I’m really excited about this thing. But I couldn’t quite get a sense of how it might feel. What’s 1.5lbs like in the hands? So I made a mockup:
Obviously it’s not metal and glass, and therefore not as rigid, but I love how this thing feels. Ingredients:
1 copy of Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type, which [...]
Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville invented the Dreamachine, which I first heard about at last week’s Film Love at Eyedrum. It uses a record player to spin a cylinder with patterns cut in it. With a light inside, it makes a strobe for drug-free psychedelia. I found an online Dreamachine that makes a similar effect. [...]
Is it Art?, an essay on videogames.
A common criticism of video games made by non-gamers is that they are pointless and escapist, but a more valid observation might be that the bulk of games are nowhere near escapist enough. A persuasive recent essay by the games theorist Steven Poole made the strong argument that the [...]
How to make a $10 macro photo studio light tent thing. I don’t really need one, but I could probably think of reasons after I make it.
George Orwell’s essay Poetry and the Microphone talks about broadcasting verse over the radio, but I think there are some internet parallels here, another way to cross distances. People who are interested can find and enjoy just as easily as those who aren’t interested can move along. That combination of distance and intimacy affects how [...]
The Stylophone is a pocket-sized organ you play with a stylus. Here’s a medley of Survivor, Final Countdown, and some other 80s hits. I love how the stylophonist leans back around the 45-second mark to kick out the full rock climax effect.
Scott Rosenberg is giving away paperback editions of his book, Dreaming in Code. I liked it—no reason not to snag a copy.
“Email apnea is temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doing email.” [via collision detection]
Spent some time playing with Flickr stats the other day. I’m not really looking to be known for my photographs, but I am a sucker for data. As expected, my stats don’t demonstrate that internet users worldwide have come to appreciate my uncanny eye for composition and form, but rather that one can leverage Flickr’s [...]
The Twitter Curve. I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. It’s one of the best things distractions going, but I have to be really careful to keep my signal/noise ratio in balance.
The Web that Wasn’t: Alex Wright talks about precursors and alternatives to the web we know.
Holy crap. I just noticed that there’s a LibX plug-in for Emory University libraries. There are a couple hundred other schools that use LibX. From the comfort of my own Firefox toolbar, I can search Emory’s catalog, journals, and databases, as well as Google Scholar and WorldCat. This makes me unreasonably happy.
Is it me, or is there subversive body language in this Apple promo video? I was watching the iPod Touch guided tour, and I noticed that our friendly host keeps moving his head left and right, as if to express disagreement. It’s incredibly distracting.
Liz Danzico analyzes the closing phrases we use in e-mail. My most common reflex closings: Thanks, Later, Rock and roll, Don’t stop believin’, Heh, See you soon, Etc., Ciao, Yours. I do like to mix it up every now and then with a tongue-in-cheek rendition of the earnest and baroque.
Did a little housekeeping around here…
I restored the link to subscribe to the RSS feed for this site, which I took away some time ago in an inexplicable fit of madness.
The sidebar now reatures a running list of what’s playing in my iTunes, updated every 10 minutes or so. I suppose you can get the [...]
A friend at work got a RipStik. They’re like skateboards, except they’ve got two wheels and you can take really tight turns and you don’t have to keep doing that annoying foot push-off thing to keep moving. Watch some of the videos. Might be a good Christmas gift.
A timeline of things that have gone or will go extinct from 1950-2050. [via kottke]
Scott Underwood and Merlin Mann talk about productivity stuff. I’m not really a huge fan of instant messaging in the workplace, so I enjoyed this brief exchange:
Scott: IM to me combines the worst aspects of the telephone and e-mail—
Merlin:—and being a teenager.
Something I learned today: I was reading this NYT article about fashion, and I discovered that if you double-click a word in an NYT article, it will make a pop-up with a little dictionary/ reference search for you. Doesn’t look like it works on the home page, but that’s pretty cool. Am I the last [...]
Wikimindmap maps out the subtopics and links in Wikipedia articles. A little slow, but very cool. [via idw]
I would very much like to own a Monome 256. It looks like just the kind of wonderful toy I need* these days. They mentioned the beautiful woodwork was from Atlanta—I wonder if that’s Matt Soorikian’s craftmanship?
*i.e., want
In the Year 2000 is a photo collection about “past visions of the future,” like picnicking with your hover station wagon.
Doing a little housekeeping around here. If this were 1996, I’d be displaying one of those “under construction” gifs.
A very cool bit of wisdom from Hugh MacLeod.
I remember Robert Hughes, the great art critic saying in his wonderful book, “The Shock Of The New” that the Conceptual Art scene that emerged in the 1960s-1970s was actually good for “Painting”.
Why? Because with everybody else scattering bits of string around gallery floors and calling it [...]
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