Google Books teamed up with LIFE, to scan full issues of LIFE magazine from the 1930s-1970s and provide them for public viewing.
Update: A Year in Pictures is a particularly interesting artifact for the type nerds out there.
Month: September 2009
Soviet electronics
The Soviet Digital Electronics Museum is pure gold for the gadget junkie.
Mario AI
Infinite Super Mario AI one of the submissions for the Mario AI competition has been released under a WTFPL license. Make sure to check out the videos.
Books in a digital world
Want to know why books will never go away? Read this blurb from the description of Code(x)+1.
The book is a durable artifact in which author, reader, and the artisans who make and preserve them enter into ordered and potentially pleasurable relationships. A printed book is enhanced by the materials and processes with which it is made. The book in the era of digital reproduction is an object of pleasure as well as a container of information. To consult information relieved of the pleasures of turning a page, smelling ink, or admiring the binding, we can rely on the internet. The book as ark of deposit requires neither electricity nor fossil fuel to either read or maintain. The book as an object dwells at the intersections of writing and art, philosophy and poetics, science and scholarship. The structure of a book is a sculpture for reading. The meaning is transmitted and the book remains.
The production run is limited to 500, anyone want to buy me a copy?
Cheese or font?
Cheese or font? Pretty much what it sounds like, they give you a word, you decide whether it’s a cheese or a font. It’s harder than it sounds.
Writing with distractions
Cory Doctorow offers some tips for writing in the age of distraction. Among them, use plain text not a fancy word processor, realtime communications tools are evil and don’t research, substitute TK for things you don’t know and come back to them later.
Subpixel type
The first subpixel typeface has an x-height of just 3px. It can be used to improve the legibility of favicons.
Leaden Army
Goudy Fonts is a tribute site, dedicated to the work Frederic and Bertha Goudy and their impact on American typography. I am type is one of Goudy’s more famous essays on the subject. This quote is a bit dated, but I like it.
I am the leaden army that conquers the world. I am type.
That essay and others can be found in Texts on Type.
Indie rock
A grown’s up guide to indie rock. An interesting perspective, largely summed up by the idea that everything old is new again.
Colour management
Scott Hansen and Alex Cornell have put together an excellent field guide for colour management. On that note, some of the mac people who upgraded to Snow Leopard may be interested in knowing why things seem to be darker with more contrast.