Tony Stephens / Simian Design

Primatology.net, a new favorite site of mine, has this fantastic article on this Orangutan from Borneo.  This Orangutan is special because he’s using a tool.  Not just any tool though.  We’ve seen primates use tools before.  But this Orangutan is SPEAR-FISHING.

Gurd Schuster is the researcher that took this photo.  He did mention that while this orangutan learnt this method from watching fishermen along the river, he hasn’t fully mastered the skill yet.

“Although the method required too much skill for him to master, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals’ fishing lines”

I, for one, welcome our Spear-Fishing Orangutan Overlords.

An amazing, homemade, underground fortress is for sale.  It’s in Blaine, WA.  He built it over the course of 20 years, working it 45 feet under his house!

The fortress has over 1600 sq. ft. of living area, plus hundreds of more square feet of passages and secrets rooms. It was all hand dug over a 20 year period, and all the walls were constructed with a small electric hand cement mixer. There are 3 ft concrete walls, using 5-bag cement (20% denser than regular cement). Not only are the walls thick and dense, but the finishing work is amazing quality. These walls keep it a constant 60F degrees year round. It is so well insulated that even one small space heater can heat all 1600+ sqft of fortress space in a few hours. The fortress has amazingly fresh air in it with an incredible air ventilation system that pulls air outside and brings fresh air in, leaving no moldy or musty smell that you commonly smell in basements.

It’s listed as a two-story house with four stories underneath. Go through the photos, showing the secret doors, the many levels, the amazing finish work.  I’m stunned.  I really want to live here.

Discovery Channel: I Love the World

Richard Pryor’s alphabet

Don’t nobody care about D, because E has it all covered. Just genius.

Pixelsurgeon is Dead.  I, for one, will miss this site.    It was a great site while it lasted.

The latest commercial from Guinness borders the line between commercial and short-story/art film.  It reminds me of the BMW “Drive” commercials at first watch.

I find myself just watching this over and over again in sheer pleasure.

The advert, part of a £10 million campaign, was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, who was behind the Sony Bravia “balls” commercial. The advert took a week to film, with some of the sequences having to be reshot up to 15 times.

High Altitude Object is a fascinating project this guy did on his own.  He put a camera and a helium ballon up into the edge of space.  Amazing stuff.

ReubenMiller : Coat Hanger Gorilla

Ok, two quick links today of useful pages that I ran across.

One is a LONG list of links that deal with building better forms. Web form basics, usability, accessibility, form design, form processing, validation, and generators are all covered.

The other is a useful page on 5 JavaScript Tricks Made Easy with jQuery. Swapping form fields, character countdowns in textareas, centering a div popup, collapsing table columns, and reading RSS are the tricks.