Interview with author of The Art of Clean Up Reversible Journey hoodie Inside the awful world of RATters - the men who spy on people through their computers with "remote administration tools" Nominating Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize Nanoscale 3D printer that runs 100x faster than current models Kickstarting a 24"-on-a-side large format 3D printer Tell Me Something I Don't Know 003: Eric Skillman, Criterion Collection art director Review: Ghirardelli White Mocha Premium Beverage Mix Can Domingo be for dolphins? Old cold-cream ad touts beautifying benefits of radioactivity Interview with author of The Art of Clean Up
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 11, 2013 12:56 pm I can't wait to show Ursus Wehrli's book, The Art of Clean Up: Life Made Neat and Tidy, to Jane because her mind works this way. Here's a photo of her dinner place setting when she was five. Is there a practical purpose to the book? No. I don't like to work with a moral ...
Read in browser Reversible Journey hoodie
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 11, 2013 12:42 pm Redditor Volpinazzurra made her own reversible hoodie inspired by the hero of the indie-game smash Journey. Alas, the labor that went into this makes it uneconomical for wider production and sale ("it took me way too long to be profitable!") but Volpinazzurra says she's considering offering the pattern for sale. I wondered why no one ...
Read in browser Inside the awful world of RATters - the men who spy on people through their computers with "remote administration tools"
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 11, 2013 11:39 am Nate Anderson's long Ars Technica piece on RATters -- men who use "Remote Administration Tools" to spy on others, mostly women, via their laptop cameras, and to plunder their computers for files and passwords -- is a must-read. Anderson lays out the way that online communities like Hack Forums provide expertise, tools, and, most importantly, ...
Read in browser Nominating Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 11, 2013 11:26 am Various politicians -- MPs and former MPs from Iceland and Tunisia, two Pirate Party MEPs from Sweden -- have nominated Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. Anyone can nominate anyone else for the prize, but this is a particularly good one, especially given the torture Manning faced for his brave efforts, and the ongoing ...
Read in browser Nanoscale 3D printer that runs 100x faster than current models
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 11, 2013 10:20 am A German startup called Nanoscribe says it will ship a nanoscale 3D printer in the second quarter of 2013, and that its device will run 100 times faster than similar devices currently in the market: The technology behind most 3-D microprinters is called two-photon polymerization. It involves focusing tiny, ultrashort pulses from a near-infrared laser ...
Read in browser Kickstarting a 24"-on-a-side large format 3D printer
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 11, 2013 09:15 am Just saw this at SxSW and it is AMAZING. Solid aluminum chassis, very precise, and the things it prints are awesome. Back it!
Read in browser Tell Me Something I Don't Know 003: Eric Skillman, Criterion Collection art director
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 11, 2013 08:30 am Thanks to Soundcloud for hosting Boing Boing's podcasts! This is episode 3 of Boing Boing's newest podcast, Tell Me Something I Don't Know. It's an interview podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the reality/business side of how they do what they do. In this episode Jim, Jasen, ...
Read in browser Review: Ghirardelli White Mocha Premium Beverage Mix
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 10, 2013 09:10 pm ★☆☆☆☆ Fond as I am of white chocolate, mochas and Ghirardelli's Double Chocolate Premium Beverage Mix, their White Mocha Premium Beverage Mix sounded promising. Drinking this stuff was a profoundly bad idea. Not bad in the way that drinking methanol is, but bad enough. The flavors, cloying and ersatz, offer only a vague impression of ...
Read in browser Can Domingo be for dolphins?
By Jason Weisberger on Mar 10, 2013 07:00 pm 
Read in browser Old cold-cream ad touts beautifying benefits of radioactivity
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 10, 2013 06:21 pm In an ad for cold cream facial cleanser they use 'slightly' radioactive dirt on a young woman's face to test which cleanser works the best. Complete with geiger counter clicks. Gotta love the innocence of the 50s.
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
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