Final Encore: Pick Your Song For The End Of The World

via npr’s All Songs Considered
“Let’s just say, for the sake of discussion, that Saturday marks the occasion when the righteous ascend to heaven and the wicked are sent to writhe miserably in the eternal damnation of hellfire. What single song do you plan to play when the end arrives?”
Join the discussion here. My song would be the Beatle’s “A Day in the Life”

Stand Up For Girls Big and Small

via moomah
“...My five-year-old daughter came home from school last month and said she no longer wanted to wear pink because a girl in her class had told her that she hated pink and that it was too girly. My first instinct was to have my daughter tell this budding fashionista what she could do with her critique… but luckily I’ve learned to ignore my first instincts. I told my daughter it was a shame that her classmate couldn’t enjoy all the wonderful colors out there in the world. Then we made a list of some wonderful pink things: puppy bellies, cotton candy, strawberry ice cream, piglets, roses, bubble gum…

Let’s teach our daughters to celebrate other women’s strength, success and happiness. Let’s not limit their options. Let’s teach them that when they make decisions in their lives, to make them based on what’s right for them. Our dreams should never be hampered by fear of what others may think.”
Read the entire post by Tracey Stewart here.

How to create a ligature

via thisiscolossal
“David Schwen demonstrates how typographic ligatures are created. It’s all about the details…”
Find out more here. This really makes me smile.

Create an ambigram-style logo

via ComputerArts
John Langdon reveals how to bring rotational symmetry to your work, here.

Douglas Coffin, Lettercarver

via typeculture
“While this film may not be about type, it abounds with beautiful letters. Douglas Coffin is one of a handful of people in the United States who carve letters in stone with the same methods that were used in the Roman Empire. Two thousand years later, the most compelling results are still achieved through the design and carving skills of a passionate artist-craftsman…”
Watch this, and other short videos, here.

QR Code Portrait

via cmybacon

“Scott Blake has been creating large scale “pixel portraits” using barcodes, and one of his most recent projects is a portrait of Amy Goodman using 2,304 QR Codes that link to 9 years of Democracy Now videos….”

See the image and read more about it here.

Memento Mori

via make
Cory Doctorow writes, “I’m often puzzled by how satisfying older technology is. What a treat it is to muscle around an ancient teletype, feeding it new-old paper-tape or rolls of industrial paper with the weight of a bygone era. What pleasure I take from the length of piano roll I’ve hung like a banner from a high place in every office I’ve had since 2000.

How much satisfaction I derive from the racing works of the 1965 mechanical watch I received as a Father’s Day present this year, audible in rare moments of ambient silence or when my hand strays near my ear, going tick-tick-tick-tick like the pattering heart of a pet mouse held loosely in my hand.

The standard explanation for the attractiveness of this old stuff is simply that They Made It Better In The Old Days. But this isn’t necessarily or even usually true. Some of my favorite old technologies are as poorly made as today’s throwaway products from China’s Pearl River Delta sweatshops.”
Read the rest here.

Mimi and Eunice: Negative

Makes me smile.

Photoshop Levels Landscapes

via cmybacon
The Photoshop levels landscapes by Jasper Elings makes me smile.
See them here.

The Rapture: May 21, 2011 6:00 p.m.

via The Bennington Vale Evening Transcript

“By now, everyone in Bennington Vale has seen the signs promising the end of days on May 21, 2011. The prophecy is being spread by Family Stations, a 53-year-old Christian radio network with over 60 outlets. Family Stations is so convinced that God is ready to receive His devoted flock this year that they have posted over 3,200 billboards worldwide with the message: ‘The Bible guarantees it!’ According to their prediction, the world will be progressively shaken apart by earthquakes, beginning at 6:00 p.m. EDT on May 21 and continuing through October 21. During this period of cataclysm, the Rapture will call all true believers back to Heaven. As a result, and with heavy heart, The Bennington Vale Evening Transcript is issuing final paychecks to some staff members and preparing to temporarily cease publication at the end of next week -- which is also the end of the world…”
Read the rest here.

via wikipedia
“Harold Egbert Camping has gained recent notoriety due to his prediction that the Christian Rapture will take place on May 21, 2011 and that the end of the world will take place five months later on October 21, 2011. Followers of Camping claim that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world's population) will be raptured. As for the remainder of the human population, Camping himself believes in annihilationism, which is the view that those who are not saved will simply cease to be conscious rather than spend eternity in Hell. Those who were "unsaved" and died prior to May 21 will not be affected by or experience the Rapture or the end of the world…”
Read the rest here.Or you can slog through his site here to learn more behind his prediction, or here and here or more links.

The Post Rapture Looting Facebook page [here] just makes me smile, as does the Post Rapture Pet Care Facebook page [here].

Classroom-Sized Camera Obscura

via neatorama
Cuban-born photographer Abelardo Morell demonstrated the concept of camera obscura to college students in 1988 by turning the entire classroom into a camera.
Read the rest here.

Creating a community of happiness

via felt and wire
“Eric Smith’s Live Now project began as a website collection of inspirational quotes illustrated by designers. It quickly turned into an international community project, which has now been released in book format. The Live Now book includes the contributed works of 65 designers and illustrators from around the world. Of the message that he hopes Live Now will inspire…”
Read the rest here, visit the Live Now community here.

Mimi and Eunice: Spectrum Disorders

Makes me smile.

Cartography and Photography

London, 2011 and 1572

via imprint
“My, how our perception of the world has changed in a few short centuries—a heartbeat in the universe’s chronology. The Atlantic has an intriguing slideshow comparing differences between cartographic representations of major cities in the 16th century, and modern Google Maps views. In many cases, the difference in underlying geography are striking…”
See the slideshow here.

On Interrobang, Pilcrow, Capitulum, and Wayzgoose

Some small random bits . . .

via Shady Characters The secret life of punctuation

Read an addendum to the Interrobang, here.

via H&FJ

“ . . . In any case, Pilcrow & Capitulum would make a fine name for a pub, and a grand place to host a typographers’ wayzgoose.”

Read the entire post here.

via worldwidewords

“The end of summer came early in old-time printing shops. By the third week in August candles were needed to light the final hours of the long working day. To mark this shift to winter working, it was usual for the master printer to give his journeymen a feast around St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August). This was the wayzgoose or way-goose…” Read more about this feast here and here.

Wayzgoose for Coventry printers at Stonebridge, c. 1907.

Summit at Shilow: Proving Grounds?

The Summit at Shilow

Over the years, we have rarely seen anyone in this development. Even taking a shortcut morning run through it, no one is around, yet there are cars in the driveway, lawns marked that they have been chemically treated for weeds, recycling bins at the curb side, and a few random lights in windows. No children are ever in the playground, and I have only seen one very quiet dog waiting by a door.

So...is this some military or government proving ground for secret testing? A search online turned this up about communities like this during the Cold War, “… Homes and commercial buildings were built to standards typical of American and European cities. Other structures included military fortifications (of types used by both NATO and the Warsaw Pact), civil defense, and ‘backyard’ shelters. In a typical test several buildings might be built using the same plan with different types of paint, landscaping, cleanliness of yards, wall angles, or distances from Ground Zero. Mannequins were placed in and around vehicles and buildings...”



Read the rest here about destruction and survivability testing at the Nevada National Security Site (N2S2), National Test Sites (NTS), and Proving Grounds. Perhaps this development just has some restrictive covenants for noise and being seen in public, in addition to the usual not hanging clothes on a clothesline.

Mimi and Eunice: Bees In Their Bonnets

Makes me smile.

Television ‘Deaths’

via wired
“Retro televisions sparked an interest for Berlin graphic designer Stephan Tillmans after he noticed the brightly colored picture breakdown when certain screens were switched off. After much experimentation with old televisions, Tillmans realized that every old television has its own ‘death,’ and, with enough patience, this could become an intriguing photographic subject…”
Read the rest here.

Mimi and Eunice: Posting Art Online

Makes me smile.

Image of the Day: Panorama of Philadelphia

This is another postcard that I purchased at a flea market,
postmarked June 25, 1909.

I love the sepia-toned ink, and find it quaint that this is referred to as a ‘postal.’ But who is ‘Brother,’ why did he run away with Fred, and why didn’t she expect him to return until September?