By Mark Frauenfelder at 9:03 pm Tuesday, Oct 10
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Cory recently
reviewed Scott McCloud's amazing new book,
Making Comics. Kevin Kelly also reviewed it on Cool Tools and included this marvelous page from the book about combining two primary facial expressions to create a complex facial expression.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 7:51 pm Tuesday, Oct 10
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Peter Bagge did a four-page comic strip for
Reason that handily obliterates arguments against an open immigration policy.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 7:29 pm Tuesday, Oct 10
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Thumbelina is the world's smallest horse. She weighs 60lb and is five years old. She was born on a ranch that specializes in breeding miniature horses. She is thought to have dwarfism, which makes her even tinier.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 7:23 pm Tuesday, Oct 10
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Enjoy this narrated video of a shrimp peeling machine. While not as jaw dropping as the
live chicken catcher I blogged about a while back, this one has its moments.
Link (Via Information Junk)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 6:33 pm Tuesday, Oct 10
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"Swipes" are comic book panels that were obviously copied from another source, but not credited. They are pretty common. It's a fun pastime for comic book fans to identify swipes. Unlike plagiarism, people don't really think the "swiper" is much of a cheat. I'm not sure why, but I sort of agree with that sentiment. I don't think badly about a comic book artist who swipes occasionally but I do think badly of a writer who copies someone else's writing.
Here's an interesting swipe discovery: Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, swiped an illo from a 1938 issue of a pulp magazine called Gang Busters In Action for the Batman story in Detective Comics #33 (November 1939.) Check out the fingers of Bruce Wayne's left hand. They are green in the panel, but should have been skin colored.
Link (Thanks, Eric!)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 6:21 pm Tuesday, Oct 10
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I was born in Denver and grew up in the area, and am too familiar with the barfalicious names developers attach to the hideous cookie-cutter housing subdivision springing up in the weedy praries around Rocky Flats nuclear bomb plant and the underground nerve gas armories. This table, which lets you generate subdivision names, is so good that I'm afraid developers will really start using it to name future particle-board-and-tarpaper travesties.
The Reserve at Saddle Bluff Heights. The Preserve at Hawk Creek Landing. The Estates at Antelope Glen Ranch.
Over the years, as new subdivisions have stretched farther and farther out onto the plains, their names have become wordier, more elaborate, and more pretentious. Today, there is an obvious trend in the naming of new subdivisions in metro Denver. Developers now use a variety of semantic tricks in their attempt to increase the perceived exclusivity of the development. No longer would something simple and unassuming like "Columbine Knolls" suffice. These days, the first part of the name must clearly identify that the development is not only a residential community, but also one of great distinction, and that these homes of great distinction are located at a place of even greater distinction. Thus, new suburban development names now begin with phrases like "The Estates at..." or "The Preserve at..." or "The Retreat at..." followed by not just one or two words to describe the incredibly special patch of prairie on which these homes have been built, but three words or more.
Link (Thanks, GM!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:43 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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The co-chair of Disney's board has recognized piracy as a "business model" to be competed with, instead of a war to be fought on Disney's customers:
"We understand now that piracy is a business model," said Sweeney, twice voted Hollywood's most powerful woman by the Hollywood Reporter. "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We we don't like the model but we realise it's competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward."
Pretty clever, though she also said this:
Sweeney outlined Disney's strategy as: being primarily about content because it drives everything else...
Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 11:38 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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TSA goons working "security" at Bradley Int'l Aiport in Hartford, CT, confiscated a geologist's favorite rock, which he was bringing as prop for a speech he was delivering at a learned conference:
To enhance my speech, I nestled one of my favorite specimens between my underwear and shirts in a carry-on bag because I never check luggage on business trips. My banded chunk of the Hebron Gneiss (pronounced "nice") resembled a broken slice of layer cake composed of licorice and cream cheese.
In retrospect, I suppose I could have put the grapefruit-sized specimen inside my sock, swung it around my head like a mace, charged the cabin and attempted to hijack the flight. This, of course, never occurred to me until the zealous inspector declared my rock a "dual-use" item.
"What, pray tell, is a dual-use item?" I asked. I'm afraid I chucked just a little, causing her to glare, withhold a satisfactory answer and call her supervisor. He hefted my rock, scrutinized it for a moment, and agreed that my specimen was indeed a dual-use item, meaning a potential low-tech weapon. During those uneasy moments when I thought I would be detained, I wondered if a doctor's stethoscope would also be declared a dual-use item, since it could be used to strangle a pilot.
Link
(
via Schneier)
By David Pescovitz at 11:06 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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PhantomPark is an elevator for your car. It effectively doubles the space of your garage and hides your secret cherry AMC Pacer until you're ready to peel out.
From the American Custom Lifts product page:
A 2-deck vehicle parking system rigidly bolted together in the field of operation by a heavy-duty scissors style lift designed to lift (2) 5,000 lb. vehicles at the same time. The deck structure and lifting/synchronizing components are completely concealed below ground so there is no indication that a lift (or second car) is present when lowered.
Link to product page,
Link to video on YouTube
(via Jalopnik)
By David Pescovitz at 10:22 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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Tomorrow's
Creative Commons Salon in San Francisco is the CC Fundraising Campaign Launch Party. I'll be giving a brief talk about
MAKE: and DIY technology.
Micki Krimmel of
Revver and
Ryan Junnell of
Webzine and
SLOMO Video will also present. Live performance by mash-up maestros
Evolution Control Committee. The party is Wednesday, October 11, from 6-9pm at the bar Shine. If you're in the area, please stop by and support the righteous efforts of CC!
Link to Upcoming.org page,
Link to Creative Commons
By David Pescovitz at 10:08 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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Designer/artist Tim Simpson's Smile Helmet mechanically draws the corners of your mouth back into a grin. He created it for "people in jobs which demand an unusual amount of smiling, such as air-stewards, receptionists and politicians." A video of the device in action is available on Simpson's Web site. From the project page:
A sensor in the front of the helmet detects anybody within a 2 metre range, at which point the mouth is pulled into a broad grimace by a small servo motor and some concealed fishing wire. The helmet addresses the facades of social interaction and explores our responses to affected expressions.
Link (via MAKE: Blog)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 9:56 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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JavaMoose writes:
When my wife and I got married I found out that her late grandfather had said to the family that, when married, I was to get my choice of all his old tools. That alone was amazing, given the excellent collection of vintage woodworking tools and special-built power tools. But, it got better.
I found Pop's collection of vintage Handyman Magazines and oh how glorious they are. So, I decided to share! Every Monday I will post a "new" magazine, in its entirety, here for all to enjoy!
Link
(Via Make Blog)
By David Pescovitz at 9:48 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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A hazmat team closed off a section of Halle, Germany on Monday after a pile of gelatinous goo was discovered on the side of a roadway. It turned out that the mysterious matter was leftover Jell-O dumped after a party. From Reuters:
"The fire brigade always has to assume a worst-case scenario," said a fire brigade spokesman. "We conducted a variety of tests and figured out it was jelly."
He said the newly wed groom, who was pulled out of bed at noon following a tipoff, confirmed that the jelly, known as Jell-O in the United States, was a party leftover -- and agreed to clean it up.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 9:33 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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This "handheld printer" was made from a repurposed HJ inkject cartridge -- because it's handheld, it can print on odd surfaces like balloons:
The fact that it was built from parts readily lying around makes, for example, that MOSFET T1 is a rather strange type. In principle any P-channel MOSFET can be used for this, as long as it can cope with the peak current of about half an amp. The coil L1 does not have a critical value either. The author's coil comes from a backlight-inverter, but any slightly hefty coil will do. If the 20-V power supply is actually in the vicinity of 20 V, then all is well.
Link
(
via Gizmodo)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:09 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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The NYT reports on the rise of nanotechnology food startups that propose to engineer food at a molecular level:
Given the uncertainty about the risks of consuming new nano products, many analysts expect near-term investment to focus on novel food processing and packaging technology. That is the niche targeted by Sunny Oh, whose start-up company, OilFresh, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is marketing a novel device to keep frying oil fresh. OilFresh grinds zeolite, a mineral, into tiny beads averaging 20 nanometers across and coats them with an undisclosed material. Packed into a shelf inside the fryer, the beads interfere with chemical processes that break down the oil or form hydrocarbon clusters, Mr. Oh says. As a result, restaurants can use oil longer and transfer heat to food at lower temperatures, although they still need traditional filters to remove food waste from the oil.
Link
(
via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:07 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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Megnut food blog points to a moral panic among chefs reacting to plagiarism of their recipes and presentation -- cooks who propose that they should be able to copyright food. Not that they should have a remedy for plagiarism, but that ways of preparing food should be owned, frozen in amber, usable only with permission:
Food and Wine: "Shaw told me he hoped to convene a summit meeting with some of the smartest people in the food world to hammer out a workable model for copyrighting food. First, he’d propose changing the copyright code, possibly by making cuisine a subdivision of the existing category for sculpture or acknowledging recipes as a form of literary expression. For enforcement, Shaw leans toward creating a system like ASCAP, an association that collects composers’ royalties for public performances of songs–on the radio, in nightclubs and so on..."
Megnut: "The culinary world at its best is a world of craft and art. A fine meal is a performance, not a soulless assemblage of ingredients. I feel good when I eat Grant Achatz's "Hot Potato" at Alinea. I don't want to eat "Hot Potato™ by Grant Achatz" rotely created at some food counter in the airport. Clearly there are issues with how chefs get rewarded for their creativity and effort, and I would love to see the best get the recognition they deserve. But bringing the lawyers in? I don't see how that benefits chefs in the long run, or diners, or amateur cooks. In the end, I suspect the ultimate beneficiaries would be the same people who always win. As we get ensnared in the webbing of our increasingly-complex legal system, the ones who always make the most money are the lawyers."
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 8:37 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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A proposal to the Canadian Copyright Board from Canadian music publishers for online music distribution contains a neglected clause that smuggles in a
requirement for Canadian music services to use DRM:
The proposed tariff says that, as a condition of the licence, "an online music service shall use all technical and other means available to it to ensure that reproductions made by a user are exclusively for that user’s private use." Is this provision really what it appears to be: mandatory DRM for Canada's online music market?
Would the tariff require online music services to use TPMs? Would “other means” require strict end user licence agreements? What happens if a popular online music store like eMusic wanted to continue selling DRM-free music? Could they be sued? Could they negotiate a separate agreement, and even if so, would they be at a competitive disadvantage? Will consumers just have to accept DRM if they want to pay for music? If all or most online music services must use DRM, would that limit creators’ freedom to sell online music on their chosen terms? What would be the broader public policy implications of mandatory DRM?
If this stuff pisses you off, consider joining a group like
Online Rights Canada.
Link
(via Michael Geist)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:31 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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IceWeasel is a version of Firefox created for use in "free" operating systems like Debian (and its derivatives, such as Ubuntu), which eschew any element that can't be freely reused by anyone, for any reason. Iceweasel was developed because Firefox and the Firefox logo are trademarked, and because some of the default Firefox plugins can't be freely redistributed. Iceweasel will be synchronized with the current Firefox release, but without the non-free artwork and plugins.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 7:58 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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The war on music downloaders rages in the Christian music world, too:
Christian music sales, both on CD and via paid download, over the first six months of 2006 were 11% higher than during the same period in 2005. That double-digit surge stands in stark contrast to the rest of the music industry, which experienced a 4% decline during the same time period. And no other genre has a 2006 sales jump anywhere near the level of the Christian sector.
When the six-month numbers were released, industry leaders said the figures showed that efforts such as the "Millions of Wrongs" campaign were making in-roads. But that view may be a leap of faith, says Joe Fleischer, chief of marketing for Big Champagne, a top barometer of online media activity.
Fleischer said the uptick in Christian music sales was more than matched by a jump in Christian music that was traded on peer-to-peer networks, e-mailed as file attachments and (the new popular mode of youth distribution) via digital files tucked into instant messages.
Link
(
Thanks, David!)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:17 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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The Scroll Pan is a roll-up nonstick frying surface -- unroll it over the burner and use it to cook your omelets and suchlike.
Link
(
via OhGizmo)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:15 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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Ronen Design has published a number of metal sculpture designs under CC licenses in DXF form, which can be fed to CNC machines. Included is a design for a "fake Rolex" stand with the word FAKE cut into its base.
Link
(
Thanks, Ronen!)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:10 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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It's a little tricky and requires specialized equipment, but if you're planning on going as the Green Lantern on Hallowe'en, you could do worse than to invest in the production of one of these fantastic Green Lantern rings.
Link
(
via Make Blog)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:06 am Tuesday, Oct 10
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Flickr user AK_IceCube makes handsome, ooky severed hand pincushions out of fabric.
Link
(
via Craft Blog)
