MetaFilter posts tagged with repurposing

Musicartography

yiftach — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:01:38 -0800

A piano has 88 keys; Ohio has 88 counties. Cartographer Andy Woodruff noticed this fact while driving through Ohio to complete his Counties Visited Map, and decided, despite knowing nothing about music, to make a map based on this coincidence.

Can Vick's dogfighting house be repurposed?

pineapple — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:30:59 -0800

Before he went to prison for dogfighting, Michael Vick trained his pit bulls at a 4,600-sq-ft house on 15 acres in Surry, Virginia. Earlier this year, local tax rolls valued the property at $747,000, but Vick hurriedly sold the house to real estate developer Ray Todd on the cheap, to aid his mounting financial troubles. Todd had hoped to resell the house for $1M at a December auction, and dozens of rubberneckers toured the property -- to gawk at the syringes left on the ground, the twenty kennels "like prison cells", and the outbuildings where the dogs were fought. Naturally, no one was buying. Still, Todd wants to recoup his investment, so he’s turning to a conventional sale this month… and failing that, is considering building (unbelievably) a bed-and-breakfast where pets are welcome. Enter The Vick House project: a Dallas charity called Jalie’s Butterflies is hoping to raise enough money online to buy the house and convert it to a non-profit animal shelter, under guidance of the SPCA. But no good deed goes unpunished: from a post today at the Vick House blog, it appears that the charity has chosen to dissociate from PETA, removing them from their "Friends" page after after animal rescue activists opposed to PETA tactics have raised a fuss. Is this a case of “lemons into lemonade”? Or just a tempest in a teapot? And can a house where countless dogs were killed and trained to kill really become a good shelter for abused animals?

YourNameHereMeet dot com

jonson — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 00:12:34 -0800

Lonely? Online? Unwilling to fuck people that aren't exactly like you? Good news! The PeopleMeet Empire has a dating website custom designed specifically to fit your needs, whether you're Italian, Jewish, Divorced, Marriage Minded, Asian (nonspecific), Asian (specific), Old, Really Old, Christian (Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentacostal, Born Again, Mormon or Other), Republican, Democrat, Midget, Fit, Fat, the Outdoor type, the Indoor type, a Pet lover, Professional, some kooky Black variation of the earlier types, or even (gasp!) Californian.

Bootleg Objects

aeiou — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 10:13:40 -0800

Bootleg Objects, the site of two artists in Germany, have done some really amazing work retrofitting popular technology to serve a new and/or unintended purpose -- just because they can. It's quite beautiful design -- who knows of other examples?