Dec
30
Paper Bits
Digital, Paper, Notes, Bits.
Posts tagged books
Oct
12
I’m actually quite glad that this reads as hilarious — because it means that society has come a long way from this sort of argument being commonplace. At least, that is, with respect to sexism. Pointing out the “obvious”, appealing to “nature”, and endless “but think of the good of society!” pseudo-logical rationalizations have been, and sadly continue to be, the same whether the argument addresses sex, race, religion or sexual orientation. And they all seem to stem from a fear of losing power.
— David Malki, on this book from 1894: Revolted Women: Past, Present, and to Come, by Charles George Harper.
Sep
11
Sweethearts, the seminal concrete poetry piece by Emmett Williams is back in print! A founding member of Fluxus and the concrete poetry movement, Williams made several performances and poems that stand today as defining gems of those genres. Sweethearts is an anagrammatic erotic encounter between a “he” and a “she,” whose entire vocabulary is derived from the word “sweethearts.” The letters maintain the same spacing in every word on each page, lending the volume a flipbook dimension that Williams enhances by organizing the text to read backwards, so that the reader can flip the book with her or his left hand (thus the front cover is on the back, and vice versa).
Spread photo by Rob Giampietro. Text details from John Philips’ Concrete Poetry page.
Sep
8
“Banksy of the Book Art World” (via Amelia)
Last month, the book art piece above was found at the National Library of Scotland. It was the fourth piece found since March in a book-friendly location in Scotland. All reference or are devised from the work of Scottish mystery writer Ian Rankin and include a note professing some book love.
Jul
18
Programming iPhone Sensors
O’Reilly Media is publishing a book on programming and communicating with sensor networks with iOS devices, called iOS Sensor Apps with Arduino.
The examples and apps in the book rely on the Redpark Serial Cable, which provides a dock-connector–to-RS-232-serial link for iPhone, iPad, and the iPod Touch. This cable makes communicating with an arduino, sensors, or other elements of the internet of things much easier. That’s exciting, because until now, the tight integration with Arduino-based devices and sensors was a major source of Android envy.
Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be an option to pre-order an eBook from O’Reilly. I wonder why?
Jun
7
Making Things See: A Book for O’Reilly about the Kinect | Ideas For Dozens
My goal is to introduce users to working with the Kinect’s depth camera and skeleton tracking abilities in their own projects and also to put those abilities in the wider context of the fields of gestural interfaces, 3D scanning, computer animation, and robotics.
Excellent. As Tom Armitage puts it, we need to put this stuff in the hands of designers. Right now, making the Kinect work is a difficult and fiddly task. I’m hoping this book helps smooth that process out and gives half-bright folks like me the tools to do something interesting.
Feb
8
“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.”
Why secondhand bookstores smell good
Perfumes: The Guide (via YMFY)
Jan
31
Kickstarter - The Shape of Design
Frank Chimero wants to write a book on design. And I want to read it.
If you watch the video, I hope you will want to, as well.
Dec
10
I am a mixed-media artist specializing in vintage book carvings. I am a scientist by trade and have always enjoyed the visual elements of science (graphical representations of data, figures of theoretical models, diagrams of complex systems, etc). People often focus on the information these elements contain, rather than appreciating their aesthetics. I started carving books to draw attention to their beauty rather than their content. I have made carvings that display the illustrations the books contain as well as some that depict topographical landscapes and “specimen boxes” that hold paper butterflies
Dec
1
The 24 Ways Annual 2010 | Five Simple Steps
This year’s 24 ways annual blog is going to be turned into a printed annual that will be shipped in the new year. In partnership with 24 ways, Five Simple Steps is taking the 24 articles from high profile web professionals and making something tangible and beautiful to read off-line, during the rest of the year. All the proceeds from sales will be given to UNICEF and their global charitable projects with children.
Brilliant.
Also, 24 Ways is on now. You will want to go rub your eyeballs on it. Leave room for me.
Please note: the 24 Ways Annual 2010 will only be on sale throughout December 2010. December 31st is our last day for sales. So, if you want it, you need to buy it before then!
Nov
4
Endless Notebooks – Blog – BERG
Reason number 36,643 why I want to buy everyone at BERG a beer:
Tom Armitage describes a series of experiments by Jack Schulze in bound notebooks.
That? The way I just said it? It’s wrong. It’s… look, read the article. It resists compression. It’s about objects as components of services, and “[d]esigning books around needs rather than form-factor.”
One pull quote that doesn’t represent the whole, because you’re going to read the whole thing:
And this, of course, matches the way we work: a small amount of work in progress, ongoing, imperfect; the rest archived off for reference and posterity. There’s still value in that remainder, but it’s not worth carrying around everywhere with you. The notebook remains of relevance in the present; the separated, archived sections become archival content. This reminds me a lot of Hedeigger: the current notebook, in your hands, is Zuhanden, “ready-to-hand”, a practical concern; the archival sections are Vorhanden, “present-at-hand”, reified information.
Brilliant stuff.
Go.
You read.
Nov
3
Interleaving the unbook
My memory, bookmarks, and Google fail me, but I recall a friend telling me that it was common practice in past centuries to un-bind a book, then re-interleave the pages with blank ones, so that every other page was blank, for writing on.
I think it was Dave. Dave, was it you? I can’t find a reference.
Help me, internet!
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