A couple months ago I was informed that there was someone online with the mission to make the world’s largest sandwich. Big as a bus? A building? No, much simpler than that. He was to place one slice of bread at opposite points on the globe, take a picture and create that “world’s” largest sandwich.
Zefrank.com has a pretty simple layout. Nothing flashy or complicated. But like the sandwich, the mundane pieces that hold it together have a lot in between. The site begins with a straightforward blog, listing off all sorts of links, observations, rants and articles on just about anything one has the mental energy to investigate. The French-based, urban safety gamble known as Parkour seems to be keeping his interest lately (and to be honest, who doesn’t find this stuff sickly fascinating?).
But the real draw of the site is the bizarre links section in between. Here I find educational videos, interactive toys, essays, films and plenty more. Ze is strangely talented at creating incredible interactive online projects, especially involving the daily traffic that visit his site. One piece is titled “letters 1.2,” but I’ll just call it the online ransom-letter generator. In this case, the “participate” section called for pics of people holding up a large, single letter in front of them. In the “interactive” section, Ze translates these images into an engine which visually spells out what you type in using the cropped pictures. The effect is amazing, but actually tame compared to some of the other projects hidden in the site. “Meditation Flowers” actually generates a flower in real-time on the page via the audio input of a mic from your computer. This is also done with a speaking frog, for a slightly more bizarre effect.
The educational videos on the site show the comedic talent of Ze. Each video is orchestrated to resemble the high-pace frame-rate of old-time films. So when I watch the “advanced dancing seminar,” such complicated struts as the “stop it silly” or the “Titanic” come across with a little more authority. Endless as this site is, I fittingly retired from it by the “Atheist game” in which my character begins on a block, surrounded by black-once I walk off the edge, that is the end; there is no replay. (James King)
www.zefrank.com