magpie's shiny things

Slow morn­ing.

Easter bun­ny cute­ness. Not for the bam­bi lovers in the crowd. Be sure
to click on all the views!
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=22149195

I’m a total whore for let­ter­press. Two DIY press designs reviewed.
Verdict — well not really.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/07/how-to-build-your-ow.html

Just added this blog to the rota­tion. We’ll see what it brings. (If
noth­ing else I like the design. I think it’s from Smashing Magazine -
tell­tale S in the bot­tom right cor­ner. Could be wrong.)
http://craftfail.com/?p=31

For play. Using a “rub­ber band” inter­face to explore words and their
connections:
http://www.visuwords.com/
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

Reporting on Reading Rights and the National Federations of the
Blind’s protest of Amazon’s cav­ing to the Author’s Guild over the
text-to-speech fea­ture of the kin­dle. Show some love. Write a letter.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/06/reading-rights-coali.html

Best round up of the report­ing on the Google books set­tle­ment. I’m
still work­ing my way through the links here.
http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/the-controversy-over-google
‑book-search/

more tomor­row,

In case you don’t have a suf­fi­cient­ly rad busi­ness card. Make up a few
of these. A must for MEs.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Cardapult-the-Business-Card-Catapult/

Too bad these are art prints. I would love to take them down to the
local. I’d final­ly be cool­er than the 20 some­things out to show their
girls a hot Saturday night.
http://www.offworld.com/2009/04/nice-shot-olly-mosss-shoot-the.html

A musi­cal inter­lude. A lit­tle Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
nos­tal­gia mixed with a lit­tle swing. There’s a link to a pre­view. No
audio on the lap­pie so I can’t tell you if it’s any good. The cov­er is
a can’t miss though.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/06/jazzy-covers-of-mist.html

Lastly two exam­ples of home fur­nish­ings mixed up into art.
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=39237
http://sleepmachine.tumblr.com/post/93051352/handa-classics-secretary-rita

(Note that Sleep Machine is in Japanese. Other mate­r­i­al on Sleep
Machine is NSFW.)

more tomor­row,

Heavy on the visu­als today.

Touching pho­tos of Mexicans in America who sup­port fam­i­lies at home
doing mun­dane jobs dressed as superheros.
http://dulcepinzon.com/superheroes.htm

I will make time to see this mod­el and all the rest dur­ing my spring road trip:
http://www.matchstickmarvels.com/Comingin2009.htm

I am fas­ci­nat­ed by pho­tographs of decay­ing infra­struc­ture. From
Abandoned Britain, Helling Asylum: I chose one of the 8 pages of
pho­tos. Be aware that you can spend hours on this site.
http://www.abandoned-britain.com/PP/hellingly/5.html

Another vari­a­tion on plumb­ing mate­ri­als used as in light­ing design. I
like that he’s solved the switch prob­lem with­out resort­ing to a hidden
tog­gle or some­thing else non-plumbing.
http://www.dezeen.com/2009/03/31/kozo-lamps-by-david-benatan/

Useful key­board mod­i­fi­ca­tion soft­ware for any­one whose work involves
lots of get­ting all those pesky lit­tle typo­graph­ic glyphs to appear in
print and on line.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/02/typography-keyboard-layout-download-now/

More tomor­row,

Every morn­ing I send JimH a quick sum­ma­ry of my morn­ing cruze around
the net. He sug­gest­ed that you all might like to see the results as
well.

From Core77 a snarky short descrip­tion of how the US Mint makes coins
(cool pho­tos) there’s a link to the longer COINage mag­a­zine ver­sion at
the bot­tom. The oth­er entries in their Production Methods Series are
worth a look.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/production_methods_coining_12577.asp

Funny Kindle case. (Yes I love my kindle)
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/04/kindle_2_case_mod.html?CMP=OTC-5JF307375954

Schneier has begun the annu­al “movie-plot” threat chal­lenge. Ignore
the first cou­ple of com­ments, the good ones are at the bot­tom. Check
back often.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/04/fourth_annual_m.html

Probably an April Fool’s joke and cer­tain­ly the only way you’ll ever
get me to play gui­tar hero.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/01/guitar-hero-leonard-cohen-coming-this-summer/

There’s a new xkcd. It’s only sor­ta fun­ny. (IMHO)
http://xkcd.com/563/

More tomor­row if you all would like.