Architectural Stationery Vignettes

Bibliodyssey reports: [edited]

The images in this post all come from Columbia University's very large assortment of commercial stationery (featuring architectural illustrations): the Biggert Collection.

The majority of the images have been cropped, cleaned and variously doctored for display purposes, with an intent towards highlighting the range of letterform/font and design layouts. The underlying documents are invoices (most), letters, postcards, shipping records and related business and advertising letterhead ephemera from the mid-1800s to the 1930s.

via Kottke
------------

Kurt Vonnegut on how to write a great story

Brain Pickings reports: [edited]

Kurt Vonnegut — anarchist, Second Life dweller, imaginary interviewer of the dead, sad soul — with eight tips on how to write a good short story, narrated by the author himself.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
------------

HTC One X Android

Register Hardware has published a (very favourable) review of HTC's quad-core flagship smartphone.

Their verdict:

"A perfect smartphone? Very nearly. Some will bemoan the absence of Micro SD expansion and the lack of a dedicated HDMI port. I expected better from such a large battery too, but the screen is huge and glorious, the CPU powerful enough to run a small country, both cameras are good and the build quality superb. Suddenly my Desire HD feels like the relic of a bygone age."
------------

The Collective Snapshot

Pep Ventosa reports: [edited]

Nominated for the Photography Masters Cup in the International Color Awards, images in this series blend together dozens of snapshots to create an abstraction of the places we've been to and the things we've seen. A celebration of our collective memory.
------------

Plantronics BackBeat Go Bluetooth Earphones

pcmag.com reports: [edited]

The featherweight BackBeat Go is a stereo Bluetooth headset equally adept at voice calls, listening to music or podcasts, and watching movies without disturbing anyone nearby. In fact, it's the best stereo Bluetooth headset we've ever used for phone calls, period.

The BackBeat Go weighs just 13 grammes. The plastic earbud housings have a curved shape, with a rubber cover over the micro USB charging port on the right earbud. The rubber tips are of a very soft material. Plantronics includes three sets in the package, each of a different size, plus a set of optional looped stabilisers to further anchor each one in place when fitted to your ear.

The tiny cable connecting the two earbuds is of a tangle-free design, and is designed to sit behind your neck. It's made of a rubberized soft touch material that's comfortable, and in practice it disappears from view and doesn't interfere with modest neck movements. .

The BackBeat Go features a pair of 6mm neodymium drivers. Audio quality is good, but not great, when listening to music. The BackBeat Go is highly sensitive to getting exactly the right seal in your ear in order to deliver sufficiently weighty bass response. That's true of all in-ear earphones, but what makes the BackBeat Go more difficult is that you can insert them in your ears 10 times, and end up with 10 slightly different frequency response curves.

The high-end is another story. I've yet to hear as smooth a treble range over stereo Bluetooth as I do here. The BackBeat Go is unusually delicate, with little of the obvious harshness and warbling you get with other Bluetooth headsets. There's a trace of it, as you can't fully escape the limitations of the Bluetooth codec, but it's not at all bad.
------------

Material 6 iPhone Wood Backs

Cool Hunting reports: [edited]

Material 6's product is not an adhesive layer applied to the glass back of the phone, but a replacement back, with the wood mounted in a frame identical to Apple's standard issue.

The in-house laser etching service offered by Material6 costs just $5. The company supplies a template to use for the creation of your designs, and their Flickr page contains past examples for inspiration.

The case is delivered with a five-point screwdriver, and the whole set-up takes less than a minute to install. Calibrated to fit precisely with the iPhone, the wood backs doesn't affect the device's profile (although the replacement of the phone back does void the Apple warranty.

Material6 backs can be purchased at their online store for prices starting at $89.
------------

The Old Rugged Cross

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary.

Refrain

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.

Refrain

To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;
Its shame and reproach gladly bear;
Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,
Where His glory forever I’ll share.

Refrain

George Ben­nard, 1913

------------

Bose QuietComfort 15 Noise Cancelling headphones

My eldest son endures a 2 x 2-hour commute between South Harrow and Feltham. His iPhone's playlist provides some solace, and on our last trip to the Westfield Apple Store, we spent some time listening to the headphones on display.

The well-reviewed, top-of-the-range Dre Beats failed to impress. They sounded like they had a built in graphic equaliser with all the sliders pushed up to '11'... my guess is that they could become extremely wearing over longer periods of listening.

By contrast the Bose QC15s have a more delicate, initially underwhelming, sound presentation that rewards longer periods of listening. So far, so not worth £250, but the QC15 trump card is the noise cancellation function. The effect of switching it on is quite magical, with background noise and bustle fading away to almost nothing.

I purchased a nearly-new item on eBay for substantially less than the retail price, and Brook's feedback has been very positive. He says the noise cancelling has the effect of significantly reducing the 'thrum' of background noise, while still allowing him to hear voice announcements, etc.

If you do purchase a pair, remember to carry a spare AAA battery with you at all times, as the QC15s don't work without power.
------------

Nokia Lumia 900

Ars Technica has published a full review of Nokia's latest Windows smart phone, complete with plenty of images.

Excerpts follow:

"The Nokia Lumia 900 has the weight of two big names on its shoulders. It's Nokia's big re-entry into the US market; it's also the flagship Windows Phone Mango."

"We largely compare the Lumia 900 to the two flagship phones of the other two major OSes, the iPhone 4S with iOS and the Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0."

"The new hardware can hold up against both of these phones. Still, the OS has some maturing to do compared to the other two platforms. Power users for whom price is less of a factor will find much to admire here, but they still may not be won over when it comes to getting the best handset, period."

"The Lumia 900 has a 4.3-inch 800x480 resolution Clear Black AMOLED display embedded in a unibody polycarbonate shell, rounded on the long sides and squared off at the top and bottom. The polycarbonate body has a velvety, slightly rubbery feel to it, making it easy to hold. Due to the screen margins and casing overhang it feels bigger in hand than you might expect of a 4.3-inch-screened phone."

"As a point of reference, the Galaxy Nexus measures 67.9 millimeters wide to the Lumia 900's 68.5 millimeters, despite the Galaxy Nexus having a 4.65-inch screen. The Galaxy Nexus is also less than a centimeter longer, meaning the Lumia 900 is hardly any friendlier to a jeans pocket."

"The Lumia 900's single speaker is pretty quiet, even at the loudest volume setting."

"...the Lumia 900 comes with a flat 16GB of storage—unexpandable, unupgradeable. As apps get bigger and photo libraries expand over the course of the next two years (the standard length of a phone contract), that size limit would start to chafe us."

"The 8-megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss, f2.2 aperture, 28mm focal length lens) is centered on the back of the phone, which seems more in the interest of aesthetics than practicality (my fingers were all up on it while using the phone). Next to the Carl Zeiss lens is a dual-LED flash."

"The pictures turned out quite well, at least in good lighting. They can even stand up to the iPhone 4S's, in many scenarios. In closeups and dim scenarios, though, it stumbles."

"The Lumia 900's screen is 800x480 pixels. Because the Lumia 900 has regular RGB subpixels, it displays text beautifully in a big range of sizes, especially in the OS and applications. At its brightest, the Lumia 900's screen appears a bit warm compared to the bluer-hued iPhone 4S's display. The blacks are nice and inky."

"The physical glass of the screen is noticeably not oleophobic, so the Lumia 900's screen holds onto grease and fingerprints like crazy."

"There's no denying that the OS looks great. From the transitions to the screen arrangements, Microsoft paid a lot of attention to the look of Windows Phone. On the surface, it creates a very polished product. The menagerie of flipping and changing tiles on the home screen make you want to interact with them."

"...the OS isn't without polish problems or minor difficulties. Landscape orientation sometimes seems half-baked, with buttons that stay portrait-oriented next to the horizontal keyboard. The phone is also a bit finicky about scrolling. Being that the screen is so big and the range of my thumb is comparatively small, my horizontal swipes are often slightly diagonally downward (instead of working the joint to make the swipe straight, I keep my thumb straight). Android and iOS have never had a problem interpreting this slightly-downward, mostly-horizontal, somewhat lazy swipe as I intend it, but the Lumia often reads as "scroll down" instead of "swipe across." This creates a lot of mistakes in an OS where there is so much swiping left and right to do."

"The browser is based on IE9, the desktop version of which has won a lot of praise. But the browser on the Lumia 900 does sometimes feel janky when it comes to text rendering. Mobile browsers resize text and alter page layouts in some subtle ways in an attempt to ensure greater readability. IE 9's algorithm has some oddities not found in Safari's approach."

"We also have some quibbles with the interface design for the browser, namely that tabs are buried two clicks deep. A third-party browser, UC Browser, adds a second bar to the interface that provides one-click access to tabs as well as a forward button (something else Windows Phone IE lacks) and a home button."

"Those issues and the benchmarks aside, we found that the Lumia 900 actually loads pages fairly quickly. It doesn't beat the iPhone 4S at loading any of our test pages, by any means, but at least beats out the iPhone 4 while on WiFi."

"The battery life of the Lumia 900 is another point of pride on Nokia's part. It clocks in at 1830mAh, which is on the large side for a smartphone battery. Nokia estimates it gets around seven hours of talk time with that."

"This is pretty healthy performance for a smartphone, besting the Galaxy Nexus in similar tests, but the iPhone 4 and 4S crank out about 3 more hours of video and several more hours of general use. iPhones also have an often-overlooked ability to charge the battery to 80 percent in an hour, but the Lumia 900 charges at steady pace and over a few hours: it took ours nearly 4 hours to go from 0 to 100 percent."
------------

SSD drive prices continue to fall

Register Hardware reports: [edited]

Intel has a new budget 330-series solid-state drive (SSD) coming on Friday, 13 April, and it almost doubles the current 320 SSD's performance.

Amazon UK lists the 120GB 2.5-inch Intel 330 SSD for £109.05.
------------

G-HUB iPad Cover

I purchased the latest iPad. It is a wonderful thing, but the original iPad cover doesn't fit.

This cover came highly recommended on Amazon, and at a penny shy of a tenner, inc. p&p, I decided to give it a try.

- The 'carbon fibre' finish isn't too tacky.

- The iPad fits snugly in it.

- The closure magnet sleeps/wakes the iPad.

- The front flap folds to make a reasonably stable base.

And, inexplicably, you get a free ballpoint pen/screen stylus thrown in for nowt.

Available here.
------------

A Day in the Life of a Warehouse Robot

Kottke reports: [edited]

Amazon announced recently that they bought a company named Kiva for $775 million. Kiva makes robots for fulfillment warehouses, of which Amazon has many. When I heard this news, I was all, robots are cool, but $775 million? But this short video on how the Kiva robots work made me a believer.
------------

How To Typeset A Poster

Imprint reports: [edited]

Bowne & Co., Stationers at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York frequently produces beautiful letterpress keepsakes. This one from 1989, "Nineteenth Century Job Printing Display - The Poster" is a delightful little guide to the dos and don'ts. Using their enviable stock of metal types, 200 copies were printed on a Vandercook Universal I.

The text was adapted from "The Letter-Press Printer: A Complete Guide to the Art of Printing; Containing Practical Instructions for Learners at Case, Press and Machine" (London, 1881).
------------

Scribal complaints

Brain Pickings reports: [edited]

The history of bookmaking hasn’t been without its challenges, but never was its craft as painstaking as during the era of illuminated manuscripts. Joining the ranks of history’s most appalling and amusing complaints, like this Victorian list of don’ts for female cyclists or young Isaac Newton’s self-professed sins, is an absolute treat for lovers of marginalia such as myself — a collection of complaints monks scribbled in the pages of illuminated manuscripts.
------------

Scrabble Typography Limited Edition

Winning Solutions reports: [edited]

- Solid walnut storage case with drawer

- Six-panel walnut magnetized gameboard

- birch cover

- Metal tile racks

- walnut tiles featuring a variety fonts

- 19.00” x 17.50” x 6.00”

Price: $199, available August 2012

Thanks to Conrad Gempf for the link
------------

iAcoustic

aBite Design reports: [edited]

iAcoustic boosts the audio output from the iPhone or iPod Touch built-in speaker up to about 60 decibels without using any external power sources.

While passing through its wind instrument type horn and solid wood base, the audio source is transformed into deep, warm, rich and resonant sound.
------------

Unbroken sleep a modern phenomena?

The Guardian reports: [edited]

Roger Ekirch's book, 'At Day's Close: A History of Nighttime''s most fascinating revelation is that our pre-industrial ancestors experienced what Ekirch calls 'segmented sleep': there was 'first sleep' until midnight, followed by a 'second sleep'.

In between, they tended the fire, read or talked, had sex, smoked and meditated on the events of the previous day. Electric lighting has altered our sleep patterns and robbed us of this nocturnal hiatus.

In fact, Ekirch contends that the 'gradual elimination' of night has impaired the quality of our dreams and deprived us of 'a better understanding of our inner selves'.

480pp, Weidenfeld, £20
------------

Increase your chance of camera retrieval

PetaPixel reports: [edited]

If you were to lose your camera today, would anyone who found it be able to get in touch with you?

If not, it might be a good idea to put a couple of 'digital dog tags' on your camera’s memory card.

First, add a photo with your contact information onto the card so that anyone looking through the photos on the camera will come across it.

Next, add a series of text documents to the root directory of your memory card (the first directory that appears when you access the card on a computer) with file names that contain your contact info.
------------

Old Maps Online

Ars Technica reports: [edited]

The world’s single largest online collection of historical maps launched earlier this week at Old Maps Online. By the end of the year, the site aims to have 60,000 maps available for public access. Cooperating institutions include the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Czech Republic’s Moravian Library and the San Francisco Bay Area’s David Rumsey Map Collection. The University of Portsmouth’s Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System hosts the collection in conjunction with Switzerland’s Klokan Technologies.

Starting from a map of your area, you can zoom in or reorient over a basic world map, then drill down. The right column contains a changing stack of maps germane to your area.

Each historical map you click on is presented in a separate frame that you can enlarge, drawn from the contributing institution. A slider across the top allows you to dynamically change the offerings by moving from as early as 1000 CE up to 2010 (check Google Maps for anything more recent). A search box allows you to navigate by place name.
------------

John Steinbeck on Writing

Brain Pickings reports: [edited]

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it — bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
------------

3d Printing of a Model Racing Car

In the video, a race car with dimensions of 330x130x100µm3 is fabricated. The structure consists of 100 layers, each made of an average of 200 polymer lines. It is finished in 4 minutes and resembles the CAD file at a precision of ±1µm.

For more information click here
------------

Khan Academy releases iPad app

TUAW reports: [edited]

MIT alum Salman Khan has an ambitious plan. He wants to provide anyone, anywhere with a quality education. To that end, he's created a website with over 2,700 K-12 lectures spanning math, history, science and more. Now he's bringing all this online learning to the iPad with his new Khan academy app.

In keeping with Khan's philosophy of learning, the Khan Academy app and all its resources are available for free. The app lets you login to your Khan Academy account and track your progress as you work through the courses. You can also download videos and playlists for learning on the go and follow along with subtitles that'll help you navigate through each lecture. You can grab the Khan Academy app free from the iOS App Store.
------------

Beautiful Chalk Lettering

Trendland reports: [edited]

After graduating in 2007 with a BFA in Communication Design from The University of North Texas, Dana Tanamachi moved to New York City to design Broadway show posters.

Since then Dana works full time as a custom chalk letterer and has been commissioned by clients such as West Elm, Rugby Ralph Lauren, Google, The Ace Hotel, Adidas, EveryDay with Rachael Ray, Lululemon Athletica, and O Magazine.

Thanks to Conrad Gempf for the link
------------

Olympus OM-D E-M5

Simply Robin has published a hands-on review of Olympus' new semi-pro Micro 4/3 offering.

First impressions are that Olympus has taken the format up another level, the images are beautiful, and the low-light performance the best I have seen in the Micro 4/3 format.
------------

Spider silk a superb heat conductor

TG Daily reports: [edited]

Spider silk conduct heat as well as metals do, an Iowa State University professor has discovered.

Indeed, spider silk - especially the draglines that anchor webs in place - is a better thermal conductor than silicon, aluminum and pure iron, and 800 times better than other organic tissues. It conducts heat at the rate of 416 watts per meter Kelvin, compared with 401 for copper and 0.6 for skin tissues.

"This is very surprising because spider silk is organic material. For organic material, this is the highest ever. There are only a few materials higher - silver and diamond."

The reason for spider silk's unusual heat-carrying properties, says Wang, is its defect-free molecular structure, including proteins that contain nanocrystals and the spring-shaped structures connecting the proteins.

Spider silk could be used to help create flexible, heat-dissipating parts for electronics, better clothes for hot weather, bandages that don't trap heat and many other everyday applications.
------------

iPad - The Third Generation

Faster, LTE (4G) enabled, 5MP camera, and a 2048 x 1536 pixel screen for the same price as the previous model.

For Apple's blurb click here.

For a brief 'hands-on' view click here and here.
------------

Sony SmartWatch

ZDNet reports: [edited]

Alongside Sony's new Xperia smartphone it launched a cool accessory called SmartWatch ($150, pre-order). Unlike the iPod nano, which is an iPod being forced into being a watch, SmartWatch is an accessory to an Android phone. It connects via Bluetooth so that you can receive email and SMS notifications, answer calls and keep tabs on social networks like Facebook and Twitter — in addition to playing music. Plus it clips to any standard watch band.

In addition to the Sony Xperia line of phones, SmartWatch works with the following handsets: HTC Desire S, HTCEvo 3D/Shooter, HTC Sensation, HTC Wildfire, HTC Wildfire S, Motorola Defy, Motorola Droid 2/Milestone 2, Motorola RAZR, Orange San Fransisco, Samsung Galaxy 5, Samsung Galaxy Ace, Samsung Galaxy Fit, Samsung Galaxy Gio, Samsung Galaxy Mini, Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Galaxy SL.
------------

Lions close up

PetaPixel reports: [edited]

UK-based wildlife photographers Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas got the Internet’s attention a couple years ago with the BeetleCam, a special remote controlled DSLR that allowed them to capture close-up photos of animals in the wild that photographers would have difficultly strolling up to. After the success of that experiment, they decided to return to Africa last summer with upgraded (and armoured) versions of the BeetleCam in order to photograph lions in Kenya.
------------

Corner Picture Frames

To go with your Kulma Bookshelf.

via: DigsDigs.
------------

Kulma Bookshelf

martinacarpelan.com reports: [edited]

Kulma, 'Corner' in Finnish, is a shelf to be positioned either in a positive or a negative corner of a room. The idea is to utilise and highlight the space within the shelf and the corner surrounding the shelf. Produced by Martina Carpelan, designed with Hong Ngo in 2006

H 250 x W 420 x D 250mm. Solid oak, hand-made in Finland.

Price: €95 + shipping
------------

10 Commandments for Con Men

Lists of Note reports: [edited]

'Count' Victor Lustig was a con man of considerable note. Born in 1890, by the 1930s he was wanted by approximately 45 law enforcement agencies worldwide. He had 25 known aliases and spoke 5 languages.

In 1925, Lustig posed as a government official in Paris, took five businessmen on a tour of the Eiffel Tower, and then 'sold' it to one of them as 7300 tonnes of scrap metal; the con went so well, he tried it again soon after.

He also wrote the following list of commandments for aspiring con men:

1. Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con-man his coups).

2. Never look bored.

3. Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them.

4. Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones.

5. Hint at sex talk, but don’t follow it up unless the other fellow shows a strong interest.

6. Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown.

7. Never pry into a person’s personal circumstances (they’ll tell you all eventually).

8. Never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious.

9. Never be untidy.

10. Never get drunk.

via kottke
------------

Samsung Galaxy Beam

Register Hardware reports: [edited]

The Samsung Galaxy Beam was first launched in Singapore in July 2010, although the feature of a built-in pico projector did little to propel the handset up the popularity charts.

Almost two years down the line, though, and Samsung reckons the time is right to revisit the prospect, pitching a refreshed Galaxy Beam to the rest of the world. The projector is able to cast a 50in beam with a 720p resolution.

The Beam packs a 4in, 480 x 800 display and a 1GHz dual-core processor running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. There's 8GB of internal memory expandable to 32GB through Micro SD cards, and a 2000mAh battery.

Pricing and availability to be announced.
------------

FujiFilm Finepix JV210

If you're looking for a 'cheap-as-chips' digital camera, this one (original price £150) is available new on ebay for under £50 including p&p.

It comes with a 14MP sensor, 3x optical zoom and a rechargeable battery. You can even capture videos with it. You'll need to supply an SD card, but you can get a 4GB version for under £4 (inc. p&p) from Amazon.
------------

Teller reveals his secrets

Smithsonian.com have published an entertaining article about how magicians manipulate the human mind.

Excerpts follow:

"In the last half decade, magic has become shockingly respectable in the scientific world. I asked a scientist friend why the sudden interest. He replied that those who fund science research find magicians “sexier than lab rats.”"

"I’m all for helping science. But after I share what I know, my neuroscientist friends thank me by showing me eye-tracking and MRI equipment, and promising that someday such machinery will help make me a better magician."

"I have my doubts. Neuroscientists are novices at deception. Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years. Magic’s not easy to pick apart with machines, because it’s not really about the mechanics of your senses. Magic’s about understanding — and then manipulating — how viewers digest the sensory information."

"It’s hard to think critically if you’re laughing. We often follow a secret move immediately with a joke. A viewer has only so much attention to give, and if he’s laughing, his mind is too busy with the joke to backtrack rationally."

"To fool the mind, combine at least two tricks. Every night in Las Vegas, I make a children’s ball come to life like a trained dog. My method — the thing that fools your eye — is to puppeteer the ball with a thread too fine to be seen from the audience. But during the routine, the ball jumps through a wooden hoop several times, and that seems to rule out the possibility of a thread."
------------

Henry Miller on Practical Creativity

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.

2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’

3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5. When you can’t create you can work.

6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

via Brain Pickings

SXSW 2012 free music

Every year generous artists make one of their songs available for free download from the SXSW site. And each year the unofficial home of sxsw torrents collects and makes them available as a bittorrent file. There are 771 tracks currently available. Enjoy!

For cover art click here
------------

Panasonic Eluga

Register Hardware reports: [edited]

The skinny - it's 7.8mm thick and weighs 103g - handset sports a 4.3in, 540 x 960 (qHD) display and packs in near-field communications (NFC) contactless payment and file transfer tech.

The smartphone runs Android 2.3.5 running on a 1GHz Texas Instruments dual-core CPU. There's 8GB of Flash storage on board and an 8Mp camera on the back. Bluetooth 2.1 and 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi join 3G HSPA for wireless connectivity.

Eluga is also waterproof and dustproof, Panasonic claims.
------------

Free Font - Amaranth

Font Squirrel has this quirky postmodern sans serif available to download in regular, italic, bold and bold italic.
------------

5 colour scheme web apps

Design & Dev reports:

Colour is one of the most important aspects of any design. And since colour has such a massive impact on your viewers, it’s important to know your theory.

Warm colours give off a fiery message, while cool colours can provide a more calming effect. Analogous colour schemes, often found in nature, are comforting, while complementary colour schemes have a more energetic feel.

Here’s 5 Web apps to help you find the perfect colour palette for your next design.
------------

Clear for iPhone

TechCrunch reports: [edited]

Clear, the heavily-anticipated touch-based to-do list iPhone app, is now available from the iTunes App Store (69p).

Why the big draw for what’s typically been a rather ho-hum app category, the lowly to-do list? Clear is pure eye candy, for starters. But it’s also representative of a major leap forward in smartphone app design, as it’s been built from the ground up for the touch interface. The app is based solely on the use of now-common gestures: swipes, pulls and pinches.

With Clear, there are only a few gestures you need to in order to use the app: pull down on a list to add an item, swipe to the right to complete an item or to the left to delete it, pinch apart two items to insert a new one in between, and pinch vertically to close the current list and see all the lists in the app. Lists are colour-coded with a heat map to show the most pressing tasks at a glance.
------------

Pansonic Lumix DMC-GX1 - Review

Digital Photography Review has published a comprehensive review of Panasonic's top-of-the-range micro four thirds compact.

Summary of Conclusion:

The GX1 is a camera that gets a whole lot right. If the combination of small form factor and high number of external control points are priorities, the GX1 has to be at the top of an enthusiast's wish list. You'd be taking advantage of the highest quality image sensor available for the Micro Four Thirds market and buying into an extensive range of high quality optics including fast prime lenses.

The GX1 is a very capable and solid, but not ground-breaking camera that does a very fine job at what it sets out to accomplish. Panasonic has addressed almost every criticism of its early generation G-series cameras in a package that, when paired with its collapsible kit zoom is among the most pocketable cameras in its class.
------------

Gerber Steady Tool

Gerber.com reports: [edited]

Built for the weekend adventurer, the Gerber Steady combines the utility of a multi-tool and the functionality of a camera tripod. It comes equipped with an adjustable cell phone and screw-in camera mount and two foldable legs that serve as a tripod. The rest of the tool is all Gerber ingenuity – a fine edge blade, a serrated blade, three screwdrivers, a bottle opener, pliers and wire cutters.

Overall Length: 6", Closed Length: 4", Weight: 5.8 oz.

Price: $64.00
------------

Painting with sound

The New York Times reports: [edited]

Like a 3-D take on Jackson Pollock, the latest work by the artist Martin Klimas begins with splatters of paint in fuchsia, teal and lime green, positioned on a scrim over the diaphragm of a speaker. Then the volume is turned up.

For each image, Klimas selects music — typically something dynamic and percussive, like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Miles Davis or Kraftwerk — and the vibration of the speaker sends the paint aloft in patterns that reveal themselves through the lens of his Hasselblad.

The resulting images are Klimas’s attempt to answer the question “What does music look like?”

via kottke
------------

HoverBar for iPad 2

Twelve South reports: [edited]

HoverBar hangs iPad 2 beside your Mac, letting you use iPad as a secondary, touchscreen computer.

The flexible HoverBar arm positions iPad in a place where you can keep tabs on Twitter, stocks or partake in a FaceTime chat.

As a bonus, you can use HoverBar separately to float iPad 2 as a micro workstation, a handy kitchen mount or as a tool that elevates iPad, creating a whole new way to interact with apps.

Price: $79.99
------------

Classic Apple Products iPhone Cases

Core 77 reports: [edited]

A company called Schreer Delights is selling a line of iPhone cases that reference Apple's design history, printing visual elements from the original Mac, the original iMac and the original iPod directly onto the case. Each runs a little under 50 bucks.
------------

'I Do' Wedding Bands

Sakurako Shimizu creates wedding bands with a representation of the waveform of the couple's own voices saying, 'I do' cut from the metal.

View more of his creations here
------------

Free Font - Open Sans

Open Sans is available in 5 weights (with complementary italics) from Font Squirrel.

------------

Electric Tron Motorcycle

Bike EXIF reports: [edited]

It’ll cost you at least $55,000 but it’s electric, so you’ll save money on gas. The Xenon was styled by Florida-based Parker Brothers Choppers, and it’s based on the gas-powered "Light Cycle" they created for the movie 'Tron: Legacy'.

There are two versions of the production Xenon, a basic model and the “XR”, which doubles the battery power to give a 100-mile range. A 40,000W motor delivers a top speed of 70 mph, and the battery pack is fully charged in three to four hours.
------------

Solar panels becoming financially viable

New Scientist reports: [edited]

SOLAR power has always had a reputation for being expensive, but not for much longer. In India, electricity from solar is now cheaper than that from diesel generators. The news - which will boost India's "Solar Mission" to install 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 - could have implications for other developing nations as well.

In India, electricity from solar supplied to the grid has fallen to just 8.78 rupees per kilowatt-hour compared with 17 rupees for diesel. The drop has little to do with improvements in the notoriously poor efficiency of solar panels: industrial panels still only convert 15 to 18 per cent of the energy they receive into electricity. But they are now much cheaper to produce, so inefficiency is no longer a major sticking point.

Solar power is now cheaper than diesel anywhere as sunny as Spain. That means vast areas of Latin America, Africa and Asia could start adopting solar power.

The one thing stopping households buying a solar panel is the initial cost. Buying a solar panel is more expensive than buying a diesel generator, but solar becomes cheaper than diesel after seven years. The panels last 25 years.

Image: Joerg Boethling/Alamy
------------

Panasonic DMC-TZ30

Digital Photography Review reports: [edited]

Panasonic has updated its range of travel zoom cameras with the DMC-TZ30. It is the slimmest 20x zoom camera on the market. Its lens covers a 24-480mm equivalent range and features the company's latest Power O.I.S stabilization.

The high-speed 14MP MOS sensor allows autofocus taking as little as 0.1 seconds, and it can shoot at up to 10 frames per second (5fps with AF-tracking). It also has GPS and an updated mapping function to show photos on a map with greater detail. The usefulness of this and other features is increased by a touchscreen.
------------

Doxie Go

GetDoxie.com reports: [edited]

Doxie Go + Wi-Fi is the tiny new wireless scanner that scans all your paper. Scan anywhere – no computer required – then sync wirelessly to Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, or directly to the cloud [WiFi SD card required, Ed.].

- Tiny, fast, and rechargeable.

- Doxie 2.0 syncs scans, creates searchable PDFs, creates multi-page stacks, and sends directly to your favorite apps and cloud services.

- Works with Evernote, Dropbox, Flickr etc.

£204.75 (w/4GB WiFi SD card) from Amazon.
------------