Tag: Curiosities

Ipad Apps for the Anglophile

I was looking up a few references in Rob Chapman’s excellent Syd Barret bio A Very Irregular Head and came across these Ipad apps for the Anglophile in us all.

First off, this digital version of the classic Pollock’s Toy Theatre which lets you produce Monty Python-style, cut-out theatrical productions with authentic Victorian-era graphics.

The app is available here.

Next The Sun’s App displays their famous “Page 3” girls in full 360 glory…and I think they give you a wink and a smile.

This put’s Hot Metal‘s “Wobble-vision” to shame.

Here’s The Sun page promoting the App (not sure about U.S. availability). Ironic that the Page 3 girls are now probably the most innocent part of the Murdoch media empire.

I’m sadly padless and haven’t tried either of these, but between these and the upcoming BBC Iplayer App, I’m sorely tempted.

Photo Catch-up

In my state of blogging lethargy, I’ve accumulated a number of miscellaneous photos that haven’t found a post of their own. Here’s a big photo-dump to bring myself up to date.

One for my Book CSI series analysing book abuse, neglect…and here just ineffectual good intentions:

This message was jotted–with the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old girl–on the outside of a package that was folded in half in my mail box. You can’t rile a postman like that. In the time it took to write this cutesy and pathetic plea, the seller could have cut a piece of cardboard and reinforced the book so that it would actually be inconvenient to pound it into taco shape.

Here’s one of my favorite grafitti tags (after “Neckface” and “Backfat”) that appeared near my subway stop on the Q train:


An edifying message, diluted a bit by the appearance of the classic “upsk*rt”, but still I’d like to see this one go city-wide. Really curious what kind of crap this building is stuffed with. Didn’t notice the mountain of clutter until I processed the photo.

My folk art, big rig toy chest in its new home:

That’s Mego Spock riding shotgun, with Scotty at the wheel. I found this at a stoop sale back in June and I couldn’t part with it. I think I’ll use the trailer as my time capsule for stashing hi-grade books that’ll be rare in 10 years.

Jug City:

We pass this establishment every year on the way to camp. I love a “Postal Outlet” with signage like an off-brand Hooters. Last time I saw Jug City, some other–relatively jugless–business had taken over the space but thankfully they kept the name. One day I hope to retire to Canada and open “Jug City Books” and the window display at least will be up to snuff.

…keeping to the theme. My favorite bad break (one of the quiet joys of proofreading) in recent memory:

Amazon suggested this “pay phrase” to my demure wife (“…embly” was after the break). She passed on that one for some reason. Previous to this my favorite BB I discovered in a book catalog I was proofing was:

The most feared weapon in Hitler’s arse-
nal

And lastly a haul from a month or so back that I forgot to post:

All from the GOB sale of an estate/storage liquidator. My best one-time cartridge score until the World’s Largest Garage Sale earlier this month. This photo is part of the “Junk in Your Trunk” photoset on Flickr documenting garage sale and thrift finds.

All right, caught up. And until I replace my scanner the Hang Fire Blog will likely be a bit image light. So does anyone have any particular aspect of bookselling, pulp fiction (or whatever) they’d like to see me write on? The brain is a bit scattered lately and I wouldn’t mind some outside imposed direction.

Maker Faire

I’ve found that I’m fairly terrible at event coverage so here’s a simple list of the cool things I caught at the New York Maker Faire hosted this past weekend at the New York Hall of Science.

FRC: First Robotics Competition
High school students participating in the FRC (“A varsity sport for the mind”) showed off robots from the recent 2010 challenge, which was to build a soccer-playing robot. These students were among the most excited and outgoing presenters at the fair and managed to pull off the–inconceivable in my generation–coup of being in high school, a science geek and cool simultaneously. There will be a scrimmage this Saturday (October 2nd) at the Francis Lewis High School in Queens. Check it out if you’re in the NYC area.

Frank DeFreitas of Holoworld demonstrated his approx $100 DIY garage kit for creating holograms; using a laser pointer, metal pipe, some bulldog clips, and a lens. Frank has been creating holograms and teaching the process since 1983. His website has details on his workshops and updates on new developments in the art.

Mustafa Bagdatli explained his high tech, interactive mood ring project called “Poker Face” which uses “a heart rate monitor and galvanic skin response” to provide real time and highly visible readings of a user’s emotional state (mood changes are displayed via a color changing medallion). The coolest feature of this project to me was the ability to sync this data with something like Google calender so you can track exactly who/what makes you happy and edit your life accordingly. It also made me imagine the potentially amusing conversations with spouses when they ask something like “Why were you so happy between 1:30 and 1:35 last Tuesday afternoon?”

Well above my understanding level, but incredibly cool is the Orbotix hardware/software platform for turning your mobile phone into a remote control unit to command killer robots.

Proteus Gowanus (543 Union Street in Brooklyn) hosts a “Fixers’ Collective” every Thursday night. A “social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending”, participants bring in broken objects and the accumulated expertise and brain power of the room tries to diagnose and fix them. Looking forward to attending a few of these this winter. Unfortunately most of my broken electronics were sent off to the “Deconstruction Lab” organized by my lovely wife for one of NYHOS’s own Maker Faire workshops. Guess I will have to break more things.

Lastly a mesmerizing kinetic sculpture by Brad Litwin:

The piece shown at the fair was even more complex than this as the entire sculpture spun and the balls were catapulted through small holes in two spinning sheets of plexiglass. I could have stared at this thing for days.

Also noteworthy the 3D printer pavilion, life-size Mousetrap, the Rubiks solving robot, and lots more.

All-in-all a great time. Check it out if it comes to your town.

Bionic Books

A friend sent me a link to a French publisher with an interesting mission statement:

Les editions volumiques is a publishing house focusing on the paper book as a new computer platform, as well as a research lab on book, (computational) paper, reading and their relation to new technologies….

…video game interactivity sheds a new light [on] the potential of a story [and] the role of the reader…. We do not consider the e-book as the replacement of the paper book, but we wish to enrich the tangible…connection that paper brings with all the new dimensions of the digital world. Each of our projects explores a different face of this union of paper and computation.

Their flash-heavy site (with non-embeddable videos unfortunately) showcases some stunning and fascinating projects.

Several use the iphone’s camera and touch sensitive screen to interact with game boards and artfully designed branching books. My favorite of this type “The Night of the Living Dead Pixels” is a multi-directional fold-out book imprinted with treated stills from NOTLD. The iphone camera picks up bar codes (that are cleverly blended into the high contrast b+w images) which trigger specific video clips on the iphone screen; transforming the book into a multiple-choice role-playing experience.

Another project is:

“A prototype of a paper video game using reative inks to makes shapes appear and disappear dynamically on the paper. A tiny joypad allows to play [sic] with the duck to open the door to the next page.”

The video shows what appears to be a page torn from a children’s book crazily trailing wires like witch’s hair. A hand controls the movements of a small duck through an abstract city-scape. If this ever becomes practical/affordable it could be beautifully implemented in picture books (or pop-up books! Imagine a pop-up book made with this “reactive paper”).

I really like the way this studio is going with their re-imagining of the book form. They’re innovative, exciting and–perhaps best of all–unlike traditional ebooks they’re collectible and resellable!

See all of their projects here.

Vote Batman!

While listing a pile of 60s gentleman’s magazines (along the lines of Cavalcade and Bouncy Babe), I came across this “Eradicate Evil…Vote for Batman!” bumper sticker in two separate photo sets in different magazines.

(click through for full page in Even Less Work Safe Version)

The sensible side of me knows that the photographer worked for multiple magazines and reused the same props.

The fanciful side says that Batman ran a 1966, Giuliani-in-tights mayoral bid that only faltered when he engaged a Joker front company to handle his publicity.

Surreal + Erotic Marionettes (NWS)

Like Hans Bellmer and George Grosz drawings come to life! Not sure if these are technically marionettes, automata, or both. Damn cool though

Los Grumildos are automated puppets, miniature beings that skulk about a world somewhere between Victorian dollhouse and red light district. The brainchildren of Peruvian artist Ety Fefer…. this voyeuristic experience was inspired by the characters that inhabit the shady areas of downtown Lima, Peru. Fefer creates a kind of magical world that serves as a home for these marginal creatures that tend to be rejected and despised by society. The hyperrealist details of each plasticine puppet bring out their most intimate feelings, but the narrative is left to the viewers.

This was in New York at the beginning of August. Can’t believe I missed it. That’s what I get for letting my RSS reader grow wild.

(link via Daily Burlesque)

Eaton Awful Food Jigsaw Puzzles

I was going through my game closet the other day–trying to make some room–and I pulled out my collection of Eaton puzzles. I hadn’t looked at these in a while so I thought I’d share.

I found my first Eaton at a yard sale (“Good Morning!“). This was a jigsaw puzzle featuring fantastically bad photography of dangerously unrefrigerated food so, of course, I bought it immediately.

Putting it together I asked myself questions like “Is this part of the gristle near to that gluey milk puddle?” or “Should I sort out all of the mushy cereal pieces and work on those first?”. I have a fairly weak stomach so this was a race between my gag reflex and compulsion to finish.

After “Good Morning!” I was hooked and tracked down 9-10 more on eBay (6 of which were classics).

There’s “ethnic” food via 1980s mall food court (“Oriental Chow“, “Chili Today-Hot Tamale!“), quaintly obscene melted pastel confections (“Oh Fudge!“), venereal potatoes (“Stuffed Spuds“), and train wrecks of meat (“Deli Fare“).


(“Deli Fair” even features a handy diagram on the reverse so you can tell that the block of…what looks like the stuff they cleaned out of the wood-chipper at the end of Fargo, is actually head cheese.)

Last night Alice and I sat down with “Oh Fudge!”. We choose to do it with dinner for some reason and as always it was Eatonic. I was reminded that these are actually really well-crafted puzzles, lots of texture and color variety, thick board stock, and bizarrely-shaped pieces that break up the standard grid layout.

Anyway they’re great fall weather fun and (now that I have all I want) any jigsaw and/or kitsch fans out there should track them down.

New Favorite Thing

Headed to the Upper East Side yesterday to pick up my Craigslist-find Paradigm surround speakers (which rock BTW), and stopped by a thrift store that I haven’t visited in a while.

Last time there I saw a great vintage wooden toy but since it was pricey–and I wasn’t sure I could eBay it for more than the sticker–I let it go. In the succeeding months though I couldn’t forget the thing, so I took a long shot that it might still be there.

Went in. Looked around. Didn’t see it. Deflated.

I noticed the same volunteer clerk from previous and asked her about the toy. She lit up, recognized me instantly and was overjoyed that I came back since the manager wanted her to throw it away. She knew how great it was though and just stashed it in the bottom of a stuffed animal bin.

Heart-warming, no? I even got a discount.

Here it is:

A child-size rotary-phone from the Brio Company in Sweden, founded in 1884 and still active today (in fact our friend’s kid has a Brio toy crane that he has to fight me for whenever we visit). It’s about 3 1/2″ tall, 4″ wide. I can’t find date information but judging by the typography on the Brio label, I’d guess mid-60s. It has a nice weight, makes a satisfying light clunking sound when you replace the receiver, and the rotary dial is spring-loaded and returns to the start position when released.

Anyway I’m keeping it. I tried using a rotary phone a few years ago and it was exhausting. We were a hardier breed back then.

I love the idea of a toy representing something that has evolved into a new form. It’s original purpose was to familiarize a child with adult tools, but now it would just be mystifying. Maybe when kids visit they can pretend they’re in Madmen or something.