web toys – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Obamicon

Given this week’s conjunction of a Poe anniversary and the Presidential Inauguration, creating this was irresistible. Obamicon.me allows you to turn any photo into something resembling Shepard Fairey’s ubiquitous Obama poster. The only drawbacks are the way the processing stretches the type and the use of Arial for the title, a font which few self-respecting designers can bear to use. If you’re as picky as I am, some Photoshop post-production is required.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The best font won
• Another lazy meme post

Speak & Spell

Before speech synthesis became a standard feature of home computing there was this crude device for teaching children spelling, now emulated in Flash by Kevin St. Onge. Anyone who’s heard Kraftwerk’s later music will recognise the tones generated by the top row of buttons which Ralf and Florian used on the track Home Computer for the Computer World album. Speak & Spell voices turned up on many recordings throughout the Eighties and Nineties. Fun as this emulator is I’d much prefer an EMS VCS3 to play with.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Old music and old technology
• A Clockwork Orange: The Complete Original Score
• Aerodynamik by Kraftwerk
• The genius of Kraftwerk

Colorscreen

Given the time of year it’s a temptation to vent spleen and post something by the great Charles Addams. But rather than burden you with churlishness I’ll point instead to Colorscreen, a piece of web abstraction inspired by Olafur Eliasson. By the same programmer, there’s also the Random Color Generator.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The New York City Waterfalls
• Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson
• Olafur Eliasson’s BMW
• Olafur Eliasson’s Serpentine Pavilion
• New Olafur Eliasson

Psoakoonaloose me

— You’re a nice third degree witness, faith! But this is no laughing matter. Do you think we are tonedeafs in our noses to boot? Can you not distinguish the sense, prain, from the sound, bray? You have homosexual catheis of empathy between narcissism of the expert and steatopygic invertedness. Get yourself psychoanolised!
— O, begor, I want no expert nursis symaphy from yours broons quadroons and I can psoakoonaloose myself any time I want (the fog follow you all!) without your interferences or any other pigeonstealer.

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

More from the world of the web meme. Current favourites doing the rounds include various blog analysers which are by no means scientific but which curiosity impels one to try out anyway. The Typealyzer subjects your words to a Myers-Briggs Type personality test which in my case reveals me to be in the INTP class:

The Thinkers
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy (sic) attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

I’ve never tried a proper Meyers-Briggs test but the above seems quite accurate if anything so vaguely algorithmic can ever be thus described. I did try an Enneagram test a while ago and came out as a Four (The Individualist) which is more applicable than the others on that scale.

Back at the web testing, the GenderAnalyzer rates { feuilleton } as 99% male based on the aforementioned “logical and analytical” writing style. So much for gay men being more feminine… I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed by this. I obviously need to get in touch with my inner drag queen, in which case the Drag Queen Name Generator would be a place to start.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The CD cover meme
• Another lazy meme post

Obsolete formats continued

Following yesterday’s post, more cassette culture. Cassette Generator allows you to make your own labelled cassette graphic like the one above. I’m not quite sure this has any compelling purpose but that’s the web for you. For the question of what to do with the world’s stock of unwanted cassettes, Designboom has a few suggestions, including the belt buckle below. If you need more bling, there’s also a gold version. And for real obsessives, there’s Tapedeck.org.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Old music and old technology