It’s cool to get in a groove, but don’t end up getting stuck in one. Life has lots to offer. Try a different style of music. Check out some new art. Talk to a total stranger. Mix it up.
This picture was taken at Wondercon 2010, but it goes out to all my friends in San Diego today. Keep calm and carry on. Repeat after me: It’s only a toy. It’s only a toy. It’s only a toy. If the mantra fails, go get it; it’s probably awesome 
I’m a sucker for infographics and data visualizations. To create these raised-relief maps, Doug McCune used a full year of San Francisco crime data from 2009. The maps show a visual rendering of crime peeks in particular neighborhoods of San Francisco.
You should check out the full data set on Doug’s blog here. Beyond the obviously interesting nature of the way this information is presented, I found the disclaimer worth quoting:
These maps were generated from real data, but please don’t take them as being accurate. The data was aggregated geographically and artistically rendered. This is meant more as an art piece than an informative visualization.
I agree that these maps exist dually in the data and art worlds. I decided to take two of the maps into Photoshop and overlay them with a map of San Francisco neighborhoods. As you can see from these two visualizations, Neon Monster HQ (located in Noe Valley) is looking good on prostitution and narcotics crimes! Go us!
Hat tip to Sergey Safonov all the way in Moscow for pointing me to these San Francisco maps!
Tomorrow, Friday, March 12th at 12PM PST, Sket One releases his Bacon Swine Flu Edition custom 8″ Dunnys. The figures are “dressed in issued scrubs, blood splattered paint and ready for inoculation.” There are ten hand-crafted Bacon Swine Flu Edition Dunnys in this set. Each is signed and numbered and comes with the shown accessories available through at Sket’s Big Cartel Store.
The figures look so clean in the production sense, yet so dirty in the medical sense. Naturally, that paradox earns them a thumbs up from the Doctor!
You didn’t think all this was just for a single Cyclops, did you? Today, Neon Monster opened the doors to its Bestiary, a place where you can go to meet the Neon Monsters. There’s a Doctor who is obsessed with neon, a chicken-obsessed Mouth, a psychedelic Psnail, a proto-robotic Robotephant and a conglomeration of eyeballs with a viscous ectoplasm loosely binding them together aka Panoptes. We hope you like reading their stories, an evolving project of words and ideas by Isaac and Jacob Pritzker, 2D art by Reuben Rude and web design magic by The Neon Hive. Keep a watch on The Bestiary: you never know who or what might pop up.
I stopped by the Cave of Wonders to see how my monsters were doing, and encountered this interesting species: a radioactive sheep. Genus: Ovis. Nickname: Seamour. A most curious creature, to which many meanings may be ascribed and ascertained. His goggles nobly salute ’safety first,’ and though I have yet to test him for narcolepsy, he falls asleep with the utmost of ease. Many visitors have already adopted this glowing entity, no doubt to light their way in the Cave of Wonders and beyond. Read his fascinating history here. Clones are available to adopt here.
