(German Edition: click here!)

Sometimes, the stars align and we get a wonderful glimpse into how hilariously tasteless random chance can be. I've collected a number of these glimpses that people have found and put on the web. This one's been on the Jimmy Kimmel show already:

But it's not just TV that falls victim to ads clashing with content. Web sites with a lot of different types of content and largely random ad placement are also at risk. News sites, for example:

As you can see, the more serious a topic is, the more jarring an unfortunate ad placement can be. A very serious topic is of course September 11th:

Virgin even used the power of animation to offend:

Another sensitive topic is rape - especially prone to inappropriate advertising because so many ads use sexual innuendo and sensual imagery:

I mean, lube? Seriously?

Anyway, always likely to commit a faux-pas are context-sensitive ads that react to key words in a page:

But ads aren't just placed awkwardly in the media. The world is full of them:

A more seldomly seen occurrence is an ad unfortunately placed not in space, but in time. For example, this ad ran during the height of the SARS scare:

Once in a while though, you might get the ultimate ad spot:

(If you speak German, check out these as well)

Update, 25/05/07: I'm moving the additions from the comments to the main post and inlining them. Thanks again to Streetsblog, cioxx, SplitSoul, AtomicDrunk, evilbastard and Georgia Peach.

One more from cioxx (thanks buddy!):

I feel pretty bad for posting this but I just got this ad with that story and damn, that's some insensitive context sensitivity (or a really dirty mind, if you prefer):

From Press Esc:

Update, Jul 29th: Someone swiped half of this collection and gathered tons of diggs with it. Read about it here.

I'm going to return the favour and add whatever their digg thread generated in findings to this page. Don't hold it against me : )

Posted by Archos:

Posted by AndrewDBarker:

Posted by FuriousGopher

Posted by MalDON:

Posted by gthyb:

Update, Jul 31st 07: From a recent story on digg, submitted by arbiterofcool, a double whammy. BP's committed something, but I'm not sure it is "to using modern technology to treat wastewater"...

And from this digg story by GawtMilk:

And here another new one, via scythoior:

Here's a double whammy from Chagum at digg:

More stuff:

Jesus Christ, Sun.

Added 29/05/08 (thanks Swansonite):

Added 16/06/08, from PhotoshopDisasters:

Added, 08/07/08, Posted on digg by ipek:

Added, 21/09/08, two ads back to back that shouldn't have been from MeTal CaNdYcaNe:

Added, 25/09/09, from failblog:

This one isn't just unfortunately placed, it's tragically sad. (via Irish Bandit)

Added, 09/10/08, via DrNougat:

Added, 23/10/08, via eebliss:

Added, 29/10/08, via Gutter Monkey:

Added, 01/03/09, via Psykon:

Added Oct. 2nd, via the new jazz:

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Also a very long post title! This wallpaper is 1600×1200 (click the thumbnail below to download the large version). It's made from a giant picture of our Milky Way galaxy, adjusted a bit to look like a star explosion. I've been using it on and off on various computers.

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I saw a photo of the delicious Heidi Montag today, and for some reason it made me think of my favourite online comic (Dinosaur Comics). Not sure why.

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This was grown in a tank:

Pull it out!

3rd Annual Grossly Mismatched Sumo Tournament:

Preparing for missionary:

A couple of years ago, I put some text on a couple of pictures. This one seems to have gained some popularity, I saw a couple of similar pics that have popped up with the same text (some even with the tilt).

This one was from the same batch:

Anyway, try not to think about this one when you go to sleep tonight:

Good night and good luck.

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(This is an edited repost of an article I wrote for kwak attack, a collaborative blog.)

Waldo is pretty bad at hiding. Even small children can easily find him in his various books. Observe:

This quote from The Silicon Zoo gallery explains why their site exists.

"When searching the Sunday comic strip, you have to screen several hundred faces to find the real Waldo hiding, usually in a crowd, behind a building or in a corner. We caught this silicon version of Waldo (that is about 30 microns in size) hiding among caches, buses, and registers while searching through many thousands of square microns of complex circuitry with a high-power optical microscope. Waldo is the first Silicon Creature that we discovered, and this led to an exhaustive search for more creatures and construction of the The Silicon Zoo gallery."

That's right: The Silicon Zoo gallery contains hundreds of images that appear on microcircuitry (with enlightening and often hilarious comments), photographed with microscopes, ranging from simplistic 10 micron long planes to elaborate renditions of the ancient god of thunder, Thor.

The designers are, of course, geeks, as should be evident from the various pop culture references, horrible puns and boyish delight these images exude. Witness these two gems from a Hewlett-Packard math processor:

Oh yes, they went there.

The medium lends itself to comic style figures that are easily identifiable even if drawn very simply. Some old childhood friends appear on these chips:

But different techniques allow even photographic reproductions.

So, what do you think is the ultimate culmination of expertise, geekiness, and k-rad awesome ass-kickery? Why, it might just be the guitar-playing Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Explore the gallery thoroughly, it's full of surprising, beautiful and funny stories and pictures. Find out why one chip contains maps of France as well as Texas, discover video game icons and model trains rolling on high speed shift register tracks - this site is an absolute gem.

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After careful finetuning of my search string, I've concluded the highest number Google can stomach is somewhere around 1.79769313 × 10³⁰⁸.

How did I get this number?

Well, the equation grew organically: Siliziumleben posted his results for teaspoons in a cubic lightyear. Then femtoliters in a cubic megaparsec. I upped the ante to femtoliters in a cubic teraparsec, but there was still room. I had to figure out how far up and down in the naming of multiples of a thousand google can go.

Turns out it's yotta (10²⁴) in the > inf direction and yocto (10^-24) for values approaching zero. So, there I was with yoctoliters in a cubic yottaparsec. By that time, it had become less a race of getting the most outlandish units to clash and more of a race for the highest number Google could produce. I added multipliers to push beyond 10³⁰⁰, and finally found a brick wall. Google would tell me that there were infinitely many cubic yoctometers in (18 !) times googol (cubic yottaParsecs). The rest, as they say, is history!

Here's the exact search string that I ended up using:

((12.2444329202069885 * (16 !)) + (17 !)) times 1 googol (cubic yottaParsecs) = 1.79769313 × 10³⁰⁸ cubic yoctometers

Extending the 12.24somethingsomething multiplier beyond 16 digits of the fraction is left to the reader as an exercise : )

Update: I have been informed that Google works with 64Bit numbers, and that the highest number Google can deal with is therefore 2^(2^64) - 1. While you can't plug that into Google Calculator (the intermediate result 2^1024 is too large to handle), you can approximate it with (2^1023) * 1.999999999999999 = 1.79769313 × 10³⁰⁸.

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And you can be pretty fucking sure that I'll NEVER EVER do something like this again. EVER.

Please note the retarded amount of stuff that I needed to animate. Please realize that I used ImageReady for the whole thing and that every character and every coloring is on a separate layer. Please note the rather underwhelming outcome (not really, please think it rocks!)

I'm particularly proud of the clever use of ASCII characters to make a car that spells "car". I'm not particularly proud that this animation depicts a foetus being hit by said car, catapulted into a tree, falling to the ground, then bleeding to death.

Just so you know: the amount of work I stupidly put into this gives me the right to file it under video. >:(

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I usually make my own kick drum samples from synthesis, sampling and a lot of splicing and layering. I'm making 10 of them available for download in 16bit WAV format, not just to brag but to encourage others to do the same and not just use prepackaged kicks from sample CDs (or downloaded from me!). Make your own kicks and see the quality of your productions rise.

These drums should work well for many kinds of electronic dance music, including Trance, Techno, House and Goa/Psytrance.

Here's the link: Download 10 bassdrum samples made by wayfinder

Enjoy!

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Bubble Bobble is such a great game. I love the music, too. In what the Comics Industry calls a "reimagination", here's Bub!

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...denn die hängen sich mehr rein!

Zum Beispiel beim Verhör: Hart aber herzlich.

Was gut, gut, gut ist, setzt sich durch:

Die kriminaltheoretische Ausbildung ist erste Sahne:

Auf das Wohlergehen der Bürger wird peinlichst geachtet.

Aber auch auf ihr eigenes!

Durch umsichtiges Verhalten der Verbrecher hat die Polizei auch für andere Dinge Zeit.

Zum Beispiel für Akrobatik:

Nur zu gern helfen die Beamten auch bei Knochenjobs aus:

Recherchiert wird knallhart.

Beim Material ist jedoch durchaus noch Luft drin. Neidisch schielen die Landespolizisten auf die Ausrüstung des Bundesgrenzschutzes, vor allem die Autos:

Was bekommt die Polizei dagegen?

Das zeugt von schlechtem Geschmack. Gefährlich schlechtem Geschmack:

Und wie können Sie von der geballten Kompetenz des Staatsapparates profitieren?

Nur nicht erwischen lassen.

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Search terms that yield exactly one result on google. Great if you want consolation that you're not the only person that comes up with a horrible, horrible pun, but you still want to be kinda original. I found these:

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "the protools of the elders of zion".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "straight up stalin"

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "stdio 60 on the sunset strip".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "wtf-8 encoded".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "horrible cuddling". I broke this one meanwhile : (

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "outer reaches" "side boob".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for haribo-zack.

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "how to get killed by a sith".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "bohemian cockpit.

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "grape heaven" "raisin hell".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "Tom Arnold" "Jaleel White" "Bill Pullman" "Bobcat Goldthwaite". (This is the google thwack B-Team: Hannibal, BA Baracus, Face and Murdock)

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "strong stubby lips".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "speichel durchfall".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "the itchy pads".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "mary j. bleach"

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "sorry honey, i'm bushy".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for aloharythm.

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "the witness sex change".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "cory visi" goatse.

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "hacking with bonzai buddy".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "bling timeout".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "radar of the lost ark".

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "wayfinder sucks".

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fr-025:.the.popular.demo was released at Breakpoint 2003, and it went on to become, in a most deliciously self-fulfilling prophecy, the popular demo in the following years. I estimate that it's been downloaded about 750,000 times, with more than 500,000 downloads alone on scene.org, the demoscene archive. That probably makes it the most watched demo ever, and I am seriously awed by the amount of people outside the scene who know it. When I got involved in the project, I couldn't have known and wouldn't have dreamed that any of that was going to happen.

In the beginning,...

I was approached by fiver2, who had wanted to make a pop demo since at least 2002, probably earlier, and had already started on concepts and graphics. .Werkkzeug1 was being used for intros and demos both already and had proven itself capable of winning parties (in particular, Mekka/Symposium 2002 with the fantastic fr-019: poem to a horse). All signs said "go". Fiver2 insisted that the soundtrack should be the first thing to be finished, so he could synch properly and mold the demo to the music, and so I started. I wanted to make a candy colored discohouse tune that would appropriately capture the mindless indulgence of pure pop.

Finding the melody

I browsed through my unreleased and unfinished tunes to find inspiration - I do this from time to time when I'm looking for something specific. I've got a huge backlog of unfinished material in just about every style, mood and sound that I can use as reference. On this particular day, I stumbled upon a a groovy house track that I had made a couple of years ago, heavily influenced by Moloko - Sing It Back. A simple synthesizer riff over a deep, kind of latin bass and luscious strings, backed by a shuffly, grooving beat. Perfect.

I had meanwhile changed my weapon of choice, switched from Impulse Tracker to Buzz, so I translated the song from one sequencer to the other, changed it around a bit, used some fancier instruments where samples were used in the tracker and well, something was missing. I started looking for a vocalist.

Finding the vocals

I met Mike May on an art forum. He's an amazing artist, and he was one of the bigger shots on there. When I put out my call for a voice, he sent me a recording of his, and I was impressed. I decided that I wanted to work with him. I wrote the lyrics and melody over the course of two or three days, at first just humming along to a loop, then, when I had a melody, writing a text to go with it.

The lyrics to .the.popular.demo tell of something that seems to creep into everything I write, and that is the imminent loss of a good thing, and enjoying it while you've got it. The full text goes as follows:

Tonight tonight, it's all in motion,
Can't feel the gravity.
Tonight tonight, what is this potion
That makes a fool of me?
Tonight tonight, I'm seeing stars -
I'm blind with love.
Tonight tonight, we're Venus and Mars
Winking from above.

Tonight tonight, I feel like moving;
Like flying endlessly.
Tonight tonight, the city's grooving -
They're dancing all for me.
Tonight tonight, the perfect night,
The only one.
Tonight tonight, I'm holding you tight;
Tomorrow you will be gone...

They're a bit silly, and I rhymed love with above, but I think they capture the butterfly-like blissful melancholy of a moment of happiness that you know is going to fade. It's a fairly wide gamut of emotions, as far as pop music goes :)

It's all going wrong

The first draft is never exactly what you need. It turns out that the first draft of the music wasn't up to snuff. I went to Hamburg for a weekend, stayed at fiver2's place and tried to get a better feel of what he wanted. I re-wrote the whole shebang in a mere day, and that was the foundation of the final version.

Right before the supposed release of the demo, disaster struck. I didn't get the vocals in time. Everything was now up in the air. The song wouldn't work without vocals. There was no way I was going to get them in time. What was there to do?

Party Version

We decided to go with the replacement vocals that a friend of Chaos, his choir conductor in fact, had recorded a couple of weeks earlier. They weren't what I had imagined, and I was really miffed about the whole thing. Additionally, both Chaos and I had organizing duties to attend to while trying to put the finishing touches on the demo. I struggled a bit (10 agonizing beta versions) with the placement of last minute sound effects (the sweeping arches), but finally we had a product. I wasn't totally happy with it, mostly because of the wrong vocals, but it killed at BP. Not even the botched mixing (done on headphones at the party) was too distracting. After the compo, I was finally happy.

Aftershow Festivities

We quickly released a final version, with the vocals from Mike May and a little better mixing (although, looking back, it's still pretty much atrocious), and the demo went on to the top of the charts at pouet, where it still resides. An amazing ride that sometimes still makes people go, "THE wayfinder?" when we meet online, and I'm very glad that it all happened the way it did.

Download fr-025 Soundtrack (Single Edit) (House, 3:40, 4.2MB)

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Neben dem englischen Sprachraum ist natürlich auch der deutsche nicht vor seltsam platzierten Anzeigen gefeit.

Böse (gefunden von abductee):

Ganz böse:

GANZ GANZ BÖSE:

Nicht ganz so böse, aber irgendwie lustig:

...und völlig bizarr:

Addendum, 1.11.07:

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I was looking for a player for .flv files - Flash Video - and found fluffy. The agency that made this tool, nothing, has a nice site with a backlog of disturbingly candy-cartoonish illustrations and cute logo design, oh and did I mention they're robots from the year 3086?

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