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We continue our weekly tribute to all the random, eclectic awesome stuff out there. Welcome to Part 3 of the Hodgepodge of Cool issue: SHEEP! …or what 10,000 strangers, the BBC and Soulja Boy have in common.

SHEEP!

When we promise random, we deliver random. But, really, there’s a ton of sheep-related awesomeness out there. In fact, we think sheep are the new penguins — you know, that awkward yet adorable “it” species of popular adulation that gives rise to all kinds of trends. You heard it here first, kids — Happy Hoofs, anyone?

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Knowing the name of the individual animal you’re eating for dinner: kinda creepy. Knowing the name of the animal you’re wearing to dinner: kinda cute. FLOCKS, the brainchild of Dutch designer Christien Miendertsma, is a knitwear line that explores the long-lost connection between producer and consumer.

In simpler terms, you can buy a cozy wool sweater (or scarf, or mittens, or socks, or hat) that comes with a photo and a short bio of the ovine contributor, so you can confidently answer you fashionista friends when they ask who you’re wearing.

The project is a collaboration between the graphic designer, a knitter, some spinners, and the farmers and felters who tend a flock of sheep. Each sweater comes with the sheep’s “passport” and a yellow RFID tag that matches the one on the sheepie’s ear.

And we’d so much rather wear something that comes from a happy fluffy sheep than from the hands of an overworked Chinese 6-year-old.

>>> via GOOD Magazine

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The BBC, always the beacon of underappreciated entertainment (hey there, The Office original), has just upped the ante for sheep-related entertainment with the latest work of cult animators The Brothers McLeod.

Pedro and Frankensheep, a series of 10 5-minute episodes for CBBC, is part Robot Chicken, part Sesame Street, part something else entirely. It’s the story of a crazy guinea pig scientist and his cyborg pet sheep, delighting British kids in those bedtime hours with quirky, weird-voiced, crazy-eyed animation magic.

Ah, nothing beats a Mexican accent with a British accent.

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Why on earth would 10,000 strangers get together to draw sheep?

Remember Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s labor distribution system where you can pay web workers small amounts of money to complete simple tasks for you? Artist Aaron Koblin did just that for his project The Sheep Market — he created a simple drawing app and simply instructed Turkers to “draw a sheep facing left.”

10,000 people got to it, for 2 cents each. In 40 days, they drew at a rate of 11 sheep per hour with an average draw time of 105 seconds per sheep. And little did they know Koblin was also recording their drawing process. He then collected all the drawings and turned them into a series of collectible stamps. But because the entire project is the ultimate experiment in collaborative digital art, he also crafted The Sheep Market website where you can see all the drawings and watch each one being drawn.

662 sheep were rejected. We feel really bad for them.

>>> via Wired

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Where else would you find a little knitting sheep by the name of Rose but at the relentlessly wonderful Etsy?

Rose stands at a little over an inch, clutching tiny bamboo knitting needles, and is made from 100% real sheep wool. She comes from Canadian crafts designer fantiny, who can ship one of Rose’s siblings your way if you’re so inclined.

Rose is most positively the cutest little knitting sheep we’ve ever encountered.

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Shaun the Sheep does Soulja Boy.

‘Nuff said.

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Forget all bucolic stereotypes — sheep have gone 2.0. Or at least that’s the case of Jan, the USB sheep from Swedish animal-themed gizmo maker Minimoo. Jan comes in 1GB ($43), 2GB ($58) and 4GB ($74) memory sizes.

Jan looks rather grumpy. But we empathize — we too would be rather grumpy if we had a USB flash drive stuck in our business end.

>>> via Geek Alerts

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A magic fish, wet geeky dreams, bubbles everywhere, Jack White loves dough, why owls are the new face of music, how Liberal got its Arts back, and why the Grinch is getting here by train this year. Welcome to the Fine, It’s The Holidays issue.

JUST IN TIME

For the holidays, that is. We’ve even made room for the usual 4-7 business days shipping time-frame. Because that’s how long you’ve got until the last work day before office folk scatters for a breather of feasts, family and other fun.

So why not send both your colleagues and the old year off with some comic relief straight from your gift list? We’re pleased to bring you the desk section of Wishingfish.com, an online boutique for beautifully designed objects that put style and humor into everyday life.

A few of our favorites span the harmlessly fun day at the beach miniature set, the functionally inspired working girl’s survival kit, and the straight-shooter ass kisser breath spray for the hint-challenged. And, in light of the week at hand, we wish we’d had the nifty office anger management kit before ugly and embarrassing things happened.

Wishingfish.com has delightfully designed stuff for many of life’s corners — entertainment, bath & body, games, accessories, baby, travel, living, gourmet and more. And we can’t decide which the stuff is more: affordable or cool. Do check it out and save yourself some retail curation.

WORLD-TESTED, GEEK-APPROVED

Call us geeks, but we have an itchy fascination with the world of knowledge and, um, data. Which is why we were taken with Swivel when it first launched two years ago, and we kept a curious eye on it because it seemed like something to, well, keep a curious eye on. Today, Swivel is still weaving its webs of user-generated data representations under the mantra “Tasty Data Goodies” — a haven for the insight-hungry to collaborate and explore data together.Simply put, Swivel uses powerful computers and algorithms to turn all sorts of boring spreadsheets with public data (from government reports to shark attack stats to odd correlations like wine and violent crime) into easily digestible visual representations. This lets people have a whole new relationship and experience with data, trading hours of sifting through spreadsheets and reports for quick snapshots of images, graphics and color. They also have a ton of new media tools that allow bloggers and general web hounds to easily share info and ideas with others.

Anyone can upload data for the world to see, and it’s all free. To fund the enterprise, Swivel also offers a paid private version where people can upload stuff either for storage or to share with select others. Think of it like voicemail and conference calling for the data-dependent.

The smarty-pants website lets you compare data from multiple sources, map geographical areas, use simple criteria to sort data, plot all the graphs your visually-inclined heart desires, and download data into spreadsheets to further analyze. You can even pimp your charts with various backgrounds. And if your own organization disseminates data in any way, you can get the Swivel official source badge to help spread the vision of spreading knowledge.

The nifty enterprise was started by CNET founder Halsey Minor and a bunch of other entrepreneurial knowledge hounds.

Now, call us crazy, but we’re starting our countdown clock. It’s no secret that Google’s self-proclaimed mission and founding vision is to help organize all the world’s information — an idea clearly reflected in Swivel’s philosophy that “better informed people make better decisions: in voting booths, in corporate boardrooms and at neighborhood meetings.” So it seems like a matter not of whether, but of when and for how much Google snags up this so-up-their-alley getup.

Don’t say you didn’t see it coming.

WORLD WIDE WEB WILDFIRE

Boy oh boy what a year it’s been. It’s tempting to call it the Golden Age of Tech, what with the iPhones and Beacons and Twitters and all. So big it was that it inspired Matt Hempey and The Richter Scales, a getup of Bay Area “gentlemen songsters,” to do a musical rendition of the web revolution that is upon us.

Perhaps not too oddly, the tune is based on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” — a classic ode to all the history made in Joel’s lifetime, saluting the cultural revolutionaries of the day. From Harry Truman, to Joe DiMagio, to Doris Day, to Einstein, to television and more, this cultural anthem is the ultimate tribute to the kinds of social forces that matter.

And we find The Richter Scales’ selection slightly ironic: do we really live in an age where cultural visionaries filter ideas through screens and buttons, where algorithms override art in shaping culture, where MySpace exploration seems more compelling to people than space exploration? Perhaps. Is that such a bad thing? Perhaps, and perhaps not: when it comes to the advancement of human knowledge and communication, can anything really be wrong?

UNTRIVIA

Speaking of music, the 50th Annual GRAMMY Award nominations came out — and just for the sake of stepping outside your iTunes library bubble, you should check them out.

And despite some questionable choices (sorry, GRAMMY’s, but the White Stripes stopped being “alternative” when they sold out to Coke two years ago and, no, Jack White, you didn’t do it to “get a message of love out to the world”) and some odd entries (Ozzy? Really???), there are no huge surprises: everyone knew Amy Winehouse would storm several categories, just like everyone knows she’ll OD celebrating if she wins or OD making the pain go away if she loses. Yeah, yeah, you’re complicated. We don’t care. Just stay alive some more and make some more not-too- shabby music.

Take a look and be your own kind of grossly judgemental.

And speaking of untrivial stuff, on a completely unrelated note, check out this curious look at how social networking may be a good decade older than we think, originating long before MySpace and Facebook were even embryos in the digital womb. (And, of course, feel free to disagree.)

BOOM WENT THE BOX

So while we’re on the subjects of technology and reminiscing for a musical times past, why not something for that holiday wish-list?

Treat your trusty iPod to a super-luxury nest where hi-tech meets Hi-Fidelity. Thanks to Dutch iPod extender thodio, you can get your scroll-wheeled buddy the iBox: a fully handcrafted yet technologically advanced iPod amplifier that looks like Bose’s rich, sophisticated uncle.

The iBox is universal — all iPods are equally happy to lounge atop it. The cabinet-looking mega-dock is constructed from durable oak, mahogany and teak, finished with a high-gloss lacquer that reminds us our father’s momentous German speakers from the 80’s. You pick the color, or you go with solid wood to really nail the old-school look.

But beneath the blast-from-the-past shell hides a sonic beast with 25-watt Focal Polyglass 100CV1 speakers, 15-hour battery life, and bluetooth functionality that turns your iPod into a nifty remote control.

Plus, we just love that it looks like a startled baby owl.

Get it straight from the source for 359 Euros — that’s $529 for the fourth-continent-confined, and they ship internationally.

PUTTING THE ART BACK INTO LIBERAL ARTS

Liberal arts universities tout an education that’s at least in part related to, well, the arts. But some, especially the higher-end, more competitive ones, don’t necessarily foster the best environment for artistic talent. When the Ivy League pendulums start swinging, artsy ambitions start dwindling. We would know, we went there: it’s a tough life when Wall Street wannabees and premed prodigies surround you, and all you wanna do is art. (There should really be a cult indie rock anthem by that title — get on it, Green Day.)

So some universities are trying to give creative types the same professional resources that are traditionally available to the pinstripe set. One such budding resource, RealArts@Penn, is still in its inception but already offers creative networking and a number of killer (paid!) summer 2008 internships for undergrads, including MTV Networks and Rolling Stone Magazine.

The goal of the project is to intersect the art world with the intellectual world of the university, with none of that mass-orientation, group-selection, intern-working-as-gopher business. They plat to extend into the curriculum, building RealArts-affiliated courses and putting together various workshops, roundtables and seminars with creative industry big-shots.

Where oh where was this program when we went to Penn?

STREET PICKINGS

It’s that time of year
And Philly’s abuzz
With irksome good spirit
And pesky blithe Fuss.

They’re all so caught up
In that holiday cheer,
Even misers are quiet
And we Grinches don’t sneer.

But look at this Picture,
It may be quite nice.
This Picture could even
Melt our Grinchy heart’s ice!

That kid with his mommy
And the swell Trains right there
May just, gee, soften
our mean Grinchy glare!

But before we start getting
Too carried away,
There’s a Grinchy disclaimer,
A big “BUT” to say:

The thing that is warming
Our little Grinch heart?
Not the small kids, HA!,
But the swell Trains, silly fart!

Art hearts, saving cyclists, 16 feet of genius, whiteboard wonders, surfing with your posse, mouthing off online, what sex triangles have to do with printing, and why the paranormal is a matter of shutter speed. Welcome to the Angles, Visions and Illusions issue.

THE ART OF THRIFT

Back in the day, we introduced you to Tiny Showcase, the brilliant enterprise that lets artists and art enthusiasts pursue their passions through affordable prices, even donating a portion of profits to a charity of each artist’s choice.

Today, we bring you another art visionary: we*heart*prints, a compilation of great sticker- shockless prints from contemporary artists.

For anywhere between $20 and $150, you can get your art-lovin’ hands on original, anything-but-bland work from folks who do it for anything but the money — while still helping them make rent.

But wait too long and it’s gone — stuff sells out fast. Great for artists, bad for slacker art lovers.

SPIRIT OF GIVING

This year, we’re spreading the holiday guilt-trip-giving spirit early.

Relax, it’s all cool stuff — literally. Like those LED Christmas lights you can get instead of the traditional incandescent variety to save energy, maintenance efforts and “fuck, that was hot!”exclamations upon touch. That’s right, these nifty suckers consume 90% less energy than the standard fare, have a lifetime 10 times that of incandescent ones (so they’re like the CFL’s of mini-lights), and don’t heat up at all (which is why they can afford to be covered by thick plastic rather than “shit, what did I just step on?” glass). And, just like CFL’s, they may cost a bit more, but you’ll be sparing that billboard-powering cycling volunteer some major pedal time. (Remember that from Brain Pickings 1.0 a year ago?)

DAMAGED / GENIUS

The human brain. We’re a little bit obsessed with it here. Its touch is everywhere, from the art inspired by its inner storms, to the complex software modeled after it, to the humor that tickles it. In fact, we’ll argue it’s the greatest product in existence.

But like all products, the human brain is susceptible to glitches in the assembly line. Glitches that result in what society deems “damaged goods.” Glitches like Alzheimer’s disease, Autism, Tourette’s Syndrome and other neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative diseases.

And based on this social yardstick, Stephen Wiltshire is damaged goods. The 33-year-old British man was diagnosed with Autism when his was a kid and spent his childhood as a mute because he couldn’t relate to other humans. He was sent to a “special school”, where he spent most of his solitary time drawing. Soon, the hobby became his only way of communicating with the world and it became apparent that Stephen had an extraordinary talent.

But the school decided to use the gift to “normalize” him — they took away his drawing supplies so he would have to ask for them, forcing him to speak. And speak he did — his first word was “paper.” By age nine, he was fully verbal. Far more impressively, he was also fully able to draw areal images from imagination (like the imagined effects of an earthquake) and recall to astounding detail.

Stephen is an artistic autistic savant. In 1987, ex-president of the Royal Academy Sir Hugh Casson called him “the most talented child artist in Britain.”

Today, Stephen’s talent has reached new heights. He flies in a helicopter over major cities (Tokyo, Rome, Frankfurt, Hong Kong) and draws panoramic views of the city on a 16-foot-long canvas, down to the most amazing details like the exact number, proportion and position of windows on each building.

Read Stephen’s full life story, check out the gallery of his mind-blowing work and/or buy some prints of this testament to the capacity of the human brain. Meanwhile, see how he crafts a panorama of Rome after he hovers over the great city.

Damaged goods? You be the judge — if you can wrap your own brain around the magic of this one.

THE FLIPSIDE

While seeing a depiction of the world so perfectly linear, static and accurate is impressive, it’s also fascinating to look at the kind of art that interprets the world much like our brains operate: in a non-linear, dynamic, constantly shifting fashion.

Which is why we dig this stop-motion by artist Kristofer Strom, done entirely on a whiteboard — just like the blank slate of our perception uses static shapes and time to interpret complex motion.

See more of the same great art/design vision at Ljudbilden & Piloten.

THE SOCIAL SURFER

Ah, the social web. It stopped being a catchphrase ages ago and now it’s just a fact of life. As is multitasking. So to address the seemingly omnipresent web multitasker, a bunch of web masterminds have just released Flock.

And we dig it because these guys seem to share our passion for a genuine understanding of consumer behavior — the online reflection of which has changed tremendously in recent years, but the fundamental application that propels it — the web browser — hasn’t necessarily kept up. So how about a browser’s that’s the intersection of media, people, and discovery?

Dubbed The Social Web Browser, this smart newbie aims to give users the most fulfilling experience across all information platforms, from gathering to exchange to self-expression to interaction, as well as across all media. As soon as you login to all your favorite social networking and sharing services, Flock pulls your friends from them into the browser so you can access them whenever. You choose how much you want to see and how often so you can keep track of when your friends have updated their profiles, access their shared media, share web stuff with them, and stay generally connected via whatever services you’re craziest about. See how the magic happens.

A bunch of new themes and extensions are coming soon, but the Flock crew promises a best-of-Firefox fiesta.

Although it’s compatible with Mac, Linux and PC operating systems, its interface and functionality decidedly have our beloved Mac feel — sharing with friends is a drag-and-drop heaven. At the top of your browser window, you get a scrollable filmstrip view of photo and video streams from Facebook, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Piczo, Truveo, YouTube and others. And, of course, the whole ordeal is appropriately open-source so you can code-write your heart out.

Our only caution: not ideal for those 12″ screens. But, hey, now you have yet another excuse to get that spiffy 15″ MacBook Pro.

UNTRIVIA

And speaking of social, we keep drumming on and on about the power of word of mouth, about how online reviews can make or break a consumer product, and guess what: it’s been confirmed.
Turns out, there’s a particularly WOM-hungry group of net dwellers out there now called “social researchers.” In the yet-to-be-released “Social Shopping Survey 2007,” PowerReviews probed 1,200 people who regularly shop online and spend more than $500 annually. They found that a good 65% of these folks are “social researchers” — a set who actively hunts down consumer reviews before buying stuff and bases final purchase decision on them. More on those WOM-ravenous shoppers:

• 78% spend over 10 minutes reading the reviews for a single product they’re interested in
• 64% research products online at least half the time, regardless of where they end up actually buying
• 82% prefer sifting though consumer reviews to finding out about the product from a knowledgeable store staffer

Ok, we’re off to finally buy that PowerShot we’ve been lusting after with the stellar Amazon reviews.

RAG DEPARTMENT

Okay, the last thing we wanna be is an industry tabloid: enough people talking about Wal-Mart sex triangles and Dentsu upskirt shots of Kournikova already. But we just heard something too gotta-spill to keep to ourselves.

Fresh from our Rumors Allegations, and Gossip department: seems like Hewlett-Packard is cooking up a new web-based service to address the marketing, design, production and printing needs of small business. There’s also some sort of personalized marketing consultancy involved. The mystery creative solutions service will offer pretty much everything an old-school ad agency would: logo design, direct mail, website hosting and design, collateral, online banner advertising, search optimization, print design and production, copywriting and more. And, of course, a promise of affordability.

We’re not exactly sure how HP will attempt to pull this off. (Craigslist wanteds for unemployed creative folk come to mind. And more stock photography than should be legal.) But we’re not surprised: HP has been pushing the “creativity” message big time lately, mostly thanks to some fresh work from Goodby and the recent Gwen Stefani endorsement with its various extensions.

We’re just not exactly convinced their end products won’t end up a tad too close to a certain NASA page.

GHOST OF ART

Yes, it’s real.

It’s William Hundley’s completely in-camera, completely haunting, completely brilliant photography. The Entoptic Phenomena project isn’t a product of Photoshop, the wind, or paranormal forces. It’s the work of Hundley’s creative mind…and his social circle.

The secret: Hundley has his friends jump completely covered in fabric and snaps shots of them mid-air. We love the eerie vibe of the result. Also not too shabby: the photographer’s boldness with colors, patterns and textures.

See his the full project and its interesting extensions. (Our favorite: Friends, in which the Entoptic Phenomena awkwardly share space with static everyday characters.)