tech@vedella

This leathery Cthulhu mask from April 2007 appears to be made by the same Ukranian genuis who came up with the steampunk gas mask (which I'm proud to own and display in my office). What a marvel of ententacled terror! Lots more to love on the site! Update: Looks like David caught this one last year -- d'oh! Still, the Bob Basset art collective deserves lots of attention. I've finally wised up and subbed to their RSS feed,and about time too. New Cthulhu Mask Новая Маска Ктулху (Thanks, theeviljeremy!) Previously:Steampunk Soviet gas-mask - Boing Boing...

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire. As you may already know from yesterdays announcement over at BoingBoing Gadgets, the Nintendo DSi is set for a US release on April 5th. Got mine back on the day of release on Nov 1st and can tell you that its a bit more than just a few upgrades. It comes with an SD card slot where you can save photos taken from the two cameras mounted on the DSi - one on the cover and one facing the player. You can also save bootable ISO images of Windows 95 and OSX on the SD card too which will be ignored by the DSi. Both screens are bigger too - not a whole lot bigger but now big enough to rest your coffee cup on. The DSi also comes with a new matte casing which will only break if ran over by a stampeding heard of wild baboons. The stylus is now a little bit longer too for those who have deep nostrils. The best bit about the new DSi is that its now longer in size than the original DS meaning that you will be able to see further when standing on it during those bird watching evenings. Full review and photos in my previous DSi review plucked from the gadgets section. The latest Japanese DSi commercial below. Anybody plan on getting the DSi when its out in your region?...

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire. While Tokyo does have more greenery than other areas in Japan, it still could do with even more green - would be awesome if Tokyo looked like this. Probably not practical but would be very nice to walk on barefooted on a warm spring day. More pics of green Tokyo at Green Island who are raising awareness of the need for more green stuff in Japan. The image in this post is of Shibuya - home to Hachiko crossing - one of the most busiest crossings in the world where about 2.4 million people cross everyday. Some photos of Hachiko crossing without the green stuff here. And speaking of Shibuya - its also where I make most of my vids - mainly because its close to where I live. You may want to use the video below when you want to Rickroll somebody. Via CScout....

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire. Tokyo University professor and world-renowned CG artist Yoichiro Kawaguchi had this amazing exhibition at Yushima Seido, a temple in Ochanomizu, which ended yesterday. Lucky me, I was in the 'hood and caught the last bit of it, including a small closing event held by Kawaguchi himself. I wrote an article about him in Wired several years ago, so we had a little chat. He created these ultra super modern sea animal prototypes and planted them in front of the temple's architecture, creating this stark contrast between old and new that somehow perfectly depicted what Japan is today. You can also see more pics n videos at Mitaimon - in Japanese but the photos and videos should give you a feel of the wonderful objects that were on display - one of the videos pasted below. While I enjoy this type of art, I also appreciate the sculpting that goes into the work of anime figurines. Many folks see them as being perverted but I'm finding difficulty in understanding how the nekkid bronze statues on display *in public* (with bewbs and pack lunches hanging out) are not? And if you are interested in how anime figurines are sculpted, you can see the process in my previous tour of the Good Smile Company offices. Blockquote from Tokyo Mango....

Above: Funeral for Analog TV, starring the lovely and talented Bruce Sterling. "The service took place at the Berkeley Art Museum Tuesday, February 17, at 7:00 PM." More: Audiences joined author Bruce Sterling, technology pundit Paul Saffo, and other special guests on the UC Berkeley campus to mourn the loss of our long time acquaintance, the Analog Television Signal. Born in the 1920's in San Francisco, the signal has been an integral part of all our lives, bringing us news of the rich, the famous, the politicians, the wars, the Apollo landings, the thrills of victory, and the agonies of defeat. While Analog Television has not been a good friend to us all, it has been important to each and every one of us. Analog Television is survived by its wife Digital Television, and its second cousin Internet Television. Visitors brought their Analog TV for display and recycling. We stacked the first 40 in memoriam to our life long friend and the remainder were responsibly recycled. At the ceremony Paul Saffo spelled out the sordid history of the Analog TV Signal's life, the group Author & Punisher performed the funeral dirge, and author Bruce Sterling delivered the eulogy (above) just before the analog signal winked out for the last time and the frequency wasteland was invaded by pirate TV artists. It's rare that the entire nation gets a specific date on which one major medium dies and is replaced by another. This event was a scholarly and artistic reflection on the passing of one of the dominant mediums and cultural influences of the late 20th century....

On February 26 at the New York Public Library, there will be a group discussion with Lawrence Lessig, Shepard Fairey and former Boing Boing guest blogger Steven Johnson. The event is said to be Lessig's final planned public discussion of remix, copyright issues, and so on, before he departs Harvard this fall to head up the Safra Center for Ethics. There, he'll be directing interdisciplinary research on institutional corruption (medical, political, big picture things). Snip from the event description: What is the future for art and ideas in an age when practically anything can be copied, pasted, downloaded, sampled, and re-imagined? LIVE from the NYPL and WIRED Magazine kick off the Spring 2009 season with a spirited discussion of the emerging remix culture. Our guides through this new world—who will take us from Jefferson's Bible to André the Giant to Wikipedia—will be Lawrence Lessig, author of Remix, founder of Creative Commons, and one of the leading legal scholars on intellectual property issues in the Internet age; acclaimed street artist Shepard Fairey, whose iconic Obama "HOPE" poster was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery; and cultural historian Steven Johnson, whose new book, The Invention of Air, argues that remix culture has deep roots in the Enlightenment and among the American founding fathers. Tickets are on sale here, $25 general/$15 students or seniors. (Thanks, Melanie Cornwell!) Above, a previous Boing Boing Video episode with Shepard Fairey, about how that Obama poster came to be. Previously: BB Video: Shepard Fairey and the Obama Poster, on Inauguration Day ... AP tries to shake down Shepard Fairey over Obama poster he didn't ... Shepard Fairey's covers for Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 - Boing ... Shepard Fairey's Obama poster - Boing Boing Shepard Fairey and Paul Frank Industries laptops - Boing Boing Boing Boing Video: Our 4-part Glen E. Friedman/Shepard Fairey ... Milton Glaser weighs in on Shepard Fairey's Obama Hope poster Stanford Fair Use Center needs your Mannie Garcia Obama photo-alikes for Shepard Fairey defense...

I presume that these little potatoes of joy were not, shall we say, harvested in the former Soviet wilds, but were instead created by American hands in the pursuit of irony. They are most certainly not authentica Russian LOLcats, and are more likely a parody in the vein of our Cheetos friends. Still, I laugh, as heartily as borscht. And as one of our moderators, Antinous, just quipped -- "In Soviet Russia, cat laughs out loud at YOU." ROLCATS (thanks, R. Stevens)...

Here's a lovely tilt-shift music video for the band Codebreaker, featuring vocalist Kathy Diamond. The piece was shot, directed, and edited by Erik West, who says, "None of the snow in this piece is simulated. I went out and show on the snowiest days of winter. The last scenes in the video were shot during a blizzard. This was shot on a Canon Powershot SD630 Point & Shoot. Additional footage was shot on a Sony EX1 by Jeff Thomas. Posted using Final Cut, Photoshop, Motion and Color." (via Aaron Wahle via Matt Kirsch)...

The Chicago-based independent music distributor is said to be cutting back operations drastically -- but not closing doors, as previously reported. Snip from Chicago Trib article: Touch and Go Records, a pillar of the Chicago music scene and independent music worldwide, announced Wednesday that it is drastically shrinking its business, cutting ties with 20 independent labels and laying off an unspecified number of employees. "The current state of the economy has reached the point where we can no longer afford" to provide manufacturing and distribution services for the labels, including stalwarts such as Chicago-based Drag City, All Natural, Overcoat. Flameshovel and Atavistic Records; Delaware's Jade Tree; and Kill Rock Stars in the Pacific Northwest, said Touch and Go founder Corey Rusk. The move could drastically hamper the ability of these labels to get their new releases into retail outlets in a timely manner, and could affect their ability to stay solvent during the current economic downturn. (...) Among the revered bands who have recorded for the label are Big Black, the Jesus Lizard, the Butthole Surfers, the Mekons, Slint, Calexico and TV on the Radio – virtually a Who’s Who of underground, punk and postpunk of the last three decades. "It’s not coming to an end," Rusk said, "but it won’t be the same company it has been for the last 20 years." Chicago indie powerhouse Touch and Go cuts distribution service, staff (Chicago Tribune via Glen E. Friedman)...

(Click for big.) I was at my sister-in-law's house in Los Angeles when I spotted this fruit growing on a vine on a fence. It was the only fruit I could find. Anyone know what it is? I've never seen anything like it. UPDATE: I think its a Jasmine (Stephanotis) fruit. Windell and Lenore (our Evil Mad Scientist friends) dissected one....

The following is book review by my friend (and editor and publisher of MAKE) Dale Dougherty. I spent President's Day offline, finishing up Daniel Suarez's novel, Daemon. I'm back online today but I'm leery, uneasy, maybe even a little afraid. I'm looking at my cell phone and my computer with suspicion. Daemon is a dystopian novel about a doomsday scenario made possible by technology. The irony is that it's all the same technology that encourages us to think in utopian terms about what good it can do. Fiction can make us confront fears that may be hidden from us day to day. After reading Peter Benchley's Jaws, people stayed away from the beach the next summer. It was perhaps an irrational response because we faced no greater chance of shark attack on the beach after reading the book than before. The world had not changed but the perception of our own vulnerability changed. I got in the water but I thought a lot about sharks swimming below me. Reading Daemon made me think that, technologically speaking, we live in a glass house. We have our own private space where we have a sense of being protected and being in control of our own life. We think of it as our castle but we don't really live in a fortress. The glass house is transparent so that anyone can see what we do; the glass that separates us is also quite easily shattered. Dead Men Have Tales To Tell I won't give away what happens in Daemon except to say what's on the dust jacket. When Matthew Sobol, a "legendary computer game designer," dies and his "obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events." The daemon seems to know everyone and what they're doing, partly because so much of what happens to us finds its way immediately online. A daemon created by a dead man is in control....

Here's a PDF scan of the November 6, 1975 edition of Rolling Stone with a terrific profile of Philip K. Dick by Paul Williams. (If you like the feature stories in Rolling Stone, check out this excellent DVD archive: Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years) UPDATE: David Gill of the Total Dick-Head blog emails: Excellent find! This is a fantastic article, probably the best ever written about Philip K Dick. Williams’ interviews (which he eventually collected in a book titled Only Apparently Real) capture Dick had his bullshitting best. In the book Dick even tells Williams that the amphetamines he had been taking for years had been filtered out of his bloodstream by his liver before he even got high! But I wanted to add some information about the illustration, which was done by GK ‘Kent’ Bellows, who was given the assignment by his friend, Greg Scott, an assistant art director at Rolling Stone. Scott wrote in an email regarding the picture: “Paul's accounts of the break-ins plus Phil's general paranoia led to Kent's idea of an alien sneaking into Phil's house. The tentacled monster was inspired by the 50s movie 'It Came From Beneath the Sea' (Google image search for it, you'll see a few stills of the monster). Kent always did extensive photo research for his paintings, thus, his chair, lamp, rubber plant, and so forth were used for props. Personal photos of Phil that were provided by Williams inspired the open corduroy jacket, hairy chest and necklace….Kent himself did model for the body, posed in the chair, and yes, I do think that there was a somewhat vicarious self-portrait lurking within the whole idea. Like Phil, Kent was an artist; he used drugs to enhance the creative process, had tempestuous relationships, an unusually wild imagination, etc... There's no question that Kent identified with Phil on many levels. (Later, Kent was obsessed with self-portraits in general... which you may have gleaned from much of his work that can be found online).” Kent, who unexpectedly passed away in 2005, was a huge PKD fan. Dick very much liked the portrait, and, in fact, met Kent and even officiated an informal marriage ceremony for Kent and his girlfriend Liz. Check out Kent’s work here. And order Williams’ book here....

Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are the archives for Boing Boing Video. A disclaimer for the capitalist entertainment pellet above: This Boing Boing Video episode is a paid ad for Cheetos. This is the third in a six-part series of security bulletins from the long-lost Communist enclave of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. Background on the series here. All other BBV episodes we're producing this month are ad-free. Neither Cheetos nor Federated Media, the agency that sells our video sponsorships, has seen what we're doing before we air it, and gave us pretty much zero editorial restrictions. With effectively no creative oversight, we went for the most irreverent and ridiculous option we had, and that meant monochrom. IN THIS EPISODE: Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Academy of Sciences agents analyze the contents of a box recently parachuted into the motherland from American capitalist swine. The box contains a substance that resembles pleasingly cheese-scented packing material, and yet -- there is nothing else inside. Agents attempt to isolate the secret ingredient inside that morphs cheese, corn, and boredom-killing antimatter. WHAT IT IS, COMRADES? Previously: * BB Video: (This is an ad) Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, pt. 1 of 6 / Cheetos Boredom Busters. * BB Video: (This is an ad) Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, pt. 2 of 6 / Cheetos Boredom Busters....

Roq La Rue Gallery's Kirsten Anderson and Kenny Montana interviewed painter-of-robots Brian Despain about his passion for our mechanical friends. The painting above, titled "The Exchange," is available as a very limited edition print from Roq La Rue. Previously:Victor Castillo and Brian Despain art show in Seattle - Boing Boing Science fiction and fantasy art at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery ......

Steven Lightfoot, the man who claims that Stephen King killed John Lennon, attempted to, er, expose the truth at a Sarasota City Commission meeting yesterday. The mayor told Lightfoot that Casey Key, where King lives, is not under the jurisdiction of Sarasota County. The whole thing was captured on video. "Man escorted from commission meeting Tuesday"...

According to a case described in the medical journal Sleep Medicine, a 44-year-old sleepwalker logged onto her computer and emailed out party invitations to friends. Fortean Times magazine looks at this case and several other bizarre episodes of somnambulism. From Fortean Times: The mails themselves were perhaps not up to the woman’s waking standard; each was in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions. One read: “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only.” Another said simply: “What the…” The writers of the report have dubbed this new variation of sleepwalking ‘zzz-mailing’. They say: “We believe writing an email after turning the computer on, connecting to the Internet and remembering the password displayed by our patient is novel. To our knowledge this type of complex behaviour requiring coordinated movements has not been reported before in sleepwalking. She was shocked when she saw these emails, as she did not recall writing them. She did not have any history of night terr­ors or sleepwalking as a child.” Unlike simple sleepwalking, they argue, the activities the woman engaged in required complex behaviour and coordinated movement, as well being able to remember her login details. She had no memory of the events next day. It’s thought that the somnambulistic episode may have been triggered by prescript­ion medication. "Somnambulism in the Internet Age"...

Mary Robinette Kowal sez: Astronomy professor and SF author, Mike Brotherton, had a brilliant idea. A lot of people get their ideas about science from fiction, but the problem is that much of the science in fiction is really bad -- like that whole exploding in vacuum thing. So he decided to put together an online anthology of science fiction specifically to use in conjunction with teaching astronomy. The National Science Foundation thought it was a good idea and funded the anthology. He said, "The purpose of the anthology is to provide stories with ample and accurate astronomy spanning a range of topics covered in introductory courses. Instructors in high school and college may these stories useful, as some students may learn concepts more easily through story than from lecture. Fans of science fiction with good science should also enjoy these stories." These free stories come from Hugo, Nebula and Campbell-award winning authors. Astronomy Science Fiction (Thanks, Mary!)...

Chris Ryniak is best known as a painter of unnatural flora and fauna. But the graduate and former instructor at the Ringling College of Art and Design also brings his bizarre beasties to life in three dimensions. Hi-Fructose Magazine posted an interview with Ryniak and a sneak peek at his sculptures, product and process. Your sculpture pieces often reference hilarious poses or outright cuteness in some form, do these come naturally or do you find things in nature to reference? I reference my teeth a lot. The forms are fairly organic, and often have animal elements to them, like elephant skin texture and such. It all depends on the piece... When I get a vinyl figure to customize, I never look at it the way it was intended to be displayed. I flip it upside-down and on it's side, see if the arms can become ears..etc. So the figure is whatever I want it to be anyway, it's a fun way to do things I wouldn't normally do though, work with new shapes. The original sculpts are approached as organically and spontaneously as possible, they kind of sculpt themselves once I really get moving and my brain turns off. If I think about things too much and analyze the task at hand, things go wonky-poop. "Chris Ryniak spills the beans (all over his secret sculpture projects)"...

As part of my plan to give my friends and family handmade gifts (like wooden spoons, baked goods, and felt creatures) for birthdays and holidays, I've been learning to sew. I took a two-evening sewing class with Christine Haynes at ReForm School in Los Angeles and sewed a pillow and really enjoyed it. I just got a copy of Jenny Ryan's new book, Sew Darn Cute: 30 Sweet & Simple Projects to Sew & Embellish, and I'm excited to start making the projects in it. Jenny's whimsical aesthetic sensibility really resonates with me: surprising and appealing color combinations, rounded simple geometry, mixing patterns with solids, pleasing textures, and designs that reveal their process of construction. Her creations are the masterful result of many years of dedication, study, experimentation, and creativity. When it comes to craft projects involving sewing, there's no one better than Jenny. Projects include a bracelet, necklace tank top, fabric button necklace, scarf, headband, customized cardigan, eyeglasses cozy, pillowcase purse, merit badge wristlet, terrycloth travel pouch, ladylike laptop tote, recycled coasters, café curtain, checkerboard table runner, happy hostess dishtowels, patchwork travel pillow, apple tree fabric collage, monogrammed baby tee or onesie, silly snake, square bear, vinyl bib, doll quilt, spumoni stripe quilt, crochet hook cozy, knitting needle canister, pockets aplenty apron, nifty needle book, sewing machine cozy, and a wrist pincushion. Patterns are in the back of the book, as well as a list of suppliers for hard-to-find items. If you haven't tried crafting something recently, I recommend it. As Jenny writes in her introduction, "You're no longer at the whim of manufacturers or trends when you learn how to make things yourself. Making time to be creative truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Nothing beats the fun of holding regular craft nights with your pals or bestowing a thoughtful handmade gift on someone you love." Sew Darn Cute: 30 Sweet & Simple Projects to Sew & Embellish...

Researchers at the University of Toronto used near-infrared light shined on a person's brain to "read" the subject's mind and determine which of two drinks they prefer. By reading images of the brain, they decoded the person's drink preference with 80 percent accuracy. According to the biomedical engineers, the technique could someday enable people who are "locked in" to communicate using their minds. Or create a 21st century Pepsi Challenge. From Live Science: In the beginning of the study, nine adult volunteers rated eight drinks on a scale of one to five. Then, wearing a headband fitted with fiber optics that emit light into the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, the subjects were shown two drinks on a computer monitor, one after the other, and asked to make a mental decision about which they liked more. "When your brain is active, the oxygen in your blood increases and depending on the concentration, it absorbs more or less light," Luu said. "In some people, their brains are more active when they don't like something, and in some people they're more active when they do like something." "New Device Reads Mind" (LiveScience), "Decoding subjective preference from single-trial near-infrared spectroscopy signals" (Journal of Neural Engineering)...