David Carson returns to print with CARSON mag. His work with Raygun was familiar to anyone dabbling with grunge design in the nineties. It takes me back the early days of the web design scene with the Swank Army and my old Suffocate crew.
Joy of Stats video
The Joy of Stats with Professor Hans Rosling, an hour-long documentary from the BBC. Statistics are anything but boring, according to nine out of every ten mathematicians.
4-bit computer
How to construct a 4-bit computer, see how computing works at a base level.
Stone letterforms
Lorenz Fidel Huchthausen sent me an email awhile ago with a photo of Stein, a typeface that he created using stones collected from Croatia.
A 2,550 year old beer recipe
Wired has an article about the resurrection of a 2,550 year-old beer recipe.
Six specially constructed ditches previously excavated at Eberdingen-Hochdorf a 2,550-year-old Celtic settlement, were used to make high-quality barley malt, a key beer ingredient, says archaeobotanist Hans-Peter Stika of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. Thousands of charred barley grains unearthed in the ditches about a decade ago came from a large malt-making enterprise.
Stika published his findings in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, where you can find the original paper.
Feeling old at a gig
On Sunday night, I went to see Two Door Cinema Club and Tokyo Police Club play a gig at Club Soda. Yeah, there’s a promoter somewhere who’s far too impressed with getting so many “clubs” on to one poster. I thoroughly enjoyed Two Door Cinema Club, they were much better live than on their album (it’s a tad over-produced). Tokyo Police Club was up and down, the songs off A Lesson in Crime rocked, but the rest of the set was blah and the banter with the crowd was a nonstarter.
The highlight of the show was the encore — the two bands joined forces on stage to belt out The Strokes’ Last Night. The song was uptempo and high energy, it was awesome. Part of the way through, I stopped rockin’ out to take a look around. I was surrounded by people in their late-teens or early twenties. The kids were not alright. The lack of energy in the crowd made me realize that most were probably nine or ten years old when the song came out. It made me feel old. So, I slunk off to consume some prune juice and donepezil.
An Awesome Book!
Dallas Clayton created An Awesome Book! for his son. The story is about dreaming big and never giving up. The book is self-published and is currently in its twentieth printing. Dallas started a foundation to give away a copy of his book for every copy that he sold. It’s not limited to schools and stores, he’ll walk up to random parents and give them a copy. You can read the book in its entirety and then buy a copy.
The Disposable Academic
The Disposable Academic is a somewhat cynical look at the world of high-level academia. I’ll take the article with a grain of salt, considering the secondary headline reads, “Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time”.
One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle.
Yeah, it can be a bit crap, but it’s on par with a lot of other professions. Talk to the struggling artists, apprentices and interns that toil away in indentured servitude for the betterment of their craft. Some make it big, some never will, most end up in the middle of life’s bell curve and do just fine.
Nerd merit badges
I like the idea of nerd merit badges, but I probably wouldn’t like a sash across the front of my computer. Seems a little on the pricey side, could use a greater selection and a bulk option.
A gaming class structured like a MMORPG
Gaming the Classroom is a program at Indiana University, created by Lee Sheldon and Jenna Hoffstein, that is structured like a MMORPG.
This class is designed as a multiplayer game. Class time will be divided between fighting monsters (Quizzes, Exams etc.), completing quests (Presentations of Games, Research etc.) and crafting (Personal Game Premises, Game Analysis Papers, Video Game Concept Document etc.).
The class is now finished and you can read a post mortem.
Fonts In Use
See examples of Fonts In Use. The site takes a look at various web and print sources, and examines which typefaces are used. You can also narrow the results down to a specific font and see samples of it in action. File this one away for inspiration.
Growing up with aging tech
Question: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? It’s the type of thing that makes you feel like an old nerd. It reminded me of one of my teaching experiences late last year — one of the kids was looking at the title page of his planner (which contains all of the school’s contact information), and proceeded to ask me what a fax was. In a somewhat related note, both my father and brother say that faxing is still widely ingrained within the medical profession, and seemingly the legal profession as well.