Design delightful notebooks with heat transfer vinyl ...

It is really hard to walk slowly in your own city. I happily snail around any other city, taking days going 6 blocks. But in my own town it is really hard to slow down. But you have to, if you're going to catch the textures.Streetart in Oslo. There are great variety, artistic skills, and ...

My company has an office in Gdańsk, where my favourite colleagues hang out. I've been down twice so far, and spent about two weeks there. It's a delightful town, and as i get to know more and widen my circumference i discover new treasures. Gdańsk is a lot more than just the main drag. You ...

On the northern edge of the Oslo forests sits Bislingen. It used to be a bustling place, with downhill and cross country skiers, weddings, parties. One day they closed the door and left. The plan for someone to come back another day and open the door … i guess this plan fell through. Then plan ...

It was a small thought. Ages ago. "Wouldn't it be fun to make glowing mushrooms!" The short answer, it turns out, is "no". The obnoxious answer is "the journey is the goal". So i guess the truth is somewhere on the scale between yes and no. I made this There's a pandemic these days, so ...

Last year, i actually got my arse in gear, and went to London. Good thing, that, considering the pandemic of 2020 ...

I went to Utrecht last year, to meet up with two of the other squirrels, and attend a workshop in datavisualisation with Stefanie Posavec. A few days in Utrecht. You should stay away, so it always stays delightful for me. I am going again in april. Wonderful place. 36 73 tile tile 6 44 43 ...

Judge it by the cover. Of course you will. Covers are some kind of board or another. Typically chip board: gray dense cardboard. I am using MDF and plywood, and will try plexiglass, mirror, wood, veneer and whatever comes my way. Typically, boards are covered with cloth, leather, or some cloth-plastic-y combo. The entire thing ...

The inside of a book is called a book block or register. Register makes only sense if the content must be in a certain order, such as in text, images, or any content. Blank pages are… blank. A4 on tape signatures map book Bookbinders love book designers who include a tiny square on the spine ...

Paper Paper is what it is all about. Almost. Industrial, hand made, rag paper, pulp. Printed, patterned. One thing about paper: there is a direction of fiber, and this should always go along the spine. If it doesn't, things will crack. I promise. Do you have any fancy coffee table books, that creaks; where the ...

I have an apprenticeship in bookbinding. That means I dedicated three years of work and school to it, and I got a scroll-y, hopelessly large and pompous diploma, proving it. I have not worked as a bookbinder for over 20 years. For some reason, now is the time to start again. But to find the ...

There is nothing to see here. This is just a story. In 1997, i quit my job, sold my things, and got a one-way ticket for Scotland. I joined an organisation that enabled women to travel with a network of women all over the world. I found Anna in Belfast. I don’t remember what the ...

This was going to be a triumphant article about a stellar idea, a struggle of problem solving, learning curves, dangerous lasers, and the final, exuberant splendid result in all its plasticky-golden glory. Yeah, well… The idea! …so the idea: to laser engrave a bunch of slices of my brain in transparent acrylic, stack them… it ...

laser engraving 3D I have mentioned elsewhere, I love laser cutters. I got to try one at uni, and to do some pretty cool things. And wanted to make more. I could have made files and ordered the pieces from professional companies, but the laser is a tool and unlike any other, and to get ...

There are some amazingly talented artists around here. fremtiden wellies viking child child superhero trolleys old gods see the wall don't go in there scene chimney chimney explotion love shipping news shipping horses the walls splish splash baby turtle turtle blue :0 arrrr wire colour ...

Stave churches are curious buildings. They seem to try to mirror some viking age aesthetics, and in the process, produces their own visual premise. It has been suggested though, that the stave church is a translation of the architecture of bysantine basilikas – from stone to wood, with its closest architectual relations in Ireland. Maybe, ...

Pretty deep in the Swedish woods, there is a narrow gravel road. At the end of this gravel road, is a deserted smallholding. All around this delapidated farm, there are cars. Hundreds and hundreds; in various states of decay. Cars from the 40ties, 50ties, 60ties, 70ties and probably 80ties. The car cemetery. It is here, ...

There are wolves here in Norway, and it is an insane controversy. It would have been really funny, if it was not so tragic. Here is the gist: the wolf is red-listed here. That is to say, on a national level. This means it is threatended, on the brink of extinction, there isn't enough individuals ...

I am scanning my father’s positive slides and negatives, a Himalayan task. He took a good deal of photographs, starting in the 50ties. I am guessing about 3-4000 35mm negatives, colour and black and white. 12 boxes of slides, and an unknown amount of 9x6 I have not even dug out yet. It is of ...

Biomimicry is about mimicking nature. Humans have tried for thousands of years to conquer and control nature. But we tend to do this in a very heavy-handed way: pour concrete over it, set up miles and miles of fencing, and if we cannot fence nature in, we erect walls around ourselves to keep nature out ...

When we make websites for clients we analyse their business, their products, and their customers. We create interfaces that are logical, that helps drill down. I am looking to buy a notebook. This company sells stationary. A top-level category then might be "paper products", "writing and drawing", "blank paper" or something like that. So I ...

2016 has been an absolutely shait year, so I am not going to do a list of main events. I think we better get seriously drunk and forget the sorry business. However! As every year, new species are discovered, and not all of them tiny bacteria, gray mushrooms, or minuscule fish from lake Malawi. I ...

What was your thesis about? I don't really get that question. People know I did my master at the Institute of Informatics, faculty of mathematics and natural sciences. Yes, I did really study.. To most people, that is enough to get their eyes to glaze over. "Computerstuff", "hard science", "mathematics" are words connected to that ...

I am not a Luddite, I promise. But we are drowning in the Internet of Shit. *checks wrist*ah yes i seem to be thirsty pic.twitter.com/lNTQVZ4INu— Internet of Shit (@internetofshit) October 17, 2016 We are producing awful products at a frightening rate. Not only is it hard to find a real need for bluetooth-connected inlay shoe ...

Theodor Kittelsen was a Norwegian painter and book illustrator (1857-1914). He illustrated the Scandinavian bestiary of legend and fairy tales, and his work has scared countless children (myself included). He drew and painted trolls, the black death, sea monsters, nøkken ("water spirit"), and anthropomorphised natural phenomena such as the echo. His work can be rather ...

Most warships these days are gray, and for good reasons. They are generally more difficult to make out with the naked eye. Of course, these days technology often makes visual camouflage redundant, but during World War I, a different tack was used: dazzle, or disruptive, camouflage. The idea was not camouflage as in "invisible", but ...

The Eurasian lynx is a medium-sized cat, native to Siberia, Central, East, and Southern Asia, North, Central and Eastern Europe. It lives in the wild close to where I live, but after decades of hanging out in the woods, I have never seen anything but a set of footprints in the snow. Once. They are ...

It is embarrassing. There is this question "name a female scientist, not counting Marie Curie". I cannot really do it. I can say "oh.. you know, that lady .. whatshername...". I can do Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852), the "mother" of computer programming. Which is sad on so many levels: she lived not that long ...

There is a fairy tale here in Norway, called the twelve wild ducks. The story is not really important, it a fairly classic good versus evil, patience, purity and deceit. I think it is a pretty convoluted story, and I always found it dissatisfying that there is no attempt at explaining why the princes are ...

I was going to write an article about the Encyclopedia of Life. It is a phenomenal undertaking, its goal is to create one web page for every living species. Right now they have 1,322,989 pages. That is 1.3 million living things. It is a herculean effort, and it takes the biggest institutions and the best ...

I grew up with the stories from Norse mythology. The sagas, the pantheon of gods, their fights, petty arguments, and underhand murders. How to keep them happy by offerings, how the vikings saw themselves and ordered their society and solved conflicts – which was not as bloody and brutal as you might think. The mythology also ...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was at a beach, and among some rocks found a fairly decomposed duck. Basically, a big pile of feathers, mainly no flesh, but sinews and – cough – bits of unidentified biohazard. The skull was delightfully intact, with sinews holding it all nicely in place and (thankfully) ...

I have fallen in love with a machine. The laser cutter at the uni. Well; actually, it is what it can do, that captivates me. I am craftsperson – I have two educations in crafts. I am a potter and bookbinder. So I have a sense for materials, how they act, what you can and ...

Lots of games have no result except the pleasure the player gets out of it. But there is an increase of games that help science in some way. Yisela has already written an article about some of them; in games for science. This article is about a brand new game by University College London, University of ...

We know the stories: heroics, suffering, death of exploration in polar regions. Amazing feats, hunger and stamina and team work. As for the story of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913–16; not so much. It is a story of bad planning, bad preparations, egos, death and men divided and (probably) murder. The Karluk. CC Wikimedia ...

Bonsai: noob and scissors. I know nothing about bonsai. Or rather, practically nothing. Should this stop me? NoooOO! Bonsai is, of course, an impossible world. It is full of technical stuff about soil composition, tree shapes, cutting, snipping, wiring, not wiring, clipping. What kind of wire, foil, raffia, string, cutters. And aesthetics and zen. Frontal ...

The future library is a forest in Oslo: 1000 trees was planted in a forest in Oslo in 2014. It is the future library. Each year, an author submits a manuscript, unread, unseen; that will be stored in the national library. In 2114, the trees will be cut down, milled and made into 1000 books ...

Taxonomy in the time of technology: Deichmann is the municipal library in Oslo. Last week they opened a library for children, age 10-15. All good, you might think. Commendable. But what images do you create in your head? Chances are, you would be very very wrong. Perhaps it would not be surprising that the kids ...

Scientific illustrations by Carim Nahaboo Carim Nahaboo is a London based illustrator specialising in accurate depictions of natural history subjects as well as more imaginative, conceptual themes. So says his bio on his webpage, and who am I to argue? I am in awe of his work; this is old-school scientific illustration: art, design and ...

Computers: someone or something that calculates something. That would be the general idea. But (machine) computers don't have to be digital. In 1901, divers found the Antikythera mechanism in a shipwreck in the Aegean sea. It is old. Very old. Estimated, in fact, to be from 200-100 BC. That would be 2200 years old. They were ...