area, and the wrapping expediting area. The Stuffer in the hot holding area stuffs the meat into the tortillas, ladling beef with Taco Bell's proprietary tool, the BPT, or beef portioning tool. The steps for scooping the beef have been broken down into another acronym, SST, for stir, scoop, and tap. Flour tortillas must be cooked on one side for 15 seconds and the other for five.

When I take my place on the line and start to prepare burritos, tacos, and chalupas—they won't let me near a Crunchwrap Supreme—it is immediately clear that this has been engineered to make the process as simple as possible. The real challenge is the wrapping. Taco Bell once had 13 different wrappers for its products. That has been cut to six by labeling the corners of each wrapper differently. The paper, designed to slide off a stack in single sheets, has to be angled with the name of the item being made at the upper corner. The tortilla is placed in the middle of the paper and the item assembled from there until you fold the whole thing up in the wrapping expediting area next to the grill. "We had so many wrappers before, half a dozen stickers; it was all costing us seconds," says Harkins. In repeated attempts, I never get the proper item name into the proper place. And my burritos just do not hold together.

2. Animated gif shows what's it like to visit 4chan.

3. New Last Exit to Nowhere film contest with 10 t-shirt prize. And here's the winner of April's photo contest.

Link roundup

1. Funny Portal 2 animated gif. And speaking of, it would be cool if Valve made a POTaTOS kit that attached to a typical Mr. Potato Head.

2. How to set up a green screen photo studio for $100. Via.

3. Gallery of beer league hockey jerseys.

*Buy vintage cameras at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Hugo Awards 2011 nominees. Via.

2. Classy collection of animated gifs.

3. Chris Battle is auctioning off two Quorra prints at eBay to benefit Japan.

Link roundup

1. LA Times:

Gang tattoo leads to a murder conviction
Inked on the chest of a Pico Rivera gang member was the detailed scene of a liquor store slaying that had stumped an L.A. County sheriff's investigator for more than four years. It leads to a jailhouse confession from Anthony Garcia — and a first-degree murder conviction.

Via.

2. Animated gif featuring Jesse Venture and Old Painless from Predator.

3. A claim that Jim Shooter's blog is filled with lies.

*Buy Tattoo of Death (Choose Your Own Adventure #22) at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. Exactly which career path is a good choice?

Since 2000, there have apparently been about 300,000 layoffs in the drug industry. It's important to remember that a good number of those people have found other jobs in the business - I'm one of them. But there are a lot of people who haven't.

2. Why Walmart is a case study for mishandling customer surveys.

3. Paul Robertson posted some new animated gifs.

Link roundup

1. Fashion photographs as animated gifs. (These are incredible.)

2. An assertion that Google could simply buy the entire music industry.

3. "Downward Spiral of Whole Foods House Brand."

Link roundup

1. Gumby animated gif. Via Reddit.

2. Roger Ebert discovered that filling his Twitter stream with Amazon spam in an effort to make affiliate money mostly just irritated his readers. (Have you visited Amazon lately? Great store.)

3. Cory Doctorow's doing a booksigning this afternoon in Burbank.

Link roundup

1. Japanese-themed custom items for a Team Fortress 2/Total War: Shogun 2 cross-promotion.

2. Reports that the Nissan Leaf gets a lot less mileage than advertised, and worse, misrepresents how much charge is left, leaving drivers stranded.

3. Animated gif is close to the real life version of Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown.

*Buy Peanuts toys at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. Camouflaged cat animated gif. Via.

2. Alice in Wonderland painting by N.C. Winters.

3. Is exposure to radiation actually good for you?

*Buy Alice in Wonderland toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Cthulhu idol.

2. Animated gifs celebrating the drug culture in Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Via.

3. Hip version of Big Barda.

*Buy Alice in Wonderland blacklight posters at eBay.