Archivos diarios: 26 de abril de 2015

Se puede coleccionar cualquier cosa, incluso esos cartelitos de «no molestar» que hay en los hoteles. Y resulta que la variación puede ser espectacular.

As the son of a hotel manager, Edoardo Flores spent his childhood around objects many of us associate solely with the niceties of vacation. His interest in collecting “Do Not Disturb” signs didn’t come until later, when he grabbed some unique ones as business trip souvenirs. Around 1995 he began collecting in earnest, and he now owns close to 9,000 signs from 190 countries.

In a history of the collection that Flores provided to Hyperallergic, he claims that little is known about the development of the “Do Not Disturb” (DND) sign, now such a common, expected component of hotel stays. Flores speculates that the DND sign was the wise invention of one hotel manager, and that other places later emulated the practice.

Mi preferido creo que es:

Origen: The Diverse Designs of “Do Not Disturb” Signs

Play House. Según la descripción:

Play House is an automata that generates slow hypnotic acid house through mechanisms built from LEGO Technic.

Y efectivamente, ofrece un enorme deleite visual ver ese cacharro en funcionamiento.

Su creador, Alex Allmont, tiene bastantes otras creaciones en su web, que combinan todo tipo de elementos. Dice:

My research ties together aspects of cognition and performance and I am focused on making the experience as open as possible so that the audience can get better understand what is driving the performer – or become the performer in some cases. The intention is to blur the lines and responsibilities between them in an attempt to have a deeper connection with music.

Para los aficionados a LEGO, este otro vídeo puede resultar fascinante y educativo:

LEGO Sketchbook 2013 from Alex Allmont on Vimeo.

(vía Play House | ./mediateletipos))))

La revista New Yorker ofrece un muy buen perfil de Gene Wolfe, el mejor escritor de ciencia ficción vivo. Su magistral El libro del sol nuevo es una lectura maravillosa y una prueba de las cumbres a las que puede llegar el género en manos de un autor sobresaliente.

Wolfe has published more than twenty-five novels and more than fifty stories, and has won some of science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious awards. But he has rarely, if ever, been considered fully within the larger context of literature. His books contain all of the nasty genre tropes—space travel, robots, even dragons—and he hasn’t crossed into the mainstream on the strength of a TV or movie adaptation. Wolfe himself sees the trappings of science fiction and fantasy, the spaceships and so on, as simply “a sketchy outline of the things that can be done.” But even within fantasy fandom, Wolfe’s work presents difficulties. His science fiction is neither operatic nor scientifically accurate; his fantasy works are not full of clanging swords and wizardly knowledge. But ask science-fiction or fantasy authors about Gene Wolfe and they are likely to cite him as a giant in their field. Ursula K. Le Guin once called Wolfe “our Melville.”

Origen: Sci-Fi’s Difficult Genius – The New Yorker

(vía “That Notoriously Picky Publication” — Crooked Timber)

Hay gente a la que uno simplemente debe admirar.

Fixing the world, one piece of hardware at a time.

Origen: iFixit Store Europe | Pro Tech Toolkit

Es el de toda tecnología: ¿quién decide cómo se aplica? No es tanto que se pueda o no se pueda hacer, sino para qué fines vamos a usar la tecnología:

Por otra parte, también es verdad que dada una tecnología, siempre decidimos que nosotros somos las personas adecuadas para decidir su uso. Nunca se nos ocurre pensar: «esto lo vamos a dejar que se lo miren en el futuro».

Origen: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal