Saturday, July 2, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Mervyn Peake's centennial -- new illustrated Gormenghast, long-lost sequel

Posted: 02 Jul 2011 01:07 AM PDT


Zack sez, "Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of GORMENGHAST author Mervyn Peake -- not to mention the new illustrated edition of his work and the publication of the long-lost final volume in the series, TITUS AWAKES -- The Guardian has a special tribute with essays by the likes of Michael Moorcock and China Mieville. The pieces range from examinations of the themes and ideas in Peake's work to personal reminiscences about the author and how his work was rediscovered in the last years of his life."
Gormenghast by China Miéville

With its first word the work declares itself, establishes its setting and has us abruptly there, in the castle and the stone. There is no slow entry, no rabbit-hole down which to fall, no backless wardrobe, no door in the wall. To open the first book is not to enter but to be already in Mervyn Peake's astonishing creation. So taken for granted, indeed, is this impossible place, that we commence with qualification. "Gormenghast," Peake starts, "that is, the main massing of the original stone," as if, in response to that opening name, we had interrupted him with a request for clarification. We did not say "What is Gormenghast?" but "Gormenghast? Which bit?"

It is a sly and brilliant move. Asserting the specificity of a part, he better takes as given the whole - of which, of course, we are in awe. This faux matter-of-fact method makes Gormenghast, its Hall of Bright Carvings, its Tower of Flints, its roofscapes, ivy-shaggy walls, its muddy environs and hellish kitchens, so much more present and real than if it had been breathlessly explained. From this start, Peake acts as if the totality of his invented place could not be in dispute. The dislocation and fascination we feel, the intoxication, is testimony to the success of his simple certainty. Our wonder is not disbelief but belief, culture-shock at this vast, strange place. We submit to this reality that the book asserts even as it purports not to.

A celebration of the writing and art of Mervyn Peake (Thanks, Zack)

Yaya and Friends: Athens, Greece, ca. 1927 (photo, Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 09:41 PM PDT

5870237825_b38aac5363_o.jpg "Yaya and Friends," a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (2.0) image from bigfatstupidslob's photostream, contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool. About the image, I asked him where it came from, and he explained:
It's my grandmother and some of her friends in what seems to be a dress-up photo studio. Who knew they had them way back when? And in Greece no less! That's Yaya on the top right - her name is Domna.


Wikileaks to sue Visa and MasterCard for "unlawful, U.S. influenced, financial blockade"

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 05:53 PM PDT

This just in, at the end of a Friday before a long holiday weekend in the US: "WikiLeaks and Datacell (a service provider assisting WikiLeaks) are to sue Visa & MasterCard for engaging in an unlawful, U.S. influenced, financial blockade."

Arizona police hacked for 3rd time in 10 days

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 04:01 PM PDT

MSNBC: "For the third time in less than 10 days, confidential information from Arizona's law enforcement community was hacked and posted online, with the same basic group of hackers behind the effort."

Ashton Kutcher bullies Village Voice over sex slavery hype-debunking cover story

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 05:25 PM PDT

the-problem-of-underage-prostitutes.6852100.93.jpgAdrian Chen at Gawker reports on Ashton Kutcher's bullying response to a critical piece about him in the Village Voice (I read it in their sister publication, the LA Weekly).

Kutcher and wife Demi Moore are on an anti-sex-slavery kick, aligning themselves with the same folks who beat Craigslist into submission and ended "adult" listings on craigslist.org. The Village Voice piece debunked much of the hysterics. Must have done some real damage, because Kutcher is now tweeting at the paper's advertisers, suggesting that they should cease financial support. "Hey @disney @dominos," he tweets, "Are you aware that you are advertising on a site that owns and operates a digital brothel?" Like the paper needs any more problems right now.

A disclosure: Mrs. Kutcher and their superstar attorney bullied Boing Boing similarly a while back, over a post I wrote which was perceived as unflattering (it wasn't intended to be).

I can't stand bullies, no matter how many goddamned Twitter followers they have.

Update, via Chen: "Ashton Kutcher's Twitter freakout has convinced American Airlines to stop advertising with the Village Voice. Sex slavery problem: Solved."

Christ, what an asshole. Wonder how much of a tax writeoff they're getting out of this "DNA Foundation."

Screen-shot-2011-07-01-at-5.14.jpg

Hitler reacts to Metallica recording with Lou Reed

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 02:35 PM PDT

Brainfeeder's "beat music" scene

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 04:05 PM PDT

Images Assets Music News 2010 11 Teebs Images Samiyam Sambakersalbum
Last night, Dean and I got caught in a heavy/heady groove with this track, "Cushion," by Samiyam, from the just-released "Sam Baker's Album."


Reading up on Samiyam at XLR8R and NPR took me into the Los Angeles "beat music" scene of bassy, noisy, psych-y, instrumental hip hop. The main point-of-entry is the Brainfeeder record label, spearheaded by Steven "Flying Lotus" Ellison. Flying Lotus is a well-known producer and laptop musician who happens to be the great-nephew of the late Alice and John Coltrane. You may unknowingly have heard his music in the bumpers running on Adult Swim, or in this BB post last year. Along with his own myriad projects, including a collaboration with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Flying Lotus has over the last couple of years created an impeccable roster of experimental producers and musicians whose work I've only begun to explore. Some names are Teebs (photo above left), Gaslamp Killer, Austin Peralta, Thundercat, Strangeloop, and Tokimonsta. Ready, steady, go!

Brainfeeder

"First Listen: Samiyam, 'Sam Baker's Album'" (NPR)

Samiyam "Cushion" (XLR8R)

"Teebs: Better Living Through 'Beat Music'" (NPR)

NPR on Amazon Affiliates kiss-off: carries a "tinge of blackmail"

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:54 PM PDT

NPR did a piece today on the new law signed by CA governor Jerry Brown requiring online retailers like Amazon.com to start collecting sales taxes, even when they're not based in the state. Amazon argues the law is unconstitutional, says it won't collect the tax, and this week severed ties with roughly 10,000 small businesses and bloggers who reside in the state, and made revenue through Amazon.com affiliate links on their sites. Search engine blogger Danny Sullivan, who was one of those bloggers receiving modest commission cash through the program, "suggests that Amazon's tactics carry a tinge of blackmail."
It felt like Amazon wanted to use the affiliates as a kind of a pawn in all this, that by cutting loose these people, that they will go forth and try to get the law changed.
Couldn't agree more. Audio here.

 


Subgenius gnostic text: Dobbs hats of 1948

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 11:00 AM PDT


Bitterlawngnome has uncovered this gnostic Subgenious text from the Nov 15, 1948 edition of the Seattle Post Intelligencer -- a range of Dobbs hats from the slack-merchants at Klopfenstein's.

There's Nothing Like a Dobbs

CIA man reveals secret "black site" prison: "Some Will Call Me a Torturer"

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:15 PM PDT

Spencer Ackerman in Wired: "Though heavily censored by the CIA, [former CIA operative Glenn Carle] provides the first detailed description of a so-called 'black site.' At an isolated 'discretely guarded, unremarkable' facility in an undisclosed foreign country (though one where the Soviets once operated), hidden CIA interrogators work endless hours while heavy metal blasts captives' eardrums and disrupts their sleep schedules. Afterward, the operatives drive to a fortified compound to munch Oreos and drink somberly to Grand Funk Railroad at the 'Jihadi Bar.' Any visitor to Guantanamo Bay's Irish pub -- O'Kellys, home of the fried pickle -- will recognize the surreality."

Here is a happy puppy frolicking on the beach (photo, Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:06 PM PDT

5889159337_a4ca46c4a5_o.jpg

(Image: Bambina on the beach, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (2.0) image contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool from soggydan's photostream)

Acoustic cloak from metamaterials

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 11:13 AM PDT

A Holey Sound-1
We've heard a lot about how someday metamaterials -- composites that bend electromagnetic waves in bizarre ways -- could lead to invisibility cloaks. Also in the lab are acoustic cloaks that bend sound waves to hide objects underneath. Researchers from Duke University have just reported on their success making a small acoustic cloak that works in air, not just water as has already been demonstrated. Eventually, the metamaterial could be used to tweak acoustics in concert halls at a very high resolution or hide submarines from sonar. From Science News:
To manipulate sound waves in air, (electric engineer Steven) Cummer's team designed and built a cloak that sits atop an object like a piece of draped carpet. By layering simple metamaterial building blocks — ordinary strips of perforated plastic — the researchers hid a triangular wooden block a couple of inches high and more than a foot long at its base.

Sound waves over a range of high but audible frequencies slowed and changed direction cleanly after striking the holey plastic. Most reemerged appearing to have traveled all the way down to the flat surface beneath the block.

The prototype is two-dimensional — both the speaker generating the sound and the microphone recording it must be in the same plane above the object. But Cummer believes he could make a 3-D version that would cover an entire bump on a log, not just a slice.

"We are still a long way from a full acoustic cloak, but this carpet cloak is a step in the right direction," says Andrew Norris, a physicist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J.

"You haven't heard it all"

 


Diecast toy car photos

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:46 PM PDT

Lotus Mark 11 600
German photographer Michael Spengler collects diecast and metal toy cars. He also takes gorgeous photos of them and has even put together sample pages of a book he hopes to publish documenting his collection. Collectors Weekly spoke to Spengler and presented several of his captioned photos. Above, a Lotus Mark 11 Le Mans from Corgi Toys, 1961.
The Lotus Mark 11 Le Mans is one of my very favorite model cars. I'm sure this one was forgotten for a long, long time somewhere in a garage or in a basement. The base plate is very rusty and the car is still full of dust, but I love it. It's a good example of the Japanese approach to aesthetics called wabi-sabi.
"1951 Maserati GP, Low Miles, Needs Paint"

Restoring a badly damaged 1870s tintype

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 12:01 AM PDT


Bob Rosinsky from Top Dog Imaging walks through the extraordinary process of restoring a badly damaged 1870s tintype (such as the Billy the Kid image that was the subject of a recent record-setting auction) using modern, high-tech techniques, such as a polarized strobe and ultra-high-rez camera. He hints at even more advanced techniques employing X-rays, UV and infra-red light.
My standard operating procedure is to use an ultra-high resolution camera combined with a top-of-the-line macro lens to photograph tintypes. I use strobe lights to illuminate the artwork. Strobes produce "hard" light, much like the sun on a clear day. In addition to the strobes, I place a polarizer over the camera lens and polarizer gels over the strobe lights. This eliminates all reflections and enables the camera to pick up a greater tonal range along with more detail...

One advantage of using a scanner to digitize a tintype is that it will smooth out surface imperfections and micro details thus reducing the amount of time it takes the retouch artist to produce a clean, albeit low fidelity, image -- somewhat analogous to hearing a Beethoven symphony on AM radio.

Restoring a Photograph from the 1870s (via Kottke)

Surreal, contrafactual Haunted Mansion that never was

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 10:58 AM PDT


The always-unmissable Long Forgotten blog has an astounding post on the Disneyland Haunted Mansion that almost was, when the design team of Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey were in charge of the team. Crump was an enormous fan of Jean Cocteau's 1946 surrealist film La belle et la bête and he and Gracey created some of the most memorable effects that grace the Mansion today. But the stuff they didn't make -- lovingly researched and presented herein -- is just astounding, weird and gorgeous. Even with that stuff on the cutting-room floor, the Cocteau influences are unmissable, as you can see from this comparison between the arm wall-sconce and a prop from La belle et la bête.
Suddenly we've got concept artwork out the wazoo. (That's where the other Imagineers thought it came from, too.) By this point, Walt had added Davis, Coats, and Atencio to the team. All of them had their individual ideas to pitch to Walt. Then came that infamous episode in late fall, 1964 (summarized two posts ago), in which Walt made it crystal clear to everyone working on the attraction that he really liked Rolly's nightmarish creations and wanted them incorporated into the finished project in the form of a "Museum of the Weird." The Museum never happened, of course, and it's difficult to know exactly how all of this surreal material was going to be used in the house itself. Heck, Rolly freely admits that he himself didn't know, which is why Walt had to find a solution to the problem. So you wonder, would a 1963 Mansion have included things like this? Or did these 1964 creations represent a fresh departure after the Fair? Or . . . well, it's not clear.

Recall that the Museum was Walt's idea, but it really wasn't what Rolly had wanted. Rolly wanted a weirder Haunted Mansion, not just a spill area before or after the main attraction. He has repeatedly said that he wanted to avoid the usual haunted house clichés ("corny") and to go for something more fantastical. As discussed in an earlier post, he was particularly intrigued by the castle in the Jean Cocteau 1946 film, La belle et la bête, and he wanted something similar for the HM, with the entire building enchanted and alive, and with things like human body parts merged into the very architecture, as in the Cocteau film.

Long-Forgotten: A Weirder Haunted Mansion

Print-on-demand and donations -- report on DIY publishing business models

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 10:40 AM PDT

My latest Publishers Weekly column, "Heuristics," documents the success I've had with a pay-what-you-like donation model for my With a Little Help DIY short story collection, and looks at how it might be applied to other books:
But it's the success of the donations program that has me thinking hardest--specifically, about the value proposition of the donations. Could donations form the basis of a new retail channel for e-books? Perhaps a widget that commercially published authors could embed in their own Web sites and social media pages based around this pitch: "Buy my e-book on a pay-what-you-like basis, and I'll split the take 50-50 with my publisher, still a much better take than I'd get from your e-book purchases on Amazon, Nook, or iBooks."

Why not? Commercial entertainment conglomerates understand that "pay creators, it's the right thing to do" is a better pitch than "pay multinational entertainment conglomerates, they deserve your money." This is why so many antipiracy ads focus on creators, not on corporate profits. Authors who collect directly from readers have a commercially valuable moral high ground, and figuring out how to incorporate the special relationship between creators and their audiences into a business model has the potential to rebalance the current relationship with the existing online retail channels.

It's not unprecedented--pay-what-you-like programs like the Humble Indie Bundle (video games) and Radiohead's In Rainbows and Nine Inch Nail's Ghosts I-IV (music) have been runaway successes. The pitch from these projects, "pay the creator you love," is a message that clearly resonates with my readers, some of whom have donated as much as $200. And this can help with the "pig-in-a-poke" problem. Without locked-in channels or DRM-laden works, authors and publishers can put together new titles in a single package to cross-promote their works--new writers could be bundled with established ones, for example. The Humble Indie Bundle has been very successful with this strategy. Readers could even nominate some of their payment for charity--say PEN, a library friends organization, a literacy trust, Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or ACLU.

With A Little Help: Heuristics

HOWTO turn an MRI of a crocodile skull into a 3D printed replica

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 10:35 AM PDT


Gian Pablo wanted to turn an MRI of a crocodile skull into a 3D model and print it out on a Makerbot 3D printer; the process was complex, but produced a very good result; Pablo's documented the process so you can repeat it and improve on it:
The crocodile skull data is derived from a CT scan of a real skull. It is very detailed, preserving information about the internal volumes of the skull. That makes it fragile. I quickly realized that I was going to have to slice it into two parts in order to be able to print it without support. Cutting support off a fragile piece can be very difficult!

The first step is optional: the model is very high resolution, more than will really be noticeable in the print. If you want, open the model in Meshlab, and use Quadratic Decimation to reduce the number of polygons to 50% or 25% of the original number. This will make things faster. However, I had no issues slicing the model in Skeinforge at full resolution, though it took longer.

The next step is to get it into the right orientation. You can do this in ReplicatorG, which works fine, but since I was going to use Netfabb Studio for the rest of the process, I just used that.

Printing complex organic shapes with a Makerbot « MakerBot Industries

Whose bear urine is this? - Intraoffice email at National Geo

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 10:24 PM PDT

From an office-wide email at National Geographic, which sounds like a fun place to work:
Subject: Bear Urine- not a joke

A package arrived at Geo...(talk about weird) 2 small bottles of Pee. Bear Urine. No... really.

Can you please send a blast to see if some brave soul will claim the urine.

But wait, it gets better. According to a producer at National Geographic Television, one woman responded to the original email saying she was expecting coyote urine and deer urine, but that the bear urine was not hers. Two other people requested to be notified if the urine was not claimed because they need some "for personal use." No, not to pass drug tests, but to keep deer out of their yards. In the end, the true purchaser of the bear pee came forward. It is now safe with its rightful owner.

Excuse Me, Is This Your Bear Urine? - Only at National Geographic

Friday Freak-Out: The Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)" (1967)

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 10:14 AM PDT

Airline security still isn't: Man uses old boarding passes to fly NY-LA for free

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 11:56 AM PDT

Screen-shot-2011-07-01-at-9.56.jpg

Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a Nigerian-American man, managed to bypass all layers of airport security and avoid arrest for five days after Virgin America and authorities learned that he'd flown from New York to Los Angeles as a stowaway. It all started when some of his nearby passengers on the Virgin America flight complained that he was emanating powerful B.O. From the Los Angeles Times:

A flight attendant asked Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi for his boarding pass and was surprised to see it was from a different fight and in someone else's name. She alerted authorities, and Noibi went back to sleep in his black leather airline seat. When the plane landed, authorities chose not to arrest Noibi, allowing him to leave the airport.

On Wednesday, Noibi was arrested trying to board a Delta flight out of Los Angeles. Once again, he had managed to pass undetected through security with an expired ticket issued in someone else's name. Authorities found at least 10 other boarding passes, none of which belonged to him. Law enforcement sources told The Times they suspect Noibi has used expired plane tickets to sneak on to flights in the past. On his website, Noibi describes himself as a "frequent traveler."

(...) Noibi, also known as Seun Noibi, proclaims himself a "storyteller, strategist and designer who is passionate about reaching the world for Jesus," according to his Facebook page. He was arrested in Chicago in 2008 after allegedly refusing to pay a $4.70 fare on a Metra train. Those charges were later dropped.
Noibi faces stowaway charges and is scheduled to appear in federal court Friday.

Looks like this is his Facebook page, according to what's published in the Los Angeles Times, and this would be his LinkedIn profile. This is his blog. And, here's his YouTube channel. Apparently he is some sort of freelance video producer? Below, one of the videos from his YouTube channel, identified as a kind of proof-of-concept ad he produced. His channel is full of ads he must have produced for various evangelical Nigerian religious entrepreneurs. And he is a Gemini.


Here's the video description:


There are a lot of activities that we do now that we won't do in heaven! The one activity we do now that we will do in heaven? Worship. We will be doing that forever. In fact, you can sort of look at this Ad as an Invitation topractice!




 

Things exploding in slow motion, set to classical music

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 09:27 AM PDT

Do wrinkled fingers help us grip?

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 09:27 AM PDT

"Wet fingers and toes eventually wrinkle, and this is commonly attributed by lay opinion to local osmotic reactions. However, nearly a century ago surgeons observed that no wrinkling occurs if a nerve to the finger has been cut. Here we provide evidence that, rather than being an accidental side effect of wetness, wet-induced wrinkles have been selected to enhance grip in wet conditions." — From "Are Wet-Induced Wrinkled Fingers Primate Rain Treads?," a recently-published paper co-authored by Mark Changizi.

Vladimir Nabokov: The Nostradamus of emoticons

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:17 AM PDT

In a 1969 interview with the New York Times, Vladimir Nabokov inadvertently drifted into futurism by presaging the basic idea behind emoticons. (Via Amos Zeeberg)

Brazil rises up for free speech in 40 national demonstrations

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 10:25 PM PDT


40 Brazilian cities saw mass demonstrations on June 18, with broad-based, diverse participation. The "Freedom Marches" were a response to a brutal police crackdown on São Paulo's Marijuana March on May 21. The Freedom March organizers used Facebook to coordinate a march in response in São Paulo, and then all across the nation. Global Voices has excellent coverage in several languages:
Quando a tropa de choque bateu nos escudos e, em coro, gritou CHOQUE! a Marcha pela Liberdade de Expressão do último sábado se tornou muito maior. Não em número de pessoas, mas em importância, em significado.

Foram liminares, tiros, estilhaços, cacetadas, gases e prisões sem sentido. Um ataque direto, cru, registrado por centenas de câmeras, corpos e corações. Muita gente acha que maconheiros foram reprimidos.

Engano...

Naquele 21 de maio, houve uma única vítima: a liberdade de todos.

Google Translate:

When the riot police beat their shields, and in chorus shouted SHOCK! the March for Freedom of Expression on the last Saturday became much greater. Not in number of people, but in importance in meaning.

Injunctions were, shot, shrapnel, clubbed, gas and arrests meaningless. A direct attack, raw, recorded by hundreds of cameras, bodies and hearts. Many people believe that marijuana users were repressed.

Cheating ...

At May 21, there was only one victim: the freedom of all.

Brazil: 40 Cities Make the Freedom March (Thanks, Gmoke!)

(Image: André Rodrigues/Tudo de Fotografia)

Close-up of a Moon crater

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 09:21 AM PDT

tycho_cpeak_oblique.jpg

Tycho is a crater on the moon that has a little "island" peak in its center. If you're feeling immature, it looks a bit like a breast. With that analogy in mind, what you're looking at here is a close-up of the nipple—the very tip-top of Tycho's central peak. The photo was taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Lonely Place for Dying movie released via BitTorrent, then to theaters

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 09:06 AM PDT


Vodo, a remarkable film house that makes movies, distributes them on BitTorrent, and enlists their fans to fund the films' release, has just released part one of a new, CC-licensed thriller, "A Lonely Place For Dying" ("KGB defector Nikolai Dzerzhinsky convinces Washington Post Editor-In-Chief Howard Simons to send a reporter for a rendevous in an abandoned Mexican prison near the Juarez/El Paso border. CIA project manager Anthony Greenglass sends special agent Robert Harper to intercept Nikolai...and kill him"). The first four parts of this film will be released online monthly, and the fifth will come out in February, to coincide with the US theatrical run. They're seeking donations to fund advertising and marketing for the film as well as people to help produce this collateral.
A Lonely Place for Dying has been honored at festivals across the globe and praised by both critics and audiences alike. An official selection of 38 film festivals with 45 award nominations and winner of 19 awards including 14 for best motion picture, VODO is proud to present this cold-war spy thriller co-starring Academy Award nominee James Cromwell (LA Confidential, The Green Mile, Secretariat) and indie-favorite Michael Wincott (Talk Radio, The Crow, The Assassination of Richard Nixon)...

The Lonely Place team will be releasing A Lonely Place for Dying theatrically in January, 2011. Your donation helps us buy traditional cable, network, magazine & newspaper ads, complete a theatrical mix of the motion picture, create a DCP (digital cinema package) of the motion picture and distribute the film to independent theaters in North America via blu-ray and DCP. We'll be chronicling our journey and bundling a documentary about the theatrical release with the film's fifth and final installment so that everyone can learn from our experience.

A Lonely Place For Dying

Google Earth captures airplane mid-takeoff

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:25 AM PDT


View Larger Map

Scroll South on this map of Oklahoma's Tinker Air Force Base and you'll get to watch a single airplane go through several stages of takeoff. There's a gap between the first two shots of the plane and the rest, so keep scrolling. Michael Hord, who pointed out this cool Easter Egg, says the plane is a KC-135.

Bionic Woman action figure ad

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 10:08 PM PDT


A companion to this week's vintage Six Million Dollar Man action figure ad -- this Bionic Woman action figure ad. I never had her, I suppose because she was so totally gendered as a "girl toy," and while my feminist parents could be wheedled into buying me "boy toys," the polar opposite of those in my household were "gender neutral toys" and "girl positive toys," not high-heel fashion dollies.

The Bionic Woman

17th Century Chinese travelling bookcase

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 10:33 PM PDT


Christie's is auctioning off this 17th century Chinese travelling bookcase -- frustratingly, they don't have any photos of the interior, but even the measly 512px-wide image supplied of the exterior has set my mouth a-water. Seriously: the love-child of a steamer trunk and a bookcase? Drool, drool, dribble, dribble.
Of nearly square form, fitting into a slightly larger shaped and carved base and conforming upright frame with a rounded toprail with ox-nose bail handle to enable transportation, and with a pair of foliate-form spandrels where each upright arm meets the base, with two framed rectangular doors opening to the interior fitted with single shelf and a row of two drawers at the bottom, the front rectangular lockplate with square openings to receive the metal members attached to the interior shelf

A Rare Huanghuali Travelling Bookcase, Tushu Shinggui (via Cribcandy)

Open license your work, win a Polish "Get Excited and Make Things" tee

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 11:30 PM PDT


Alek sez, "Creative Commons Poland is celebrating its 6th birthday with a little competition. People who will release a work under a CC license will take part in a raffle - with a chance to win T-shirts with a limited edition design - a remix of Matt Jones's 'Get excited and make things' graphic (CC BY-NC-SA), made by Kamil Åšliwowski, member of the CC Poland team."

CC Poland celebrates 6th birthday (with a competition!)

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