How To Pronounce Labret and More Fun Facts

Filed Under Body Modification, Education | 2008-12-29, 10:00

A common misconception about the popular below-the-lip piercing is how it’s pronounced. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard people say “It’s French, the ‘t’ is silent!”. Consider this your Body Mod Public Service Announcement for the day. The ‘t’ is pronounced. It’s not French, it actually comes from Latin: labrum meaning “lip”, and -et meaning “something worn on”.

If you’re interested in more information on the labret piercing, ModBlog (aka BMEZine, one of my favorite sites) has an article and even a wiki page. Did you know that the labret is part of cultures in Alaska, South America, Africa, and even ancient Babylonia?

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Visual Illusion Jewelry

Filed Under Art | 2008-12-28, 23:21

These necklaces and earrings from Tania Hennessy on Etsy are amazing. Not only are they eye-catching, they’re also made from recycled vinyl records! Click over to her store, Aroha Silhouettes, to check out all the different pieces.

via mindhacks

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Fire on the White Holly In the Sausalito Yacht Parade

Filed Under Art, Burning Man, Fire Art, SF Bay Area | 2008-12-15, 12:01

For 19 years, the Sausalito Yacht Club has held the annual “Lighted Boat Parade”. Everyone brings their boats out lit up with Christmas lights and cruises around the Bay. This year for the 20th time, they held the same parade, only there was a new entry, the White Holly, which took things a step further by being loaded up with fire art from around the Bay Area.

The White Holly is a “High Endurance, Expedition Vessel” primarily used primarily for research missions. It’s a pretty hardy ship, but one has to wonder if anyone had in mind what it was used for on Saturday. Unfortunately I wasn’t there, but I saw multiple comments on my Twitter stream of friends mentioning going on a boat, needing ear protection, etc. The best being “It’s like we took Crude Awakening and stuck it on a ship. There’s nowhere to run or hide. God help us.” I wasn’t fully aware of what was planned until the next day.

So what was on the White Holly? Well up front there was Epiphany, a 25′ steel sculpture by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito that many remember from the Crude Awakening installment at Burning Man 2007 or maybe Maker Faire 2008. It had a “beating” heart of fire. There was El Diablo, a jet engine repurposed for shooting fire (and being noisy) by Jack Schroll. There were also flame effects built by the Flaming Lotus Girls and Bob Hofman installed on the boat amidst the Christmas lights. Don’t forget the Tesla coil hanging off the side of the boat upside down sending arcs into the water. And to top it all off, the loudest air raid siren ever produced, the Victory Siren, announced to the entire area that the White Holly had arrived.

Videos and photos are still trickling online, but here’s what I’ve found so far:
Wally also posted about it over on Planet Wally
There’s also a good video over here.
Friends Leslie and NetDiva were lucky enough to be on board and have posted their Flickr sets from the White Holly.

The Victory Siren

Tesla Coil Test

Megavolt2’s Video

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A Night of Scrabble in Time Lapse

Filed Under Video | 2008-12-03, 01:12

Vimeo is being weird so you may have to hit play, pause, and then replay or else it zooms through the video way too fast

We’ve been playing a lot of Scrabble lately. Surprisingly it’s the old school board game style and not some online Facebook app. I saw on Laughing Squid that this year is the 60th (or 70th depending on who you ask) anniversary of Scrabble. They’ve even released a Scrabble Diamond Anniversary Edition of the game. (Call me old fashioned, but I believe there’s only one true Scrabble board… and it’s this one) In honor of so many decades I figured we’d sit down this evening and make a time lapse of our games. I also tossed in a bit of stop motion fun. Watch my tiles on the right at around the 1 minute mark. The first game was a win for Heather (playing on the left), but I came back and reclaimed my crown in the second game!

There were a few words that we let each other slide with. One of these days we’ll go out and pick up a Scrabble Dictionary, but in the meantime it’s house rules which allows for more interesting words.

The video was made using my Pentax K100D DSLR + TI-85 calculator intervalometer setup and compiled using Quicktime.

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