It feels odd to write about analog cameras these days. They seem old fashioned and out of date to someone like me. Perhaps that’s why young people embrace them. If you too would like to embrace them (or at least know more about them), Yanko Design has two recent articles you might want to check out:
Kodak even has a translucent one in their mix, because why not.
Do they take good photos? I guess “good” is in the eye of the beholder/photographer. Still, worth a look.
For the last few years I’ve shared interesting links I wanted to write about some day and maybe I will. Last year it was 28. The year before it was 85. As in other years, I think these links are all interesting, even if I don’t have much to say about them.
First off, let’s look at some cool links/sites. These retro design choices are cool. As are all the things Clive Thompson writes about. Anything Dan Sinker writes about is cool. Is Sonny Rollins cool? Of course he is. As was Min Matheson, the Labor Leader Who Faced Down Mobsters. Is the home of Roberto Gerosa home in Milan cool? I happen to think so.
Moving on from cool, this story, on Only fans and being good, is interesting. Edmund White’s sex memoir may also be interesting to some. Same goes for this story of Stormy Daniels and the gofundme she set up to deal with alleged threats due to testifying against Trump.
I was curious about where does the expression “peace be with you” come from. I was also curious about Christian masses other than Christmas. For example, Childermas. Speaking of Christmas, I liked this piece on the shepherds and the Magoi and this piece on shepherds or wise men at the birth of Jesus. If you wonder if churches still matter, read this.
Some historical pieces I liked: this on 1177 BC bronze age societies and this on the world’s oldest known song, hurrian hymn no 6. Likewise, this story on rare anti-nazi resistance pamphlets. What’s this? A good reminder that there were still old people when life expectancy was low.
Three things on Canada worth reading: MAID has led to soaring euthanasia deaths, where the primary care crisis is hitting ontario hardest, and a story on a Canadian woman sentenced for inuit benefit fraud.
Not on Canada, but by a Canadian, are these two posts by Lloyd Alter: why i am thinking about giving up and if only i could sleep on the overnight train.
Some good articles on fashion and design/decor: a piece on how Google is reaping the benefits of big ad spending from fast fashion companies temu and shein. Meanwhile, Burberry shows signs of decline with job cuts worldwide. Here’s a slight piece on wearing white in summer. Here’s something on a minimal entrance way. And I liked this fake window for windowless rooms and this transformer table that goes from a workstation to dining table in seconds.
For some time I was wanting to write a critique of Peter Singer and his arguments about affluence and morality. So I read a number of pieces on him and his argument here, here, and here. In the end the cartoon shown above (and found here) summed up what I wanted to say, so I leave it at that for now. In addition, I wanted to also write on the correspondence theory of truth (more on it, here) but didn’t. Same goes for Compatibilism.
Did I care enough to write about Ellen Degeneres and her netflix special? I guess not. Do I care about Bill Gates closing his Foundation in 2045? Not really. Do I think much of Niall Ferguson’s tendentious op ed? I do not. Do I think even less about Elon Musk and xAI? I do. Is any thought of RFK Jr (as seen here) worthy of consideration? Nope. Is Richard Hanania a terrible person? Yep.
Finally I thought these random pieces were worthwhile: on soldiers shortage due to population changes, when Dietrich Bonhoeffer theorized how stupidity enabled the rise of the nazis, on the changing of plant names that contain a racist slur, on antitrust suits, on whether or not you are entitled to severance pay, on how parents are stressed and how young undecided voters voted in the 2024 US election.
Summer’s starting, and when the weather gets hot, you need something cool. These links below aren’t cool in that way, but they are cool nonetheless:
For example, this moped design by teenage engineering is definitely cool. Other cool transportation is this solar-powered chocolate factory supplied by a sailing ship.
When people first started putting things on the Web, virtual tours were very cool. Guess what? They still are. Check out this recent virtual tour of the Basilica Santa Maria.
The great Gina Trapani has built a page showing her Life in Weeks. Cool stuff. Speaking of the Web, here’s some cool stuff you can do with the web site, Bluesky
If you need a cool place to get away, how about these Postcard Cabins? Some of them are awesome. Also awesome is this clip of an Olympic gold medalist runner dominating the 100m at her kids sports day event! Any time someone says they would have a slim chance against an elite athlete, show them this.
It’s getting hot out there. Stay cool.
Open Benches is a map of thousands of “memorial benches – added by people like you”. Just type in a search request and see if anyone has dedicated a bench to someone or something, like people and their dogs. For example, this bench was dedicate to Veronica Calver.
You can find examples all over the world, including my town, Toronto. Thanks to the folks who put together this wonderful crowd sourced project.
P.S. If you want to first get a commemorative bench or tree in Toronto, you can get more information on that, here.
Once I got an Apple Watch, it was hard to wear any other time piece again. In some ways that’s great, since my Watch can do anything other wearable time pieces can do. And then some. That said, I do miss wearing other time pieces.
For example, the Timex Ironman watch. When I was seriously into running I wore my Ironman until it literally stopped working. I’m glad to see Timex still sells the versions of the ones I had, the original TIMEX IRONMAN Flix 100 Lap watch and the updated TIMEX IRONMAN watch. I liked the updated version, but the original was a watch I loved.
Another watch I loved was the Pebble. It too was an original, as far as smart watches go. Then Apple released their watch and like many people, I swapped my Pebble for Apple. Some time after that, the Pebble company itself disappeared, until now. As the new developers proclaim: We’re bringing Pebble back! For fans of it, and even those curious, check out that link.
Another smart watch — as in design smart — is this Casio sauna watch with 12-minute timer (shown above). It’s a watch I didn’t even think I needed, but fans of saunas likely will.
Finally, this device from the flipper zero creators (shown below) seems almost too smart. But for people who work constantly in an open office and need to get people to leave them alone while they focus, it could be just what they need.
The folks at Stone Island make very nice, very expensive clothing. They also did an interview with one of my favorite people, Philippe Starck, here.
Fans of Starck, check it out. (Here he is, wearing their parka. Some of the 100 questions/answers also appear).
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Of all the people I follow and pay attention to on the Internet, Austin Kleon may be my favorite. I look forward to his newsletter every Friday: it’s always the same format, and always good and often great.
While he does a lot of great things digitally, I admire his creation of analog material, like zines. In this post, What does a seed look like?, he’s shows us one of the handmade zines he created. In another, More light!, he provides the reader a zine to print and make. While here in this post, Love is not a gadget, he has created both a zine and a cassette tape.
Seeing all these zines of his got me making my own again. There’s something about handcrafting anything — from zines to cassette tapes to…well, whatever you prefer! — that is very satisfying. I’d encourage you to follow our lead and create your own…it’s not hard!
I’d encourage you to read more Kleon too. Maybe start with this: Study something you love in depth!
Here’s a list of random good things I thought worth sharing this fine Friday:
This Muji fountain pen shown above is one of my favourite writing instruments. But don’t take my word for it, read this: Mini-Review: Muji Fountain Pen – The Well-Appointed Desk. If you can’t find the Muji version of the pen, this pen is also good: Platinum Preppy. (You can order one here.)
This is a really good use of AI: it helps turn waste wood into usable lumber.
I posted this on Bluesky and people loved it: you can go here and listen to different forests!
This piece on the friendship of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien is wonderful.
Do you want to watch some feel good movies this weekend? Then click on that link.
Speaking of movies, it turns out that people love going into the Criterion Closet. It’s a good vehicle.
This is a good story: “Vienna”, a 50-year-old Billy Joel B-side, is now one of his most streamed songs. (Click here for the story.) I was a fan of the song ever since I heard it half a century ago. Glad so many young people love it still.
Also a good thing: finding out that there is a causal effect of video gaming on mental well-being, according to this study done in Japan 2020–2022.
Finally, I love the furniture of Phillip Keefe (seen below). Is it functional? Is it art? I know for one thing: it’s cool and it’s well made. Very good, if not excellent.
Is enjoying the colours of autumn (tho’ today’s temp is summer! :))
Twitter may be no more, but twitpic still lives! Photos I posted on twitpic back in 2008 still exist. To see what I mean, check out the link to the photo above with my accompanying tweet that went with it.
Back then, you didn’t have the ability to post photos directly on twitter, so new services like twitpics allowed you to do that. Of course that all died off as twitter grew and added photo posting into their core features.
What’s amazing to me is
Anyway, fascinating to me that this archive still exists. Long after Elon ruined twitter and turned it into X. So check it out while you can.
P.S. For more context on twitpic, I wrote about it in 2008 here and here. And here’s one more from me: Saturday coffee at Indigo at yonge and Eglinton, Toronto
All taken from a Blackberry. 🙂
Just as he did for Obama, you can find his latest imagery for Harris by Fairey, here.
I’d add it’s smart he did this. I’ve been seeing all sorts of remixes of his old work, applied to Kamala Harris. It’s good to see his version.
(Art by Shepard Fairey. Reference photo by Lawrence Jackson / Biden for President is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; For personal, non-commercial use only.)
How great is Teenage Engineering? Let me count the ways. Or devices. In this case, three very special devices designed by them.
Device #1: the play.date
First up is the Playdate, a unique game playing device with a black and white screen and a crank. Is it any good? It is according to this: Playdate, all it’s cranked up to be (The Verge). You can read more about it, here:playdate – teenage engineering.
Device #2: Rabbit R1
For the second device, there is a chance you’ve heard of the rabbit, “ a pocket companion that moves AI from words to action”. I have one and I like it. Is it good AI? Yes. Is it brilliant design? Definitely.
If you’ve only ever read disparaging things about the device, then read this: Rabbit R1 Explained: What This Tiny AI Gadget Actually Does (CNET) and this:I just spent my first day with the Rabbit R1 — here’s what this AI gadget can do | Tom’s Guide.
Device #3: the EP–1320 medieval.
finally for the third device, you might exclaim, what is that?? Well let the folks from Wallpaper explain: Teenage Engineering EP-1320 Medieval: back to the Middle Ages.
What I love about the 3rd device is a) who knows what kind of market there is for this if any, and b) they don’t care, they made it anyway!
I love how different these devices are from most current handheld devices. The form factor is different, the colors are bold, the inputs are unique. They are small pieces of equipment, but they are not minimalistic pieces of equipment. I love them.
For more of teenage engineering’s great products, go here. For the longest time I wanted to have something from them, but most of their musical devices would be wasted on someone as non-musical as me. (Although if I ever get around to building my own computer, I am getting this:)
I wrote recently about the one million check box site and how it became a collective craze. Will the fridge poetry site succeed it? Time will tell. Meanwhile take a few minutes to check it out and perhaps add your own poetic whimsy.
P.S. I am surprised the one million check boxes all got checked off. Crazier things have happened, I guess.
Even if you don’t care for cars, you have to admire the one above. It is more of a work of art than a vehicle. Even the motor is beautiful! To see what I mean, head over to Uncrate and check out the photos of this beauty.
And hey, it was up for auction. So if you got $8.5 million lying around, it could be yours.
One of my favorite works of art in Toronto is The Pasture: nine bronze cows lying restfully on a field of grass. If it was located in another section of Toronto, might be less remarkable. But being in the heart of the financial district and all it represents, there is a superb tension between the cows in their field and the people in their offices. In the offices people are working hard, stressed, standing and walking. The cows are doing none of that.
If you ever in downtown Toronto near the Toronto Dominion center, I recommend you check out this fine work of art. It is an oasis of calm.
P.S. I remember when this sculpture first went in, for I was working at IBM and this sculpture went in right around when the IBM Tower on Wellington was established.
I love this: truly a vending machine for our times! Instead of scratch tickets that promise us fortune, these scratch tickets promise us fame! Well, if not fame, then many more social media followers. I guess that counts for fame in this day and age.
For more on this amazing vending machine go here.
P.S. Dries is a brilliant artist / technologists: check out the rest of his site, here.
I get it: it’s Monday and you are busy. Fine. But if you need a break for any reason, then check out these 10 cool / fun /interesting / useful links:
Ok get back at it. Happy Monday!
Well this is fun:
Go check out the YouTube channel for PostmodernJukebox for more such goodness.
If you want to improve your vocabulary, bookmark this link: Word of the Day from The New York Times. It’s not just any old word, either: it seems to be one that appears often in stories in the Times.
Highly recommended.
Image is by Cindy Lozito, who does all the illustrations. They are fantastic.
What is that, you say? Let Open Culture explain:
The music collective Playing for Change is back. This time, they have Jackson Browne performing his 1970s hit, “Doctor, My Eyes,” supported by musicians from Brazil, Jamaica, India, Puerto Rico, France and beyond. Browne is also joined by Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel, who played on the original 1972 song, and they still sound amazing.
They really do sound amazing. So many musicians I have loved have lost their voice, but Browne sounds as good as he ever did.
Don’t believe me? Here he is in 1978 doing it live:
First off is this piece, on how Lego is finally sells braille bricks. That’s great. Second is this interactive piece on the history of Lego and the various colors they use for their bricks. It’s really well done, and somewhat surprising.
Both pieces are worth a look.
While the Bitter Southerner General Store has lots of great stuff on it, I especially loved the Apparel section. I mean, how can you not love a T shirt that says “make more biscuits”? That right there is as much a commandment and a way of better living than anything I know.
On the more serious side, there is this great message:
Powerful and wise.
Finally, I think this is simple and beautiful:
Can’t you just taste that sandwich? Love it.
books.worksinprogress.co is a cool site for people who write books and people who read them. As they explain:
Books in Progress is what we call a “public drafting tool”: Drafts will be made available for comment from the public, allowing for direct collaboration between author and reader.
As a reader, you can comment on a passage from the text, or respond to another comment. The author will accept or dismiss these comments. Once the author implements comments, a new draft will be created and the current one archived. Helpful commenters will be thanked in print at the author’s discretion.
Books in Progress was developed by Works in Progress in partnership with Stewart Brand and Stripe Press.
For authors with great readers, I could see this being an invaluable tool. Drop on by the site and see for yourself.
Every so often I read something that challenges my assumptions about something common. This piece in the New York Times on hotel bars did that for me.
I long used to think poorly of such places. But reading this, I thought: yeah, hotel bars can be really great.
Read it yourself and see.
P.S. That image is one of my desktops. I find it oddly soothing.
People often seem flummoxed when they win the lottery. They wanted to win, and now that they have, they don’t know what to do with their winnings. I get it. I’ll confess that I’ve thought about it before and I was flummoxed too.
Well that was then. Now I know the first major thing I would buy. It would be this baby: the 1989 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet (shown above).
I remember coveting that car when I was younger. And for under $200k, it’s a deal. 🙂
Any day you buy a lottery ticket is a day you could walk away rich. Be prepared!
What do you get when you pair a Blackberry-like device with a Raspberry Pi?? You get the Beepberry Pocket Computer!
I mean I just love the thing! Do I know anything practical I can do with it? No. Does that mean I shouldn’t lust after it? Also no. 🙂
The brains behind it is the same as that behind the Pebble watch, which was a great device IMHO. I suspect this is as well.
I’m not a watch guy, but Timex’s Reclaimed Ocean Plastic watch (above) got my attention. According to uncrate.com:
Its lightweight 40 mm case is made from upcycled, ocean-bound plastic collected from the coastlines by fishermen. The waste is then washed, shredded, and shipped to Switzerland on carbon-neutral transportation, where it’s repurposed. The material gives the piece a speckled texture and is complemented by a matte black dial with contrasting white handers and numerals.
Given that “at least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year”, this sounds like a smart use of materials by Timex.
If you want something more classic, here’s a story on the Hamilton eatch featured in the latest Indiana Jones film. I had one like it: it’s a fine timepiece.
Finally, if you are an Apple Watch owner like myself and want to go with an aeronautic theme, consider the MobyFox NASA Apple watch bands, seen below:
The map above looks much better if you go to the site that has it fullscale: night train map.
I love the design of the map. I love the idea of taking night trains around Europe. I even love that you can get a poster of it. I love it.
Go check it out.
Fans of Teenage Engineering and their designs might be interested in their new CM-15 microphone seen in the photo above. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it cool and well designed? Also yes.
These two links from Uncrate and design-milk have more details on it. Audiophiles will especially want to take a look.
I just love all the things they make, and wish I were musical enough to really appreciate them.
I can write what the Open Infrastructure Map is by using the words of its creator:
Open Infrastructure Map is a view of the world’s infrastructure mapped in the OpenStreetMap database. This data isn’t exposed on the default OSM map, so I built Open Infrastructure Map to visualise it.
But the best thing to do is tell you to head over to it and zoom in on areas you know. Being from Cape Breton, I did just that, and I was wonderfully surprised by how much detail was there. I think you will feel the same.
Highly recommended.
Apparently, there are two French versions of the Simpsons: one for France, and one for Quebec. This is great for two reasons, I think, as this piece explains: The French version of the Simpsons is oddly fascinating | indy100 | indy100:
Brilliant/brillant!
It’s an intriguing idea.
If you are not familiar with the idea, let me explain with this quote pinched from one of the links below: “Victory gardens are gardens grown by civilians during times of widespread food insecurity. The gardens were encouraged by the Canadian government during the world wars, as a way to feed both civilians and troops.”
In time of high inflation brought on to some degree by the pandemic, such a garden might help in several ways. But heck, if you want to stick with growing flowers to lift your spirits, that’s ok by me too.
For more on this, see these two pieces over at CBC.ca: How you can start your own ‘victory garden’. Also: It’s not too late to grow vegetables for your victory garden.
If you need more help on growing your own seedlings, check out that piece at Lifehacker.
Onward to victory over the pandemic, and inflation, and more!
I had been thinking about the Pennsylvania hotel recently. I first started thinking about it when I read this: Discovering another vintage two-letter phone exchange on a West Side sign. See the bottom? Things like MU 2-2655 were how phone numbers looked in the Big Apple (and other places too). Forget about area codes like 212.
One of the most famous of these old two letter phone exchanges was PEnnsylvania_6-5000 (PE 6-5000) for two reasons. One, it was the number assigned to one place and one place only: the Pennsylvania hotel. Two, Glenn Miller wrote a famous song about it, called…PEnnsylvania_6-5000. (My Dad loved this song, and whenever I hear the title, I can hear him shouting out with the band: PEnnsylvania 6-5000!).
Sadly, having a storied presence as well as being famous is not enough to survive. The Times has a piece on how its going to be demolished soon. That’s a shame. I hope the don’t regret it like they do the demolition of Penn Station.
As you can see from the photo being held, it was a massive hotel, and one deserving of its own exchange.
I highly recommend you read that piece on it in the Times. It had quite the run.
Now let’s join in with the the Muppets as they do their version of the famous song:
I love this: Ikea and Marimekko have teamed up to create a collection of home goods at affordable prices that are also beautiful. They range in prices from this low cost bag at $2:
To this lovely side table with a tray for $79:
They even have clothing, like this robe for $40:
Amazing. Over at Chatelaine they have their 15 favorite from The Ikea Marimekko Bastua Collection. The three seen here were plucked from their list. Go to Chatelaine for more. Go check it out.
Once upon a time, web sites were simple. Now they are complicated and sometimes bloated. Just go to the web site of news organizations like CNN or the New York Times and you will know what I mean.
But there is a way to avoid that. Just go to the light/lite versions of their web sites. This is lite CNN. This is a lighter New York Times (TimesWire) And here is an aggregator site that does something similar for a number of topics, like tech: The Brutalist Report – tech.
If you want to find more sites like that, check out: A List Of Text-Only & Minimalist News Sites at GreyCoder.
Kudos to companies that build lightweight versions of their web sites. Not everyone has high speed Internet connectivity. And not everyone needs lots and lots of information. Keeping it simple is cool.
(The title is an extract of the original title for the computer magazine, Dr. Dobbs Journal. It’s original title was: dr. dobb’s journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia (with the subtitle Running Light Without Overbyte))
I’ve been a fan of David Byrne and Talking Heads for many a years and have written about them often. (See those links.) And I am writing about them again, because according to Pitchfork, the “1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense, is going to get restored in 4K and re-released theatrically by A24”. Not only that, but “a deluxe edition of the Stop Making Sense soundtrack will come out on vinyl and digitally on August 18.” This got me very excited!
When I was younger, I would love to wander up to the Bloor Cinema in Toronto and watch Stop Making Sense. As a rep movie theatre, it would often play it on the weekend. Even when the Bloor was renovated and turned into the HotDocs theatre, it still plays the film from time to time. And I still love to go see it. I’ve lost track of how many dozens of times I’ve enjoyed it. And now you and I can soon enjoy it in 4K! Woo!
P.S. For people who don’t know of the film, see this: Stop Making Sense .
Here’s the YouTube trailer for the re release…it’s great:
I love that the music for it is Naive Melody…my favorite song in the film.
As someone who developed a love of indoor plants over the pandemic, I have to say I was blown away by the biOrb Air 60 Terrarium. Sure, it’s pricey, and even a little big, but for anyone who has a few bucks and some space, it could be a cool addition to your home.
Check out that link to Design Milk and get more details on it. It’s cool.
A reminder of how great WiReD magazine was — and how often it was wrong — can be found in this fine piece by Dave Karpf: A WIRED compendium.
I bought the first copy of WiReD when it came out, and was a buyer and collector for some time. It was everything I loved in a magazine: smart and stylish and full of ideas.
WiReD was a perfect title for it too. The publication was about how the world was becoming interconnected through the rapid build out of the Internet, but it was also about how our brains were changing as a result of it. It covered both of those areas well.
Dave’s piece also covers some of my favorite things it got wrong, from the promise of PUSH technology (companies HATED Pointcast for flooding their networks and soon worked to shut that it down) to digitally encoded smell (right?? yeah, no) to a cover on how Second Life was the future (hey, I thought that too).
WiReD got plenty right, too. But more than right or wrong, it captured the zeitgeist of the 90s and early 2000s and generally provided insights into how information technology was affecting us.
If you have only read the magazine recently, you might not get what the fuss was all about regarding it. Check out that summary from Dave Karpf: you will get a history lesson and hopefully a glimpse of WiReD and why it was so great.
(For more on it, I also recommend Wikipedia)
It exists:
Standing 20 stories tall, The Wood Hotel is the world’s tallest hotel mainly made from wood. Located at the birthplace of cross-country skiing, Skellefteå in Swedish Lapland, the 205-room property was built from locally harvested spruce and pine which smells awesome and absorbs more CO2 than it uses.
Now that’s cool. Would love to stay there. Would love to see more tall buildings built this way.
For more on it, see this: This 20-Story Hotel in Sweden Is Made Almost Entirely from Wood
If you love the work of Philippe Starck as much as I, then I recommend you head over to Uncreate and search on his name (or click here). It turns out he’s still doing cool stuff. Not surprising.
For example, this is cool: B&B Italia x Philippe Starck Outdoor Sofa. It reminds me of the great furniture he did for hotels like the Royalton in the 80s:
And this LaCie Blade Runner Hard Drive reminded me of how at the names of his older furniture often were borrowed from Philip K. Dick novels:
Love it! I wish I could find one of those hard drives. They look awesome.
Speaking of awesome looking, check out this, the Aeklys by Starck Payment Ring:
Finally these Phillippe Starck Log Knives are very gift worthy:
Nice to see one of my favorite designers is still creative, and creative in many different ways.
Smart People I Know 