Reissue of Jacques Cousteau Ploprof Diver's Watch

Shark-proof band. Colab with Jacques Cousteau. Gigantic. Solid back, movement accessed through the front. Push button bezel lock. My goodness this is a cool watch.


Omega Ploprof at Watchismo (Thanks, Coop!)
Also, check Desk Divers - a geeked-out diving watch fan site

Lego Minifig Business Cards

Joel at Boingboing Gadgets drools over Lego minifig business cards

Fashioning Felt at Cooper-Hewitt

Fashioning Felt Show at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum

Pre-Garage Sale Report - March 27, 2009

People often comment that I am lucky to find such great stuff. It is true, as I am very lucky to live in a time of such extraordinary abundance, but the only difference between my luck and your luck is that I spend more time creating opportunities for luck. Whilst getting from here to there, I stop at every pawn shop, thrift store, garage sale and scrap metal yard. My community is not based on geography - it is people and stuff.

The Sun's Burial

Impossibly cool looking Japanese new wave movie is set in the working class Osaka slums.

The Sun's Burial at The Auteurs

Peter Bialobrkeski Case's Photographs of Global Shackitecture

Interesting ingenuity abounds, but I am particularly impressed with this two story home that incorporates a retail component and robust electronic entertainment system.

Peter Bialorkeski Case (via We Make Money Not Art)

Other Curious Snap-On Ratchets

Following the post about the oddball garage sale Snap-On ratchet, D+R readers Mark and Robert suggested that I had stumbled upon a ratchet made for the military. Could be. The military Snap-On folktale is that the US Government spec'd tools to not be chrome plated. By the 1970's, that may have changed.

Since we are geeking out on Snap-On ratchets, I thought I would share a few others from the Hooptyrides Corporate Tool Crib.

Before ratchets had a switch to change direction, the entire drive shaft would pop out of the handle to flip to the other side. You actually had to turn the ratchet over and insert the pin through the reverse side. For real? Yeah. Check out the embossed ON. Predictably, the other side is marked OFF.
I think this little cutie is a military ratchet as the drive pin is bigger than 1/4" but smaller than 3/8". Supposedly, the military specified a non-standard size to keep the ratchets from disappearing into home tool boxes.

BTW, for those new to hand tools, Snap-On is a legendary, high-end brand that is revered by mechanics and is terrifically expensive. Whether they are worth the premium price is a matter of considerable debate.

The Mad Natural Historian's Tadpoles

I just find tadpole/frog metamorphosis to be the most peculiar thing. The Mad Natural Historian's tracking of his tadpoles' progress makes me want an aquarium, despite his run in with Spindly Leg Syndrome. I would love my spindly leg frogs equally, despite their challenges.

Diary of a Mad Natural Historian's "Creature" tag

1956 Eshelman Child's Sport Car

D+R reader Thomas says:

Just looks at it...LOOK AT IT! Dear God. It's PERFECT.

It is pretty darn impressive. This is no pedestrian pedal car - the Eshelman is powered by a 2-stroke Briggs and Stratton engine! Ring d-ding-ding d-ding-ding.

Eshelman Sport Car at the Microcar Museum

Wood Blossom Pin

DaWanda appears to be a European version of Etsy (Am I a day late and dollar short on this?), and I'm liking what I'm seeing over there! Especially this wooden brooch from Domestic Candy.

Link

The Clubhouse Strummer

On Sunday I made a fretted musical instrument. It doesn't have a name yet. Maybe I'll call it the kitchen table strummer, because the wood came from a broken table that's been leading against our storage shed for a few years. Actually, my daughter was using this particular piece of wood in a backyard clubhouse she built until I took it for this project. So maybe I should call it the clubhouse strummer.

My goal was to make an electric string instrument that uses drone tuning. I don't know anything about music theory, but drone tuning is a way to tune an instrument that makes it sound good no matter what you do with your fret fingers. Sitars, some dulcimers, and bagpipes use drone tuning. The clubhouse strummer uses GDG tuning (the Gs are one octave apart). I copied the fret layout from a strumstick, but I could have used this handy mountain dulcimer fret calculator to figure out the fret spacing.

Because I don't have many tools, and I hardly know how to use the ones I already have, I didn't try to make metal frets. Instead, I simply used wood matchsticks for frets and epoxied them at the measured and marked spots along the neck.

(Click all small photos for enlargement.)

I used a set of ukulele tuners (now I have one tuner left over to make a one-string electric bass), and the three highest strings from a package of baritone ukulele strings.

I made a lot of changes along the way. For instance, I was able to shorten the neck, and I hollowed out the area for the tuning posts, rather than just drilling three holes. I think it looks better this way (see photo above for way it looked earlier).

I was going to use a Tinkertoy piece as the house for the amp cord jack.

The result was ugly. I tried to live with it, but I couldn't bear it. The piezoelectric buzzer (which makes for a nice acoustic pick-up) looked unspeakably hideous bolted to the back, too.

I removed the piezoelectric element from the plastic housing and epoxied it to the back of the strummer.

Then I took a remaining scrap of the table wood and made a back that I hollowed out to accommodate the protruding parts of the piezoelectric element and the cord jack.

I'm pretty happy with the way it sounds. I'm looking forward to applying what I learned when I make another one.

Here's a sample of the way it sounds without amplification. (I used my iPhone to record it. It sounds better in real life, I swear!)

The Hell Way of the Taste

Unless you can read Japanese, a visit to this site will only steal an hour from your day. A Japanese fellow with "The Hell Way of the Taste" has posted detailed photographs of his interests ranging from Japanese tea ceremony cups to his 5 epic listening rooms. If bigger speakers are better, he has won.

Impressive Japanese Personal Page (Thanks, Andy!)

Come-in: Interior Design as a Contemporary Art Made in Germany

Despite the title being a bit of a mouthful, I sure would like to see this show in Singapore. The creation of spaces as art is particularly fascinating. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, there are few photos of the show. When will institutions offer detailed online archives as part of their public service?

Come-In at the National Museum of Singapore

Lucian Bernhard

Lucian Bernhard at IFA
Absent an archive of Lucian Bernhard images, you would be well served to just Google

Topiary

I usually watch crappy TV while I'm working on the computer. For whatever reason, this Schick Quattro commercial caught my eye...then melted my brain a little. I guess it's no different than a tire swing metaphor for erectile dysfunction, but....really, Schick Quattro? Really?

Mid-90's Bicycle CNC Aluminum

Coco's recently acquired a Cannondale mountain bike that somebody heavily upgraded with high end components. Not everybody's taste, but you have to admire the aircraft grade engineering and machining.

Garage Sale Report - March 21, 2009

Homemade Wrench Holders

If there is a secret skill in garage saling, it is the ability to pick the rare items of real value from the detritus of suburbia. People laugh when I say that a typical garage sale can have 10,000 items as it seems like a preposterous number.

Lidless Tupperware, non-stick pans that have lost their non-stick, blenders, short pants, white pumps, soccer cleats, VHS tapes of Night Court recordings, a black particle board media stand with glass magnetic latch doors that came with a 32" TV, half pads of stickie notes, cheap PC speakers, shirts given away at a business retreat, stadium seats, power adapters, plastic ice chests, knock-off Rollerblades, mountains of t-shirts, turntables missing the stylus, disposable box cutters, videotape rewinders, garden hoses missing one end, jeans that never fit right, socks, half filled boxes of drywall screws, disposable cigarette lighters, Bic pens, old cell phones, dull kitchen knives that were never sharpened, half empty jugs of weed killer, record albums, vacuum cleaners, broken Ikea furniture, 15" CRTs, remote controls, #1 Phillips screwdrivers destroyed by turning #2 screws, bicycle helmets filled with crumbling foam, 32 ounce fast food soda pop cups with overly thick plastic straws that taste like a green plastic watering can, throw pillows, clear glass vases that came with a flower arrangement, cork screws, toys, CDs, file folders, free headphones from plane trips, paint roller frames, laser key chains and a big box of cables for electronics.

Think about what it takes in time and money to individually buy 10,000 items. 10,000 disposable items or those that were purchased and have disappointed in some fundamental way. 10,000 items too good for the trash can but not good enough to keep.

Aforementioned Wrench Holder, in Action

Rare Snap-On Ratchet

Maybe it isn't eBay rare, but this Snap-On ratchet is certainly real world rare. I have never seen another like it and I have been sifting through dusty tool boxes for many years.

Hammers and Handles

Today I saw an orange gummy bear on the ground and thought, "Oh! Like my new hammers!"

Photos Instead of Stuff

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out a closet and came across a pile of photos I'd taken nearly ten years ago when I was selling regularly on ebay (and using a 35mm camera). It was interesting to look over all the things that had passed through my hands, including a few I regretted parting with. That's how I felt when I saw this photo of a Bavarian sugar and creamer set (well, it was intended to be an inviting image, after all). I held the photo for a second thinking "Geez, I wish I'd kept those," and had an idea. I placed the photo on a shelf in my kitchen where I would have displayed them had they been kept. The photo is enjoyed every bit as much as if the pieces were sitting there themselves. Which got me thinking: how much of my precious stuff would I be equally contented by in having only a photo of the object instead of the object itself? Hm. Nah....

John Stezaker

John Stezaker at Petzel

Terunobu Fujimori's Tea House

Lisa Katayama of Tokyo Mango wrote about Terunobu Fujimori's tea house. "He built it for his own use in Nagano Prefecture. A traditional tea house is supposed to be self-constructed and extremely tiny." More photos here.

Hot Rod Paintings on a Nintendo DS

Christian Pearce uses an application called Colors to paint hot rods on his Nintendo DS. (Via Drawn)

The Fantasyland Viewliner

Disneyland, 1957

The classic fifties future Viewliner Trains were the predecessor to Disneyland's Monorail. Though they existed for only a year and a half, from 1957 to 1958, the engine in the photo above seems just within reach.

Patterned, in part, after General Motors' 1955 Aerotrain,  the Viewliner looks like a train that's also part bus and part toaster.  I love it.

Nadya Rusheva

"Saying Good-bye to Fox"

Whenever I learn about an artist, writer or extraordinary being that I simply can't believe I haven't been hearing about since elementary school, it reminds me that there are centuries of people with stories, talents and unique perspectives that we never hear of that are still left to discover, or more probably: will never know about. I was reminded of this last week, when I first learned about Nadya Rusheva, a cannonized artist in Russia- almost completely unknown in the West.

"The First Meeting of Master and Margarita"

Nadya Rusheva was a young Russian artist who left over 10,000 drawings of exquisite, sinuous lines and bold emotion. Apparently, she did little to no preparatory work. But her work goes far beyond impressing with its technical abilities: she marries emotional encounters with a style of drawing that is so assured, effortless and beautiful it is staggering to think they were created by a girl as young as she was (she began seriously drawing at the age of seven). Her astonishing body of work was realized, and to be completed, by the age of seventeen, when she died of a brain hemorrage (1952 - 1969).

Link (thanks, Ruxandra)

Cathy Callahan Makes Straw Flowers with Martha Stewart

My friend Cathy Callahan was on Martha Stewart's TV show recently, showing Martha how to make straw flowers from a 1967 crafting book. Here's the video.

Chris' New Truck

While on my bicycle garage sale adventure, I stopped to check out Chris' new truck. It is terrific. You couldn't come up with that winning paint combination if you had a year with the Pantone deck. Powered by an inline 6, I would say that it is firing on most of the cylinders.