Artist James Mylne recreates ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Johannes Vermeer using just one BiC pen. The reproduction took approx. 90 hours to complete.

More at http://www.challengebic.co.uk

“There is only one real South Park”

It’s not like there are so many people who like me, but some of those who do just noticed they lost a friend and think I’m ignoring them.

For those who didn’t email/SMS to ask why I suddenly hate them:

Long story short, I’m here, I love you all, but I got banned from Facebook. One day I could login, the next day I got an error message saying my account was suspended.

This raises the question: can I survive without an aggregated feed of little social games, pokes from fake girls, and videos of octopussies? Is FB the future, the place to be, or “so 2009″?

Until I hear from FB’s support staff, I’ll give a chance to this relative silence, and see where it leads me, perhaps to the next Facebook.

And as always, I’ll keep posting my bookmarks/links and comments on bennaim.com and twitter.com/ZLOK. With RSS feeds and all.

So, if you read this, i ask you to please share this post on Facebook (and RT on Twitter), just so that our friends know that I’m fine and dandy.

Thanks much. :)

April 7th – Update:

Someone from Facebook sent me a reply:

Hi,
At this time, we cannot verify the ownership of the account under this address. Please reply to this email with a scanned image of a government-issued photo ID (e.g., driver’s license) in order to confirm your ownership of the account. Please black out any personal information that is not needed to verify your identity (e.g., social security number). Rest assured that we will permanently delete your ID from our servers once we have used it to verify the authenticity of your account.

Please keep in mind that fake accounts are a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Facebook requires users to provide their real first and last names. Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited.

In addition to your photo ID, please include all of our previous correspondence in your response so that we can refer to your original email. Once we have received this information, we will reevaluate the status of the account. Please note that we will not be able to process your request unless you send in proper identification. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks,

Eli
User Operations
Facebook

To which I replied:

Dear Eli,

Thank you for your email and support. Although I understand you need to know that I am myself, and it is very flattering that you want to protect me from getting my identity used by someone else, I really can’t imagine who would like to impersonate me, except myself.

I would be glad to send you a scan of my ID as soon as you send me one of yours, so that I know that you are yourself too. Also, I think you should ask all existing and future Facebook users to provide you with a proof of who they are too, so that it would be fair for everyone, and safer too of course.

Again, I don’t really understand how my identity can be an issue: no one wants to claim my name, and a quick search on Google will easily show you that the content on my Facebook feed is identical as the content on several websites attached to my name, including bennaim.com itself.

So, please enable my account again.

Thank you in advance,
Yves

April 8th – Update:

Just as I was getting out of FB without looking back, and my real-life friends sending me emails to ask why I removed them from my FB-friends, South Park just prepared FB’s coffin first few nails…

April 11th – Update:

For those of you who miss my FB presence too much — and since I am not allowed to join again, at least until the matter is officially resolved — there is now an official Yves Bennaïm page, on which you can become my fan.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yves-Bennaim/108108309228777

April 15th – Update:

Last night, I received an answer from my new friend Eli:

Hi,

We apologize, but the only way we will be able to verify ownership of this account is if you reply to this email with an attachment of scanned, government-issued photo identification confirming your full name and date of birth. If you do not have access to a scanner, a digital image of your photo ID will be accepted as well. Rest assured that we will permanently delete your ID from our servers once we have used it to verify the authenticity of your account.

Additionally, you should make sure to copy and paste all of our previous correspondence into your message when you reply. Once we have received this information, we will reevaluate the status of the account. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks in advance for understanding this security policy,

Eli
User Operations
Facebook

And of course I promptly replied:

Dear Eli,

I understand very well what you are saying, but I need to point out a slight flaw in your logic: it’s true that a copy of my ID would help you verify my identity, but it is not my identity you need to verify, only, as you wrote, ownership of my account. For this, you have my email address, as it is customary in this type of situations.

With the same (flawed) logic in mind, I will have to ask you to send me not only a copy of your own ID document, but also one of Mr Zuckerberg’s, so that I can identify you are really an employee of Facebook. I’m sure you understand this security procedure.

Alternatively, please enable my account again.

Thank you in advance,
Yves

To be continued…

Remember Merton doing some piano improv on Chatroulette, which sounded like Ben Folds, but wasn’t? Well this time it’s Ben Folds pulling a Merton. In front of a live crowd. Yummy.

Merton freestyles with random strangers on Chat Roulette. He’s not Ben Folds although he’s obviously quite inspired by him (the “number 3″ bit sounds like Ben Fold’s now famous “rock this bitch” improvisations). Anyway, it’s funny and original.

UPDATE: Merton has reposted the video, with the description: “This is a new, edited version of the original Video #1. I had to make some changes in order for YouTube to be happy with it.” Apparently, he didn’t get approval to use the images of those he chatted with.

UPDATE AGAIN: Merton posted a second Chatroulette piano impro video.