I’m really in a Halloween mood, even though I have to stay in today to catch up on some work. So no dressing up and trick or treating for me this year (to be fair, I’ve never really celebrated Halloween before, so it’s not as if I’m missing out this year, cause normally I wouldn’t do anything anyway). Despite that though, I couldn’t resist thinking of costumes and wondering what I could put together if I had to do something last minute. So here’s my short list of last minute outfits (most of these are somewhat based by clothes I own, and which I could pull off last minute if I wanted to).

1. Lara Croft – Tomb Raider

An obvious place for me to start, especially after I got the remark last summer that I was in full-on Tomb Raider style. All you need is a simple black or brown pair of shorts, plus a black or brown tank top (although white and teal are also possible depending on which game/movie you take). Add a pair of sun glasses, boots and your outfit is complete. For extra effect, add a fake gun, gloves, and a little back pack.

2. Echo – Dollhouse

How simple can you make it? The dolls when in the Dollhouse walk around in what are basically pajamas. Loose fitting pants and a simple tank top… tada! You’re done. Now just walk around with a vacant look on your face.

3. Max – Dark Angel

I’m not even sure most people will get this, but I used to love Dark Angel (until it got cancelled… by Fox… of course). Max had a lot of different type of outfits on Dark Angel, but half of the time it was leather pants (or trousers or whatever you call it here in the UK) plus a neck high zipped jacket. Don’t forget to add the barcode to the back of your neck!

4. Steampunk

You might have seen my tweets yesterday when I realized I could use my bridesmaid dress as the basis for a steampunk costum. This is the dress I got, but anything brown and kind of long and flowy should work for this. There are a lot of ways you can go about putting this look together (there aren’t any real steampunk costume rules, I assume, it just has to be a bit victorian inspired). I’d try adding a leather vest or corset over the dress, or if you can find it a white high collared old fashioned shirt with ruffles. Add extra props like goggles or a parasol.

5. Chuck – Pushing Daisies

Again a tricky one, cause there are so many possibilities. Chuck on Pushing Daisies always had very colourfol combos on, and the main thing you have to bear in mind is to keep it as vibrant as possible. Most of the time she’d layer clothes in the same colour; for example, a bright red dress plus a bright red coat (although any colour would do). Most of the dresses were 50s inspired (although it depended per week). Add sun glasses and a head shawl to complete the outfit.

Bonus: Elle Wood – Legally Blonde

It’s not really a ‘geeky’ outfit, but I thought I add it anyway. To create the Elle Wood look, just take anything pink! Oh, and you have to be blonde (or get a wig). Extra points if you can arrange a chihuahua.

Interesting links for October 4th through October 20th:

• People With Same Name as Tube Stations – Hehehe, love this post. Especially because of some of the more 'hidden' tube names like Edward G Ware. (Ed G Ware -> Edgeware) or Stephen Bury, who entered the army and became Gunner S Bury. Lol.
• Thoughts on my “How To Be A Good Interviewer” Session at Blogworld : Ewan Spence’s All New Musings. – Great slides on how to interview people (something I should really work on).
• Bazaaro – Gorgeous and weird Tim Burton spread in October's Bazaar. I'm not sure though it it's just "inspired" by TIm Burton, or if he actually also worked on it. (I'm thinking the former)
• Kashiwa Mystery Cafe – Great idea, and it must be amazing to stumble on something like that while on holiday.
• Ironic Sans: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica? Quiz – Yay! I got 19 out of 20. How did you score?

Interesting links for September 28th through September 29th:

• Neil deGrasse Tyson’s worst science movie of all time? Titanic. – Great anecdotal story from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse on how he met James Cameron and talked about his problem with Titanic.
• SpY, street art, urban art – Wonderful art from SpY, a former graffiti artist turned ‘urban remodeler’. Definitely have a look at the urban furniture and interventions.
• William Safire’s Finest Speech – The speech William Safire drafted for Nixon to read in case the Apollo 11 Astronauts became stranded on the moon. Interesting peek into an alternate history scenario…

Interesting links for September 2nd through September 27th:

• Clive Thompson on the New Literacy – Article about how the online world actually makes the current generation write more (than previous generations) and that we are on the cusp of a literacy revolution.
• Lego Art by Mike Stimpson – I love some of these photos! My favourites are American Beauty and the V.J. Times Square kiss.
• Snow Leopard Review – Best Snow Leopard review I’ve read so far!

I stumbled on an interesting website called Personas; it’s part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, that’s currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses natural language processing to create a data portrait of your online identity.

I like the idea, but it didn’t really give any good results. I tried it out a couple of times, and each time I got different results. I understand that I’d get different results for “Melinda Seckington” vs “Miss Geeky”, but I got several different results for “Melinda Seckington”, which just doesn’t make sense. I also don’t understand which websites it analyzes to get its data from. Here’s my results:

Little bit weird, right? I have no idea where terms like medicine, illegal, religion, committees come from; I don’t think I’ve ever written about stuff like that. And even things like politics, and music, I practically never write about that!

The people behind it know that it doesn’t give good results though, and see it as a way to make people think about online identities:

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

It is an interesting idea, and I understand the concept behind it. Still, I’m wondering if there is a site out there that truly analyzes our online identities. I’d love to see something that takes tags and favourites from my Delicious, YouTube, Flickr, etc, adds an analyzation of my blog, Twitter and whatever other websites I’m on, to finally create a nice visualization of my online presence. Does something like that exist already?

Interesting links for August 23rd through August 27th:

• Anagram Map – Lovely map of the London Tube, but with anagrams of the station/line names. Without looking can you tell me which tube stops the following anagrams are: Chronic Grass, Crux For Disco, Concerning Torments and Blood Rending.
• How much harm does a bad book cover do? – Marketing classics to the Twilight generation.
• The Measure of a Robot – Cute chart of robots: “where they fall on a scale of good to evil, and a scale of being humanoid-shaped to being AIs-in-a-box”.

Interesting links for August 10th through August 16th:

• Life-Size – Cute art project from Cynthia Greig who created miniature every day objects.
• The World’s Most Amazing Hotel Pools – Wow, some of these pools are just gorgeous!
• Nerds, Jocks, and Lockers – Programming algorithm puzzle. I came across the same puzzle a couple years back while practicing for a programming contest, although in a different "story" (with Romans, goblets and coins).
• Chroma-Hash – "a smart jQuery plugin that dynamically visualizes secure text-field values using ambient color bars".
• 21 Amazing Movie Posters Recreated with Lego – Lol!

Interesting links for July 28th through August 9th:

• How Different Groups Spend Their Day – Cool interactive graph of how americans spend their day.
• Shooting Stars: 71 Portraits From Comic-Con 2009 – Ooh, pretty famous people. Love some of these pics.
• 25 Various Styles of The Wizard of Oz Illustrations | The Design Inspiration – I especially love the one on the second row.
• Melancholia – “I didn’t say she stole my money.” A sentence with 7 meanings.

Interesting links for July 20th through July 27th:

• Melancholia – I didn't say she stole my money. A sentence with 7 meanings.
• Comic Con Live Blog: CHUCK Panel – Great write up of the panel of Chuck at Comic Con. I loved how Season 2 ended, and I think Chuck might be one of the most under-appreciated shows at the moment.
• Flickr: The Anaglyph (Red-Cyan 3D Pictures) Pool – I remember ages ago I got a magazine with photos of Mars in them in 3D, and you got one of those flimsy paper red/green 3D glasses with it.
• Ridiculous Life Lessons From New Girl Games – Ugh, list of the "girl" games coming out this year, and most of them are horrible; they're all about fashion, modeling, makeup, boys, etc. Why do game developers think these are the only type of games girls would be interested in?

Living in London, you sometimes come across the weirdest/prettiest/surreal campaigns. At the moment, if you’ll stroll down the Southbank, you’ll come across red with white polka dotted trees. I didn’t really know what it was for until I saw this ad:

So it’s for an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery called ‘Walking In My Mind’. The idea of the exhibition is to explore the inner workings of the artist’s imagination through immersive, large-scale installation art. Ten international artists transform the Hayward Gallery’s indoor galleries and outdoor sculpture terraces into a series of gigantic sculptural environments, each of which represents an individual mindscape. Interior worlds of emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams collide with exterior reality, blurring the boundaries between inner and outer space.

It does sound pretty interesting, so I might have to make my way to the museum one of these weeks. Tickets are £9, but there’s a 2 for 1 voucher on the website (so only £4.50!). Anybody want to join me?