Extensive collection of vintage pocket calculators
"1970s Vintage desktop and pocket calculators listed by company (131 identified brands, 613 calculators). ..., it is crazy to think that in many of these calculators you have a chip that is bigger in size than one of the Intel Core Family processors."
(Vintage Technology)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Instructable web-based documentation platform
"Instructables is a web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others. The seeds of Instructables germinated at the MIT Media Lab as the future founders of Squid Labs built places to share their projects and help others."
(Eric J. Wilhelm)
Fig.1 Kipkay (Kipkay Videos) Blu-Ray Laser Phaser http://www.facebook.com/kipkayvideos/
Fig.2 SaskView "The Most Useless Machine EVER!" http://saskview.com/?page_id=11
Fig.3 Randy Sarafan. "Lunchtime Clock" http://www.instructables.com/id/Lunchtime-Clock/?ALLSTEPS
Fig.4 kaptaink_cg "Bacon Roses"
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Story of Stuff: The Story of Electronics
"So, some time ago I was shown this video 'The Story of Stuff', a project created by Annie Leonard. She is an environmentalist who worked on international environmental health and sustainability issues, among other things like Greenpeace International, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and others.
This project has, so far, 2 seasons, the first with 7 short animated videos explaining some of our everyday environmental, social and economic problems and how they're related to one another. The second season is more focused on what is behind these social, environmental and economical problems and how we can act on them."
(Letícia Neves, 23 March 2011)
Fig.1 Annie Leonard (9 November 2010). 'The Story of Electronics'
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Tailenders: missionary activity and global capitalism
"The Tailenders explores the connections between missionary activity and global capitalism. The Tailenders examines a missionary organization's use of ultra-low-tech audio devices to evangelize indigenous communities facing crises caused by global economic forces.
Joy Ridderhoff founded Gospel Recordings in 1939 in Los Angeles. She remembered how crowds had gathered around gramophones in the Honduran villages where she had worked as a missionary, and decided that rather than compete with this medium, she would use it to preach. The organization that she founded has now produced audio recordings of Bible stories in over 5,000 languages, and aims to record in every language on earth. They distribute these recordings along with hand-wind players in regions with limited access to electricity and media. The Bible stories played by the missionaries are sometimes the first encounter community members have had with recorded sound, and, even more frequently, the first time they have heard their own language recorded. Gospel Recordings calls their target audience 'the Tailenders' because they are the last to be reached by global evangelism.
The missionaries target communities in crisis because they have found that displaced and desperate people are especially receptive to the evangelical recordings. When uprooted from one's home, as in the case of Mexican migrant workers, the sound of one's own language is a comfort. And the audio players are appealing media gadgets. Audiences who might not otherwise be interested in the missionaries' message will listen to the recordings. The Tailenders focuses on how the media objects and messages introduced by the missionaries play a role in larger socioeconomic transformations, such as the move away from subsistence economies toward cash economies based on agricultural and industrial labor.
The film raises questions about how people who receive the recordings understand them. Gospel Recording's project is premised on a belief in the transparency of language to transmit a divinely inspired message. But because the missionaries don't speak the languages, they must enlist bilingual native speakers as translators. There is ample opportunity for mistakes, selectivity, and resistance in the translation. The film explores how meaning changes as it crosses language and culture."
(Adele Horne)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Chobi Mini Digital Camera
"Ultra compact, multifunctional Pocket sized Chobi Mini Digital Camera is one of the most compact digital camera's ever! Yet it takes incredible digital photos. Chobi Mini Digital Camera can Video at 1280 x 960 pix 30 fps AVI movies and take 2048 x 1536 pix pictures."
(Geek Stuff 4 U)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
