Viewing Category: Shiny Things
I stumbled upon Indigo Kelleigh's fantastic Tarot cards some time ago. Based on the popular Rider-Waite deck that's in widespread use, Kelleigh's deck is faithfully illustrated using an 8-bit retro computer graphic style. If you grew up with computer games in the 80s and 90s, you know what I'm talking about. Before we had millions of colors and photographic imagery on the desktop, computer artists basically had to work with what amounted to a digital Lite-Brite, hand-picking each pixel and color to create cartoony imagery. It is not unlike creating a mosaic out of tiles, with a very limited color set. People of my generation, however, remember this era of computer gaming fondly because quality games had to rely on good game play and story--or so we game snobs like to believe.
Anyway, Kelleigh's 8-bit Tarot covers all 78 cards in the Rider-Waite, using the same 256 colors that used to be the standard system palette on the Macintosh. That may sound like a lot of colors, but when you consider that realistic shading can take dozens of colors for each hue, you quickly exhaust your color budget. Experienced computer graphic artists dither colors to create the illusion of intermediate shades of colors; this works well if the resolution of the screen is high enough with photographic imagery. The technique creates a stippled effect that makes connoisseurs of aged computer graphics nod with heartfelt appreciation.
But I've prattled on enough...just take my word that these are really cool. The complete set became available recently for sale, and I jumped to snag a couple for my collection of esoterica. Have a look!
They're not very large cards, slightly smaller than a standard playing card. However, the printing is quite good and is on a nice coated cardstock. The cards also come in a very cool brown box decorated with blocky 8-bit illustrations done in a Victorian (?) style. The mixing of retro 8-bit graphics with retro package design is very cool.
I suspect they will also work just fine as any Rider-Waite deck for Tarot purposes, as Kelleigh's digital creations are based on the thematic elements that are in Pamela Colman Smith's original illustrations. You can see the entire card set at Kelleigh's site. If you've got US$30 burning a hole in your pocket, head on over to the lunarbistro store and send the artist some bucks.
Back in late 2007 I bought myself an Inka pen, and have been carrying it in my front pants pocket practically every day since.
Every once in a while, I catch myself noticing that the pen still looks good, so I took some macro pictures of it to document how well it has aged. It doesn't look that different from the time I noted my impressions when it was new.
While it's held up pretty well, the pen's shininess has dulled slightly with use. There are a few small scratches from scraping against keys and coins in my pocket, which isn't surprising since I keep it on my main key chain. So far, it has not malfunctioned or disappeared on me. There are even a few design details that had escaped me before; the machined metal tube has a small groove to catch the blue silicon o-ring that holds the pen in place. It's still holding the pen securely in its metal sheath after all this time. And more amazingly, the tube hasn't dented or bent in any way I can see. This is a quality product.
The place I see the most wear is on the end-cap, where you can see a few dings in the plastic. This might be from when I use my teeth to hold the end of the pen when I'm scrambling to juggle numerous items in my hands. But it's not objectionable. There is also some wear on the key chain ring holder, but I have not yet seen any cracking or other signs of imminent failure. And if it did, the Inka people have a lifetime mechanical warranty on their product.
How it is writing with the pen? Well, it's a little cramped if you don't take the time to completely assemble it, and the feel of the ink isn't going to beat a good rollerball or fountain pen. However, this is the pen that I always have, unless for some reason I don't have my usual keys with me. And that has proven to be very convenient. Most things that stay in my pockets get destroyed fairly quickly---you should see the sad state of my Moleskine notebooks---but the Inka keeps on rockin'.
A few months ago I'd stumbled upon an old hard cover quad-ruled notebook that I'd misplaced way back in 2002. The notebook, with a sturdy pebbled exterior and smooth wire binding, impressed me anew, so I pressed it back into daily service. When I ran out of pages a few months later, I freaked out and spent half the day trying to remember where I'd originally gotten it. There were no manufacturer's markings anywhere on the notebook, so I visited every store in the area that carried art, office, and architectural supplies. Nothing I found there was a match, either not being available in quad-rule (i.e. graph paper) or lacking the hardbound covers w/ spiral binding.
It was only when I took a day trip into Harvard Square to specifically visit Bob Slate Stationers did I rediscover my dream notebook. It's the Cachet Classic Graph Sketch Book. I am going to have to stock up on them.
There are several features that I love about this notebook:
- It's bigger than the average notebook, but not that much bigger at 9x12 inches. This gives the notebook a slightly more serious presence, and has the added advantage of neatly swallowing loose 8.5x11 pages. Usually, when you stuff a piece of loose-leaf letter into another notebook, some bit of it sticks out and gets frayed. The notebook also looks kind of ratty with the edges of papers sticking out. Gross.
- It uses sturdy double-looped wire binding, which allows the notebook to either open flat on a table or fold-over neatly like a pad. This is incredibly useful. The wire binding is also large enough to snugly hold my Lamy Safari pen, which is very convenient. The wire binding is also unusually tidy...quality stuff. A lot of the other sketchbooks use wire binding that's easily warped out of shape due to under-engineered wimpiness, which leads to snagging when rapidly deploying onto a coffee shop table.
- It's a hardcover, and the cover stock they use is truly rigid. It's similar to the stuff you see used for library thesis bindings, very sturdy and confidence-inspiring. If you are using the notebook with both covers folded in back, you have a very stable writing platform that doesn't flex. The corners on my circa-2000 notebook have, with time, become worn, but the structural integrity of the notebook hasn't been compromised. It actually just looks cooler.
- The paper stock is smooth and highly bleed-resistant. I'm using fountain pens (Lamy Al-Star and Safaris loaded either with cartridge or Noodler's), and the wring action is smooth without being loose. Also, I haven't noticed any significant bleeding of my writing to the other side of the page, which is a relief. Even the printing of the quadrille pleases me. The line quality consistent in tone and thickness, just present enough without being overbearing. It's even in non-repro blue.
The only down side of this notebook is the price; I paid $25 for a single 80-page notebook in Harvard Square. The prices are probably inflated quite a bit, because I've seen prices online for the same notebook (now that I know what it is) for about $13 a pop. Still pretty pricey, but I've yet to come across another notebook that actually makes me happy. Not even my Moleskine reporter-style notebooks make me as happy, mostly because I don't really like the tooth of the paper and it doesn't take to fountain pens as well.
I was unable to find out much about the company that produces these sketch books, Cachet Products Incorporated of Fairfield, New Jersey. This is an astonishingly well-made sketch book that meets all my criteria for a daily process book, and I want to know how this has come to be.
UPDATE: I happened to spy a "Cachet by Daler-Rowney" Original Classic Sketchbook in my bedroom. Daler-Rowney is a UK company that is the result of a merger with George Rowney, Ltd and the Daler Board Company. Daler-Rowney also sells a 9x12 wirebound sketchbook. But who is the originator?
Every once in a while I like to check out a store online called See Jane Work. I have an irrational love of paper and office supplies, and I enjoy the cheerful upbeat nature of the site. Everything is so cute! If this website were a gal, I'd marry her :-)
Today I ordered my first product, a magnetic chirping bird for holding paper clips. This is probably the least necessary thing I need in my office, but its role is more symbolic than functional. There are these little birds that I see every day at Starbucks in the morning; I believe they are some kind of common swallow. I usually sit outside if it's not raining, taking in the morning air, and observe these birds almost every day. There's something about the way these birds approach us that I find fascinating. They're tiny, fluffy, and pretty cute. They're also diligent, bold, and industrious. I realized a couple weeks ago that they do a very good job of "just being themselves", and that I could learn a thing or two from them. I sometimes get wrapped up in thinking I should be "more professional" or "building my career", and though I've definitely chosen a more non-traditional path to life-work I still get caught up in thinking about "success" and how people perceive me. Those little birds have no such pretensions, and every day they remind me that my OWN little bird inside of me needs to come out and "just be". That realization has become one of my moral compass points.
That my moral compass point is now available in shiny magnetic bird form is just a bonus. Woot!
I was pleasantly surprised to receive my XO Laptop, formally known as the $100 Laptop for the One Laptop Per Child non-profit, and I just spent a couple hours playing with it. It is the cutest, coolest piece of gear I have in the house. I would venture to say that it's WAY cooler than my MacBook Pro 17" which is, basically, a production workstation. Sure, the XO is not very fast, is made of the type of plastic that's used for toddler toys, and the "keyboard" is a chicklet-style membrane that is not designed for touch-typing. There isn't a hard drive, and it doesn't run Windows or a window system for that matter. So what good is it you ask? It's good for getting education and computing into the great outdoors, that's what. It is the most exciting thing I've seen in quite some time. Yes, I even think it's cooler than the iPhone.
Admittedly, it is designed for smaller hands than mine, and in terms of speed you can practically feel the tiny processor grunting to itself like a jogger huffing I CAN!!! toward the top of a mountain as tourists stare curiously at him from their air-conditioned rental cars. Fast, it isn't. It reminds me a lot of one of the microcomputers I wanted when I was 12, the Sinclair ZX80. Like the Sinclair, the XO makes thrifty use of its limited memory. And like microcomputers of the early 80s, the XO is open. Open Source, in fact. The guts of the software are accessible, so this is a machine that people just getting introduced to computers will be able to learn on. What's really exciting, though, is the quality of the I/O. There's a camera, microphone, speakers, a high-res sunlight-readable display, and self-organizing mesh networking all built in. For expansion, there are USB ports and a memory card slot. You can take this computer on outdoor adventures with you, take pictures and notes, and share your findings with your peers around you. I find this incredibly exciting.
I haven't really played with the software at all yet, but I'm looking forward to trying to use this machine quite a bit as my primary "on the go" laptop to see what it's like. When I'm traveling around I usually just take notes anyway in my reporter-style Moleskine. The wireless networking capabilities of the XO should make this a good coffeehouse companion, though the keyboard is not suitable for touch typing at all.
Fortunately for me, the XO recognized my treasured IBM Model M 84-Key Space Saver Keyboard, which I plugged through a PS2-to-USB adapter. Seemed to work fine with the machine. When you put the XO into tablet mode, you end up with a very compact word processing station that is high-resolution and usable in direct sunlight. While the XO is supposed to run for quite a while on batteries (especially with the backlight off), the additional current drain of the Model M keyboard might reduce battery life further...I have no idea.
Anyway, it's here in time for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to spending a bit of time looking at the development environment. It might be neat to develop some portable tracking tools for the machine, if only for my own amusement.
