Sunday, October 14, 2012

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The Latest from Boing Boing

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Watchismo

[Sponsor] Tendence watches now have fully mechanical automatic movements!  Watchismo has the exclusive for the new Tendence Skeleton Watches, each with fully exposed 'skeletonized' mechanics seen both from the top of the dial and the see-through crystal of the caseback where the rotor can be seen revolving & generating power the old fashioned way -- with cogs, gears and hairsprings! A blend of form and function, the Tendence collection is a highly evolved concept, with extreme dimensions and three-dimensional numbers carved to stand high above the concave dial, itself cut from stainless steel, polycarbonate or titanium.s.

Free-fall from stratosphere, live now
Pink Gipper
Skele-Gore skull
Action Philosophers: philosophy of the ages in comic form
Metal circle template
Bring-Your-Own-Puppet Million Muppet March planned
Fiji Mermaids, shrunken heads, and other essentials from The Gemini Company
Junkbot bug assemblage sculptures: The Litter bug
Autumn: Spaghetti-harvest time
Comic superheroes re-imagined as Ottoman Empire figures
The harvesting of ukelele strings
Caturday: I am a Cat.

 

Free-fall from stratosphere, live now

By Xeni Jardin on Oct 14, 2012 12:14 pm

Red Bull Stratos is a mission to the edge of space that will try to surpass human limits that have existed for more than 50 years.
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Pink Gipper

By Cory Doctorow on Oct 14, 2012 04:52 am

More fine housewares/gift ideas from New York Comic-Con: Frank Kozik's pink bust of Ronald Reagan. Only 50 were made! Sold by Clutter Magazine. Clutter Exclusive PINK Gipper/Reagan Bust By Frank Kozik
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Skele-Gore skull

By Cory Doctorow on Oct 13, 2012 11:47 pm

Spotted today at New York Comic-Con, "THE 17,000 SINS OF SKELE-GORE" from Scarecrow Oven. Sadly, it is sold out. Let us hope for a restock. THE 17,000 SINS OF SKELE-GORE
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Action Philosophers: philosophy of the ages in comic form

By Cory Doctorow on Oct 13, 2012 11:16 pm

Action Philosophers is a delightful and educational comic created by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, presented as a series of vignettes that explain the biographies and ideas of the philosophers through the ages. I stopped by their booth today at New York Comic-Con after being struck by their very funny Karl Marx vs Ayn ...
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Metal circle template

By Cory Doctorow on Oct 13, 2012 09:21 pm

Tim from WindFired Designs writes, We designed this specialized circle tool. We originally made it for ourselves as kite makers, but it was quickly clear that it should be available to everyone that likes to make things by hand. There aren't any good metal circle templates out there. People that use heat for cutting synthetics ...
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Bring-Your-Own-Puppet Million Muppet March planned

By Cory Doctorow on Oct 13, 2012 06:48 pm

A group of public TV fans have announced a "Million Muppet March" on November 3 on the National Mall in DC. They are upset at Mitt Romney's vow to have Big Bird waterboarded. This will be a Bring Your Own Puppet event. More from Reuters: Within 30 minutes of the end of the debate they ...
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Fiji Mermaids, shrunken heads, and other essentials from The Gemini Company

By Cory Doctorow on Oct 13, 2012 06:18 pm

John Weisgerber's Gemini Company sells handmade replicas of sideshow gaffs, including Fiji Mermaids, shrunken heads, two-headed baby skeletons, and other essentials. I saw these up close and personal today at New York Comic-Con and they look good. Gemini Company
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Junkbot bug assemblage sculptures: The Litter bug

By Cory Doctorow on Oct 13, 2012 03:39 pm

Mark Oliver's Litter Bug series is a collection of assemble-sculpture insects made from urban found objects and laser-cut metal and wood. They're extraordinarily beautiful -- right up my street. They don't appear to be for sale, and more's the pity. Arthropod sub-species of the Insecta class. A creature whose instinctual and physical qualities have adapted ...
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Autumn: Spaghetti-harvest time

By Xeni Jardin on Oct 13, 2012 02:50 pm

On April 1, 1957 the British television programme Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland.
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Comic superheroes re-imagined as Ottoman Empire figures

By Xeni Jardin on Oct 13, 2012 02:40 pm

"Ottoman was Geeky," a fanciful series of illustrations by Berk Senturk. Above, Justice League as Fevc-ül Adâlet.
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The harvesting of ukelele strings

By Xeni Jardin on Oct 13, 2012 02:37 pm

A long-lost educational film on the growing and harvesting of uke strings.
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Caturday: I am a Cat.

By Xeni Jardin on Oct 13, 2012 02:33 pm

A tribute to cats everywhere, by Camels and Friends, starring Pancake.
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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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