Sounds just about perfect.

It's excellent stuff, stuffed full of interesting going off into unexpected directions. I got A Short History Of Nearly Everything, too.

Just started these:




And just for the hell of it, I've decided to teach myself proper German, beyond the bits and pieces I've mostly picked up from classical music and military history. I've wanted to learn it for ages, and it'll come in handy in the future for research porpoises.

navigation manual, or carpentry guide? (dividers..)

S'bout how we used to design/build things(furniture, buildings, tools, vessels, vehicles, etc), kind of as a foil to how we design and build them now.

The basic thrust of it is as a sort of crash course in learning to see, evaluate, and use, a system which is much more based on proportions and classical orders, and hardly takes into account specific measured dimension at all, except as it relates to whatever the general size a thing needs to be specifically for its intended purpose/use. [e.g. a table has to be about the height that is comfortable for a human to sit or stand at it. The specific inch dimension of that height is much less important, and indeed, as we used to do such things, could vary a fair bit depending on who, specifically will be using the table.]

So, the book aims to sort of teach one how to catch their own fish in a way. Rather than say, showing how to take a long chart of exact inch dimensions CAD drawings and building a copy of something, without understanding where the shapes and lengths are coming from, it is about learning the whys and hows of the way that our old solid things were brought to life as designs. Which is one of those utterly simple sorts of method, where the simplicity is not at all readily apparent in the finished items. Which is a wonky way of saying: Simple movements and concepts that produce complex and effective systems and designs.

Very interesting book, a lot of sort of drawing exercise stuff to sort of allow one to work the tricks out themselves rather than simply being told what to do.

ah- very cool! i got a book from lee valley tools, i think, a while back that had something like that as a theme, and it talked alot about the fibonacci sequence and divinci's ratios as guides. very cool theme! so funny how we've lost touch with the notion of human scale in pretty much every interchange with reality as a society

might haveta look that one up!

Yarr, as a matter of fact, i got this one from Lee Valley(along with a small pile of waterstones and diamond shit for sharpening things).

http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.a ... 6096,46109

It was kind of pricy for a little book at $35ish, but it is a smaller publisher, has a bunch of color images in it, and i am really enjoying the subject and angle it comes from. For me personally, the thing is worth it.

oh that's awesome! i love that company so much.. i also bought a book about practical metallurgy from them too.. so geeky, but so interesting WRT making and maintaining plane and chisel blades. i have a buncha diamond hones and waterstones as well for that kinda stuff.. super luxurious to have surgical sharp blades! well.. as long as you're careful.. i nailed myself with a 3/8" chisel one day right in the web of my thumb, and that wasn't so awesome... bled like a stuck pig. much more fun for paring wood than fingers..

I totally justified purchasing this because I can use it as reference material for a class, and not at all because I've been wanting to read it for a couple years now.

I guess my new thing is reading too many things at once. I do need to finish off a couple others so i can properly focus on these though.

The entire Geography Of Nowhere book seems to be written in the voice of William S Burroughs, hence my songs of the day today.

James Howard Kunstler is properly a curmudgeon.

I actually got around to acquiring this. I might even have time to read it eventually.

Re: too many things at once, yeah, that's basically how it works. Personally, I tend to finish most of 'em after a while? Both of the things you posted are the sort of whatnots I'd stuff my brainhole with, methinks.

FWIW, I was reminded, for whatever reason, of this, which I think you'd appreciate. I only know it exists from my former drummer salvaging a copy out of a school's recycling bin, sadface. It is quality, and I've made sure it was preserved:

Chris and joey, at the least, neeed to czech out American Hippopotamus. It's great.

This seems relevant to my interests. Fantastiche


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Yeah, imma totally czech out that hippobook.

For the nows i am reading this, sent from my sister:



Mine has a different cover but i like this image.

Uhhh I just read this page ...




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That lady needs to learn some sciences.

The larger image won't load, dammit:




I know, I know- as a proper grow'd-up historian, I shouldn't snicker at this. But it was asking for it.