bookofjoe

American Car Brochures

"This has to be one of the neatest web sites whether you have gasoline in your veins or not. It features the original factory brochures for nearly every American car you have ever owned. Pick the manufacturer, the model and the year — enjoy!"

Fair warning: there goes the day.

[via Kristiansand, Norway-based auto enthusiast Hans Tore Tangerud and Steve Frisk, one of my team of crack Chicago correspondents. The Windy City krew is really strong, and they'll be receiving an eye-wateringly large pay raise in the near future — in fact, real soon now.]

4D Glass

From creator Jonathan Krawczuk's website:

"When creating a 3-dimensional representation on a computer program a 'skeleton' of the object is formed, known as the wireframe."

"The wireframe interpretation of the glass has been engraved onto its surface — forging a relationship between the on-screen, computer-generated model and the actual physical object."

That's no cat: it's a bear.

Yesterday's post featuring George Caleb Bingham's iconic 1845 painting "Fur Traders Descending the Missouri" (above) evoked all manner of suggestions as to the nature of the furry animal seated at one end of the canoe.

I thought it was obviously a cat, but others thought it was a dog, a coati, or a fox.

I had a look at Wikipedia and this is what it had to say:

Ostrich Egg Doorstop

From the website:

...........................

This beautiful and real ostrich egg from Maison Martin Margiela is handmade and comes from a farm in France.

The egg has been filled with silicone, so it is heavy and can serve as a door stop or paperweight.

The very beautiful eggshell is fragile and the egg must be handled with great care and can not bear to be lost.

...........................

€253.

World's largest collection of artists' quotations

"This is the world's largest art quote collection, online or in a book. One word of caution: don't try to print it all out. You will run out of ink if you do."

Above, Agnes Martin.

Toilet Paper Dispenser with Integrated Matchbox

What took so long?

From Design Milk: "goodjoy design duo Les and John have designed a toilet paper dispenser that houses a built-in matchbox holder."

In another — but related — context: "As the oil comes up through the well head, it emerges with little bubbles of gas."

Below,

a burning natural gas flare atop an oil well.

[via Kyle Killan]

Who wants a signed Damien Hirst — free?

Caught your eye, did that?

Well, it's all true.

You just have to read not the fine print but the following item from the January 7 Wall Street Journal:

"The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011" of Damien Hirst will be presented simultaneously at all 11 Gagosian galleries in 8 cities on 3 continents beginning January 12. (Mr. Hirst first gained international fame with his shark in formaldehyde.) Included will be his most recent painting in the series, which includes 25,781 one-millimeter-diameter spots, each one a different color. 

You say there's nothing about a free Hirst in there?

Good eye.

That's why we pay you the big bucks to come here.

You say you're still waiting for your first check?

Have you checked your mailbox today?

nuf sed.

Now where was I... oh, yeah, wurst — types of wurst.

That's not where I was?

Never mind.

Try this: "The gallery said people who visit all 11 locations during the exhibition will receive a signed spot print by Hirst."

The show comes down Friday, February 10.

From Roberta Smith's in-depth January 13 New York Times review:

Thanks to the Gagosian art empire, a ludicrous number of paintings by Damien Hirst are on display right now.

In New York, where 115 of the 331 are on view in the three Gagosian galleries in the city, the quality of the art — and the experience of it — varies tremendously. Parts of Hirst New York are both visually exhilarating and accessible; you can take the kids, take friends who have never looked at art or acquaintances curious about the formal principles of abstraction. Then there are parts so redundant and oppressive as to appeal to only hard-core Hirst devotees. The New York allotment, at least, is a sideshow but one with redeeming qualities, a spectacle with benefits, which is a lot more than can be said of Mr. Hirst's previous attention-getting shenanigans, like the all-Hirst auctions or the bejeweled skull.

Am I grading on a curve? Probably. Undoubtedly the usual knickers will be twisted by Mr. Hirst’s latest grandstanding: He's so unimaginative, so crassly commercial, not a real artist and so forth. You can find precedents for just about all of his actions in previous generations. Multiple-city gallery shows have been around since the 1980s; many artists have overproduced, and most are publicity minded. But he has rolled all this, and more, into one big, messy contradictory ball of wax and pushed it to extremes in ways that regularly drive people nuts.

[At] the Gagosian Madison Avenue flagship [is] the very first spot painting Mr. Hirst made, in 1986, when he was a student at Goldsmiths College in London and had not yet figured out his formula; its mass of dripping, blobby spots painted on board suggests a kind of graffiti art abstraction.

It took just eight days for the first two winners of free Hirsts to touch all 11 bases.

Here are excerpts from Carol Vogel's January 20 New York Times story with details about how the winners accomplished their feats.

A blogger and a magazine editor are the first two adventurers to complete Damien Hirst's wacky spot challenge.

Before the much publicized retrospective of the British artist's spot paintings opened..., Mr. Hirst announced that anyone who visited every location before the show closes on February 18 would win a Spot print personalized by the artist. So far, officials at the gallery said, 726 people had registered to take the challenge, a requirement to be a winner.

Valentine Uhovski finished first at the Davies Street gallery in London around 3:00 p.m. this afternoon there (10:00 a.m. in New York). Co-founder of the blog Art Ruby, Mr. Uhovski said he embarked on the challenge because Mr. Hirst is one of his favorite artists. He was hesitant to say how much the journey cost, other than to explain he used many air miles and to say that "the trip was not just about the spots."

"I saw lots of other exhibitions which was great, including a 19th-century Russian art show in Athens.’"

The other winner, Jeffrey Chu, an editor at Fast Company, finished at 10:30 this morning at Gagosian's Madison Avenue gallery. It took him eight days and "not as much money as you think." The experience, he said, "got people like me who wouldn't normally set foot in a Gagosian Gallery to see his work."

Bonus: Not only will you receive a signed Hirst, but he'll also dedicate it personally to you.

Register here to get started.

Better get on the stick: You've got 21 days to make the rounds.

Fair warning.

Pancake Plates

What took so long?

From the website:

............................

In his quest to create the perfect plate for pancakes, designer Jon Wye broke down the elements of what makes a pillowy stack so comforting.

After a lifelong love affair with breakfast, Wye pinpointed the crux of satisfaction: syrup.

This plate, designed with a raised edge that gently slopes the plate toward the diner and an ingenious reservoir for pooling loose syrup, was made for slicing, dipping and delighting in each bite of pancake goodness.

Enhances any saucy dish — not just pancakes — down to the last drop.

Ceramic.

12"Ø.

............................

White or Buttercream.

Set of two: $45.

Experts' Expert: How To Find That 1 Thing You Lost Online

I can't speak for you but they had me at "... thing you lost online."

Who hasn't driven themself insane trying to locate something seen somewhere yesterday and for whatever reason not bookmarked?

You haven't had that experience?

You've come to the wrong place, friend.

But I digress.

Excerpts from the estimable ReadWriteWeb's January 26 post by Jon Mitchell follow. 

Argh! What was that video called? Was that on Twitter or Facebook? Where did I save that article? Who was it who made that joke about the Edsel? Do you find yourself asking these questions often? As we get wrapped up in more and more Web services, things tend to get disorganized.

Greplin is the way I find that one online thing I'm looking for. It's a fast search engine that can index a whole bunch of common cloud services many of us use. Once it's done crawling for the first time, you don't have to wait for a second. You type in your search query, and Greplin brings back an organized list  of everything in your cloud-life that matches.

It can search Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader and  Google Contacts (as well as the professional Google Apps versions). It searches Dropbox, of course. It searches Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and  LinkedIn. It's got Delicious and Pinboard. It has Yahoo Mail. It even searches Reddit. And these are all free. Premium users can search Evernote, Yammer, Salesforce, Basecamp, Highrise and Campfire. All of these services in one search.

Greplin's premium service is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. But basically every consumer service, and even the Google Apps service, is available for free. Evernote is in premium, and that's a very tempting hook for power users. But it's amazing what the free version of Greplin can do. In addition to the Web version (which works on mobile), there's a free iPhone app, and it's killer.

[via Seattle's own Peggy Dolane, grand panjandrum (panjandra?)/majordomo of Provient Marketing, among a number of other things. Graphic up top by Sacha Maxim.]

What is it?

Answer here this time tomorrow.

Hint: smaller than a bread box.