This is a fun idea for a blog which is both thought provoking and kind of funny. Blank is like blank gives a simile in each post, along with a humorous explanation. The author calls them analogies, but unlike the analogies you remember from the SAT test (trunk is to elephant as snout is to pig), I think these are better classified as examples of simile. There are some good ones, like these examples.

Raising a baby is like being lactose intolerant: You can’t enjoy the same things most people do, and your friends are kind of weirded out by it.

A world where Will Smith is the last human alive is like a bowl containing one M&M: Maybe it’d be better if it was empty.

Using a semicolon is like barbecuing: I’m never quite sure I’m doing it correctly.

Wikipedia is like hearing a great story in a bar: You hope it’s true, but never bother confirming it.

Joe D shares his refaced U.S. currency collection as a Flickr set. His description says “I’m surprised how much everyone likes this. It’s just something I’ve been toying around with every now and then. It all started when i would draw glasses or beards on money with the counterfeit pen on the registers at work and just grew in to a hobby.” Even though there is nothing extraordinary about the art, it’s still fun to see these well-known portraits in a whole new way.

I spent many hours mashing the two buttons on the original Nintendo game controller, so this project really brings back some memories. Kyle Downes talks about creating it and shows off the pictures at his blog called Ultra Awesome. If I were skilled enough to create something this cool, I would fire up some Ice Hockey, some Legend of Zelda, and then I’d use it to input the Contra cheat code. That is ultra awesome indeed.

There is something satisfying about opening a package and finding a nice new sheet of bubble wrap just asking to be popped. The magic of the World Wide Web has now made it possible to replicate the experience virtually. It’s true that it’s not quite the same, but if you’re like me, you can entertain yourself for almost 5 minutes with the bubble wrap flash application.

It seems like everyone has their home brew cure for the hiccups. I usually just try to drink a bunch of water in short small sips which seems to work eventually. The Growing Happiness blog claims to have the very best cure for hiccups, and they say that it’s as simple as drinking warm water, and the hiccups will disappear in 15 seconds. I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but it seems like just another tale of “here’s what works for me.” Looking at the comments on the post, many people are saying that they have a better solution than warm water, so I don’t think this is the end of the debate.

Sometimes you just want a quick couple sheets of lined paper or graph paper, and you don’t want to take a trip to the office supply store. For those situations, you can download a pdf file from printable paper and print your own. Considering the price of ink, this isn’t a good solution for creating a whole notebook, but if you need a specialty paper that you don’t normally use such as music or ledger paper, it could come in pretty handy.

With the growing popularity of MP3 players, iTunes, and other music downloading services, the audio CD market is quickly shrinking to nothing. But for the time being, most of us have CD players in our cars and stereos, and almost all of us have some CDs that we’re not planning to listen to ever again. That’s where lala.com comes in. It’s a social networking site which includes a tracking system for CD trading. List the CDs you’re willing to trade, and you’ll get a request when another users wants one of them. Send it out, and when they verify its arrival, you’ll receive a credit which gives you the opportunity to request an album that you want from another user. The cool part is that you can find users who like the same type of music and take a look at their collection to find new music that suits your taste.

For the most part I don’t really like ecards. They take the same sayings you find on paper cards and add some stupid flash graphics of fireworks or popping champagne corks. Then, along with an unwanted card, you find that a bunch of spammers put your email address on their list. I can’t help but like some of the cards available at someecards.com, however, because the writing is pretty clever. So if you want to send a greeting for tax day, check them out.

As a youngster, I remember having a Simon. I think I even played it all the way through a couple times. Frankly, I always got a little bored with it’s repeating patterns, but it was kind of fun to challenge your friends to a session of Simon. Now you can relive the lack of excitement and tedium online with the Simon flash game website. Try it once for the memory, and then put it back on the top shelf of the virtual closet next to the other board games that you never play anymore.

Advertising and marketing relies on Photoshop more than almost any other industry. They don’t always get it right, however, and the photoshop disasters blog catches their mistakes for our entertainment. Check out the Spiderman 2 poster, for example. Kristen Dunst’s arm must be at least 10 feet long to wrap around Spidey that way. Inspector Gadget has nothing on her.

I ran across this post at Neatorama. Their description says “The pic of Marvel Comics superhero The Thing of Fantastic Four is definitely one of the best examples of trompe l’oeil I’ve seen. It was drawn by Justen Ladda in 1981 at PS 37 in the Bronx, New York.”

When I think of sand castles, I think of the overturned bucket full of sand that my 4-year-old nephew sets up on the beach. Of course, that’s usually followed by my 3-year-old niece coming along like Godzilla stomping the tower to the ground. This gallery of sand castles shows creations that are quite a bit more complex. I don’t think I have the patience for competitive sand sculpting, but I have to say that these folks do an excellent job. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger image of one of my favorites.

Shown in the image are representations of all the Earth’s water and all of the air in Earth’s atmosphere collected into spheres and placed next to the mass of the planet for comparison. The site where I found this image also includes sources of information for finding the mass of all of the water and air, and some complicated math which claims to prove the accuracy of the claim. Whether or not the math actually proves anything, I think the picture is pretty interesting. There is also a post at boing boing about this image, which means a lot of users are sharing their comments about it.

This is the arcade that my inner 12-year-old would put together if I were given a blank check and access to the favorite games of my youth. Peter Hirschberg has made that pipe dream into a reality. With over 60 games spanning video game history from Pong to Donkey Kong, he has gathered a very impressive collection. He spent 2 years planning and building the structure, and describes it on his site.

Luna City Arcade is our private home arcade. It is housed in a seperate dedicated building, right next to our house. The building itself is 60′ x 40′ with 2 stories, a bathroom, and 12′ ceilings. The entire main floor is dedicated entirely to the arcade, so it is 2400 sq ft of wide open arcade space. Vintage posters for ’80s movies, toys, and video games line the walls, along with other period kitsch.

If you just need a quick way to convert a music file to MP3 format, or a Word Document to PDF, or a BMP image to a JPG file, you can do it online for free with Zamzar. You may have to deal with a pop-up ad or two, and there is a limit of 100 MB for the free version, but that’s plenty of space for almost any common audio file, document file, or image file. It’s probably not the best free tool for video conversion because of the limit, but it looks like it would be convenient in some situations.