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Simon Schubert's paper renderings of architectural interiors are stunning ... this man must have the patience of a saint.

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(Yeah, I know, it's been a while.)

1. Tired of boring old graham cracker gingerbread houses? Join Bake for a Change's sustainable gingerbread house design contest! According to the website, "It's up to you whether you emphasize using rainwater for toilet water or install candy glass skylights ... Everything must be edible." Marshmallow rain barrels, anyone? (Hat tip, Inhabitat.

2. This is possibly the biggest time waster I've ever come across online -- at least for those of us who spent our childhood building elaborate cities out of Legos.

3. I have yet to play with Splashup, but I'm pretty positive that online photo editing is going to eventually revolutionize postprocessing and give Adobe a run for its money. Flickr also just added an editing feature which I've toyed with -- it's a marked improvement over having to re-upload images after realizing that your miniature poodle's red eye makes her look vaguely satanic.

4. The prettiest teapot I've ever seen.

5. I know these are fairly old, but I'm greatly entertained by Irina Blok's stunning diamond necklace.

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1. A collaborative group project called This Day in Type invites readers to illustrate a date and send in their images.

2. British graffiti artist Banksy put a video of himself installing his art throughout the Met up on his website. Amazing!

3. Well I know where I'm buying cooking ingredients from now on...

4. The ultimate Logo Design Guide has hundreds of links to typography sites, color matching directories, and logo libraries.

5. A blog, very succinctly entitled Passive-aggressive Notes From Roommates, Neighbors, Coworkers and Strangers, posts just that.

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1. The AIGA Tools/Trade Design Resource Expo is on Monday and features workshops and seminars on sustainability, branding, and a 90-minute preview/discussion of CS3.

2. 12 Important US Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know.

3. The definitive argument for why bikes are better.

4. The web style guide for typography.

5. The NYTimes has really been producing some brilliant web-only graphics recently; first there was a look at the Met's new Greek and Roman galleries (take a look at those scrolling panoramic views!), and now there's an extensive slideshow up on the reconstruction of Juilliard's Alice Tully Hall. Beautiful!

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1. The International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob Javits Convention Center next week should be absolutely glorious. (And, particularly given my recent obsession with chairs, an endless source of sketching inspiration.)

2. A new Australian-based publication called Open Manifesto is taking a critical approach to writing about design and visual communication. Their most recent issue simply asks "What is graphic design?" and features answers from artists, professors, and writers from around the world.

3. For any Pentax users, their 40mm prime "pancake" lens (only 0.6 inches long!) is one of the most beautiful little bits of photographic elegance that I've ever seen.

4. Admittedly, given the amount of time I spend blogging I can't exactly fault anyone for having too much time on his or her hands, but seriously, this is just ridiculous.

5. I recently wanted to point a friend in the direction of one of my favorite books of all time -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince -- and found a wonderful Flash site that provides side-by-side German, English, and French versions of the text. (And this site cataloging images of the book's various covers is a good browse as well.)

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1. From ComputerWorld's 20 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, "Measurelt" allows you to take an exact pixel measurement of anything on your screen. My other favorite, ColorZilla, provides you with a handy little dropper when you want an RGB reading of something showing up in your browser.

2. For anyone who desperately misses college (or even for those college students who are interested in what other universities are up to), LectureFox posts an entertainingly eclectic stream of lectures from universities and colleges around the world on a regular basis. Recent selections include "Understanding Computers and the Internet" from Harvard, "Buddhist Psychology" from UC Berkeley, and "Physics of Rock Climbing" from MIT.

3. I've long thought that New York City's fire escapes were one of its more striking architectural features, so I was happy to see Gothamist post about Greg Martin's Fireladders of SoHo project.

4. SO nerdy!

5. And speaking of jewelry, Etsy is a wonderful site where various artisans can sell their work (and it's really reasonable, too). Last week I discovered a small bead story on Fifth Ave. and was inspired to get back into jewelry-making -- maybe I'll try selling a few pieces and see what happens...

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1. A life-sized whale for your computer.

2. For any other college students equally immersed in the blogosphere: Eater (& Curbed) are hiring!

3. Wired recently launched a new project called Assignment Zero: the latest experiment in crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe -- the Wired editor who coined the term last June -- has been tracking Assignment Zero's progress on his aptly-named blog.

4. The biggest f2.8 telephoto lens, ever. See that little thing to the right of the lens? That's the camera.

5. As an ongoing project for a class entitled "Mass Media & American Democracy," one of the Spectator's News Editors started up a blog called Editor Josh.

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1. A strangely discolored Seurat reproduction? Not quite -- it's actually a photograph representing the 106,000 aluminum cans that Americans consume every 30 seconds. Chris Jordan has an entire series entitled Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait, which "looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics." His images illustrate everything from Vicodin abuse to annual prison incarceration numbers.

2. The Brooklyn-based design group Fwis has a beautiful gallery of book covers displayed on their site. One of my favorites has to be the typographical masterpiece that is the Ecco Book for Christmas Stories.

3. Knowing my ability to muck up electronic equipment? I'm buying Camera Armor immediately.

4. Fake Is the New Real's site is filled with experimental oddities, but perhaps the most entertaining (and tongue-in-cheek) subpage is their Comparative Timeline: Elvis Presley's Life vs. US Involvement in South-East Asia. Don't laugh until you look at it -- the two are disturbingly parallel. Other equally tongue-in-cheek but slightly more research-based projects abound, including the Common Sense Electoral College Reform -- which creates new states like Virgitucky and Land 'O Lakes.

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1. Never been able to tell the difference between Garamond Monotype and Garamond ITC? Never fear, French blog Design et Typo dissects the subtle differences between all of the font's various incarnations. I suppose it makes even more sense if you know French -- but the graphics are powerful enough to speak for themselves.

2. GOOD Magazine came out with a list of the 51 Best Magazines Ever. Guess who just started working for #8?

3. Hideous design and mediocre photo quality, but this list of "Strange Houses Around the World" is entertaining.

4. In continuing with my fetish for strangely recycled goods, ThinkGeek is now making notepads from old floppy disks.

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1. I've been seeing Ian Gonsher's work everywhere recently ... I love the idea behind the coffee table pictured above. His site features a number of equally eccentric pieces of furniture.

2. I find these photos disturbing but oddly riveting.

3. Kapitza came out with another architectural font, aptly dubbed Architekt.

4. PlusMinus sells a flash disk that incrementally inflates to indicate how full it is. Though slightly impractical (weren't flash disks created to be small?!), I find the concept fairly elegant.

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1. The Telegraph has an extensive story on how infamous anti-establishment graffiti artist Banksy might actually be a consumer whore. This is reminding me of how much I loved James de la Vega until I realized that he's a complete sellout. Alas.

2. I consider myself a very competent photographer, but embarrassingly I really don't know nearly enough about the more technical aspects of the art. But! PhotonHead came out with a great tool called the SimCam, which allows anyone to play around with f-stops and ISOs and shutter speeds in order to take simulated photographs which clearly demonstrate the difference between respective settings. Whee!

3. The Society for News Design announced the world's four best-designed papers in the world: Äripäev of Tallinn, Estonia; El Economista of Madrid, Spain; Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung of Frankfurt, Germany; and Politiken of Copenhagen, Denmark. SND's blog also just announce the top ten winners in all categories (I have no idea what those are), led by the NYTimes, the LA Times (what?), and Excelsior (Mexico City).

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1. This is the dog stealing the show at Westminster?! It looks like a rat with a poodle bouffant. Ech.

2. A former Spectator news deputy just started a blog about her semester abroad in Ghana: Wrapped Up in Dust.

3. Sweet! Actual justification for owning a Vespa!

4. FontShop has a great post up on Helvetica alternatives.

5. NOLA just can't catch a break.

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1. Oh, honestly. I didn't think it was possible to lose any more respect for Annie Liebovitz, but I was so, so wrong. And Beyoncé Knowles as Alice in Wonderland? Lyle Lovett as the March Hare? Poor Lewis Carroll must be spinning in his grave.

2. This, on the other hand, is amazing. I'm going to make it my goal to try every single one by the end of the year. (Although I might skip La Maison du Chocolat ... $8 for a cup of hot chocolate? Man.)

3. If you haven't seen them yet, Bill Sullivan's photos taken of people as they're swiping into the New York City subway system -- he calls them "turns" -- are pretty cool.

4. Those crazy Germans and their strange hotels are at it again. These are even stranger than the Kunsthotel's rooms -- one suite is made entirely of mirrors.

5. AUGH! WHY?! MY EYES!

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1. While a little expensive for my tastes, the official site for Gary Hustwit's film about Helvetica has put up some very elegant posters for sale.

2. Speaking of Helvetica, it tops this list of the 100 Best Fonts Ever.

3. From Worth1000 comes Apple's next product ... I'm personally a big fan of the iBrator.

4. The LA Times is being redesigned again. Good grief, let's hope for some consistency this time...

5. Only ThinkGeek.

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1. Quipsologies is a broader, more general version of graphic design forum Speak Up, providing readers a place to submit links to anything related to architecture, branding, movies, and so on. Sweet!

2. Yes, it really is made out of Bic pens.

3. Following with my obsession with graffiti, the slightly improvised sub-practices of Reverse Graffiti and Green Graffiti are pretty cool (and more legal).

4. Gothamist has a wonderful post up on Doug Aitken's current exhibit on (not in) the MoMA. His video installation, Sleepwalkers, plays every night on eight screens affixed to the museum's exterior walls.

5. Linkable USB drives! What a good idea...

6. What.

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1. Diego Bauducco's Pictobrowser allows you to create slideshows of your Flickr photos. Above are some shots from the Malibu Lagoon.

2. Apparently, Cisco already patented the product "iPhone." Oops.

3. Speaking of the iPhone... can't wait for the real thing?

4. In response to a Business Week story called "Jammin' Like Crazy At Goldman," a blog smugly entitled "Leveraged Sell-Out" came up with a post about what i-banking really looks like. Thank god he's joking.

5. This video of an artist turning watercolor blobs into little cartoon characters is wonderful.

6. Understandably, I've become fascinated with various somethings-a-day projects. I've come across a few interesting examples, including Avid Liongoren's Project 365 (with drawings instead of photos), Paris Daily Photo, and the mp3-a-day 365 Days blog.

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Who needs iPod skins? Try an iPod bikini instead.

Speaking of iPods, by 2009 Dubai will have an iPod-inspired apartment building (creatively entitled the iPad) -- complete with docking station. Erm.

All you need is the headline: Gym Teacher Gets 3 Years Probation on Bribery Chargers. Apparently, the going rate for skipping P.E. is $1/period. Sweet!

Cellphone cameras not up to par? Buy an attachable mini-telephoto lens for your Sony Ericsson.

Bodum's double wall glasses are beautiful and practical. No more sweaty wine glasses!

Christmakwanzukah, &c.

I'm about to head to L.A. for the remainder of the holiday season, so for anyone else planning on wearing shorts to Christmas dinner, take a look at Fred Flare's compilation of December 2006 window displays in New York City. A jolly reminder of love, joy, and shameless money-spending. Cheers!

The Best (And Worst) Ideas of 2006

The New York Times Magazine's 6th Annual Year in Ideas documents some wonderful, funny, and downright weird creations of 2006. My personal favorite:

"The popularity of the iPod has given new urgency to an old criticism of the portable music player: namely, that it isolates the listener by tuning out the world around him. As one response to this problem, Noah Vawter, a graduate student at the M.I.T. Media Lab, has created a pair of headphones that tunes the listener back in.

The device, which Vawter calls Ambient Addition, consists of two headphones with transparent earpieces, each equipped with a microphone and a speaker. The microphones sample the background noise in the immediate vicinity — wind blowing through the trees, traffic, a cellphone conversation. Then, with the help of a small digital signal-processing chip, the headphones make music from these sounds. For instance, percussive sounds like footsteps and coughs are sequenced into a stuttering pattern, and all the noises are tuned so that they fuse into a coherent, slowly changing set of harmonies."

Some other favorites from the list: Reverse Grafitti, Phantom Pianists, and Spit Art.

Go Phish

According to the results of a recent phishing attack on MySpace, the top 20 most common passwords are, in order:

password1, abc123, myspace1, password, blink182, qwerty1, fuckyou, 123abc, baseball1, football1, 123456, soccer, monkey1, liverpool1, princess1, jordan23, slipknot1, superman1, iloveyou1, & monkey

...which raises some puzzling questions. Are there that many sports fans on MySpace? Is Blink182 actually still popular? And, most importantly, why monkeys?