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Awesome intricate bamboo iPhone case. [via Hey Stuff]
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Glossy photo book of urban decay in Detroit.
books
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Nice list of board books for kids to revisit.
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"This demo is an implementation of a full 8-bit color cycling engine, rendered into an HTML5 Canvas in real-time." Nice look at the lost video game art of color cycling to show movement.
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Great list of design laws to keep in mind. Seems that users are waging a constant battle against Hick's Law. [via glass]
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"There is an error in most photography scaling algorithms." Wha? This is hard to believe.
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I think we're safely out of spoiler territory now so I can post this great analysis of Toy Story 3.
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Neven Mrgan has a great point: when a satire gets too close to the subject it's taking down is it still satire?
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Great 50's comic art.
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Frozen bananas in a food processor = ice cream? I need to try this!
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Great idea, I'd use them.
Great Graphic Novels
I'm a big fan of a very specific kind of graphic novel. I'm not very keen on superheroes, war, fantasy, horror, or manga and that doesn't leave much left. I dutifully visit my local Borders every week and look through the "Other Graphic Novels" section but I rarely find anything to pick up. The New York Times tracks the best sellers in Graphic Books, and most of them fall under one of the categories I mentioned.
I've only found a handful that I enjoy, but I enjoy them so much that I'd like to request more from the universe. I'm not quite sure how to classify them. Non-fiction seems to fit, but not always. I have a hard time explaining to people who aren't graphic novel fans that there are indeed great ones out there. Here's a quick list and a panel from each of my favorite graphic novels:
Logicomix by Doxiadis and Papadimitriou
You have to wonder why there hasn't been a graphic novel about Bertrand Russell before now. Logicomix is partly about the fall of set theory, partly about Russell's life, and partly about the making of the graphic novel itself. ok, it sounds like a horrible trainwreck. Somehow it all works to show that there are people and personalities driving progress in philosophy and mathematics. Here's a panel with Russell and Wittengstein arguing about sets.
Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle
Delisle writes personal travelogues. His work in animation has taken him to inaccessible places such as Pyongyang, North Korea and Shenzhen, China. In Burma Chronicles he accompanied his wife to Burma for her work with Doctors Without Borders. He chronicled his time there exploring the repressive culture, expat community, and locals he met. Instead of a long arcing narrative he presents a series of progressive vignettes.
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld
A.D. follows the stories of six people who experienced Hurricane Katrina in different ways. Some evacuated, some stayed behind, some left, some returned. It gave me a more personal view of something I only experienced through television.
The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
This is a series of short stories by manga pioneer Yoshihiro Tatsumi written in 1969. They're gritty, looking at the darker side of human nature without ever tipping over into the grotesque like I think manga tends to do. He sets his cartoonish, simple characters against a realistic background as in this panel:
It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken by Seth
The main character in this picture novella travels across Canada looking for the work of an obscure cartoonist who worked briefly in the 40's and 50's. Like the main character, the entire book is an anachronism and maybe the medium is too.
I'm not sure what ties these together beyond realism. I've picked up a few guides to graphic novels including Graphic Novels by Paul Gravett and 500 Essential Graphic Novels by Gene Kannenberg and I still have trouble finding books that are in my favorite genre—whatever that might be.
I've only found a handful that I enjoy, but I enjoy them so much that I'd like to request more from the universe. I'm not quite sure how to classify them. Non-fiction seems to fit, but not always. I have a hard time explaining to people who aren't graphic novel fans that there are indeed great ones out there. Here's a quick list and a panel from each of my favorite graphic novels:
Logicomix by Doxiadis and Papadimitriou
You have to wonder why there hasn't been a graphic novel about Bertrand Russell before now. Logicomix is partly about the fall of set theory, partly about Russell's life, and partly about the making of the graphic novel itself. ok, it sounds like a horrible trainwreck. Somehow it all works to show that there are people and personalities driving progress in philosophy and mathematics. Here's a panel with Russell and Wittengstein arguing about sets.
Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle
Delisle writes personal travelogues. His work in animation has taken him to inaccessible places such as Pyongyang, North Korea and Shenzhen, China. In Burma Chronicles he accompanied his wife to Burma for her work with Doctors Without Borders. He chronicled his time there exploring the repressive culture, expat community, and locals he met. Instead of a long arcing narrative he presents a series of progressive vignettes.
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld
A.D. follows the stories of six people who experienced Hurricane Katrina in different ways. Some evacuated, some stayed behind, some left, some returned. It gave me a more personal view of something I only experienced through television.
The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
This is a series of short stories by manga pioneer Yoshihiro Tatsumi written in 1969. They're gritty, looking at the darker side of human nature without ever tipping over into the grotesque like I think manga tends to do. He sets his cartoonish, simple characters against a realistic background as in this panel:
It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken by Seth
The main character in this picture novella travels across Canada looking for the work of an obscure cartoonist who worked briefly in the 40's and 50's. Like the main character, the entire book is an anachronism and maybe the medium is too.
I'm not sure what ties these together beyond realism. I've picked up a few guides to graphic novels including Graphic Novels by Paul Gravett and 500 Essential Graphic Novels by Gene Kannenberg and I still have trouble finding books that are in my favorite genre—whatever that might be.
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Book that contains historical arguments between Judge Matthew Deady and Judge William Strong about the official spelling of the Oregon river. It'd be fun to track down a copy.
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A brief history of the word Willamette, debunking a common myth about its meaning.
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"This Friday, June 12, TV stations nationwide will cease broadcasting analog signals and switch to digital-only broadcasts...Starting Friday, I can no longer get TV on the radio." Didn't think of this, what a bummer. I've used this trick occasionally too, especially when the power goes out. [via MeFi]
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"...new kinds of lock-in in the era of [cloud computing] will be owning a namespace." That's Chris Messina paraphrasing Tim O'Reilly on Web 2.0 in general, applied to Facebook's new vanity URL feature specifically.
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"I tried to alternate the charming children's covers with the creepy modernist covers, but I soon lost the ability to tell one type from the other." Excellent collection of early 20th century graphic design in Japan. Be sure to check out the previous post with book covers too.
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This is a sharp bike. It's 8-speed, has a carbon drive belt instead of an oily chain, and includes fenders for Oregon weather. Officially on my wish list. [via mathowie]
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"What are some books that people are particularly likely to be assholes about?" Another fun thread gathering books that people are, umm, passionate about.
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"You know the one. I can't think of its name. It's the one they always use." Hilarious thread that catalogs overused songs in movies and TV.
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"...you can use LineIn to play sound coming in through a microphone or any other device plugged in to your Sound In port..." Used this today to pipe my iPhone through the computer speakers.
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Andy funded a chiptunes jazz album in less than two hours with his new project Kickstarter. Nice demonstration of the new service and the album is a fun project I'm looking forward to hearing.
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A list of all the books mentioned in the classic Ask MetaFilter thread: What single book is the best introduction to your field?
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Ryan Tate on Oakland bloggers: "...I often found that bloggers were the only other writers in the room at certain city council committee meetings and at certain community events. They tended to be the sort of persistently-involved residents newspapermen often refer to as 'gadflies' — deeply, obsessively concerned about issues large and infinitesimal in the communities where they lived."
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"They certainly don't make SF book jackets like they used to." Fun post about classic Penguin book covers. I enjoyed browsing through the Penguin Covers on Flickr as well, and I recommend Penguin By Design by Phil Baines for even more design inspiration.
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Eric Johnson covered on a Nintendo. He mimicked the guitar tones (including harmonics) well. I can almost picture the side-scrolling shooting spree this could back. [via waxy]
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Lifehacker brings down the hammer on commenters. Interesting to see what will earn someone an instant ban from their site; it's a catalog of bad online behavior.
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Is there anything better than engravings of alchemists' laboratories?
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"...future versions of Firefox plan on supporting the new W3C Geolocation Specification, which adds the native ability for Web sites to request, and you to optionally grant access to, your location." [via veen]
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Nice post by Ted Rheingold summarizing some of GA's advanced features.
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"PhoneGap is a free open source development tool and framework that allows web developers to take advantage of the powerful features in the iPhone SDK from HTML and JavaScript."
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A photography blog about books. [via jessamyn]