It's called The Clever Room and it's one of the rooms in Berlin's recently opened boutique hotel, The Michelberger.They describe it this way:"Boost your IQ in Till & Werner's private library. A big screen TV, an extra-large double bed, bathtub by the window, and loads to read"Imagine being a book designer and staying here. Paradise or Purgatory? And there's more.The hotel bar is also awash in books including some pretty nifty handmade book lighting.Being in Berlin surrounded by books for about $100 a night seems hard to beat. Thanks to Design Crisis for the lead
Book Flipping Scanning
No, this not a new Olympic sport for librarians. It is the latest prototype from the lab of Masatoshi Ishikawa, a professor at the University of Tokyo.They're calling the process 'book flipping scanning'. It allows one to scan a book by simply flipping its pages in front of a a high-speed camera. Currently, it can digitize a 200-page book in a minute.Here's the details, courtesy of the robotics blog of IEEE Spectrum:The camera operates at 500 frames per second, with a resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. For each frame, the system alternates between two capture modes. First it shines...
Crooks in the Food Trade
Carl Wagner, Bartender; wanted for carrying a concealed weapon. Previously wanted in Tacoma for murder Rabelais Books, a bookshop in Portland, Maine that specializes in food and wine material, is currently exhibiting a selection of mug shots of criminals that dabbled in the food trade. The exhibit titled Food Industry Mug Shots 1899-1954 features images from the collection of Dr. Lou Jacobs. Jacobs, a serious foodie himself, started collecting the mug shots 4 years ago when after searching for an antique cleaver for his own kitchen, came across a visual of a foodie who had stabbed a colleague with a butcher...
Audio/Visual
Here are a few recent podcasts and videos Hitchens and Packer on OrwellSilverblatt talks with Patti SmithThe making of a book cover Barnes & Noble on Saturday Night Live
Altering Louis L’Amour: ‘West of Dodge’ by Nico Vassilakis
Nico Vassilakis has been a cornerstone of the Seattle visual and concrete poetry scene for many years. He is a founding member of the "Subtext Collective" and was co-curator of the recently retired Subtext Reading Series, which for 15 years exposed Seattle to a plethora of new writing from across the country.His latest book, West of Dodge has recently been published by Ireland's Redfoxpress, a press dedicated "to experimental, concrete and visual poetry, or any work combining text and visual arts in the spirit of dada or fluxus." It is the latest work in their series C'est mon dada.The book...