mental_floss » David K. Israel

11 Brilliant Lifehacks

David K. Israel — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:11:57 +0000

A lifehack is a secret way to make your life easier, or better, without great expense. Most of the following ideas and photos were gathered by Ian over at Wildammo.com.

Here are 11 rather effortless lifehacks that will improve your life without cutting holes in your pockets, though I’m sure that, in itself, is some kind of lifehack we just haven’t figured out yet.

1. Take scratches out of your CDs and DVDs using a banana

1. Peel the banana
2. Rub the banana on the CD in a circular motion
3. Use the underside of the peel and rub the banana in deeper
4. Wipe away the residue with a lint-free cloth, like you’d use to clean your car windows
5. Using another cloth, remove smudges with a spritz of Windex
6. Voila, she is like new!

2. Store bedding inside pillowcase

3. Take scratches out of furniture with a walnut

4. Magnetic strips as storage behind vanity door

5. Upside down muffin pan for cookie bowls

6. Bread tags as cable and cord labels

7. Hull strawberries using straw

8. Use bowl to pump up the volume

9. Bake cupcakes into ice cream cones

10. Tension rod spray-bottle hanger

11. Stocking vacuum hack for small objects

[via WildAmmo]

12 Wonderfully Useless Flyers

David K. Israel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:24:52 +0000

The team over at smosh.com likes useless flyers. I have to admit, I do too! I’ve combed through a bunch of their posts for you and present to you now, my 12 favorites… As always, tell us which you like best in the comments below!

Lots more funny stuff over at Smosh.com.

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Are Red Lights the New Commercial Breaks?

David K. Israel — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:35:54 +0000

Commercial breaks are so pre-TiVo, right? No one does anything special during them because, let’s face it, if we’re not watching a live sporting event or something similar, we’re forwarding right through them. But back in the day, commercial breaks were stolen moments when you could quickly get stuff done. Like, go to the bathroom, grab a glass of wine from the kitchen, have a quick chat with the person you were watching the show with, whip off a quick note to someone, address an envelope, mail a letter, make a quick call, read a few pages of a book, do your homework, flip through a magazine… the list was pretty endless. But those moments are now gone.

However, perhaps smartphones and traffic lights have hooked up to create a new kind of commercial break. I’ll be the first to admit that the first thing I do when I hit a red light is reach for my iPhone. There are e-mails to be read! Texts to send! Instagrams to see! Facebook comments to reply to! Tweets to devour! Calendars to check! News headlines to scan! Stock tickers to check! Phone numbers to dial! App updates to initiate…

And I’m not alone. We all do it, right? And what’s more… we all sorta look forward to red lights now in a way that we never did even 3 years ago. The smartphone has changed the way we think about those little inconvenient stops along our route. Now, they’re less inconvenient and maybe even borderline convenient, no? The comments are officially open below. Discuss and prove me wrong.

(photo via nola.com)

Don’t Know Jack? Meet Howard Cogan!

David K. Israel — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:12:48 +0000

Chances are, if you live within radio frequency range of most any major city in the U.S. or Canada, you DO know Jack. But you probably don’t know much about the man behind the voice of Jack… FM. His name is Howard Cogan and he’s that guy — y’know — the one who says things like “Playing what we want” or “Jack FM: like apple bobbing in a piranha pool – you’ll never know what’s coming up next.” He doesn’t choose the playlist, read the news or chat with listeners, but Cogan is one of the best known voices on air.

Like the company he works for (the original Jack FM launched in Vancouver in 2002), Cogan was born in Canada. In his own words, he “worked as an unsuccessful broadcaster for over 20 years. After being fired from low paying disc jockey jobs all across his native Canada, he eventually ran out of options. After watching many late night infomercials he had an epiphany (“hey who does all the voiceovers on these infomercials”)…” Since then, he’s not only been the voice of Jack, but has also provided VO for well-known movie trailers and TV spots. (You can listen/watch a bunch of them on his Web site here.)

While many of the snarky lines he records for Jack FM get used in all markets, each city has a few that are unique to that market. For instance, here in LA, Jack FM broadcasts from Culver City, which is where the Sony lot is. Our unique snark goes like this: “Broadcasting from a dumpy little building in beautiful, downtown Culver City.” I think it would be fun to get a list of these going in the comments below. Let us know what you think might be unique to your city and we’ll compare notes. Also, after the jump, I’ve embedded a fun video of Cogan on-air, but BEFORE he was Jack — back when he was, as he put it, an “unsuccessful broadcaster” working as “Howie The Hitman” on CKLG Vancouver. Good times.

The Upside-Down Illustrations of Peter Newell

David K. Israel — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:45:34 +0000

Peter Newell’s work was very popular at the end of the 19th century, appearing in children’s books like Topsys and Turvys, a collection of poems and images that can be viewed upside-down or right-side-up. Below are my favorites. His work also appeared often in Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. Take a look at some examples.

nullthing

David K. Israel — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:54:26 +0000

I love the intersection where design meets games. Our friend John Pham in Chicago turned us on to this site called nullthing.com, which, if you’re not careful, might consume the rest of your Friday! Explore by clicking and dragging via the 12 design games at the bottom of the page.

The Roof is Leaking… in a good way

David K. Israel — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:18:03 +0000

In most hotels around the world, if water is pouring down from your bathroom ceiling, and you film it and post it on YouTube, you might get a a personal meeting with the GM, a big-time apology, and your mini-bar usage comped. Heck, he might even knock a sizable portion off your bill for all your trouble, with the hope you’d pull that video down off YouTube to save them further embarrassment of the viral kind. But not at Hotel 1000 in Seattle. (Which, by the way, has the most comfortable beds of any hotel I’ve ever stayed at in my entire life… the kind of bed that makes it hard to get up in the morning and shoot a video for a blog post here… ugh. But here I go…). No, here, one fills the bathtub in a most unusual way. Check out the vid I shot below.

It’s nice to know that at my age, when I think I’ve seen it all, there’s still a few surprises out there to trip over. Anyone else ever see such streaming coolness? And I’m not referring to the streaming video, rather what streams in the content.

Do Little Half and Half Creamers Ever Go Bad?

David K. Israel — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:27:01 +0000

So I’m up in Seattle this week, staying at a hotel some blocks from the original Starbucks (which, it turns out, isn’t REALLY the original, but rather the second location, which was situated better for marketing purposes, but who’s counting). So I bought some ground coffee, took it back to my hotel room and threw it in the French press at my coffee station, just above the mini-bar with the lasers that detect even the slightest movement – as if tiny Ninjas are going to descend and try and make off with a Snickers bar.

When the coffee was ready, I reached for the little half and half creamers and then stopped dead in my tracks: Seattle is cold this time of year, but how long have these things been sitting out here at the coffee station and what if they’ve soured? So I did a little research and this is what I discovered:

The average little half and half has a shelf life of about 6 months or more. That’s because, in essence, the dairy has been “canned.” All bacteria is killed during the canning process (heating it up, mostly) and then they seal it up quickly, so it can sit on your shelf for half a year before it starts to solidify. If you open up one and it’s a little chunky, probably best to toss it.

Now then, any requests for the busker when I go back to Starbucks this morning? Yesterday, he was doing a mean version of “U.F.O.” by Coldplay – not a song I would have thought made it into the busker repertoire yet. I’ll leave you with one other shot I took, of the interior of the Starbucks, which, as you see, looks nothing like the 9 zillion other Starbucks that came after this one.

Girl Can Say Any Word Backwards

David K. Israel — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:42:01 +0000

This is both adorable and a tad freaky. I hope Hollywood doesn’t come knocking and turn her into some freak on display. For now, she’s just a cute, strangely talented young woman having fun with a unique gift.

11 Cabinet Cards Reimagined

David K. Israel — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:18:52 +0000

Artist Alex Gross rejiggers and reconfigures cabinet cards from the late 19th and early 20th century, altering them to portray a contemporary comic book Super Hero. Cabinet cards were a commercial printed portrait standard back in the day. They were thin photographs mounted on cards measuring 4¼ by 6½ inches. As snapshot and personal photography became more accessible, the cabinet card disappeared. Have a favorite? Let us know in the comments below.