Random Thursday: The Saturday Edition

A little of this, a bit of that – mindless web-surfing on a cold and damp Saturday afternoon reveals the following gems.

I’m a sucker for multi-tools, although I confess that I rarely find a need to use one. One reason is that even though they’re generally tiny, they’re still inconvenient to carry in a pocket. Leatherman has come up with a solution to that problem: a customizable multi-tool that you wear as a bracelet. If Pandora went goth, the Tread might be the result. Good luck getting that thing through airport security, though.

The best ideas are often the simplest ones, and Snap Power’s Guidelight is a perfect example. This is an indoor night light that simply snaps onto your electrical outlet in place of the existing faceplate – no rewiring involved – and provides nice LED lighting without occupying an outlet.

Stepping up the food chain, price-wise, is the new Tamron 150-600mm zoom lens, which is getting rave reviews, especially considering its low price (which is almost half of what competitor Sigma charges for an equivalent lens). I’m practically salivating at the thought of the photos I could get of the fox with this lens.

Let’s switch gears and move to the category of Close Encounters of the Motorized Kind. First up, what would you do if you had a spare Lamborghini V-12 engine laying around the garage? (Setting aside for a moment the question of just what exactly happened to the rest of the car…) If your answer is to build a motorcycle around it, you might be clinically insane, but at least you have company.

There’s insanity, and then there’s sheer craziness, like paying a half million dollars for a 1969 Chevy Nova. Of course, any true 60s vintage hot rodder will tell you that the Nova was an underestimated powerhouse due to its power-to-weight ratio. And this isn’t just any Nova, but rather one of Don Yenko‘s limited edition models, showing off with a 450-hp, 427 c.i. L-72 Corvette engine. (Update: This car actually ended up selling at auction for a mere $380,000.)

As long as we’re hovering around 1969, let’s just jump into full time-travel mode, web-wise.

The 45 RPM Database will let you see (and hear) the top 10 songs of every month from 1950-1989. I wanted to see what was trending the year I was born; turns out it was by a simple one-lyric tune by a guy named Bell: Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you. I give it a 12…silly words and hard to dance to. (Seriously tho, while I won’t tell you the year, I can say that the top three tunes were by guys named Al Martino, Leroy Anderson, and Percy Faith.)

The Washington Post has compiled a list of the 20 most visited websites each year since 1996. This list could provide fodder for a whole series of posts by itself, but here are a few observations: Yahoo is the only website to appear on every list; Penthouse made the first list, but never appeared again; Amazon first appeared in 1998; and for the past four years, Yahoo/Google/Microsoft/Facebook have occupied the top four rankings, although in varying individual positions. The real travesty is that the Fire Ant Gazette appears no where on the list, making me think that the WaPo really is a commie pinko rag.

Last, but certainly not least, there’s this gallery by artist Flora Borsi, who specializes in software manipulated photography. The gallery is appropriately entitled “Time travel,” and it consists of well-known photos with the artist’s likeness inserted digitally as a highly-engaged observer. I love not only the concept, but the skill with which she brings it to realization.