Jay Shafer takes you inside his tiny 100 square foot home. Since 1997 he's been living in a house smaller than most people's closets. I don't think I'll ever complain about a small apartment again.

Jay talks about his reasons behind designing these tiny homes, which are mostly environmental... though he does mention that he doesn't like vacuuming. :)

I just read on NewTeeVee that episodes of Fraggle Rock are now available on iTunes! To celebrate, enjoy the opening theme song!

Thanks to our comic book industry friend Adam Wallenta, the big news this week is the return of Captain America after the assassination of Steve Rogers, the original Cappy.

That Alex Ross cover art on the right (above) is sick, but I'm not sold on the new uniform. Who follows comics out there and what do you think of the new Cappy? I'm a reformed comics junkie (I once owned over 10,000 comics, and read every single one of them) and I once owned issue #100 of Captain America from the original series.

As we get this week's show ready to upload, we didn't really have a place to leave in this blooper. But we can't help but keep giggling at it, so we figured we'd share it.

When things are going well with a shoot, Zadi can't keep a straight face. :) So I told her to make a serious face and she got into this whole evil-eye baby meme thing (embedded underneath) that was really funny. Here it is:

And here's the original:

Umm yeah I think the title pretty much says it all. These guys are eco-friendly in their own way.

This is a free download over at thesixtyone, a digg-like music discovery site we featured a couple weeks ago.

Tonight we got this great email from Luke:

Hey to all at Epic-Fu. I just wanted you all to know that I as well with many others really love your show. I was a geek in hiding until I discovered you guys. I was always embaressed to do the things that I recently discovered alot of us do. Such as, coming up with creative ways to jazz up your myspace or listening to thesixtyone.com.

Without you guys, I might still be in hiding. But I am out and proud to be a geek. Keep up the great work.

Luke

Thanks, Luke! You made our night!

Maybe you've heard the controversy surrounding Google's Street View feature in Google Maps. Check out this funny yet poignant video by The Vacationeers that gives us a glimpse into what our Google overlords might be planning next.

I can't explain what this is, or what it means, but it is awesomeness. Can someone please translate? :)

Check out this video from iwouldntsteal.net. It's a response to the "piracy is a crime" video that has aired on television.

They express that making a copy and sharing does not equal stealing. They also believe sharing expands culture and supports the artist.

Check out the web trends map for 2008 by Information Architects. They've taken about 300 of the most influential web sites and mashed them up with the Tokyo train map. Check out the clickable online version. You can get a large poster size PDF for your home or office and they're coming out with the desktop wallpaper soon.

[Via informationarchitects.jp]

Chip Whitehouse is a student at Indiana University getting a BFA in painting. Recently he's gotten into making speed painting videos, where he documents his painting process in generally under five minutes.

He uses ArtRage and a Wacom Intuos3 6x8 graphics tablet to make the art, screen captures the process with CamStudio and edits it all with Windows Movie Maker. He recently made one for us. It's really impressive to watch. Drop him a line and let him know what you think.

Thanks to Josh for the heads up. Read more at Best Week Ever.

Our friend Paul Dateh was just telling us a story told to him by Johnny Juice.

It goes something like this: James Brown invites Michael Jackson on stage, Michael performs for about 30 seconds then asks James to invite his friend Prince on stage (James has never heard of him). Prince finally emerges through the crowd on a large man's back. On stage, he plucks a few awkward strings on an electric guitar, strips down, rubs his body in a very "emotional" way and attempts to crawl up a fake lamp post... but falls off stage.

It's one of those things you just have to see.

In remembering Martin Luther King today, I came across this speech by him against the Vietnam War (or in Vietnam, the American War).

I couldn't help but wonder how he would feel about the Iraq war if he were alive today.

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Let me give you a piece of advice. Never mess with a man's computer. Unless it's a harmless prank like this one for inverting the colors on any Mac OS X machine. Use this keystroke combination:

Go ahead and try it. Use the same keystroke to go back to normal. Like every other prank, the set up is most important. So before you start control-opt-command-eighting all of your friends, you might want to tell them about the new Mac virus that's corrupting LCD displays. Have fun!

Here's a cool site I discovered recently for keeping up with real-time conversations about the presidential candidates. It's called Politweets and it's a Twitter-mashup that tracks mentions of the candidates' names and organizes the discussions into columns for Republicans and Democrats. It's not perfect, especially for Ron Paul -- whose last name is pretty common so only his full name tracked, but it's still useful for keeping up with what's going on in campaign-land.

Definitely check it out tonight during the South Carolina Democratic debate on CNN.

If you find yourself bored or in need of a fun distraction, artist Ferry Halim posts his delightful flash games on his site. They are all very refined and very intuitive and easy to play. I've toyed around with about 10 of them, and they were all really simple and a lot of fun.

In the "Items of Questionable Usefulness" category, I present a gentleman who pulled a laser out of his DVD burner, installed it in a mag-lite flashlight, and created a weapon that can set fire to things and destroy balloons. DIY at its finest! :)

What Happens When Google's Parents Leave Town for the Weekend?

Damn, just look at that freaking hole! About a year ago, our ever-changing planet swallowed a dozen homes and killed a few people when this sinkhole gave way in Guatemala. More pictures after the jump.

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It's faster.
Leechers are the scourge of the peer-to-peer community. They disable uploads during their download sessions and slow down the network for everyone else. Leechers run rampant on public trackers where there's no accountability.

Because private trackers enforce ratios, leechers are spotted quickly and their accounts are disabled. Ratios work like this -- if you upload as much data as you download, you have a 1:1 ratio. Better trackers have higher ratio requirements, but generally speaking 1:1 is considered good.

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Jason on MIX found the latest Jon Lajoie joint, and as usual it's hysterical. We spotlighted Everyday Normal Guy a few weeks ago on EPIC-FU and it got a great reception. The guy is definitely a talented comedian, I think he's going to do great stuff in the future that will reach a large audience.

Check out Everyday Normal Guy 2!

Last week we were at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and Zadi joined Tom and Molly on the CNET stage for Buzz Out Loud. They had 3 cameras going and a crane set up for the big sweeping shots -- it was really impressive. A huge thanks to the good folks there, and especially to Randall Bennett for hooking me up with a DV tape! ;)

Click the image to go to CNET's site and watch the video in their player!

You can subscribe to the Buzz Out Loud podcast here.

We have some talented friends. Mike Ambs and Amanda Walker have been working on Project Pedal for quite some time now, a documentary film about a cross-country biking journey and the inspiring people that cross their path. Mike has been documenting the experience through a behind-the-scenes videoblog and most recently releasing Part 1 of a series meant to take you on a narrative journey through their production experience.

What I've seen so far is beautiful, layered and rich. I can't wait to see the entire film once its finished. Check out the videoblog, watch it in HD, and let them know what you think.

We featured Natasha Wescoat and her artwork on the show previously. She recently twittered that she had a new video up for her artist guide series about artist pet peeves. If you're an artist, or aspiring to be one, definitely check out her blog posts, art and videos at natashasartcandy.com. Good tips and good inspiration. Also, I hear her birthday is coming up. Happy birthday Natasha!

I was pretty excited. Now I'm not. My Macbook Pro might look a little clunkier than its new thin, sleek and sexy compatriot, but it has more memory, more usb ports, a replaceable battery, a firewire drive and really cool stickers I've placed on it to look more "personalized." Also, I'm not afraid it might fly away during a wind storm.

Don't get me wrong, the new Macbook Air looks gorgeous (except for the large bevel/gutter area around the screen), but starting at $1,799, it doesn't exactly make me jump for happy-happy, joy-joy. I think I'll wait it out. I hear that good things come to those who wait... or at least better things.

Also, will it blend?

A 16-year old Australian kid threw a huge party, got busted by the police and was interviewed on TV shortly after. The rest is history. Watch for the naked guy running out of the house.

Seriously, I watched this and I got reaaally jealous. Our Tumblr friends in NYC had a Rock Band party together with our friends at N3 and Frederator Studios. Looks like tons of fun. Makes me think we should form a west coast rock band, and revive the whole east coast/west coast rivalry thing. :)

Via: shey.net

DJ Earworm has done it again. I have to say, mashing up 25 pop songs and making them sound harmonious is a pretty crazy feat to pull off, but yeah, I think he pulls it off. I was definitely bopping in my chair.

Have a listen. What do you think?

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If you're throwing a party for all your geek friends, replace those boring old place holders with little Lego people! These Star Wars ones are super fun, but I can imagine you can tailor your Lego person to fit your party theme - or even make them look like the person on the card.

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Sit back and take a 30 minute trip down memory lane with some of the more popular cartoon openings of the time. I promise when you're done, you'll feel right as rain. ;)

This past week on the show we spotlighted Bat for Lashes, the UK band headed by Natasha Khan, a Brighton based singer/songwriter. The group (whose female counterparts have included Ginger Lee, Abi Fry, Caroline Weeks and Lizzy Carey) mixes the sound of drums, guitar, piano, harpsichord, and occasional hand claps to create a sound that is dark, haunting and consistently intriguing.

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MIX member Tia is a really talented jewelery craftsperson. I remember seeing her stuff when she uploaded a bunch of photos to MIX when she first joined many months ago and thinking how lovely the stuff was. Check out a few pieces, and then go to her store and support independent artists and craftspeople!

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Semanal, is a group of dedicated videobloggers inspiring each other to post just one video per week for the entire year.

Started by Rupert Howe of Twittervlog.tv,the idea is to just pick up a camera and start filming. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to move. And don't worry if you're late, people will be joining throughout the year. Just tag your video semanal08 and you're good to go. It also helps that there are already over a hundred members - you'll have plenty of people inspiring and pushing you to create. So go and create!

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Looks like George Romero is going back to his indie roots. Check out the trailer (just released today) for Diary of the Dead -- in theaters February 15th. It's supposedly the first film he's had complete control over since the original Night of the Living Dead. I like the "Blair Witch" approach to horror films, so this might be worthy of Romero's name after all -- hey it can't be worse than 2005's Land of the Dead. Wow that was bad.

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gOS, the free operating system that just so happened to earn our FU of the Week award this week, also just released a new version of their OS. According to Mashable, the update "brings several important tweaks and improvements; namely support for Google Gears, virtual desktops, online storage drive, Adobe Flash 9 for Linux, and an updated Wi-Fi manager." Grab the free download at thinkgos.com and tell us what you think!

This amazing and compelling musician was originally blogged by Göran Wallin on MIX. He writes in response to a comment:

...the instrument is called "hang," and was developed from steel drums around the year 2000, so it's a completely new instrument. You can read more about hang drums on Wikipedia.

Göran's profile is here. Awesome find by him!

I just finished watching this really cool six-part documentary series called Eternal Children about the freak folk music scene. It features two of my favorite musical artists, CocoRosie and Devendra Banhart, among others.

It's a pretty interesting look into the thoughts and lives of these artists as they navigate their own very unique creative waters. Definitely worth checking out. The complete series after the break.

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I've been looking for a way to work this project into a show for the past 4 months, but since it hasn't happened, I wanted to post it on the blog because I think it's such a great project. Hope Larson is an art school student and created a "kiss book" that she intended to pass around to her classmates for them to illustrate. She writes:

It ceased to be a kiss book the moment it was passed to someone without my knowledge, which was disappointing, but it turned out well anyway.

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Since living in AZ and trying to find different places to see, I stumbled across this - The Polar Express. They are booked up a couple of years in advanced. But, since we didn't want to wait that long, we were able to snag a ticket AFTER Christmas this year.

After a harrowing trip at high speeds (we had a late start) from Phoenix (less than 1000 feet high) to Williams, AZ (8000 feet high - 3 hour drive done in 2 hours), to the Grand Canyon Train Station. We managed to get there just in time for train to be loading. Unfortunately, we arrived at train car A, and our train was car L - so, a mad dash down to the other end of the train. We were greeted by the nice people who boarded us, and we sat down in our assigned seats. The backs of the chair can be flipped so that you face each other - and I did that for my family.

Couple of toots of the whistle, and off we were. Hot chocolate and cookies were served by cooks and elves. We sang Christmas carols and read thru the book as the train took us to the North Pole.

At the North Pole was Santa pad - all aglow. Then Santa entered our car and gave out jingle bells.

He went from car to car doing such. Then the train turned around and went back to the station.

Neat night - especially for the kids.

Happy New Year everyone! This year start me off with a terrible flu-like cold. Sore throat, acheness, tired, and very much lack of sleep. NYE (New Year Eve - first time I saw this acronym was like couple of days ago) was spend chasing kids, drinking eggnog, and watching the ball drop again, and again, and again, as we celebrated three time zones of changes.

Tired of the after holidays sales, tired of all the new ads for "great new things" in 2008. Email, pownce, and twitter was very quiet during the turnover - at least for the folks I watch.

After seeing all the people that came to S&Z holiday party - all the people they know, I've started to try (futility most likely) to catch up with some of their blogs, video, comments, etc. Good evening Burbank - made it thru all of their shows. Seen all the Tikibar's shows. Saw all of the Scriggity shows. Watch of couple of the IndyMogul stuff.

Very creative people out there!

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