A light thingy hanging from the ceiling just on top of your pillow featuring a “Snooze” function that makes you physically wake up

When I first saw the photo I thought it gradually slid down and lightened up until it reached your head and a high level of annoyance, but it’s the other way round. “Sfera” actually turns on in the morning just on top of you, and when you switch it off with a smack, the snooze function starts raising the thing every time you smack it off… until you have to literally wake up to shut the sucker up. [Via Core77]
Personally, my idea of the definitive alarm clock is something similar to this. It would be some sort of hook hanging from the ceiling to which you could cling to, letting IT do the physical effort to wake YOU up. Or a bed tilting onwards to the vertical.

Eight-minute short film, starring Ferrari 275GTB and a happy ending

This is romantic. When did traffic jams start to mess up Paris? Certainly not in the seventies… C’etait un rendevous by Claude Lelouch. (Warning: 34Mbytes). Also available here [Via Jalopnik]

Ethics and consequences aside, I’ve always liked the aesthetics of missiles, jets, rockets, tanks, etc. Yeah, of weapons. They can dance beautifully

Please don’t anyone get too serious with this, it’s just about Colonel Blimp’s Plaid videoclip for Basement Jaxx’s song “Cish Cash”. Without rapping against Bush, they rise the topic stylishly in this monochrome video. Scene with jet fighters drawing syncrhonized vapour tails keeps my hair stand on end. Real Audio stream: Low / High.

Photographs of the same places in NYC, ones 60 years ago and ones few years ago

There was this Berenice Abbott’s photographic work featuring the New York City in the late 30’s, and now Douglas Levere has published photographs of the very same sites… in the ’90s. The comparison view of both works is as surprising as beautiful. [Via Josh Spear]

A website referral search tool using Google’s engine to present the surroundings of a given site in a diagram-like graph

I’m not sure this is the future of searching or anything similar, but it certainly provides a curious —one of many, only this is visual— point of view of the network that relates a website with others. The fact that the way the links between sites are shown is drawn randomnly and that you can even move them around quite reinforces the “curious but useless tool” theory. Useles in the sense that, like, are you really going to add this to favourites? You have to check it out anyway. [Via Josh Spear]

The Chemical Brothers are releasing “Push The Button” in 9 days. The first single “Galvanize” is exactly what I wanted

Go to www.thechemicalbrothers.com, click on “Music+video”, then watch the Galvanize video. Not the best Chemical’s video but includes a beautiful breakdance fight at the end, plus it’s been recorded in Spain (notice the car in the last scene). I’ve always been dubious about full lyrics in these guys’ tracks, and this one is no exception, but what a song otherwise. I just love this kind of ultrapowerful music that feels like a hymn to happiness itself. Or energy, whatever. And aren’t those violins??? I’m listening to the full album now (blame P2P) and the first 3 tracks (including Galvanize) are equally pounding. After them, retro sounds don’t feel so exciting as in previous albums. Maybe because retro isn’t the most exciting thing in the world anymore. But hey, it’s a new Chemical Brothers album, weeellcome!

Forget about Corel Painter, Photoshop or Tablet PCs’ Windows Journal, this is the best tool for digital drawing

I never managed to get my Wacom tablet nor my Tablet PC touchscreen to work right with Corel Photopaint or Photoshop. Pen-drawing is much more natural with Corel Painter but none of this software resembles a real paper sketchbook so well than Alias Sketchbook Pro. It has most drawing tools (the airbrush is impressive) and the original interface just helps you want to draw more. The sketch below was my first one, done in half an hour just to test the program.

The once-radical Japo whose latest generations were as exciting as unseasoned spaguetti seems to go back in the right lane

Yep, I’m blogging about cars here. I think we need a new category. Anyway. These spy shots show a good attempt by Honda to retrieve originality in the design of their best seller. Original in the “different from the rest” sense, not like “same as the first generations”. Becasue actually this new Civic doesn’t look like any other Civic before (Link1, Link2), and while I appreciate the new risks (you have to be careful with putting the wheels so near the ends in a car that wants to look sporty), there won’t be anything like the ‘83, ‘87 and ‘91 generations. Click on more to see photos of all of them and in the links above for even more.

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The smallest you could get for a kitchen block; in only one piece it includes all you need.

You might not have space but you always need the basic kitchen utilities. This design, all in stainless-steel by Norbert Wangen for Boffi not only has a cool look, but also all you need for a basic cooking experience (oven/Microwave, dishwasher, sink, fridge) hidden below a surface that doubles as a table. And there’s still some place for a cupboard. No more excuses for pulling down the wall that divides your kitchen with your living room… gain some room for your friends and bring them in for dinner.