Nikol Hasler and Guy Clark who produce the hilarious sex ed video blog Midwest Teen Sex Show were in town this week for the Sex::Tech conference. I had a chance to hang out with them last night at the Sex::Tech Happy Hour hosted at Shine.

I wrote about MTSS back in August and if you haven’t seen the series yet, I highly recommend checking it out. Their latest episode “Parents” helps teens with awkward process of talking to their parents about sex.

While they were in town, Violet Blue interviewed Midwest Teen Sex Show for her column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

photo by Scott Beale

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PMA 2008, the big annual photography show, takes place next week in Las Vegas and with it each year come a bunch of big product announcements.

One of the early pre-show announcements is Canon’s new entry-level DSLR, the Digital Rebel XSi (450D), which replaces the Digital Rebel XTi and two new telephoto lenses, the EF 200mm f/2L IS USM and the EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM.

Another announcement was Fujifilm’s new FinePix F100fd, the replacement for the FinePix F50, the powerful compact camera that I wrote about back in September.

photos via Digital Photography Review

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On the latest episode of Boing Bong TV, Xeni Jardin takes a tour of the wonderful 30′ tall Steampunk Tree House located in Oakland which was built by Sean Orlando and a crew of artists for Burning Man 2007.

See Previously: Steampunk Tree House: Roots To Roof Fundraiser

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Paul The Wine Guy has created a great series of images that help geeks related to art history: “Understanding art for geeks”

via Drawn!

mashup image by Paul The Wine Guy

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EveryBlock is a new service which launched today that helps you find news and information in your city, neighborhood and even down to your block. The service is currently available in San Francisco, New York and Chicago. The local news takes the form of civic information, news articles, blog posts, Flickr photos, Craigslist listings, Yelp reviews and so on.

“What’s happening in my neighborhood?”

For a long time, that’s been a tough question to answer. In dense, bustling cities like Chicago, New York and San Francisco, the number of daily media reports, government proceedings and local Internet conversations is staggering. Every day, a wealth of local information is created — officials inspect restaurants, journalists cover fires and Web users post photographs — but who has time to sort through all of that?

Our mission at EveryBlock is to solve that problem. We aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. We’re a geographic filter — a “news feed” for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.

via Simon Willison

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I received the latest package from Startup Schwag (schwag bag #4) today and along with a bunch of stickers it included this interesting potato head t-shirt for the social networking news blog Mashable. The shirt was designed by Haythem Haddad, who won the Mashable t-shirt design contest back in November.

Until recently I’ve had no real contact with Mashable, but then last Friday I finally met the blog’s founder Pete Cashmore at The Crunchies, of all places. Mashable and TechCrunch are rivals of sorts, so I think his appearance stirred things up a bit.

photo by Scott Beale

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Darren Rowse wrote an excellent post on ProBlogger today about “9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers”. In the write-up Darren, a recent convert to Twitter, explores several ways that Twitter can help bloggers, including:

- improve the quality of blogs
- network with other bloggers
- widen readership
- grow a blogger’s profile
- drive traffic to blogs

Twitter is still by far the social network I use the most, including many of the ways outlined by Darren, like using TwitterFeed which I have written about in the past.

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The new Blue Bottle Café opened today in San Francisco’s Mint Plaza, the first full cafe from Blue Bottle Coffee. cheesebikini? points us to a New York Times article about their Lucky Cremas Bonmac 105 siphon bar, a $20,000 Japanese brewing device located at the new cafe.

With its brass-trimmed halogen heating elements, glass globes and bamboo paddles, the new contraption that is to begin making coffee this week at the Blue Bottle Café here looks like a machine from a Jules Verne novel, a 19th-century vision of the future.

The NYT article features a photo gallery that shows the step-by-step process of how coffee is made using the siphon bar. UPDATE 1: Niall Kennedy went to the cafe’s opening this morning and shot a few photos, including some of the Lucky Cremas Bonmac 105 siphon bar. UPDATE 2: Ryan Bailey shot some video of coffee being made with Lucky Cremas Bonmac 105 siphon bar. photos by Peter DaSilva via The New York Times & Niall Kennedy

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People often ask me what companies we use for various products and services, so I thought I would be good to put together a list of Laughing Squid vendors. I’ll update this list over time as we add use new products and services.

T-Shirts

We have our Laughing Squid t-shirts screen printed by the great folks at Ape Do Good Printing in San Francisco. Here’s my write-up on Ape Do Good, which includes some photos I shot of their shop.

Stickers

People love our Laughing Squid stickers and we print them by the thousands at Contagious Graphics in Charlotte, NC. They make quality vinyl stickers and are able to match the PMS 360 green we use, as well as the occasional custom color. We have been using them to print our stickers from day one.

Buttons

We have our Laughing Squid buttons made by One Inch Round in San Francisco.

Fulfillment

For our fulfillment services we use NoonaCo in San Francisco, run by our good friend Helena “Noona” Nolan. They do all of the packing and shipping for our t-shirt and poster orders, as well as run our online store. Here’s my write-up on NoonaCo.

Managed Hosting & Data Center

We lease all of our servers, including those used in our web hosting operations, from Rackspace based out of San Antonio and our servers are located at their Dallas/Ft. Worth data center. They have been really great, living up to their motto of “Fanatical Support”. We are one of their oldest customers and have been with them since May 1999. Here’s my write-up on Rackspace from when I visited them in 2005 after SXSW.

Laughing Squid Blog Resources

Laughing Squid is proudly run on the wonderful open source blogging script WordPress, along with a variety of great WordPress plugins, including Akismet, WordPress stats and WordPress Super Cache. Some other services we use for the blog are Flickr (image hosting), blip.tv (video hosting), FeedBurner (feed statistics), Google Analytics (traffic statistics), Federated Media Publishing (direct advertising), Google AdSense (contextual advertising), Amazon.com Associates (referral program), Google Reader (feed reader shared items), Skitch (screenshots) and ShareThis (blog post sharing).

The Squid List Resources

The Squid List runs on Helios Calendar, with the email list generated by FeedBurner using their RSS to email service.

Photography

My primary camera is a Canon 5D DSLR, which I use with a variety of lenses. Also I always try to carry along a pocket camera, which is currently the Fujifilm F50 (here’s my write-up on the F50). I use Apple’s Aperture photo editing tool and host all of my photos online (over 20K of them) using the excellent Flickr photo sharing service.

Computer Equipment

I’m an Apple person so I do most of my work on a Mac Pro as well as a MacBook Pro when I travel. Oh yeah and of course my mini computer, the iPhone. Regarding Mac software, in addition to what comes with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), the main apps I use include Firefox (browser), Adium (instant messaging), VMware Fusion (virtualization), BBEdit (text editing), Transmit (FTP), SpamSieve (spam filter), SuperDuper! (backups), 1Password (password manager), iTerm (terminal emulation), Skitch (screenshots), Twitterrific (Twitter client), Speed Download (download manager), AppZapper (uninstaller), Photoshop (image editing), Aperture (photography post production), Final Cut Pro (video editing), Colloquy (IRC), QuickBooks Pro (accounting), Skype (internet phone) and Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 (office suite).

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I’ve just updated Laughing Squid to include the ShareThis service using the ShareThis WordPress plugin. Now at the bottom of each post you’ll see a small ShareThis button and link that looks like this: Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Facebook, Technorati, Reddit, Tailrank, Ma.gnolia and others or to send directly to people via email, AIM, SMS, MySpace and Facebook. Also the ShareThis icon is an nice green, so it perfectly matches our design. For more on ShareThis, check out Eric Eldon’s recent post on VentureBeat.

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Here’s the trailer for the upcoming documentary “MacHeads The Movie”, produced and directed by Kobi Shely, which explores the cult of Apple fanatics.

MacHeads is a documentary about fanaticism and unconditional devotion to a corporate brand. The film takes us through the history of the Macintosh community and how it lead the Apple revolution. MacHeads explores the human side of Apple, telling the inside story of a loyal community and its struggle to spread the Macintosh gospel. Now that Apple is world known success, is it losing its faith as a community and becoming just a… brand?

I was interviewed for the documentary last year at Adam Jackson’s DailyTechTalk Macworld Party, but I’m not sure if my interview made it into the film. Here’s more about the documentary from Violet Blue, who appears in the trailer, admitting that she’s never, ever slept with a Windows user.

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Wow, check out this super fabulous animated commercial for Pizza-La, the largest pizza delivery chain in Japan. Those are the happiest pizza toppings I’ve ever seen. So just try not singing that song the rest of the day. Pi pi pi pi Pizza-la! via Cynical-C

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“10 MPH” is a documentary about driving a Segway across the US (see my previous post) by Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell, who have decided to release the entire film for free on YouTube.

10 MPH is a comical documentary that follows a pair of aspiring filmmakers as they quit their jobs and turn a friend’s ludicrous idea into a movie. The impulsive purchase of a two-wheeled Segway scooter sets this story in motion when the two friends decide to travel from Seattle to Boston at 10 MPH in an attempt to change their lives forever… What ensues is a road trip like none other with a haphazard cast of characters you could only find on a zany 100-day trek through America’s back roads. Each poignant story the two friends discover along the way inspires a craving inside to go out and do that thing you’re supposed to do.

Hunter and Josh are currently working on their follow-up film “10 Yards”, a documentary about Fantasy Football. In order to raise money to finish their film they have teamed up with independent artist resource OurStage, who will be donating $1.00 to the filmmakers for each person who registers for their free service. Once you’ve signed-up, you’ll be able to download “10 MPH” for free there as well.

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Recently I had a chance to catch up with my good friend Daniel Browning Smith, an amazing contortionist known as The Rubberboy, who has performed in Laughing Squid events in the past. Daniel holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest time squeezing through both a tennis racquet and a toilet seat. Here’s video of Daniel performing on “When Will I be Famous”, “America’s Got Talent”, “Roseanne” and as the halftime entertainment for an NBA basketball game. Daniel is also an actor, appearing in various commercials, television shows and films including “CSI: NY”, “Monk” and “Men in Black II”. He also played an ongoing role in the aclaimed HBO series “Carnivàle”. photo by Ryan Paterson & Supersnail

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GAMA-GO makes some really great squid themed t-shirts, like their new “Golden Gate Squid” men’s t-shirt. photo via GAMA-GO

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Pink Tentacle has a great write-up on Larva Chocolate (Youchu Choco), a popular grub-shaped candy treat that is hand made by Komatsuya (400 per day) in Japan.

A unique chocolate made to look like a beetle larva has captured the fancy of candy aficionados in Japan. Produced by the Komatsuya confectionery and bakery based in Akita prefecture, the bite-sized Larva Chocolates (Youchu Choco) have a grub-shaped body made from milk chocolate and corn flakes, a layer of skin made from white chocolate, legs made from tiny strips of dried squid, and a dainty mouth made from orange peel.

Komatsuya also makes a series colorful larvae candy, which according to Babel Fish, s some kind of potato insect larvae made from bean jam. photos via Komatsuya

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Glowing Pig Passes Genes to Piglets
Two piglets glow fluorescent green from their snout, trotters, and tongue under ultraviolet light in Harbin, China. A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported. China Daily photo via Reuters

 

Glowing Pig Passes Genes to Piglets Two piglets glow fluorescent green from their snout, trotters, and tongue under ultraviolet light in Harbin, China. A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported. China Daily photo via Reuters

Pullman police said a WSU student was arrested twice the same night for smoking marijuana. The 20-year-old was arrested Tuesday night with two other men for smoking in a parking lot, police said. They were cited, fingerprinted and released shortly after midnight.

Less than two hours later, an officer saw three men passing around a pipe in a pickup truck and arrested the student again and the two others for possessing marijuana.

Police Commander Chris Tennant said he hopes the student isn’t kicked out of WSU because it seems he needs a bit more education.

Posted from here

Pullman police said a WSU student was arrested twice the same night for smoking marijuana. The 20-year-old was arrested Tuesday night with two other men for smoking in a parking lot, police said. They were cited, fingerprinted and released shortly after midnight. Less than two hours later, an officer saw three men passing around a pipe in a pickup truck and arrested the student again and the two others for possessing marijuana. Police Commander Chris Tennant said he hopes the student isn’t kicked out of WSU because it seems he needs a bit more education. Posted from here