Design: Product Manuals (Fallout Protection)
January 26, 2009
From the excellent site: http://www.productmanualarchive.org/
This is a US Government-Fallout-Protection manual from 1961. Colour, typography: Great!
Danger - UV light!
Street Findings – Analogue is so yesterday
September 17, 2008
Screen on the street
An old TV, a box of cassettes. Probably nothing really wrong with either. Just replaced by a skinnier flat model, and an iPod.
Man, I miss mix cassettes. Looking at the box gave me a slight feeling of nostalgia. Handwritten cassette inserts. A lot of care went into to these. Now carelessly discarded.
Box of C90s
The Mean Streets of Amsterdam
September 17, 2008
Chair Bear Bunch
I was cycling the WunderKind to the creche this week when some street rubbish caught my eye. What happended here? It looked like a bar-room fight resulting in a broken chair. Probably one of the Amsterdammertjes caught the full force.
This will Chair you up
I’ve got another similar picture of a broken chess board. Man, these guys can’t take a joke!
"Freeform Chess" - as the Germans would say. We say "Jazz".
Paper Scissors Rock of Hollywood
August 6, 2008
Paper Scissors Rock of Ages 2
August 6, 2008
Following up the challenge laid down by Paper Scissors Rock of Ages here is a historic photo I found in the archives. And a more recent one from last year:
On the look out for…
August 1, 2008
I’m looking for a clock for the office. A Solari Udine Cifra 12.
60’s vintage would be perfect.
Or a Solari Dator 5. Preferably 50’s vintage. The one below was sold on ebay for 110Eu. And if they go wrong I have lots of details on how to fix them.
Solari Dator 5
1000 Eclipses
August 1, 2008
1000 Eclipses - light going thru the pinholes of the satellite dish - can you see the bite in the sun?
There! By my thumb! That faint image of the eclipsed sun on a piece of paper.
Another 1000 eclipses...
1120, 1st August. It’s a solar eclipse today. And it’s never good to peer directly at the sun (although I did have a quick peek throught the clouds). Instead I used my schoolboy improvisation skills to construct a pinhole camera by digging a sharp thing though a piece of card. Then hopped out onto the flat roof to see if I could see the eclipse. And lo, I was able to see an image of the sun with a bite in it – about 20% of the area. A sort of Apple logo in shape.
Better: I found that the unused satellite dish (which is punctured with many holes) made an excellent pinhole effect. Hence – 1000 (blurry) eclipses. Is there a collective noun for a group of eclipses?
Other things to notice about an eclipse: colours are slightly washed out and it seems quieter, calmer.
Back of the house, during an eclipse
Hollywood in the Jordaan
July 25, 2008
Film crew outside the creche
Palmdwarstraat, Deepest Jordaan, Amsterdam, 0850, 25 July 2008.
Could barely get into the creche this morning. Had to fight my through assorted film crew types, lighting techs, markeup people, artistes… Filming of a social insurance commercial apparently. “Are we all ready before we bring the children in?” trilled the director in a lightly dutch-accented english voice. The smell of the make-up took me right back to John Adams Studios c.1980.
2 questions. Why does filming a commercial or a movie take so many people who just appear to stand around doing nothing? The expense! Why did the director have to speak in english? We’re not in flippin’ LA!
"OK places everybody... and.... FINGERPAINT!"
Paint No Stopping Us Now
July 24, 2008
Paint No Way to Treat a Lady
Yes, Gregor and Rodney are up on the steigers (scaffolding to us brits) giving the woodwork a good licking at LG91. Some questions over whether the structure had the right licenses (because it’s a teensy bit on the pavement) resulted in an evening visit by the Environmental Police and a ticking off from a lady cop who was breathlessly described as “Mmmm, fresh!”.
Enjoy it while it lasts as the featherweight magnesium alloy structure should be carted away by the weekend.
Pain't no sunshine when you gone
“That’s a Bookcase…”
July 24, 2008
This monster shelving unit found in the Rozengracht beats an Ikea Billy into a cocked hat. An idea for a bookcase at home. Cute girl in foreground for scale.
