Customers say the darndest things…

by T. Keith Edmunds

Having worked retail for a long, long time, I have a fair number of stories about odd interactions with customers. Just about anyone who works some sort of customer service position for any length of time does. We all have our favorites that we tell at parties, or when exchanging war stories with colleagues.

Sometimes these stories are funny, sometimes just odd. In any case, I love hearing about the strange people others have had to deal with if for no other reason than to reassure myself that the interactions I have had are not that far outside the norm.

That’s why (particularly at this time of year when retail activity is crazy) I like to frequent (The Customer is) Not Always Right.

As the holiday season ramps up, I encourage those of you that work in customer service (or used to) to check it out as a form of therapy. Or to kill time. Or for a laugh.

All good reasons.

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Six minutes of snowdenfreude

by Grant Hamilton

Here’s a compilation of Seattle drivers trying their damndest not to slide through a slippery corner after a snowstorm.

You could probably write a master’s thesis on the propensity for Canadians to yuk it up at Americans who are faced with snowstorms and suddenly lose all their driving skills. Personally, I’m sympathetic. It’s kind of like taking a desert-dweller into the ocean and then larfing because they can’t swim.

Also, Canadian cities are staffed with snow-clearing machines and sand- or ice-spreaders to keep things safe.

Also, we’re not that great the first week or two, either.

You really gotta feel for the bus driver at about 3:20, too. He or she is definitely trying their best, but it doesn’t work.

(via Seattle Bike Blog, where there are a few other videos that remind me how much I hate iPhone users for their tendency to take vertical videos)

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It’s a boy!

by Grant Hamilton

My sister and her husband recently welcomed a son into the world. It’s their first child and they’re thrilled. But I’m sure they’re very busy. So I thought I would help out as best I could by helping find them a suitable birth announcement card.

(via copyranter and comunicadores)

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What’s inside a baseball, and where did it come from?

by Grant Hamilton

Krystal D’Costa has a fascinating post up at Anthropology in Practice delving into the true heart of a baseball. Literally. From ripping out the stitches to unravelling the yarn to cutting open the rubber core to reveal the cork within, this is practically a baseball autopsy.

And, while it tickles the “take it apart” urge inside me (my parents couldn’t buy clicking pens when I was a boy), the post is more because it also delves a bit into the history of the game (cork? rubber? wool?) as well as into the sources of all those products and the labour that makes them.

Baseball may be as American as apple pie, but the ball they play with is global to the core.

If you’re interested in the anatomy of a baseball, click here.

(via @anthinpractice)

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Lego is awesome.

by T. Keith Edmunds

This is a short film, but it is way too good to keep until Friday. Plus, I’ll probably forget. My blog postings have been really lacking lately — I blame it on writing a novel and growing a moustache (I will have more to say on this once Movember is done). They both take a lot of time and energy.

But I digress. Here is the awesome Lego film thingy.

Funny!

You know what else is funny? The webcomic that had a link to this video — that’s how you got it. You see the connection? So — funny webcomic: Dinger. We have a permanent link just over there, to the left. Check it out, if you haven’t done so already.

And if you haven’t, why not? Everything we post here is gold, baby!

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Darth Vader’s head as Star Wars script

by Grant Hamilton

This image of Darth Vader’s iconic head (technically, his mask) has been created out of the script of the original “Star Wars” movie, which is pretty cool.

I think this new drawing-in-text fad is kind of cool — it’s the new pointillism — but doomed to be a fad.

Still, the creator of this piece, David Johns, is offering very large poster prints for ya.

(via Geekologie)

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The lost art of pencil sharpening has been found

by Grant Hamilton

I just spent $15 for a pencil. Actually, I spent a little more, since the Canadian dollar is kinda down. Plus, I promised to pay more if shipping to Canada proved extra — though I hope it’s not usurious.

Why did I do this? Because the pencil is artisanally sharpened — by hand.

You read that right. Fifteen bucks for a pencil because it has been sharpened by hand.

The man behind this service is David Rees — you may know him from his popular “Get Your War On” comic strip. Now, he bills himself as the John Henry of pencil sharpening. Every day, he pits himself against the best automatic pencil sharpening machines devised by science. I’d like to believe he comes out on top.

I’ll confirm that when I get my pencil.

After reading about his service in the Guardian and the LA Times, I finally thought to myself, “Heck, I spend $15 on beer or crap all the time without even blinking. Why not support someone like Rees in this quixotic venture of his. After all, it’s amusing, but it’s also real work. Would you want to spend day-in and day-out sharpening pencils by hand? If I recall correctly, that used to be a grammar-school punishment!

Better than just sending you a pencil, Rees will stuff it in a plastic tube to protect the point, hand-label it with a sharpness rating (determined by micrometer!) and send along the bag of shavings, plus a certificate of sharpness. Here’s a pic that happy customer Tom Warburton took:

And that’s not all — if you read the three-question “interview” that Rees did with Details magazine, you’ll see he takes this sharpness business seriously:

The whole point is that I’m going to have an authentic, honest-to-God encounter with your pencil. I’m not going to be absentminded. I want to get these things fucking sharp as shit. And when you get it back, you’re like, ‘Whoa. It’s actually vaguely menacing how sharp this thing is.’”

I love that this man cares. Fifteen bucks is expensive for a pencil, sure. But I’ve spent more money in worse ways. This is worth it.

You, too, can buy an artisanally sharpened pencil right here: Artisanal Pencil Sharpening. And, actually, if you spend $50, you get a cool poster, as well. But that’s like $35 for a poster. Limited-edition or no, too steep for me.

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The Future Shop 404 error page is actually kind of fun

by Grant Hamilton

Browse the Future Shop website and click a bad link, and you’ll wind up at this custom error page. It’s cute, but I also like the clever “was I now actually browsing into the future?” meta-ness of the text.

Heh.

Click here to see it for yourself.

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Check your apostrophe placements

by Grant Hamilton

If you hate the misuse of apostrophes, please check out the previously-blogged about ApostropheCatastrophes site.

If you need a refresher on proper use of the apostrophe, you could do worse than The Oatmeal. (You could also do better — for example, the Purdue Online Writing Lab.)

But if you think you’re amazing in every apostrophantastic way, take the test and find out:

I got a perfect 10/10 on the first one, and 28/30 on the second one — with an explanation! Errors follow for all to judge:

I parsed that sentence as being three ‘tyres’ that were car tyres specifically. Perhaps police were looking for a dozen stolen tractor tyres and three car tyres. Of course, on further reflection, I would have written the sentence as “car tyres” in that case, eschewing the ‘s entirely, but I plead cultural chauvinism — I was fooled by the British diction.

No excuse on this one, though — just dropped the ball in trying to juggle that many apostrophes in my head. I very much don’t think I would make that error in actually writing, but editing in my head was more difficult.

Good luck if you try it — post your scores, if you dare.

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High speed, plus high speed, equals slow motion

by Grant Hamilton

Graeme Taylor had an intriguing idea, which in some ways is like a long-exposure photograph, but with video:

In all my slow-motion work so far, I’ve used a static camera to capture a high-speed event. But, I wondered, what would happen if the camera was the fast-moving object? Use a 210fps camera at 35mph, and on playback at 30fps it’ll seem to the observer that they’re moving at walking pace- but everything observed will be operating at 1/7th speed.

In this video, he’s filming the passengers waiting for a train as he blasts past. I love it. Great parallax effect with all the people, too.

You can tead his blog post about the endeavour here.

(via Coudal)

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Now this is playing marbles!

by Grant Hamilton

On of the things that the Internet never tires of teaching me is that my childhood evidently lacked a number of essentials. These include drugged-out trips to the dentist and awesome pancake structures.

Now, I can add to that list a full-room-perimeter marble track, Moustrap or Rube Goldberg style. My dad was great and all, but he never built me one of those.

Now I’m thinking that you could have one in a rec room or a basement bar, too — have the final marble drop into a switch that would push the tap to pour you a beer or something? It could happen!

Oh, you’d like to build one yourself? The father has posted a detailed how-to on Instructables!

(via BoingBoing)

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And now, some badass blues

by Grant Hamilton

So, I was preparing a blog post and was going to comment on how the subject of this pending post was like John Henry, and Amy didn’t know who I was talking about. So I typed it into Google to see how I could educate her, in song, and the first result was this.

I’m still not sure that she knows who John Henry was, but damn, that’s some killer blues. I had to share.

Also, Amy, I left that Wikipedia link for you ;)

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Best ‘Star Wars’ jacket ever?

by Grant Hamilton

Now this is ‘Star Wars’ piracy I can get behind — a stormtrooper/Jolly Roger mash-up! Ever since I first saw this photo, I’ve been imagining post-Empire days in the Star Wars universe, when the Rebellion was still fairly weak, but the power structure of the Empire had crumbled, and I’d totally bet that loads of those star destroyers quickly went ‘privateer.’

This pic was taken by globe-trotting journalism consultant (how can I get that job?) Robb Montgomery, who posted it on twitpic and commented that:

Ironic: When Star Wars debuted this store did not exist, the location where it is now being sold was behind the wall, and East Berliners were not allowed to see the movie.

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How to shoot a gun with your feet, the video

by Grant Hamilton

A man named Michael, who has no arms, is nonetheless armed. This video gives me a whole new insight into the possible meanings of the War Amps.

Stick around past the boastful patriotism in the middle to the end of the video, where he also reloads the clip using his toes.

Inspiring stuff.

(Again from thedailywhat)

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How to wash a cat, the video

by Grant Hamilton

Something about cat videos reminds me of the Borg — resistance to them being futile and all. But something else about cat videos reminds me of Ewoks. Probably the fact that they are furry and friendly and you can *almost* understand what they’re saying.

(via thedailywhat)

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