Archives for August 2009

Because it was Gath­er week­end. First up — a lit­tle Jack Daniels his­to­ry.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/31151

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Some sci­ence — there was  lot to choose from this morn­ing.

Crows use rocks to raise the water lev­el in a con­tain­er, prov­ing that
Aesop knew what he was talk­ing about and that crows real­ly are the
coolest birds
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/aesopscrows/

Look­ing like the floor plans for one of those accret­ed french
man­sions, a more spa­tial­ly accu­rate view of the HIV genome may pro­vide
new clues to how to defeat the virus.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/hivtopograph/

I’m not sure I need a wal­let sized LED resis­tance cal­cu­la­tor but this
print, cut, and paste ver­sion may be use­ful to some of you. That this
is a home made spe­cial­ty slide rule is beyond awe­some. I miss my slide
rule.
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/ledcalc

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Art and Pho­tog­ra­phy

A very nice inter­pre­ta­tion of the indus­tri­al meme in jew­el­ry by “Junior ASJ”
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?individual_id=250153&portfolio_id=2061149&

Dar­ren Rees cre­ates the pho­tographs for many of the BMW ads. Here’s a
nice round up some of the pho­tos. No Flash. (link to port­fo­lio below)
http://www.presidiacreative.com/18-cool-and-creative-photographs-by-darran-rees/

Here’s Dar­ren Rees port­fo­lio web­site — flash 5 required.
http://www.darranrees.com/

A rem­i­nis­cence of Mary Pop­pins as cre­at­ed by the Russ­ian illus­tra­tor
Gen­nady Kali­novsky. This is not your parent’s (or Julie Andrews) Mary
Pop­pins. I love her too.
http://coilhouse.net/2009/08/06/mary-poppins-is-my-co-pilot/

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Time Wast­ing Good­ness

More musi­cians on the Mup­pet Show. High­lights include Los Lobos and Yo Yo Ma.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/30898

more tomor­row

Let’s see if I can remem­ber to spellcheck before send­ing this
morn­ing, shall we?

Pho­tog­ra­phy

We think of wild fires as being a phe­nom­e­na of the forest­ed west of
the USA and Cana­da. Mediter­ranean coun­tries face their own fire
sea­son. The Big Pic­ture has images.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/fires_around_the_mediterranean.html

More from Europe. An all com­ers heavy met­al fes­ti­val in Ger­many. (folk met­al?)
http://designyoutrust.com/2009/08/04/wacken-open-air-2009/

Clear­ly some of those met­al heads have been cruis­ing the ‘net and seen
this love­ly tiki head carved out of a water­mel­on cen­ter­piece.
http://www.watermelon.org/recipe_detail.asp?recipeDisp=183

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The Future…

…of edu­ca­tion. Nathan She­droff pro­vides the curic­u­la for three of
hos design cours­es, along with the pre­sen­ta­tion mate­ri­als and links to
many of the arti­cles to be dis­cussed. Any­one one study and because
it’s all CC licensed any­one can nuse his mate­ri­als as a start­ing point
for thi­er own teach­ing.
http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/

…of fab­ri­ca­tion. Print­ing stain­less steel. If you can draw it in a
CAD sys­tem you can make a replace­ment part for any­thing. (Or a stu­pid
look­ing fig­urine with its hand up its nose.)
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/04/the-future-of-fabrication-is-here-shapeways-announces-stainless-steel-printing/

…of den­tistry. Suc­cess­ful regrowth of a tooth in situ. Den­tures may
end up as an item in one of those ‘can you believe they put those
things in their mouth’ exhibits in 2050.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/08/bioengineered-mouse-tooth/

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Tech­nol­o­gy

New chips com­ing for net­books,. More name con­fu­sion com­ing to the
mar­ket space. Smart­books? — and some peo­ple need to get a grip with
the URL mak­ers -
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/08/arm-based-netbooks-set-to-arrive-on-us-shores-by-year-end.arshttp://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/08/arm-based-netbooks-set-to-arrive-on-us-shores-by-year-end.ars

Remote read­ing of RFID chips in cards is a favorite bug­bear of the
tin­foil hat crowd. Oh and the feds at Def­Con. I find the last
para­graph to be espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing. I won­der how many of the
lit­tle blighters I’m unknow­ing­ly car­ry­ing.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/fed-rfid/

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Archi­tec­ture

A remod­el of a lake­side house. I like it but the feel is very 50s
SoCal for some­thing so new and in TX.
http://sweetbakerygoods.com/architecture/architecture-the-peninsula-residence/

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Art

Two illus­tra­tors both doing work on graph­ic nov­els. They have a
sim­i­lar feel but very dif­fer­ent sub­ject mat­ter.

Star St.Germain has a flickr stream of her work. Her work is per­son­al
and young. Her per­son­al blog has a great deign and lay­out. Very
con­sist with and com­pli­men­ta­ry of her work.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisstar/
http://thisisstar.com/

Stein­er from Mars (aka Emma Rios) draws much dark­er more mas­cu­line
mate­r­i­al. (If War­ren Ellis hadn’t men­tioned her name I wouldn’t have
thought she was a she.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steinerfrommars/

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Games

Slate want you to choose the Amer­i­can Apoc­a­lypse. The choic­es are
inter­est­ing and occa­sion­al­ly just plain weird. Amer­i­can ends in a hail
of Rods from God? (bot­tom row) It’s a poll dis­guised as a game.
http://sdn.slate.com/features/endofamerica/default.htm

More lit­er­ary games. Where was that books set?
(6 out of 10 which is sad con­sid­er­ing I’ve read all of the books.)
http://www.mentalfloss.com/quiz/quiz.php?q=705&p=1

Stills and the trail­er from the upcom­ing Fabu­ous Mr.Fox. Anoth­er
adap­ta­tion of a children’s books clear­ly aimed at attract­ing as many
grown‐ups as sprogs. Count me in,
http://www.cpluv.com/www/feeditem/7941

tak­ing a break for the gath­er. see you all next mon­day.

The world of bits and pol­i­tics is get­ting all het up again.

First there’s this lit­tle mat­ter of AT&T, Apple, GoogleVoice, and the
FCC. The fences around the play­grounds are com­ing down and the
prop­er­ty own­ers are not hap­py.
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/08/01/att-responds-to-fcc-letter-re-google-voice-mobile-iphone-app/

Rep. Ed Markey (D‐MA) is try­ing for net neu­tral­i­ty leg­is­la­tion again.
A much more pro‐neutrality admin­is­tra­tion might make a dif­fer­ence. PDF
link to the text includ­ed. At 13 pages this bill is con­sid­er­ably
eas­i­er to grasp than most.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/the-war-over-network-neutrality.ars

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It’s Def­Con time and every­one is pun­dit­ing.

More hack­ing of high secu­ri­ty locks and access sys­tems. I think these
guys are doing an impor­tant job but Bluz­ma­n­is’ grand­stand­ing ego­ism
and bul­ly­ing of the mak­ers of these sys­tems is quick­ly under­min­ing his
cred­i­bil­i­ty.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/electronic-locks-defeated/

Schneier mounts the bul­ly pul­pit and decries China’s Green Dam Youth
Escort filter/spyware pack­age and then reminds us how much of that
tech­nol­o­gy we’ve allowed into our own net­works int he west.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/building_in_sur.html

One the oth­er hand you could get one of these and pre­tend you’re
secu­ri­ty con­scious. I think I’ve found a new desk lamp.
http://www.a2591.com/2009/08/im-not-security-camera.html

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Real Sci­ence is odd­er than sci­ence fic­tion. Wel­come to the north­ern
most sci­en­tif­ic out­post. Be nice to the bar ten­ders, beware of the
birds.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/svalbard/

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Pho­tog­ra­phy

Jakov Cor­di­na takes great pic­tures. And he’s show cas­ing a, new to me,
wid­get that makes a flickr pho­to­stream embed­d­a­ble slide show. (cau­tion
there are a cou­ple of videos with music includ­ed)
http://www.jakovcordina.com/post/86633471/photostream-slide-show

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Archi­tec­ture

Three entries today. First the “ledges” are Sears tow­er are open. So
you can now stand on a piece of glass 1300+ feet up in the air over
Chica­go.  No way in hell you’re get­ting me up there but the sprogs
seem to like the float­ing over the city feel­ing.
http://sweetbakerygoods.com/architecture/architecture-sear-towers-1353-ft-high-glass-balconies/

Train cars are con­vert­ed into church­es in Rus­sia. Some of these are
touch­ing­ly naive and some are small works of art. (The pho­tos rock
too.)
http://englishrussia.com/?p=2248

The exam­ples are of paint­ings and illus­tra­tion but the Bauhaus
move­ment pro­duced some Very Impor­tant Archi­tec­ture. Nev­er mind, just
read the sto­ry and look at the paint­ings.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/02/bauhaus-ninety-years-of-inspiration/

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Enter­tain­ment
Pop out and grab a cof­fee. You’ll about 10 min­utes for today’s video selec­tions.

Amy Cre­hore is a blue grass fiend and puts up some fab­u­louslinks. This
one is  Josephine Bak­er and Thomp­son Jazz Orches­tra from 1927. Can you
imag­ine watch­ing this woman in per­son? Elec­tri­fy­ing. The accom­pa­ny­ing
music is Ahmad Jamal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsXyDrf9HO0

Cab Cal­loway and Bet­tie Boop. This can not go wrong. There’s tons more
trea­sure in the Inter­net Archive’s col­lec­tion of vin­tage car­toons
includ­ing a whole lot of BB.
http://www.archive.org/details/bb_old_man_of_the_mountain

That’s it for today, enjoy.