Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Thanks to a 50% off $50 coupon on Groupon I became aware of this cute little place downtown called Color me Mine, where you go to paint pottery. First, you pick your white, unbaked clay piece from a shelf with a large selection. Then, you choose your glazes and colors, and begin painting. When you’re done, your piece is sent to the kiln to be dipped in a clear protective coat and fired. About a week later, you can pick it up!

The reviews on Yelp are overwhelming fantastic–yuppies love this place:

Places that give me options allow me to customize, and they allow me to personalize the product to my tailored desire. When you walk in here, you’re not buying an ‘Off-the-Rack’ ceramic piece; you’re ‘Making it your way.’ This is a great place to create a gift for someone special.

Now, I want you to disregard all the reviews talking about how this is a great place to catch up with your girlfriends. Because painting pottery is manly all the way. So next time you’re going out to a sports bar with your buddies, step up. Be a MAN. Say: “Guys. Screw the game. Let’s go paint ceramic teapots.”

When you first come in, there’s a few tables for painting, and a wall of pottery to choose from on the left. I decided to paint a box and a 1L water jug.

Here’s the jug and my paints, fresh and ready to start. I wrapped some parts of the jug with tape so will be highlights in white!

Halfway through painting the jug. Green handle and bottom. White strips along the sides. Red on top / bottom, blue in the middle. Should come out like some kind of gradient!

Evil box. Black top. Red bottom inside, and the walls are dripping blood!

Update: Less than a week later I got the final results back. Here they are!

I think the jug turned out nicely!

And here’s the box…

I think that I found the official wallpapers that are going to be used in Windows 7, whenever Microsoft gets around to releasing it! They’re quite pretty, and quite high-res. Take a look, and let me know what you think:

It’s almost like they took cues from Apple with these, which are smooth gradients and curves. No more boxy Windows in Windows 7! Update: I got these from somewhere else, but reader Skidzopedia has a download link.

This is hilarious; Iran has apparently photoshopped an extra missile into the photograph they released to the press about their recent missile test:

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo was used on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

This is the image that ran in the papers and has recently been retracted for being “apparently digitally altered” by Iranian state media. Agence France-Presse said the fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test.” Here I’ve blown up a portion of the smoke so you can clearly see the ’shop: