Ektopia

My good friend Alspix introduced me to DIY colour film processing about a year ago now and I’ve been practising (fairly) successfully for quite a while. Actually, all my film photos on Flickr over the last year were processed this way. Anyways, Alspix’s first batch of chemicals has now reached the grand old age of one year old and they are still going strong. The chemicals are suposed to be good for up to 12 films over a 2 to 3 week period but Alspix has processed coutless films and, after a year, the mirky chemicals are still producing usable effects. Alspix has witten about his experience (and about DIY colour processing in general) - C-41ophobia - The Irrational Fear of DIY Colour.

How’s this for two opposing ways to wake up on a Monday morning? The Wind Chime Alarm Clock slowly rouses you from your slumber with lush chiming sounds (well they would be lush if they were a little larger I guess) while the Drag Racing Alarm Clock “delivers a loud, heart-pounding wake-up call unlike any other alarm clock you’ve ever used! When it’s time to wake up, a dragster’s revving sounds come to life, and the staging lights illuminate in sequence, until the moment the green lights shine and the dragster sounds really take off!” [via]

Here’s an interesting story about NIN’s latest release, Year Zero. Apparently, you place the plain looking black CD into the CD player and when it comes out it’s etched with some code. The deciphered code leads to a website called Exterminal; take a look. Oh, you can listen to the whole album on the site. Just noticed that NIN have also released a few of the tracks (for free) in Garageband format for some remixing fun. [via]

I managed to catch Dan Witz’s paintings a few weeks ago at London’s Stolenspace (the show’s still on till the 6th of May). His work is completely amazing but the show itself is quite small. Guillotine have just posted some photos of Dan’s Paris show, which looks like it’s a whole lot better. However, with so many paintings to study and be in awe of you can expect to be there for a long long time. (Click the photo on the left if you want to see a much larger version of it.) [via]

Fire starting gets the beauty treatment with these Lucifer Matches. Shake the little canister to release the match and it automatically lights when you pull it out. [via]

Photos from the Attack Of The 19″ Zliks show. There are some beauties among them.

Guillatine (one of my new fave websites) are running a nice project at the moment that they’ve called S2DIO. It focuses on artists’ studio spaces and is a great insight. As luck would have it, Asbestos is today’s artist. [via]

Here’s a couple of great shredding links. First is the Chrono Shredder. This contraptions literally shreds away that days. Secondly, there’s this slow shredder, which has been designed to shred at the speed of growing grass. It’s a great day for shred fans. [via]

The femur pen holder is another little gadget for the anatomy lovers out there. Just think, a hundred years ago they would probably have dug up dead corpses to make these! [via]