USB cake design worst birthday surprise in history
Imagine this -- you walk into a custom confectionery and inform the design team that you want the image on a USB flash drive made onto a very special cake. In fact, you even leave the flash drive with them so they can really look it over. Sure, you'd think they would get to frost-brushing that unicorn flying through a rainbow right onto the cake, but apparently the artists in question had other ideas. Namely, creating a photo-perfect replica of a Lexar flash drive on the surface of what appears to be an otherwise delicious pile of sugar. Seriously. Too bad about that black icing, birthday boy.
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The rendition of the flash drive is not even good, in fact from this picture, it looks pretty bad. I would hate to see what they would have done with the real image.
What are you a professional baker? I think it's pretty good.
No, I am not a professional baker, but that does not change the fact the decoration is not good. Just look at the outside black ring, it is really bad. The black piping also leaves a lot to be desired.
It is not something I would expect a professional baker to produce and I would not pay full price for that decoration job.
The real cake would have been printed with edible inks, not made out of frosting, so it would have looked just fine, smart guy.
Unless they airbrushed it... smart guy...
I prefer the pure sugary goodness of tons of icing than some form of edible ink, smart guys.
I just figured if I replied up here, I could be a smart guy too...
He should have contacted "Butter Creme Babies", they're professional cake makers and friends of mine. do the old Google thing on their name, you will see some of THE BEST CAKES EVER. I'm getting them to help me with the next Engadget Birthday Giveaway. I will WIN FOR SURE, unfortunately these guys with their square, unoriginal cake making, Ultimately FAIL!
Looks like a coffin to me.
Either way, we're going to need some coffee here!
Hillarious!
I wonder if there has ever been another time in history when there were such big differences in peoples knoledge of current technology. I can imagine people in 1911 sitting in a car for the first time yelling "giddyap" at the invisible horses.
Sadly I was having a conversation with someone over the weekend about people's grandparents learning to drive. Tractors, specifically. One drove through a fence when the tractor didn't respond to "whoa!"
Where are the images Engadget?
Mmm... frosting!
What was that about a USB drive?
Who cares, free cake!
Reminds me of this story:
I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn't solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow.
For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my coworkers for help; they offered no new ideas.
After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly, "Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?"
Your story reminded me of another one.
A few years ago I was working for an ISP tech support. One time I get a call from this kid about some problem. Standard procedure - before inquiring about the problem I ask him to close all the windows on his computer. Some strange noises followed. After a few seconds I hear this kid being slightly out of breath and asking me: "Sir? Should I close the doors also?"
ROFL! Some people...
The kid closing all the windows in the house is pure gold! ROFLMAO
I love both the yellow-printer story and the "close all windows" story and I feel your pain.
I used to work for a web company that provided tech. support to a brick&mortar dating service with a website for viewing profiles. Most of the users were either serious Luddites or had bought and used a PC for the very first time just in the hopes of meeting that special someone.
One day I took a call from a guy of indeterminate age who was clearly illiterate, using AOL, didn't know anything about computers and couldn't access the site. I was attempting to re-direct him to a back-door URL we were using on a proxy server. I had to slo-o-o-o-wly spell out the URL while he hunted and pecked for each and every letter, averaging about one letter per every 30 seconds. I had to re-spell "H-T-T-P" 5 times alone! The topper for me was having to explain what a colon was and waiting for a couple of minutes while he tried finding it on his keyboard. It took somewhere around 15 minutes to get the guy to type in a single URL. My co-workers listening in enjoyed every minute of it.
Reminds me of a story from a friend of mine who was running a computer course for first time computer users.
One of the ladies had placed the mouse on the floor and trying to make the computer "go" by pressing it with her foot.
The most technical piece of equipment she had ever used was a sewing machine.
This was a really hard article to read. I had to go to the source link to understand at all what was going on.
yea, a chimp wrote it, seems like!
Thanks for the heads up. After reading the link, it makes sense. I guess, sometimes, in an effort not to plagiarize, a writer substitutes words that are all synonyms, but the sentence comes out with less meaning.
THE CAKE IS A LIE!
THE CAKE IS A LIE!
THE CAKE IS A LIE!
THE CAKE IS A LIE!
THE CAKE IS A LIE!
Well, more of a misunderstanding, actually.
THE FLASH IS A LIE, its a cake actually :)
Actually, I *wish* this cake was a lie.
Lazy arse, should have just print out the design.
It's not like the baker has an automated production set up that'll take a digital file and have an robotic arm do the deco.
Well, it's not a robotic arm, it's a printer.
Not a smart move, why not just print out the image and take it to the confectionery? Its not like they where getting copies at Knikos
Because they use a printer to put the image on the cake when it's from an image.
Cake wrecks is one of the funniest sites I've ever seen.
xD
Now we only need a cake PC to plug this into.
Or a big USB hub cake might work too.
Can you imagine the size of the PC if this USB Stick was going into it?
That's what she said!
Well deserved. That's one ugly ass USB drive.
The cake is a lie!
Please take a look up a few comments, beat you to it!
The fail here is the tool who thought he could stroll into a grocery store bakery and walk out with edible art. C'mon people, these guys decorate cakes in a grocery store for cryin' out loud, they're not artisans. The douchebag took a flash drive to the grocery store baker..not even the baker, the icing spreader who gets no formal training other than their high school English class and a quick tutorial on how to squeeze icing. In that regard, the cake in the image above is so fantastically rendered that the guy should have paid double.
OK... I'll give you that one.
How do you explain this one?
http://failblog.org/2008/06/19/pastry-design-fail/
I'm beginning to question the whole cake decorating community...
I agree, it's like taking your date to McDonald's expecting a gourmet dining experience.
That's not a Flash Drive. It's a media card reader.
that's not a bakery, it's a failure station!
ha ha, is it bad because its not apple logo baked? :))))))
1. Old news is old.
2. Huge USB is huge.
I think everyone has missed the point.The customer wanted the image on the drive/reader put on the cake, NOT a picture of the drive/reader itself.
I should say an Image IN the drive/reader put on the cake.not a picture of the drive/reader itself
I mean I had a Mario cake when i was 8 but come on a thumb drive cake? On second thought, that is a lot of extra delicious icing.
Teaches me for skimming through the articles.
I have a picture of a cake someone made at Walm-Mart where the cake was pretty but misseplled badly......lol, i make my own now.
Was the bad spelling in your story about not being able to spell done on purpose?
Wait, are you guys seriously debating the merits of the frosting makeup on this cake? Is that really what people talk about here at engadget? Keep talking about your computers, I don't think anyone really wants to hear you critique the specifics of a great story.
I don't know why anyone just assumes the confectioner will know what you mean if you aren't explicit. Don't tell them in words, show them. If that means a poorly draw sketch with the exact wording, DO IT.
Since I everyone else wrote their own story, I'm adding mine. Note that they didn't fail, but they were close.
I went into the supermarket and asked for a cake with 'Oh great and glorious father' and then a bunch of scribbles that look like writing but aren't. They objected, and wanted to put the whole thing, instead of just the beginning. So I recited the whole thing:
"Oh great and glorious father of all fathers, for whom the sun rises and the stars twinkle, may I please have " ... (And whatever it was you wanted.) When my dad was in a weird mood as a kid, this is what we had to say instead of 'please'. He would laugh and laugh every single time.
So when I wanted something as an adult, I got a cake with that on it.
In the end, they did exactly what I asked for after all. Heh.
THE CAKE IS A TRUTH!
Aside from being a dumb mistake, that is a poorly made cake. Seriously, I'm sure any one of us could do a better job if we put in a reasonable effort. I work in a kitchen, and have had to make cakes before, and it's really not that hard to make something that looks half-decent.
god damn they could of atleast shaped it like a drive, what da fuck is this, look like a kid just went crazy with a tube of icing.
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