[Sponsor] Retrogadget watch pioneer Click Watches and Watchismo are proud to introduce the extremely limited edition Click Watches SAFE Watch collection, now in all stainless steel casing and leather straps. Each watch has the individual edition number engraved on the caseback, supply is VERY limited, don't miss out! Time is unlocked by pressing the zero to display a sequential flashing of led bulbs in corresponding keypad buttons. Time can be displayed in 12 hour or 24 hour function. A number pad set into an angular steel casing with no distinguishable display adds up to a cool new way to showcase the time. See the entire Click Watch collection at Watchismo.
ENCODE, the media, and what we really know about the human genome In Search Of… Glenn Miller Fear and Trembling: Prion diseases on Twitter Natural history and the rights of women Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Birth of Profile Records Peacock spider shakes it for the ladies Tapeworms on the brain Tom Tom Club's first EP in 10+ years: Downtown Rockers HOWTO make a leather rockabilly Batman cowl R2D2 rolling luggage Junebug-like robotic pack mule Haunted Mansion/Small World mashup tee HOWTO make huge, wall-mounted papercraft Minecraft scenery Experience the Iranian Internet in central London Kickstarter: Impossibly goofy! Impossible Project iPhone adaptor DIY mini photo studio A Is For About Us: Martha Plimpton Haunted Playmobil set New chapter in comic strip about underground publisher John Wilcox App to speed up audio and video: Swift Sex in comic books, part 2 Phil Hartman's SNL audition reel Anatomically correct, full-sized chocolate skulls J.J. Abrams' Star Trek gets an official title that looks like it's suffering from a typo Profile of a cigar maker (video) GoDaddy's DNS servers experiencing extended outage Skull made from VHS cassettes: Dead Media Quadruplets with their birth-order shaved into their heads James Cameron says Avatar 4 is a prequel to Avatar, does not want people comparing it to Star Wars Bob Marley's "Is This Love" metal remix ENCODE, the media, and what we really know about the human genome
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 11, 2012 12:47 pm If you've read anything in the past week about ENCODE—a group of laboratories that recently published their latest work on the human genome—then you need to read John Timmer's excellent piece over at Ars Technica. What ENCODE has actually done, and why it matters, has been widely misrepresented in the mainstream press—largely because of misleading ...
Read in browser In Search Of… Glenn Miller
By David Pescovitz on Sep 11, 2012 12:30 pm On December 15, 1944, big band pioneer Glenn Miller was flying from the UK to Paris to perform for soldiers. His plane reportedly vanished over the English Channel without a trace. There are many theories about what became of Glenn Miller. Some suggest that his plane was destroyed by RAF bombs jettisoned by warplanes short ...
Read in browser Fear and Trembling: Prion diseases on Twitter
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 11, 2012 11:37 am You have probably heard this story before. Even if you don't immediately recognize the words "prion" or "Kuru", the history has seeped into popular culture, like a horrifying fairy tale, or an urban legend that just happens to be true. Once, there was a tribe in New Guinea that ate the dead. It wasn't the ...
Read in browser Natural history and the rights of women
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 11, 2012 10:04 am Really fascinating talk coming up at the Royal Society in London. Sharon Ruston, a professor of 19th century literature and culture, will be talking about the scientific texts that influenced Mary Wollstonecraft—the pioneering feminist who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Wollstonecraft isn't known for a connection to science, but during the ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Birth of Profile Records
By Ed Piskor on Sep 11, 2012 10:00 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
Read in browser Peacock spider shakes it for the ladies
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 11, 2012 09:57 am Male peacock spiders are fuzzy, strangely adorable, and boast a brilliantly colored abdomen that they flip up and use as a prop for an elaborate (for a spider) mating dance. In this video, the mating dance of the peacock spider has been helpfully set to music, so you can really see why his abdomen makes ...
Read in browser Tapeworms on the brain
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 11, 2012 09:30 am Here's a fun fact: Did you know that you can get tapeworms in your brain? You know that you can get a tapeworm from eating infected meat. But when people have tapeworms in their guts, they secrete tens of thousands of eggs a day. And those eggs can end up on food, or other things ...
Read in browser Tom Tom Club's first EP in 10+ years: Downtown Rockers
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 11, 2012 09:29 am This is a good month for Talking Heads fans. Tomorrow, David Byrne's magnum opus book on music and technology How Music Works ships, and today, Tom Tom Club -- the band founded by Heads Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz -- releases its first EP in ten years: Downtown Rockers. Downtown Rockers is just what you'd ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a leather rockabilly Batman cowl
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 11, 2012 02:18 am Trevor sends us, "An imgur gallery of how I constructed my leather Rockabilly Batman headgear, based on the artworks of Denis Medri, in 7 easy steps (some easier than others), as part of the Gotham City Rockers group forming for the upcoming Portsmouth Halloween Parade in NH.." Batman Cowl Process - Imgur (Thanks, Trevor!)
Read in browser R2D2 rolling luggage
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 11, 2012 01:13 am Salvador Bachiller's €95 R2D2 rolling baggage looks great. I know nothing about its materials, handling or build-quality (for all I know, it corners like a 30-year-old supermarket trolley, crumples the first time you fly with it, and scratches if you look at it crosseyed), but it sure is cool-looking. AZ-2028 ROBOT TROLLEY 60 (via Cnet ...
Read in browser Junebug-like robotic pack mule
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 11, 2012 12:06 am Here's a DARPA video showing a robotic pack-mule prototype. I think you're supposed to imagine this thing being on your side, but when I see videos like this, I always find myself imagining what it would be like to be crouching in the underbrush with a couple of terrified children, trying to keep them silent ...
Read in browser Haunted Mansion/Small World mashup tee
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 11:06 pm Actualchad has designed a Haunted Mansion/Small World mashup tee. He writes, "Just in time for Halloween, the Haunted Mansion has taken on the small world in the battle of which ride is really the scariest. In the style of Mary Scary Blair..." Is This Small World Actually Stretching? by actualchad (Thanks, Actualchad)
Read in browser HOWTO make huge, wall-mounted papercraft Minecraft scenery
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 10:09 pm Jeff sez, "Some gamers need a Railgun, others choose an M1A1, most seem to desire an Energy Sword...but what we need is a pickaxe! That's right, our current favorite diversion from lab work is Minecraft. We didn't want the fun to stop on the screen, so we created giant, 3-D, papercraft Minecraft terrains on our ...
Read in browser Experience the Iranian Internet in central London
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 08:48 pm Runa from the Tor Project sez, "What is the Iranian Internet? How does it feel to be censored? Filtered? Under constant surveillance? Unsure? Restricted? Oppressed? On Wednesday September 26, Small Media will transform their office in central London into a space where you can really get a feel of how it feels to be oppressed ...
Read in browser Kickstarter: Impossibly goofy! Impossible Project iPhone adaptor
By Jason Weisberger on Sep 10, 2012 08:46 pm Its crazy. I love it. You can help kickstart the project and buy one at the same time. (via PetaPixel)
Read in browser DIY mini photo studio
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 10, 2012 07:58 pm Here's how Nick Britsky made a nifty mini photo studio. Our household is spawning blogs like bunnies. Since I need all the help I could get, I thought it would be good to up my photo game. We’ve been using a bay window to take some of our pictures. So I started researching a mini ...
Read in browser A Is For About Us: Martha Plimpton
By Maureen Herman on Sep 10, 2012 07:50 pm [Video Link] I just finished producing a short video for A Is For featuring Martha Plimpton. It's essentially a quick overview of A Is For and a public invitation to be part of our new awareness-raising campaign. We're asking people to submit a video telling what their A means to them. It will be an ...
Read in browser Haunted Playmobil set
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 07:41 pm On eBay, a toymodder called Foiled1 is selling a beautiful, highly detailed Playmobil haunted house: "So what you get is the house, fence, wallpaper and all items seen in photo's (some interior item's may vary)! Watch out for the ghost that comes through the wall! Includes all people and all items seen in photo's (some ...
Read in browser New chapter in comic strip about underground publisher John Wilcox
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 10, 2012 07:34 pm I love Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall's comic strip about the colorful and brilliant underground publisher John Wilcox. My only complaint is that it runs so infrequently! They just posted the third chapter. JOHN WILCOCK, NEW YORK YEARS: 1954-1971 Chapter Three: Party Time with Bud Waldo Featuring "Editing Norman Mailer" (a true account of Mailer's ...
Read in browser App to speed up audio and video: Swift
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 10, 2012 06:13 pm [Video Link] Swift Player & Downloader is a useful $0.99 iOS app can speed up or slow down audio and video.
Read in browser Sex in comic books, part 2
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 10, 2012 06:01 pm Here's artist Mitch O'Connel's second installment of silly, unintentionally sexual (and other weird) comic book art from the days of yore. (Previous installment) Sex in Comics Part 2! The top 100 strangest, suggestive and steamy vintage comic book covers of all time!
Read in browser Phil Hartman's SNL audition reel
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 06:00 pm Here's Phil Hartman's 11-minute SNL audition from 1985 or 1986, with a guest appearance by Jon Lovitz. It's very funny, very raw, and pure Hartman -- fascinating and sad to see how Hartman's genius shone through from the earliest days. Phil Hartman SNL audition (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Read in browser Anatomically correct, full-sized chocolate skulls
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 05:10 pm Eat Your Heart Out has announced that they'll soon be taking reservations for these anatomically correct, full-sized chocolate skulls at £50 each. They're made by the cats at Two Little Cats bakery. EXCITING NEWS! WE HAVE CHOCOLATE SKULLS…
Read in browser J.J. Abrams' Star Trek gets an official title that looks like it's suffering from a typo
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 10, 2012 04:52 pm The official title for Star Trek 2 was revealed by Paramount today, and while I never thought I'd say this about anything or anyone (okay, perhaps a couple of times), I really hope it's dealing with colon issues. The title is Star Trek Into Darkness -- four words, a proper noun that consists of two ...
Read in browser Profile of a cigar maker (video)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 10, 2012 04:28 pm Made by Hand / No 4 The Cigar Shop from Made by Hand on Vimeo. Keith says: After making portraits on a distiller, a knife maker, and an urban beekeeper, we've focused our camera on The Cigar Shop. In 1974, Dominican immigrant Don Antonio Martinez started a small shop in New York City selling hand ...
Read in browser GoDaddy's DNS servers experiencing extended outage
By Dean Putney on Sep 10, 2012 04:05 pm If you manage your domains through GoDaddy or are hosting a website with them, it's probably down right now and has been for about an hour. Take advantage of this time to find out which ones of your friends use GoDaddy in order to ridicule them. You can start with ridiculing me. GoDaddy's management tools ...
Read in browser Skull made from VHS cassettes: Dead Media
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 03:59 pm Noah Scalin sez, "Dead Media is created from 497 VHS videocassettes that were given to me by several friends and also culled from my personal collection. The piece, which is approximately 20 feet long by 9 feet wide, was built in the style of the skull in Holbein's The Ambassadors and meant to be viewed ...
Read in browser Quadruplets with their birth-order shaved into their heads
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 03:00 pm A family of quadruplets in Shenzhen, China have had the numbers 1-4 shaved into their heads by their parents in order to aid in telling them apart: 'Even now, their father can't tell which one is which. 'Sometimes, he punishes the second one for something the third one has done.' The boys won't be able ...
Read in browser James Cameron says Avatar 4 is a prequel to Avatar, does not want people comparing it to Star Wars
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 10, 2012 02:44 pm James Cameron was not kidding when he said he was just going to make Avatar movies for the rest of his life. In an interview with MTV, he discussed plans for a fourth Avatar movie, an idea he'd been throwing around for a while until he realized that he might have a few more years ...
Read in browser Bob Marley's "Is This Love" metal remix
By David Pescovitz on Sep 10, 2012 02:31 pm Andy Rehfeldt turns Marley metal.
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
No comments:
Post a Comment