Great variety of old advertising from QuestionableAdvice.tumblr.com (Centuries of Advertisements and Advice)

It's like Shorpy for advertisements! Very cool collection, enjoy more at http://questionableadvice.tumblr.com/

Vim tires don't slip

found on http://questionableadvice.tumblr.com/

Union Pacific advertising and brochure covers

Found on Centuries of Advice and Advertisements : http://questionableadvice.tumblr.com/

Rooftop lake of slime

Truvia® Voyage of Discovery with Bompas & Parr:

Selfridges 21-24 July 2011

Bompas & Parr is flooding part of Selfridges roof to create a crystal island and boating lake in celebration of the impending UK arrival of Truvia® calorie-free sweetener, from the stevia leaf.

The Truvia® Voyage of Discovery invites visitors to enjoy their first experience of the Truvia® brand and their first introduction to the stevia plant, astonishingly 200 times sweeter than sugar.

The project encompasses an emerald green boating lake, thousands of stevia plants, 12 rowing boats, a gushing waterfall, a life guard, cocktails by ECC, design by Studio Toogood, uniforms by Tour de Force, tropical soundscapes by Dom James, teas by Rare Tea Company, coffee's by Caravan, and a Crystal Island - all six storeys above Londons busiest shopping street.

You can read a description of the event here and here.

*Previously: Bompas & Parr is building a five tonne Chocolate Waterfall in London; Truvia's target audience.

Clever energy drink packaging

Packaging created by Saatchi & Saatchi Belgrade for Booster Energy Drink.

Hertz rent a car 1949 advertisement

found on http://questionableadvice.tumblr.com/ known as Centuries of Advice & Advertisements

Clever/Irritating advertisements for Antique Roadshow

"To promote a new season of Antiques Roadshow on Prime TV, DRAFTFCB Auckland took to the streets, placing price tags on numerous objects that could well be considered an antique in the future. From shopping trollies and picnic benches, to cars and arcade machines, all objects were labeled with prices far greater than their current value." Via.

Gilmore's 1934 traveling neon sign fuel tanker (mack chassis)

found on http://dieselpunk.livejournal.com/471611.html#cutid1

Attn: Noah's Ark Zoo Farm

Dear Noah's Ark Zoo Farm,

Someone in your employ appears to have posted a comment on one of our articles:

Zoo has left a new comment on your post "Eagle Coaches at Bristol Zoo":

I am very inspire from your blog, i love your simple and clean post for getting information about Bristol zoo. overall your blog and content is superb.

As stated in our comment policy on spam postings, " Such attempts SHALL result in one or more postings in which we MAY be rude or we MAY make fun of you". In accordance with our policy, we opt to be rude.

1. How can you call yourself a zoo when you don't believe in evolution? It'd be like a geology museum that thought the earth began a hundred thousand years ago and yet had to come up with explanations for sandstone that denied that they were historic deserts, that the limestone that your zoo stands on isn't the relics of Cretaceous-era coral reefs.
2. Why do you hide the fact that many of your animals are on loan from a circus. If you believe your religious claims are valid, then surely you ought to come out and be proud of the fact that the creatures -to which humans have divine rights over- are mistreated. Why feel guilt?
3. How can the local councils justify sending their schoolkids to a zoo whose belief system is at odds with modern rational thinking about the nature of the universe and life -and how to treat animals?
4. If you do wish to deny the whole notion of modern rational thought then why are you using computers whose existence is based on experimental science working at the nanometre scale? At least people like the Amish and the Mennonites are willing to live consistently within their world view.

We don't know what you were thinking paying some tier-3 loser to post such badly written comments on our site about your zoo, but this is the response.

If you feel that our claims that your beliefs about evolution are utterly mistaken, please file a lawsuit.

If you do want to pick on a bit of science, go for the low level physics stuff, the bits nobody really understands. Not evolution. Seriously.

Thank you for your participation in the Bristol Traffic project. It was not expected, and no doubt, neither was this response.

Red Bull: on the motorists side

In the F1 races, Red Bull are fielding a team. In Bristol a while back, they also had a vehicle on show in Clifton

Yes, it was just an electric thing, but it was on our side

Proof: THB61S is on double yellow lines, has a tax disk and two parking tickets!

[photo by Martin of Bristol Culture] 

GPS: the rest of the press catch up

There's a lot of fuss in the press about a new paper arguing that Satellite Navigation, in the form of the US GPS system, ex-Soviet GLONASS and the EU Galileo system are all vulnerable to failure, and that the country now depends on them working.

This doesn't surprise us, because we made this claim back in 2001, in our article "BMW - No Joy: GPS is a SPOF", using Volpe 2001 as the reference paper. We pointed out that BMW made naive or misleading comments about the reliability of GPS, helping to retain an unrealistic expectation of the failure modes of a tool designed to prosecute a conventional war or the opening exchange of a nuclear war rather than help you get home in time.

We've never mentioned it, but we did get a reply from the ASA on the 29 of November 2009 -a paper one- in which they stated that:

1. We were the only people that complained.
2. It was meant to be metaphor, and therefore the fact that the failure of GPS could cause widescale destruction to the national transportation infrastructure was unimportant.

This is somewhat disappointing. The Bristol Traffic project was seventeen months ahead of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and yet the ASA dismissed us because we were the only people in the country who knew what they were talking about. The fact that we were the only organisation to complain is a sign that we are more competent than the rest of the national media, not some daft troublemakers.

Hello to Van Hire Bristol!

A quick hello to Van Hire Bristol who added a comment to our co-existence post, the one that showed a white van turning into Cotham Hill without bothering to look, because the driver knew that mostly only people on bicycles come down the hill, and any pedestrians crossing at that point are students and therefore liabilities on the state.

Whoever it was that posted the comment made some well informed comments showing their mastery of the the English language, and their complete failure to read the bit where we warn that anyone posting adverts will be publicly criticised, along with ignorance of the nofollow attribute hence the fact that adding comments to a high page-ranked site like ours does nothing for their own ranking:

Hey I like the post very much. This is really a very good post with very good information.


Thanks a lot for sharing the post very much. You know what I like the title of video very much which insist to watch the video to me. :)


Keep sharing such stuffs.

Well, we don't care whether you like the title or whether you think it's a really good post with very good information, and we shall keep sharing such stuffs without being asked. What we want to know is this? Is the white vanYB06BDO one of the Van Hire Bristol fleet?


Furthermore, if we rent a van from you:

1. Does it automatically come with pre-insurance cover for running over bicycles and pedestrians?
2. Will you be upset if comes back with scratches and blood on the bumper?
3. Does it have a tow bar to provide audible feedback when reverse parking (crunching sounds)
4. What driver training will you provide showing us how to drive and park such vehicles, especially while texting?

Regarding the comment itself, a few more questions

• Did you actually pay somebody to write such an atrociously badly written comment?
• What did they promise in return? 
• Did they read the warning notice before they commented, and did they understand the consequences of their action, namely that they consented to have your site discussed in a posting all of its own?
• How does it feel to have a web page making fun of you (as promised in the comment form) come back ahead of you in searches?
• Given that some people may view the video as portraying a mildly negative opinion of white vans in the city -despite our own view that they are an essential part of the national economy- do you feel that it is wise to have your brand associated with such incidents?
• Did you ask the person who promised to boost your page to read the pages first? Will you request this in future?
• Have you asked your outsourced SEO agent about nofollow tags and the fact that they mean that none of our google pagerank (5) transfers to yours (0) -and that the comments have at best no effect whatsoever?
• Are you aware that because Google own blogspot, there is the possibility that at worst they will use the URLs in postings downgraded as spam to actually penalise such sites in their search engine?
• Have you a way of asking for your money back?

Remember, the Bristol Traffic project is a data gathering and datamining organisation that views Google and Yahoo! as strategic partners; Game Theory  and Graph Theory key branches of mathematics to model traffic movement around cities. We do not yet see any value in strategic or tactical alliances with Van Hire Bristol, whoever you are, so will be forced to block any further attempts to add comments to our site.

Thank you for your participation in the Bristol Traffic Project.

A polite refusal

Dear james@becomeknown.co.uk

Thank you for your posting on our entry Traffic Calming by YK06USX.

 Hi Bristol Traffic,

I work with a company that sells bollards and we would LOVE to get a link to their site from Bristol Traffic. Especially as these inventions feature on your blog quite often, such as your History of Bollards Is this something you're open to?

If you could let me know either way that would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

James 

And

Hi again, my email address is james AT becomeknown DOT co DOT uk :) 

While you were posting your two comments, you would have had time to notice the text immediately above which stated "No adverts, no spam, no requests for cross linking. We will only be rude.".

As this text warned, we not only decline your request, we do so publicly, with your email address put up online with the email address converted into an Internet Engineering Task Force RFC2822-compatible form, RFC2822 replacing, as you may recall, RFC822, so ensuring that spam-bots will find your address and get in touch with your inbox, giving you opportunities to buy discounted counterfeit pharmaceuticals as well as Nigerian 419-spam about how this-week's toppled middle-eastern leader's bank funds could be yours for a small investment up front.

Now, perhaps our rules were not clear enough, so we have reviewed the text and the IETF RFC2119 standards on the correct use of MUST, MUST NOT, SHALL, SHOULD, SHALL NOT, SHOULD NOT, MAY and MAY NOT.

Here then is our new statement in which we state our expectations from commenters and the response that faces comments that violate the rules:

Commenters MUST NOT post spam, MUST NOT post requests for cross linking and MUST NOT post up requests for paid links. Such attempts SHALL result in one or more postings in which we MAY be rude or we MAY make fun of you and MAY include your public email address. Furthermore, we MAY report you to google for attempts at paid linking, who SHALL then punish your site. 

This statement follows RFC2119 rules regarding the use of MUST, MUST NOT, MAY, and SHALL and MUST be treated as normative.

We hope that this clarifies things, and that you do not attempt to add any more comments, as if you continue to do so we SHALL go to the relevant google form and report you and your customer.

Thank you for your participation in the Bristol Traffic Project.

good advertising

Found on http://autoadvert.tumblr.com

You have less than a second to see the biker... Click on the image to see the full size first

Too late, next time slow down and be careful, it's the only way to see better... Ducati advertising found on http://autoadvert.tumblr.com/

The new ad campaign for Coca Cola delivery trailers

Red Bull? We thought they were on our side!

A reader, "O.M.", tips us off with the breaking news that Red Bull are sponsoring a bike race up Park Street on Saturday night, Jan 29 at 19:00.

This sounds quite fun, we thought we could join in with the van. We swing past the racers, cut in and park on the uphill side of the road to do a delivery gambit, helping to get our main line of business -discreet delivery of sex toys to all parts of the city- a bit of publicity. But it will not be.

From 18:00, Park Street will be closed to traffic! 

This is so wrong. Not just because it denies Saturday night stretch-limos the opportunity to take stag parties up from the centre to whiteladies road, it gives the racers and the audience an unrealistic view of what Park Street is like without motor vehicles. Which then gives the audience an unrealistic view of what the city would be like without motor vehicles. Unrealistic, because all of us, from the parents driving their kids to school, to our white vans, discreetly delivering inflatable people everywhere from stokes croft to southville, keep the city alive. Have you ever tried to get a child to school on foot? Crossing the roads? Have you ever tried to get a matched set of official Sky TV presenter inflatable dolls (with the official presenters voices- its like having them on your own sofa) across the city on the back of a fixed wheel bike? It just doesn't work.

What galls us is, as  "O.M." points out, Red Bull were on our side. Their energy drink not only lets you stay up night drinking vodka until you have to drive home, if you only get three hours sleep a couple of cans of the stuff will wake you up and have you so buzzing that you'll be driving right behind the vehicle in front, flashing your lights, be they cyclist, commuter or even then avon and somerset police. There they are, doing the 20mph or 30 mph speed limit, and there you are, jittering so much you can barely text ahead to the office complaining that a police car doing 30 is holding you back and you'll need another five Jeremy Clarkson models as now he's the last remaining real man left on TV the fact that he looks like a run-over badger doesn't put the punters off.

Red Bull, whose side are you on? You sponsor a formula 1 team, the cars above, yet now you seem to think encouraging cycling will keep your business going. This fills us with resentment and fear

Also, and this is for the cyclists taking part:

We have given you Ninetree Hill. What more do you want?

Absolute Vehicle Care Ltd, selling Alloy wheels to outsiders who inconvenience us

Dear info@absolutevehiclecare.com.

Thank you for posting your comment on our alloy wheels are for outsiders posting.

We are aware that we are the highest ranked site when you search blogspot for alloy wheels, and therefore that a comment with some banal chat and back links to your own site would help your page rank. However, as well as using nofollow links to remove them from google's PageRank scores, we have a policy that says if you spam us with attempted to links, we only make fun of you. Therefore, please accept this posting as a gift, but note that the nofollow tag above renders your link worthless and all that you will get is more spam to your email address. Sorry.

There is no point trying to push alloy wheel services to our readers, despite our broad readership in Bristol, because (a) you have a Southampton postcode and are therefore unimportant, and (b) we don't think alloy wheels have a place in the city.

Every driver who has alloy wheels values their wheels. Not only does this prevent them doing operations in the city, it holds up other traffic. Takes this video of the bottom of St Michael's Hill from last month.



The car in front of us is waiting to turn slide into the left turn lane -which has a green light onto Park Row. But it cannot do that as the car in front of it values their wheels too much to scrape against the kerb or to commit more aggressively and get both wheels entirely on the pavement, and they still have a driver-side wingmirror to lose. The selfish decision of the first car to have alloy wheels not only slows them down, it slows down the rest of the city's traffic. And this is on a Sunday! Imagine how much congestion one selfish alloy-wheel owning outsider would cause on a busy weekday morning!

Drivers who value their vehicle's bodywork and paintwork are as much an inconvenience to us locals as pedestrians on zebra crossings and cyclists pootling along. You may not realise this as you live in the provinces and dream of day trips to Portsmouth where you can see three cars in a row, but we city folk know the harsh truth: from a game-theory perspective, alloy wheels place you at a disadvantage. They are easily damaged and, as they are a visible status symbol, everyone else sees that you value your car, therefore are more likely to give way on high conflict roads, such as here, the Horfield Road/St Michael's Hill junction.

Please do not bother posting any more spam advertisement comments, as we will only continue to criticise you for your naive lack of understanding of modern driving techniques and issues, as well as your complete ignorance of game theory and its application in city driving.

Thank you,

The Bristol Traffic Team.