I posted a few illustrations of unfortunate font choice a while back. Here’s an example of a poor choice of special effect applied to an otherwise perfectly reasonable font. Don’t get carried away with those fun filters, kids! Or just suit yourself. 😉
Some low-tech gadgety goodness for the gardeners out there.
A few years back I experimented a bit with how to deal with slugs and snails in the garden. I planted up two trugs with pak choi and placed them either side of my shed door. I sprinkled organic slug pellets generously on and around one, and banded the other with spiky copper tape, about two-thirds up. Then I waited a few weeks to see how both trugs fared.
It’s been a while since I did a book review, but when I saw this one listed on the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program, I knew I had to delve deeper. We’re a house full of LEGO addicts here, and I fully expected to love this tome, but in fact, I *LOVED* it!
To quote from the book’s Introduction: “While step-by-step instructions can show you how to re-create specific models, they fail to explain how and why the original builder made certain design choices. This book reveals those thought processes.” And it does – with lots of practical information on design and building techniques, and interviews with some astonishingly talented LEGO masters.
The book is packed with beautiful illustrations of real world builds, which provides one variety of inspiration. But it also goes to extreme geek levels with details of brick styles, lengths, heights, angles, colours, production dates, and so on. To say nothing of the copious practical examples of how building techniques (for example, building curves using series of slopes of varying angles), plus a whole section on creating mosaics using LEGO pieces (with extreme detail on measurements, ratios and geometry).
The sections on buildings and furniture were my favourites, but the ones on robots and spaceships will tick more boxes for other members of the family!
Aside from the wealth of information already in the book, there are plenty of references to online resources where you can find further inspiration and even source spare parts for your own creations!
You can find out more about the book and order it direct from O’Reilly here.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I got my review copy free, but expect I’ll be investing in a couple more for certain friends and family having seen what it has to offer.
ETA: Especially loving Luke Hutchinson’s Flickr feed, found as a result of his interview and model pics in the book.
After all the desperate longing for summer holidays, the small people tend to find themselves BOOOOORRRRRRED remarkably quickly when they start. The Summer Reading Buzz may be one way to keep them entertained if your local library is particpating.
We’re at the “learning to read” stage with our youngest. He can already recognise some letters – especially “his” letters (from his name). He loves being read to, and “reading” to himself. (I love standing outside his door at night listening to him talking to himself and his teddies retelling and reinterpreting the bedtime stories we’ve just read him.)
