Roadside Architecture. "I have been passionate about commercial architecture and roadside related things all my life. I grew up in California but New York City has been my home since 1980. I started this website in 2000 simply as a way to organize my own photos. Since then, it has become a bit of an obsession and grown to well over 1,000 pages." flickr. blog. [more inside]
posted by mwhybark on Apr 14, 2009 - 11 comments

Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same motion picture soundtrack, reverse engineered. [more inside]
posted by melorama on Nov 17, 2007 - 58 comments

One day, a vintage motorcycle restorer gets an idea in his head to tackle a new project, restoring an old-timey "board-tracker" bike. In and of itself, that's not such a big deal; over the past century, vehicle restoration has become equal parts hobby, business, and spectator sport. The catch with this particular project, however, is that there are no existing examples of the bike he wants to rebuild, the last known extant part remaining is a corroded engine case, and there are only 5 known photographs - all of which happen to show just the right side of the bike. This is the story (so far) of Paul Brodie's Excelsior OHC. [via]
posted by the painkiller on Jan 26, 2007 - 14 comments

During his downtime on early worldwide tours with DEVO, Mark Mothersbaugh began illustrating on postcards to send to his friends, which he still creates, and has been creating every day for over 30 years. It's an obsessive habit/hobby which still yields anywhere from one to a couple dozen new postcard-sized images per day.
posted by furtive on Sep 3, 2006 - 11 comments

The Great War: "People at the time experienced it differently. We may think they were misinformed and deluded, and perhaps they were, or maybe we have become incredibly cynical and mistrusting. What were once considered to be civic virtues are now thought to be quaint anachronisms at best or grand delusions at worst. Things change." The site proffers an incredible variety of popular-press articles and imagery concerning the unfortunate European events of 1914 to 1918.
posted by mwhybark on Sep 1, 2006 - 40 comments

Galactic Central is the mother lode of magazine archives, with publishing information and cover art, including a prodigious pile of pulp magazines.
posted by crunchland on Feb 8, 2006 - 6 comments

Privacy? No thanks.
posted by I Love Tacos on Feb 2, 2006 - 12 comments

The Adaption to my Generation - daily portraits of Jonathan Keller...from 1998 to the present (as he states, "The project will continue until the day I die. Only then will it be complete, and worth its true value."). Also of note...his links page, which includes links to other "passage of time" (like the Portrait of Louise Anna Kubelka from birth to adulthood and Nicholas Nixon's "25 Years of the Brown Sisters") and "obsessive" (like Eat22 and 365 Plrds) photo projects...via Information Aesthetics.
posted by tpl1212 on Jan 26, 2006 - 14 comments

Fantastically obsessive & detailed recreation of Bag End (Bilbo's home from The Hobbit) in dollhouse scale. Pictures from the start of the project here.
posted by jonson on Jan 15, 2006 - 14 comments

À la carte explores French cookery in just about every angle one can imagine. Featuring an extensive list of recipes, suggested menus, and in-depth articles ranging from how to plan a meal, to what tools to use, including everything one needs to know about knives. Like Strawberries, & crêpes? Want to know more about ice creams & sorbets? Obsessive is an understatement.
posted by riffola on Nov 25, 2005 - 14 comments

Sarah Elizabeth Witt struggles to convey a word game [direct to quicktime] that caused her doctor to diagnose her as obsessive-compulsive.

"When I hear a word that starts with the letter U, I immediately gain access to the letter Y!"
posted by odinsdream on Nov 24, 2005 - 16 comments

cursor-dodger ... don't let the little guy grab your pointer.
posted by crunchland on Jul 29, 2005 - 31 comments

Ellis Parker Butler (1869 - 1934) American author, speaker, humorist. Author of more than 30 books and more than 2,000 stories and essays, Ellis Parker Butler is most famous for his short story "Pigs is Pigs" in which a bureaucratic stationmaster insists on levying the livestock rate for a shipment of two pet guinea pigs that soon start proliferating geometrically. This website is a loving tribute to a prolific author you've probably never heard of. Most of the stories and articles available on this web site have not been reprinted or reproduced since their original publication. Be sure to also check out the extensive library of vintage magazine covers.
posted by crunchland on Apr 10, 2005 - 5 comments

When your list of "dinosaur movies" can include "Wizard of Oz", maybe you've gone too far. These people make a distinction between “Live-action with people dressed as dinosaurs and/or mechanical dinosaurs” and “Live action with lizards dressed as dinosaurs or prehistoric animals”. That’s beyond thorough. But for basic information even potentially remotely related to dinosaurs and/or movies, I can’t imagine a better starting point.
posted by GhostintheMachine on Nov 27, 2003 - 5 comments

At the recent Digital Games Research Conference held at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Florence Chee and Richard Smith presented a paper on Everquest and its implications for addiction policy. Here's the full text and a decent summary here.
posted by Ufez Jones on Nov 7, 2003 - 5 comments

So how would you spend your retirement? In the grand tradition of the backyard Falcon and Gundam (link in Flacon thread), a retired Canadian Navy officer built a German submarine. In his garage. With "egg poaching cups and a motor from his wife’s blender", among other items. Sadly, he died before its launch. (more inside)
posted by GhostintheMachine on Sep 25, 2002 - 6 comments