The packaging for this knife set by Keiji Ashizawa has been written up in just about every design blog on the net. The knives are beautifully handmade in organic shapes and each shelf uses dove-tail joints to allow the system to slide apart and lock back together. In a world of mass production, there’s still room for art in design and function.

Super-cute video of a baby flipping through a magazine and finding it frustrating that the pages swipe ok but the images don’t respond to finger gestures, nor can she scroll.

If you’ve ever been stuck in a queue wondering why all the other lines move faster – an engineer has the answer and surprisingly the theory starts with ye olde telephone switchboards:

Occasionally we see wedding videographers at our weddings and I always wonder what the end result is – then I stumbled upon the following video from The Stylish Soiree. Shot in the style of Amelie, it is simply awesome:

Amelie Inspired Shoot from Lovespun ~ Handmade Films on Vimeo.

In 1990, 30,000 people lined up to eat at Moscow’s first McDonald’s. I like the expressions on the faces of the people once inside – a cross between bewilderment and dissapointment. I’ve fallen victim to this in Thailand, a long queue was forming around a city block for a new chain of cinnamon bun stores – I passed this queue every day, dying to know what the fuss was about. Then one day, on closing time the line was small and I managed to get my hands on one – just a gooey sticky bun. This shop spurned some imitation stores and now, a few years later, there are none to be found – the trend has died. But McDonald’s has proven itself to be more than a trend, please enjoy Russia’s first taste of Captalistic Decadence in the video below:

You might wonder what’s in your local fast-food hamburger but it’s probably nowhere nearly as toxic as what is in the burgers that look oh so good in their picture board menu displays – check it out:

What you’re about to see is amazingly poetic and beautiful – thanks to the wonders of Autotune (the technology that most popstars use to shift their voice when they sing out of key) you’re about to see boring physics lectures turned into something amazingly poetic.

John Boswell of Symphony of Science made this song featuring Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye.

Popstars should be banned from using autotune leaving autotune to the people who really do have something to say:

Australia.

See more national flags made from the country’s national food at my favourite design site:toxel.

It’s easy to capture pretty photos of the ‘happy couple’ in our gardens. But the photographer Todd Hunter Mcgraw took some photos at a recent wedding at the Spirit House that are quirky, original and unique.

Todd truly has a great eye for that unusual shot and manages to take the ordinary and turn it into something special. An example is this photo from our smoker’s courtyard – an area that most wedding photographers never use:

This is definitely not your traditional wedding photo but it really makes a statement – you can see more great photos and read more about this wedding on his blog:

Dusk is a must ! .. Cara & Craig » toddhuntermcgaw.com.au.

We love good design at the Spirit House and the you know design is good if some love it and others hate it – so when it comes to knives we think this is pretty neat:

Give one of these to a teenager and you’re going to get some help in the kitchen. The blood stain is permanently set on to the blade and the evidence tag is a nice touch. And at $20Aus or so, it’s quite a bargain. You can buy it online at Neatorama’s shop.