This shall most definitely pass!
Marco at 3dartem on Etsy makes and sells 3d-printed table lamps featuring the top of Gandalf’s staff from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies.
If the power supply weren’t 220 V type L, I’d seriously consider buying one. It’s absolutely gorgeous!
(We have no connection, financial or otherwise, with Marco.)
Image by Marco at 3dartem on Etsy
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
Happy Star Wars Day!
Have you heard of Ikea hackers? It’s a site for sharing projects modifying the DIY furniture store’s products. The hack below is both clever and timely: exploding Death Star ceiling lamp.
(Note: The Ikea hackers post I’m linking to has a few different options; I like Maria Krüger’s best, so the pictures are from her project.)
The hack starts with the PS 2014 lamp with copper insides. First it is spray-painted grey before details are applied. Maria Krüger masked in some stripes and used darker grey to paint most of the outer pattern.
Here’s a closeup of her Death Star:
And the finished lamp:
She’s also posted a short video of the lamp Death Star “exploding”:
Star Wars Death Star Lamp – IKEA PS 2014 Modification – Todesstern Lampe by Maria Krüger on YouTube
Isn’t it handsome? I’m not sure I’d have the patience. Or maybe I should say that I don’t care for the Death Star enough to go through the trouble and mess with paint. Now, if you have a fabric project, we might talk…! 🙂
Images by Maria Krüger via Ikea hackers
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
Hanging around World of Warcraft and taking advantage of the Winds of Wisdom buff inevitably leads to new transmogs. Here’s my new female gnome arms warrior mog:
I was idly flipping through the various leg slot possibilities when I noticed that one of the plate legguards has this short skirt-like fold at the top. I was able to find a color-matched chestpiece to go with it, and noticed they vaguely reminded me of ancient Mediterranean garb. I then turned off the head, shoulder, cloak, wrist, glove, waist, and boot slots; in the end, the only pieces I mogged were chest, shirt, legs, and the weapon.
Awesome roar, right?!? LOL!
If interested, you can have a look at the set in Wowhead’s Dressing Room.
Image: World of Warcraft screencaps
Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.
Oh my goodness, the Hubble telescope has turned 30 years!
More specifically, it’s been operating, up there in Earth orbit, for 30 years. It was projected to be in service only about 10 years when it launched on April 24, 1990, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Impressive.
Read more at the NASA website:
Happy belated birthday, Hubble! Thank you for all of the space pics you’ve sent down.
Found via File 770.
Image: Large Magellanic Cloud, a vast star-forming region composed of the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020), by NASA / ESA / STScl via NASA
A lot of speculative stories involve characters going for very long walks, whether it’s carrying the One Ring to Mordor or keeping away from other tributes in the Hunger Games. If you’re feeling cooped up inside right now, you may well be imagining a new story in which your characters travel a long way through the wilderness on foot.
I’ve written before about some of the practical details of walking long distances (here), but you may also want to think about the effect a long walk has on the human body. Here is a very interesting article by Robert Moor from a few years back about how walking the Appalachian trail affected him.
The whole article is fascinating reading, but here are few noteworthy observations from Moor about the effects of strenuous walking.
Enjoy your explorations. Even if you are stuck between four walls at the moment, the imagination knows no limits!
How It Happens is an occasional feature looking at the inner workings of various creative efforts.
We all know that the representation of people of different genders and races is imbalanced in popular media, but sometimes putting it into visual form can help make the imbalance clear. Here’s a chart of the Star Wars prequel movies (Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith).
Characters included
(Characters are listed in the first movie in which they qualify for inclusion under the rules given below.)
Rules
In the interests of clarity, here’s the rules I’m following for who to include and where to place them:
Corrections and suggestions welcome.
Chart by Erik Jensen
In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.
The world’s oldest yarn or cord has been found. The fragment was discovered at the prehistoric cave site Abri du Maras in the south of France.
The 3-ply cord fragment was made from fibers by twisting, likely of inner conifer bark, and found on a stone tool. A number of artefacts at the same site also have plant / wood fibers adhering to their surfaces, but the remains are not extensive enough to classify as cords.
The researchers estimate the meaning of the find thus:
“While it is clear that the cord from Abri du Maras demonstrates Neanderthals’ ability to manufacture cordage, it hints at a much larger fibre technology. Once the production of a twisted, plied cord has been accomplished it is possible to manufacture bags, mats, nets, fabric, baskets, structures, snares, and even watercraft. […]
“Ropes and baskets are central to a large number of human activities. They facilitate the transport and storage of foodstuffs, aid in the design of complex tools (hafts, fishing, navigation) or objects (art, decoration). The technological and artistic applications of twisted fibre technologies are vast. Once adopted, fibre technology would have been indispensable and would have been a part of everyday life.”
Fascinating! Like the research team says, fiber making allows for an incredibly large variety of material culture, from utilitarian objects to clothing to decorative motifs. As a bit of a fiber nerd, it’s tantalizing to think that people were making yarn already 40,000 years ago.
Found via CNN. Read more in Scientific Reports.
Image: Hardy, B.L., Moncel, M., Kerfant, C. et al. in “Direct evidence of Neanderthal fibre technology and its cognitive and behavioral implications” via Scientific Reports
(Read previous entries part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4)
Things are starting to get routine. My teaching day goes like this: I check my email for any messages from students and respond to individual questions and problems. If someone raises a question that I think others may be wondering about, I send out a general email to the whole class or to all my students. I try not to send more emails than necessary, because I know my students are already getting a lot of information from the administration, but sometimes important things need to be said or reiterated. I’ve been surprised by how many of my students have missed or misunderstood basic instructions about how to participate in online discussion for my classes, but I don’t hold it against them. We’re all struggling right now, and I have to be aware that just because I understand something doesn’t mean that my students do. My job is to give them the information they need, and if that means repeating the same information in different words four or five times, then I will.
Next I grade and comment on any assignments that have been submitted. Then I move on to the online discussions. Wherever there are new comments, I record who participated in the discussion so that I can give credit. To do this I have a sheet of paper, on the same model as the sheet I always use for taking attendance at the start of class, with rows for all my students’ names and columns for the different discussion topics. When a student makes a comment on a given topic, I make check mark in the corresponding box on my sheet. At the end of the semester I will put this sheet together with the attendance sheets from the first part of the spring and combine them to give participation grades.
Depending on the day, this process can take anything from an hour to the whole afternoon. When I have time to spare, I work on my current book project, which is getting close to being finished. This schedule is exhausting, but in an entirely different way than a day of in-class teaching is. After a good day in the classroom, I feel energized and alive. Even at the best, this online teaching just leaves me feeling drained.
I miss the spontaneity and verve of the classroom. I miss the way a good class takes on a life and spirit of its own. I miss the dumb jokes and pointless but entertaining tangents that help bind students and professor together. I miss the performance-art craft of leading a discussion so gently from my students’ own questions and ideas to the points I wanted to make that they feel like they got there on their own. I miss the wonder of seeing my students strike off in new directions and arrive at ideas I never expected them to come up with.
This is an emergency situation, and we all understand that this is how things have to be for now. My fear at the moment is that we will not be able to return to the classroom in the fall. I know that there are some professors who are amazing at online teaching, but I am not one of them. For all of us, the end of this spring semester has been a rickety tub held together with duct tape and twine. With a summer to prepare, I’m sure I could make my online teaching better in the fall if I have to, but I cannot be at my best for my students from the other side of a screen.
Image by Erik Jensen
How It Happens is an occasional feature looking at the inner workings of various creative efforts.
In the village of Zalipie in southern Poland, some blossoms never stop blooming: they’re painted. Not just on the walls inside or outside, but on ceilings, beams, stoves, sheds, dog houses, wells, buckets, paved ground, and bridges.
No one apparently knows exactly how the flower-painting tradition came to be. Common features of the origin stories involve covering up stains, or simply perking up the homes, or uplifting people’s mood following World War II.
Regardless of the custom’s origins, it’s a fascinating feature of village life. These kinds of details would make spec fic stories even more alive, wouldn’t you say?
Found via Good Stuff Happened Today on Tumblr. More photos e.g. via My Modern Met or your favorite search engine.
Images via Flickr: Cabin by magro_kr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Museum interior by mksfca (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Sweep well by magro_kr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Shed by Mariusz Cieszewski via Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (CC BY-ND 2.0). End of house by magro_kr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.
To ease some of the covid-19 cabin fever, Wendy and Richard Pini have released a pdf version of an ElfQuest coloring book that was included in a past Kickstarter project of theirs.
The coloring book is free to download for private use, with one catch. In their words:
“One condition: You may not post images of the uncolored line art from the coloring book publicly online anywhere. The art is still copyright Warp Graphics. Thanks for your understanding. Bootleggers already steal ElfQuest images for unauthorized t-shirts and such; we don’t want to give them any more access than they’re already thieving.”
Thank you for sharing!
Image by Wendy Pini
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Co-Geeking 