Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Simple and not so simple mechanical toys from the engineers at Hitachi. The designs are quite clear and should tickle your brain to come up with ones of your own. The ‘south’ pointing car is a classic design that could have some use as a maze solving robot, or at least one that keep track of what was was south when it started.
[via MAKE fourm]
These are a true jem, you can never have too many fonts.
In the first half of 2005, the Fontleech blog was offering an almost daily portion of links to and reviews of quality free fonts. Among them, a lot of Japanese ones. Since the Summer however, Fontleech hasn’t really been updated anymore, and comment spam is slowly taking over the place. As I’m afraid the site may go offline one day on another, I decided to reproduce its links to Japanese type foundries with free fonts, and added some of my own links too. Here we go, in no particular order:
One of my favorite things about Japan was the canned coffee. Not only could you find it in a vending machine every few meters but it’s served to you nice and hot. The perfect thing on a chilly night walking around Yokohama.
Canned coffee is more than a drink. It’s a whole fidgety, jacked-up subculture that bonds young punks, middle-aged office workers, fatigued students and even old guys in polo shirts. Enter the world, join the addiction and shop for caffeine-inspired art that would make Balzac proud.
This site reviews many of the flavors that you can find on the streets. Some are good, some are.. well, unique… Read on…
In an attempt to make astronomy more popular, a Japanese company has come out with toilet paper that is printed with astronomical information. So far you can get either ‘The life of a star’ or ‘Beyond the zodiac’. ‘The life of a star’ tells the story of solar evolution, from a molecular cloud up to a planetary nebula. A translation can be found here. The second set, ‘Beyond the zodiac’, as they say, "… we represent the signs of zodiac and some astronomical objects toward these constellations. You can feel the depth of the universe with this ATP." I’d hope that you would feel the softness of the paper and not the universe but that’s another story.
As a teaching tool it will probably go a long way in increasing the awareness of astronomy among those who read while doing their business.
[via Ektopia]
Oh man, this is sweet! Twin 38mm f 2.8 lenses, shutter speeds from bulb, 8 seconds to 1/1000, rear curtain shutter flash sync, and 20 exposures on a roll of 36 are just a few very cool features of this camera. It even has an LCD on the back to give a read out on your settings. Oh yeah, it even spots full manual or AE shooting. And to top it all off you get a high quality stereo viewer included with your camera. With a price of $5000USD will keep this beauty out of the hands of all but the most dedicated stereo enthusiasts when it comes out later this year. I one day hope to see an affordable stereo camera with quality lenses on the market again, my 1953 Kodak stereo camera could do with an upgrade.
[via Retro Thing and Gear Live]
