tech@vedella

The Bohn Aluminum and Brass Corporation announced that "Magnificent new designs, like this one, will some day be popping up very rapidly." (Image: ... futuristic 'woody'!, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from x-ray_delta_one's photostream)

This week on The Command Line podcast, a recording of a live chat between host Thomas Gideon and myself at the New America Foundation, discussing (among other things), my new essay collection Context. (MP3)

Spacemen was a short-lived early-1960s magazine specifically about space-themed science fiction movies. Warren Publishing -- creators of the classic magazines Famous Monster of Filmland, Monster World, Creepy, and Eerie -- produced only 8 issues of the magazine, helmed by Forrest J. Ackerman. The cover art is glorious (cover above by Wally Wood!) and you can [...]

Above, a snapshot I took of Ninja and Yo-Landi of Die Antwoord during a recent visit to Los Angeles. In this photo, they are hanging out in the studio of LA-based artist David Choe. Die Antwoord will release their second album Ten$ion soon, and tour dates will kick off in early 2012. They've said goodbye [...]

In the description for this video released earlier this year, pianist and elephant-lover Paul Barton in Thailand says: I took my piano to the mountains of Kanchanaburi to play for some very old, injured and handicapped elephants, especially a blind elephant Plara immediately behind the piano. Elephant-lovers please rest-assured - all keys on modern pianos [...]

In this interview with the literary journal AGNI, MacArthur-prize-winning author Jonathan Lethem discusses originality and the way that "influence" and copying from other writers are part of the creative process. Lethem's previous essay on this, The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism, is a masterwork (I'm also a big fan of his novels, e.g. this one [...]

A beautifully evocative and emotional video for "All Farewells Are Sudden," a track from A Winged Victory for the Sullen's selt-titled LP. The duo consists of Adam Wiltzie of Stars Of The Lid and film composer Dustin O'Halloran. "A Winged Victory For The Sullen," on the Kranky label, is available for order from Aquarius Records. [...]

Two lost episodes of Doctor Who were found in a TV engineer's private collection. The episodes feature the first two Doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. One episode, Airlock, was part of a four-parter titled Galaxy Four. The other is The Underwater Menace, about the rebirth of Atlantis. From BBC News: The announcement was made [...]

My cohost for this episode of Gweek is my old friend Barry McWilliams, a designer/art director who has turned me on to a great many wonderful books, comics, games, apps, drawing tools, and so on. In this episode, Barry has a ton of recommendations for cool stuff: Gallery Girls Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School Dropbox Sketchbook [...]

New in the Boing Boing Store: the zombie half-balaclava, just the thing for seasonal fun. The all acrylic design includes exposed brain tissue and gruesome eyebags. Zombie - Knit Half Mask

Damiano DeMonte says: The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) today announced the final entry deadline for submissions to the 16th Annual Webby Awards is Friday, December 16, 2011. Hailed as the "Internet's highest honor" by the New York Times, The Webby Awards celebrates the year’s best websites, interactive advertising, online film and [...]

My latest Guardian column, "The pirates of YouTube," documents how multinational copyright-holding companies have laid false claim to public domain videos on YouTube -- videos posted by the nonprofit FedFlix organization, which liberates public domain government-produced videos and makes them available to the world. These videos were produced at public expense and no one can [...]

Vlad Savov reviews the Xoom 2, Motorola's latest Android tablet. He recommends waiting until Android 4 is out: "[the] good things are for naught if the software isn't good enough and, regrettably, that's exactly where the Xoom 2 finds itself." [The Verge]

The Mary Sue's roundup of nerdy seasonal gingerbread is not to be missed, with a gingerbread Tardis, Weasley house, weighted companion cubes, and Starship Enterprise. Shown here, Mezcraft's stonking Weasley House (which includes edible Molly Weasley jumpers!). Gingerbread We Saw Today

Contractors renovating a Wake Island Air Force operations building recently stumbled upon a massive stash of vintage vinyl records. The long-defunct, one-room military radio station was known to be in a restricted part of the base, but remained unvisited for so long that no-one realized it housed a perfectly-organized record collection now valued at up [...]

Samsung is launching the Series 5 Ultra, an "Ultrabook" with an optical drive. It's got an Intel Core i5 processor, HDMI and ethernet ports, SSD storage and an attractive aluminum casing. At 14" across, 20.9mm thick, and weighing 4 pounds, however, it does not meet Intel's original specifications for that description. It's as if there's [...]

Senator Ron Wyden's staffers have promised a flood of Freedom of Information Act requests to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the DHS over its program of seizing domains it believes to be implicated in copyright infringement. ICE's domain-seizure program made news this week when the Kafkaesque tale of dajaz1.com, a hiphop site that [...]

Apple is a cipher, and its reasons for making changes often a mystery. A new update to iBooks for iOS devices adds a full-screen mode, a night-time reading color theme, and nicer covers for free, public-domain books. The release notes mention four new fonts, all superb choices, but avoid the fact that three less-loved fonts were removed.

A small sample-set study of young American women to be published in Journal of Voice found a high incidence of "vocal fry," a form of low-register speech once classed as a speech disorder and thought to cause damage to the vocal chords. Vocal fry occurs when speakers drop into the lowest register and sort-of gargle [...]

They're ripping each other to shreds! Oh the humanity! Thanks for Submitterating, hombrelobo! [Video Link]