Month: September 2004
My favorite result of Self-Googling:
“Kempa, Adam of Detroit, Wayne County, Mich. Independent American candidate for U.S. Representative from Michigan 1st District, 1960; Independent American candidate for delegate to Michigan state constitutional convention from Wayne County 5th District, 1961. Still living as of 1961.” [link]
Further digging yields the following eerily applicable excerpt, from a summary of the September 12th, 1961 Michigan Constitutional Convention:
“Adam Kempa (Independent American), defeated.”
Bonus points to anyone who can tell me how to find anything else about this guy.
Update!
I found the following results page, showing the voting breakdown between the parties involved in this campaign. The Democrat won, the Socialist beat him.
More:
Born: Dec 24th, 1913. Erie, New York.
Died: February 6th, 1975. Detroit, Michigan.
Have any ipod users noticed weirdness since the last firmware update? All my radio shows (large files) are only playing the first 30 seconds or so, then cutting to silence. It will play through the whole hour in silence if I let it, but if I try and jog ahead, it just skips to the next song. All my other songs are playing fine. I checked Apple’s forums and have noticed a lot of people reporting variations on this theme in the last week. Hm…..
If you’re in the market for an easy to install wiki, I can wholeheartedly recommend Qwikiwiki. Simplest installation ever.
A few footnotes to last week’s lonesome ‘pi pie’ entry that sparked so much inspired humor – Several other pi pies have come to my attention. The most finely detailed was submitted by Andy Baio, though he doesn’t know the source of the photo.
My Roommate Ryan baked a Pi:
Marvel comics have released a series of edible mosaics, called “Snerdles.” Anyone who knows me knows four things:
- I love mosaics.
- I love candy.
- I love comic books.
- I love the shit out of combinations of things I like.
Based on these facts, it should be clear that Snerdles are the greatest thing ever.
I’d love to see a behind the scenes of how these things are made. I’m assuming it’s automated, and if that’s the case, just think! ROBOTS that make MOSAICS out of NERDS. No, wait – ROBOTS that make SUPERHERO mosaics out of NERDS, FOR NERDS.
Update: There are examples of other, less geeky varieties of Snerdles here and here. Snerdles appear to be produced by Au’some Candy Company. I emailed them about the production process, but haven’t heard back yet.
Other, more detailed snerdles links: here, and here.
You can buy Marvel Snerdles in bulk here.
I was also recently alerted to an article on Jellybean mosaicist Peter Rocha, which ran in a recent issue of ‘Stuff’ magazine. Jelly Belly has a (creditless) gallery of his works here. There are a few photos of additional works here. Unfortunately, Mr. Rocha is no longer around to bask in my e-preciation (Thank you, 1999!). From the article:
“The artist, who immortalized such celebrities as Laurel and Hardy and Queen Elizabeth in his Jelly-bean portraits, died on April 20 at the age of 65. Each of his portraits used about 15,000 beans, and his Ronald Reagan piece hangs in the Ronald Reagan Library.”
Update (2/2010): Looks like snerdles are coming back in a new Super Mario Bros. themed series. I recently heard from an employee of Ausome, the manufacturers of Snerdles – further reenforcing my theory that if you want to know the answer to something, put the question in a blog post and leave it up for five years or so, and eventually someone will answer you. Here’s the tiny bit of information they were able to share about the process:
“There’s a machine which you run sheets of fruit snack through. There are stencils for each color candy bits and they’re laid onto the sheet with a glue (syrup).”
Hooray!
Looking for an easy way to amplify the signal from your iPod for under $2.00? Not finicky about sound quality? Sounds like you’re in the market for a NUBY GC-7, only $1.85 from All Electronics! Operates on a single 9V battery (Not included), or using an aftermarket 6V DC power supply. Act fast! Only 941 available!
Disclaimer: the iPod in the photo below is propped up on several teabags – the two don’t fit together nearly as well as the photo might lead you to believe. The speakers were manufactured to fit the original gameboy, so they are significantly thicker than the iPod.
My bottlecap mosaic is mentioned in the Fall 2004 issue of Venus Magazine (Le Tigre on the cover). The mention is on page 73, in an article discussing craftster.org. Site originator Leah Kramer chose some of her favorite projects from the site, and apparently my mosaic was among them:
“Some projects on craftster are way more art than craft. In this project, Adam Kempa pays homage to his late brother Chris by creating a mosaic of Chris’ likeness made entirely out of different types of bottle caps. It’s an unbelievable technical feat and a touching expression on Adam’s part.”
Wow! Super nice, and Exciting!
