“Boneyard”, a gallery show featuring the amazing night photography of Troy Paiva and Joe Reifer, opens this Friday, May 4th from 6:30-10:30pm at Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Gallery in Alameda. The focus of this show is surreal night photography of an airplane graveyard located in the Mojave Desert. It’s absolutely fantastic work.

In the summer of 2006 night photographers Troy Paiva and Joe Reifer were granted access to photograph “Aviation Warehouse”, a high desert airplane boneyard near El Mirage Dry Lake. This surreal location is a graveyard for every type of aircraft imaginable, from tiny Cessnas, to military fighters and transports, pre-war prop-liners, to wide-body jet airliners. Dead planes lay chopped and gutted amongst the Joshua Trees. Sheared-off noses reveal rows of empty seats and oxygen masks silently dangling. Clouds smear like ghosts and the stars arc across the sky during the long exposures.

Vlog Deathmatch has put forth the challenge to see who can make the ultimate music video. The submission deadline is May 14th and voting deadline May 21st.

Bill Cammack lays down the official rules to this challenge.

Vlog Deathmatch is all about victory. There is no second place in a Vlog Deathmatch. Do not commit yourself to a Vlog Deathmatch without careful thought. The community decides the winner. That is all.

baconmonkey shot some great video early Sunday morning of the tanker truck that caught fire and caused a section of the MacArthur Maze freeway overpass in Oakland to literally melt, then collapse.

He originally shot the video on HD. Here’s near DVD quality on Stage 6 and lower quality on YouTube.

A tanker exploded on a freeway overpass in the Oakland/Emeryville area in CA on Sunday, April 29th around 4am.
The deck collapsed and burned.
It was a connecting ramp between I-80 and I-580.
This is what 8,600 gallons (which weighs 80,000 pounds) of unleaded gasoline does when it burns.

Reports state that the fireball started on the lower deck, and the rising heat of the 3000+ degree fire melted parts of the deck above, causing it to collapse.

baconmonkey wrote up his “Adventures in Citizen Journalism” regarding dealing with the mainstream media’s use of his video footage, specifically CNN, whose lawyers told him that they could use his video without his permission because he had posted it on YouTube.

via » jwz

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) made an annoucement today that based on their research, San Francisco is the most humane city in the country, in fact they determined that it is twice as humane as the average US city. Mayor Gavin Newsom issued the following statement regarding San Francisco’s humane status:

“This is a wonderful honor that I proudly accept on behalf of all the pet and animal lovers living in San Francisco. Pets play a significant role in the culture and social landscape of our city. There is an undeniable love and respect for our pets that often gives them equal status as a beloved member of the family. From pet-friendly hotels to world-class veterinary facilities, we are a compassionate city dedicated to the humane treatment of animals and take great pride in being the best place in the country to live for animals and animal lovers alike.”

The full results of The Humane Society’s measurements of the humane levels of US cities have been published on their new website, Humane Index.

The first-ever Humane Index is comprised of a dozen factors selected to provide a basis for comparing the relative humaneness of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. The Index includes topics related to pets, farm animals, wildlife, animals in entertainment and advocacy for animals and demonstrates that Americans extend their compassion beyond the millions of pets who share our homes.

Lori and I have been been doing our part to contribute. Both of our cats, Ika Zaru and Taki Zaru are both formally feral cats that we rescued through Feral Cat Assistance Program at The San Francisco SPCA.

Let’s Green This City is a viral educational campaign promoting to goal of making San Francisco the greenist city in the US. It’s partnership between Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and over 40 organizations, including Friends of the Urban Forest, EcoGeek, City CarShare, sustainablog and many others.

Working with San Francisco creative agency Mekanism (the guys behind Microsoft’s Clearification campaign), they have created a bunch of really creative videos, including some great psychedelic animation, as sort of a “user manual” on a variety of green topics to help reduce San Francisco’s energy consumption. A few of my favorites are “Magnify”, exploring the benefits of using solar panels, “Flight of the CFLs”, which helps promote use of Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs and “10 Speed”, encouraging people to try biking to work one day a week.

Cryptome, the controversial government information and free speech website run by John Young, is being shutdown by Verio/NTT without justification or prior notice of violations. Their account will be terminated on May 4th and therefore they need to find a new host soon. The storage and traffic resources required for Cryptome are beyond what Laughing Squid could host (our focus is hosting for small websites), but if you know of a host or someone who might be able to help out, have them contact John Young directly at cryptome[at]earthlink.net.

Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance — open, secret and classified documents — but not limited to those.

Thanks to Dave Pifke for the tip!

“Too Many Robots!”, the new animated short by Attaboy, recently premiered on the Disney Channel as episode #9 of Shorty McShorts’ Shorts. If you didn’t catch it then or forgot to do the Tivo thing, not to worry, you can now watch it on YouTube.

The Lolcat meme is has been exploding lately. Lolcats or cat macros are those weird photos of cats (sometimes other creatures) doing strange things and using bad grammar. Recently they have been popularized via creative Twitter error messages.

I Can Has Cheezeburger? is becoming a massive clearinghouse for Lolcats and there is now even an online Lolcat Builder where you can make your own Lolcat images.

Anil Dash recently wrote a great post about the whole Lolcat phenomenon.

Of course, I couldn’t resist playing along and created my own Lolcat image staring the one and only Ika Zaru. Have you made a Lolcat? Please share in the comments.

UPDATE: Well I’m legit now, I Can Has Cheezeburger? has officially cataloged and tagged my Ika Zaru Lolcat.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories recently had a major technical breakthrough, they equipped a CNC router with a hot air gun and are now successfully printing images on toast.

Here’s a video showing them printing some creepy Ze Frank faces on toast.

They even paid tribute to our good friend Jeffrey McGrew aka “Toast”, who along with Jillian Northrup run the CNC fabrication company Because We Can, by making him a special piece of toast with his face on it.

Ask A Ninja recently make a guest appearance on MythBusters to dispel Ninja myths with Jamie and Adam.

Coachella 2007 is currently in full swing down in Indio, California. Xeni Jardin is there and she has been providing some great coverage of the event over on Boing Boing: part 1, part 2 & part 3

Dave Bullock is also on the scene doing some amazing live photo blogging on his website eecue.com, Metroblogging Los Angeles and Flickr.

Mediaeater shot some fantastic photos of Bjork, Of Montreal and Interpol.

Summer Burkes is with the Cyclecide crew at Coachella, blogging periodic updates.

Here’s more Coachella 2007 coverage from the Los Angeles Times, Spinner and Entertainment Weekly.

UPDATE 1: There are a bunch of Bjork videos up on YouTube from her Coachella performance.

UPDATE 2: Jon Alloway has uploaded some great photos from Coachella 2007.

The Do LaB presents Lightning in a Bottle 2007, a 3 day Green-themed, music and art festival, which takes place May 11th-13th at the 40 acre Live Oak Campground in Santa Barbara. The event features art installations, workshops and an amazing music and performance line-up which includes The Mutaytor, Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque, Kid Beyond, March Fourth, Gooferman and many others.

Featuring three stages with 40+ musical and performance acts, workshops, seminars, and art installations, the lineup for the festival represents some of the most acclaimed and original acts the West Coast has to offer. From San Diego to Seattle, the event’s roster of talent features a range of world-class electronic artists, live bands, and unique performers. With an expected attendance in the thousands, the environmentally conscious event will be powered almost entirely by solar energy and bio-diesel. “Lightning in a Bottle” will take place 100-miles northwest of Los Angeles in a 40-acre forest.

Bill Gurstelle, who is organizing the King of Fling Catapult Contest at Maker Faire 2007, has a new book out, “Whoosh Boom Splat: The Garage Warriors Guide to
Projectile Shooters”. Check out his promo video featuring the high-voltage Night Lighter 36 spud gun (don’t try this at work).

These are the homemade machines that you’ve dreamed of building, from the high-voltage Night Lighter 36 spud gun to the Jam Jar Jet, the Marshmallow Shooter, and the Yagua Blowgun. Including detailed diagrams and supply lists, Gurstelle’s simple, step-by-step instructions help workshop warriors at any skill level achieve impressively powerful results.

Mark Frauenfelder recently interviewed Bill for episode 6 of Boing Boing’s podcast “Get Illuminated”.

500 special edition [adult swim] branded Zunes were given out last night at the annual Turner Broadcasting/Cartoon Network “up-front” season preview event. These will not be sale to the general public, but chances are they will start showing on eBay in the near future. Ryan Block has more coverage over at Engadget.

As seen by jkenning at a recent San Francisco Giants game. I bet people had a hard time finding their seats in that section.

For the geek-challenged, HTTP 404 is the web server error message for “file not found”.

Thanks to RICK! for the tip!