Paper Bits

personalfactory: Buccaneer Initial Specs via...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:20:15 -0400

Buccaneer Initial Specs via 3dprintingindustry.com

I’m skeptical that they’re going to be able to reliably produce this thing for the price tag listed, at the volume required to meet demand. I’m definitely skeptical that they’ll be able to do it and maintain a reasonable level of quality. No chance in hell that they’ll meet both the previous requirements and make a profit. And that’s even assuming it’s a real product. Which is generous.

That said, it looks pretty good.

Which it should, because it’s a Macintosh Cube.

I’m pretty sure that the project’s industrial designer was baked out of his mind one night, and looked at the Cube on his bookshelf, and was all like, “hey, whoa, man, what if this thing was a 3D printer?”

Given that the cube’s clear plastic shell tended to crack from the heat produced by the computer’s CPU, I wonder what one of these things will look like after a few months of real use.

The pictures are pretty, though.

blech: Designing for Unnatural Selection at the next Cooper...

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:40:13 -0400

blech:

Designing for Unnatural Selection at the next Cooper Parlor:

Like it or not, the sixth wave of extinction is upon us. By the end of the century nearly 50% of all species on the planet will be gone. Most will perish simply because they do not have enough time to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. But what if there were gadgets (or services) that would help plants and animals transcend time and make the evolutionary leap? What if there was a Whole Earth Catalog for the non- human among us (eat your heart out, Stewart Brand)?

Reblogging for the bunny cartoon.

I should really find the sketches I did for modern rabbit tactical armor in college…

kadrey: Game Designer Creates Board Game Meant to Be Played...

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:31:54 -0400

kadrey:

Game Designer Creates Board Game Meant to Be Played Thousands of Years from Now

“
American Jason Roher has recently won a game design competition after creating a board game that no one is likely to play anytime in the near future, if ever. Called A Game for Someone, Roher’s game was made from titanium, to stand the test of time, and buried somewhere in the Nevada Desert, where it will probably be discovered by an advanced civilization, or zombies, thousands of years from now…”

http://www.odditycentral.com/news/game-designer-creates-board-game-meant-to-be-played-thousands-of-years-from-now.html

invisiblestories: Inuit Genealogy, Jean Malaurie (via...

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:40:21 -0400

invisiblestories:

Inuit Genealogy, Jean Malaurie (via huldrapress)

bibliofila: A mid-fifteenth-century cookery scroll—measuring...

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:33:56 -0400

bibliofila:

A mid-fifteenth-century cookery scroll—measuring over twenty feet long and featuring nearly two hundred recipes in Middle English—speaks to medieval tastes. Among the recipes on view will be two for “conynges” (coneys or rabbits), one in syrup, the other in clear broth. The first recipe instructs the cook to “Take conynges and seethe them well in good broth. Take Greek wine & add a portion of vinegar & flour of cinnamon, whole cloves, whole peppercorns, and other good spices with raisins, currants, and ginger….”

Source: The Morgan Library & Museum

"In science, you make your mistakes in public. You show them off so that everybody can learn from..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:40:23 -0400

“In science, you make your mistakes in public. You show them off so that everybody can learn from them. This way, you get the benefit of everybody else’s experience, and not just your own idiosyncratic path through the space of mistakes.”

- Daniel Dennett’s seven tools for thinking

For all that Yahoo! completely screwed up and deleted Geocities, my Flickr photo stream is still...

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:53:33 -0400

For all that Yahoo! completely screwed up and deleted Geocities, my Flickr photo stream is still there and works as well as it did in 2005. Not a single URL has broken, not a single image is missing.

I’ve read the stories of how upcoming.org, del.icio.us, and other companies were acquired, languished, and died. And Flickr’s persistence has led to its fall from grace as the most obvious place to share photos online.

But compared to technologies absorbed by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, that doesn’t seem so bad. Anyone here use Stikkit? How about dodgeball? Jotspot? Socialtext?

Use IFTTT —while it lasts— to archive your blog as you write it. Make multiple connections to the people you care about. Stay in touch. This, too, shall pass.

prostheticknowledge: GIF-TY Design concept for a camera that...

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:46:41 -0400

prostheticknowledge:

GIF-TY

Design concept for a camera that can print out a series of small prints to create a flipbook - video embedded below:

Via Yanko Design:

This unique camera allows you to print out short flipbook animations, so that you can physically keep the memories of precious moments alive in a fun way. GIF-TY’s Animations can be physically edited, and clipped on a separately designed module. Nametags can be attached to those clips just like old videotapes.

Technologically: GIF-TY is a combination of a burst-shot camera, and a ‘Zero-Ink’ Printer.

More Here

Tumblr Backup python script (GitHub)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:01:44 -0400

Tumblr Backup python script (GitHub):

tumblr_backup.py is a script that backs up your Tumblr blog locally.

The backup includes all images from photo and photoset posts. An index links to monthly pages, which contain all the posts from the respective month with links to single post pages. Command line options select which posts to backup and set the output format.

By default, all posts of a blog are backed up in minimally styled HTML.

"You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:18:32 -0400

“You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple the unemployment isn’t interested in purchasing the assets of the generation who just blew an enormous housing bubble and kept it from popping through quantitative easing and out-and-out federal support? Curious.”

- When comments are better than the article, Atlantic edition (“The Cheapest Generation: Why Millennials arent’ buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy”)

"Intelligence is all about context, and when computers get better at providing it, they make us..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:40:01 -0400

“Intelligence is all about context, and when computers get better at providing it, they make us smarter.”

- Dictionary of Numbers | xkcd

Yes. A thousand times, yes. [≈ the first page of comments on Randall’s blog]

"What the system is supposed to be doing when everything is working well is really beside the point..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:40:02 -0400

“What the system is supposed to be doing when everything is working well is really beside the point because that happy state is never achieved in real life. The truly pertinent question is: How does it work when its components aren’t working well? How does it fail? How well does it function in failure mode?”

- Systemantics

"The larger and more complex the system, the less the resemblance between the true function and the..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:20:11 -0400

“The larger and more complex the system, the less the resemblance between the true function and the name it bears.”

- Systemantics

Also known as the principle of functionary’s falsity.

"Any change in status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system."

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:40:10 -0400

“Any change in status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system.”

- Le Chatelier’s principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Or, systems fight back when you try to change them.

"As long as a system exists only in the head of its creator, we would agree that it might be knowable..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:20:28 -0400

“As long as a system exists only in the head of its creator, we would agree that it might be knowable in all its implications. But once that system is translated into the real world, into hardware and people, it becomes something else. It becomes a real-world thing, and mere mortals can never know all there is to know about the real world.”

- Systemantics

"There is a world of difference, psychologically speaking, between the passive observation that..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:40:29 -0400

“There is a world of difference, psychologically speaking, between the passive observation that things don’t work out very well, and the active, penetrating insight that complex systems exhibit unexpected behavior.”

- Systemantics

The former is paralyzing. The latter is predictive.

"This is an example of what happens in a market-based system: any clash between generating profit and..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:23:06 -0400

“This is an example of what happens in a market-based system: any clash between generating profit and protecting the natural world is resolved in favour of business, often with the help of junk science. Only those components of the ecosystem which can be commodified and sold are defended.”

- The Self-Hating State (via burningfp)

"All the components in a smartphone — the sensors, the GPS, the camera, the ARM core processors, the..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 08:20:21 -0400

“All the components in a smartphone — the sensors, the GPS, the camera, the ARM core processors, the wireless, the memory, the battery — all that stuff, which is being driven by the incredible economies of scale and innovation machines at Apple, Google, and others, is available for a few dollars. They were essentially “unobtainium” 10 years ago. This is stuff that used to be military industrial technology; you can buy it at RadioShack now.”

- Hardware startups - Chris Dixon (via iamdanw)

I remember sketching a networked device with a GPS in it circa 2003, and being told, “you’re never gonna be able to prototype that.” And they were right.

It’s pretty damn amazing, what’s changed in the last 10 years.

"When we finally added thumbnail views we launched it with distinct “file not found” and the “image..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 07:40:19 -0400

“When we finally added thumbnail views we launched it with distinct “file not found” and the “image not digitized” icons. But there’s also a necessary third icon that no one in the museum world ever seems eager to talk about: An icon for images that have been digitized but that can’t be shown because they haven’t been licensed or some equally insane restriction.”

- [this is aaronland] you’ll design thank us in the morning (via iamdanw)

"What’s impossible to ignore is how many of the individuals diagnosed with mental disorders are..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 21:45:48 -0400

“What’s impossible to ignore is how many of the individuals diagnosed with mental disorders are essentially anti-authoritarians. This was potentially a large army of anti-authoritarian activists that mental health professionals are keeping off democracy battlefields by convincing them that their depression, anxiety, and anger are a result of their mental illnesses and not, in part, a result of their pain over being in dehumanizing environments.”

- Bruce E. Levine (How psychologists subvert democratic movements)