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Comments · 14
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Penstix
http://www.dickblick.com/products/alvin-penstix/
I already posted about technical pens but will add these as they are the smoothest drawing pens.
Used them for years to do illustration work.
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Copic
Copic pens are what I use. Definitely can't push hard with the disposables but the aluminum bodied ones are amazing. Then again I get the sense that you want a different style of pen.
Available as a set at Dick Blick These are no Sakura pens, these things are made for professionals! -
Re:Silly
Pens are symmetrical.
Biros and felt-tips might be.
Proper pens aren't. http://www.dickblick.com/products/speedball-lettering-nibs/
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Michelangelo wrote to your MBR
What's that Ring -1? Shit, this is terrible, but so is allowing anything that can house it's own driver signature file to be inserted into a SCADA system in the first place. Hell even the army gets this one right. You can buy the answer at any drugstore. And vendors, the nature of USB is such that we NEED to have secure interfaces (or at least dumb ones) like PS2 on our motherboards still.
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Re:alternative and cross processing film
If you are working with black and white, and want to try alternate chemistry and aren't afraid of chemistry, get Ansel Adam's book "The Negative".
Though I have some colour C41 for about 10 years I've been using mostly E6 colour slide film. I love chemistry so that's not a problem. As for the book, I'll check it out on Amazon, ah they have 43 book listed from or about him. Amazon also has The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes
For B&W printing, see if you can find 'Oriental' brand 'Seagull' fibre bases paper.
I don't know if they have that paper but there's a Dick Blick art supply store near me that has a bunch of art paper. I'm not sure if they have photography paper or not but for computer printing they have some good paper, and eventually I want to get into that. For now I'll shoot film then scan prints.
Falcon
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Re:Uhhh...
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Re:And...When will they outlaw razor blades that only fit one razor?
Only when they can't buy safery razor blades and double edge razor blades and you have to go to a Gillette. There is a standard razor format still out there. The blades fit box cutters and paint scrapers, art tools, medical tools, as well as razors. You can buy the blades at either the grocery store, drug store, or hardware store. Your other option is to go the single vendor lock-in route. You don't have to pirate blades if you decide not to go with a single vendor solution.
You can't find many online music stores selling a variety of formats for several brands and functions of devices. This is the issue. I can buy several brands of razor blades at any one of the stores to fit my open format razor and can shop for the best brand and price. There is no online store selling competing brands of DRM content compatible with whatever brand of music player you happen to like. There is also no price and quality choices. If you buy online for your iPod, the only choice in the USA is 99 cents a track at the only quality level of 128Kbits. If you have a Zen, you can't buy compatible content for any price. If your device plays MP3's, you are SOL at the iTunes store. It's like having a safety razor and absolutely nobody sold blades for it so you had to rip your own from tin cans. (I know e-music, but try to buy any mainstream music there..)
Here are some examples of safety razor blades to fit your any name and function device that uses safety razor blades..
Mekur brand http://www.amazon.com/Merkur-Double-Safety-Blades- 3-Pack/dp/B0001XGNRK/sr=1-1/qid=1169789189/ref=sr_ 1_1/104-5655065-6533564?ie=UTF8&s=beauty
Auto Parts blades
http://www.parts4cars.com.au/cart.php?target=produ ct&product_id=19167&category_id=439
Feather brand
http://www.classicshaving.com/catalog/item/522941/ 906451.htm
Excel brand
http://www.dickblick.com/itemgroups-r/razorblades/
Wilkinson brand
http://www.blademail.co.uk/acatalog/Classic_Twin_E dge.html
Gem brand
http://www.2spi.com/catalog/tools/smtol14.shtml
There are more not listed here.. You can't mix music and players like you can razors. MP3 format works fine, but everyone wants to be the defacto DRM single vendor instead. When will they outlaw music that only be played by one player?
Only when they can't buy music in Rebook CD format and you have to go to a download. There is a standard CD Audio format still out there. The discs CD players and DVD players, computers, and can be freely ripped in iTunes for an iPod. You can buy the CDs at either the grocery store, major music retail outlet, or independent music store. Your other option is to go the single vendor lock-in route. You don't have to pirate music if you decide not to go with a single vendor solution.
The reason the razor blade analogy fails so miserably is that to get an "open format" razor blade, you have to settle for an inferior product, while to get an "open format" digital music file you have to buy a goddamn CD and settle for a superior product. MP3 is a steaming pile of shit as far as audio quality is concerned. I do not understand why people think that the convenience of being able to buy single songs for a dollar a piece is somehow worth losing control of what you can do with media that you have purchased. -
Re:And...
When will they outlaw razor blades that only fit one razor?
Only when they can't buy safery razor blades and double edge razor blades and you have to go to a Gillette. There is a standard razor format still out there. The blades fit box cutters and paint scrapers, art tools, medical tools, as well as razors. You can buy the blades at either the grocery store, drug store, or hardware store. Your other option is to go the single vendor lock-in route. You don't have to pirate blades if you decide not to go with a single vendor solution.
You can't find many online music stores selling a variety of formats for several brands and functions of devices. This is the issue. I can buy several brands of razor blades at any one of the stores to fit my open format razor and can shop for the best brand and price. There is no online store selling competing brands of DRM content compatible with whatever brand of music player you happen to like. There is also no price and quality choices. If you buy online for your iPod, the only choice in the USA is 99 cents a track at the only quality level of 128Kbits. If you have a Zen, you can't buy compatible content for any price. If your device plays MP3's, you are SOL at the iTunes store. It's like having a safety razor and absolutely nobody sold blades for it so you had to rip your own from tin cans. (I know e-music, but try to buy any mainstream music there..)
Here are some examples of safety razor blades to fit your any name and function device that uses safety razor blades..
Mekur brand http://www.amazon.com/Merkur-Double-Safety-Blades- 3-Pack/dp/B0001XGNRK/sr=1-1/qid=1169789189/ref=sr_ 1_1/104-5655065-6533564?ie=UTF8&s=beauty
Auto Parts blades
http://www.parts4cars.com.au/cart.php?target=produ ct&product_id=19167&category_id=439
Feather brand
http://www.classicshaving.com/catalog/item/522941/ 906451.htm
Excel brand
http://www.dickblick.com/itemgroups-r/razorblades/
Wilkinson brand
http://www.blademail.co.uk/acatalog/Classic_Twin_E dge.html
Gem brand
http://www.2spi.com/catalog/tools/smtol14.shtml
There are more not listed here.. You can't mix music and players like you can razors. MP3 format works fine, but everyone wants to be the defacto DRM single vendor instead. -
Re:Am I the only one
Am I the only one who wishes that the laptops with the built-in iSight had a way to manually close the shutter, like the standalone iSight?
First, there is an obvious green light by the camera that comes on when it's active. I hope that it's hardwired so that a firmware update can't just flash that functionality away. So you can at least know something's up when the light comes on, though you can't necessarily prevent it in advance without add-on security. (Something seems wrong about taping over my shiny laptop, though Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance says it's okay to fix the motorcycle with the cheap metal from a pop can.)
But no, you're not the only person who wishes that. I'd like to go further. I wish there were a similar mechanism (at least the light, maybe a manual switch) for the microphone. I'm not sure why people are so worried about people looking at them but don't even think of the possibility that somone could be listening to them. Almost all laptops (not just new Apple ones) come with a built-in microphone, and it's only a matter of time until people start using viruses/worms/trojans to spy on conversations.
Still...if we can't trust our computers not to spy on us in the physical world, that's a pretty sad statement for eCommerce. At some point you have to type the credit card number into the computer...better make the software trustworthy...
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Re:Not exactly, but:
It's called an eraser. May I suggest Staedtler Mars Plastic? They're quite good.
http://www.dickblick.com/zz215/00/ -
Re:Composites
Composites are strong, but composites are very flexible. They don't lend themselves well to control wires although cabling is acceptable if you have slack (which adds weight)... but movement is never a good thing
This is simply incorrect for a couple of reasons. Whether or not composites are strong or stiff depends on the material -- composites like carbon fiber are both very strong and stiff (compared to say aluminum or steel) while composites like kevlar are less stiff but still quite strong. But a composite is just a heterogeneous material, usually a fibers laid in a matrix, so it can have almost any set of properties.
In fact, a composites are generally, anisotropic meaning that their strength and stiffness vary with direction. Think of it this way, if you pull on a strip of filament tape along the strip, its hard to break, but if you pull across the strip, it tears easily. Filament tape and duct tape are fiber composites -- like the carbon fiber in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Aluminum, by comparison, would be equally strong (and stiff) either way. Of course, carbon fiber is much stronger and stiffer than duct tape.
Stiffness and strength should be explained. Stiffness is a material's resistence to deformation under loads. Flexibility is the opposite of stiffness. Most aerospace materials are modeled to act alot like springs -- increasing the load results in proportional change in length. Stiffness in tension and compression (pulling and pushing) is measured using Young's Modulus, E. E is a constant, single scalar for a given alloy (temper, etc) of metal, but changes depending on the orientation of a composite structure. For composites, its described using 0th, 1st or 2nd rank tensors -- depending on how hard my professor wants to make the problem. There's also shear stiffness measured by the shear modulus, G. Both moduli, E and G have units of Pascals.
Strength is the stress -- load per area, given in Pascals-- at which a material fails. There are different definitions of failure, and so different values of strength for a given material -- but one of the most popular ways of looking at it is "when does the material stop acting like a spring. How much force can be applied before it won't return to its original shape?" That's the yield strength of the material and it works for our purposes.
Also note that the density of the material plays are part. Steel is stronger and stiffer than aluminum, but aircraft are made out of aluminum because they must be light. Aluminum has a higher strength to weight ratio than steel. So, pound for pound, its stronger -- but its yield strength, measured in Pascals, is lower.
As it turns out, carbon fiber -- pretty much the definitive composite material in aircraft -- is lighter, stiffer and stronger than aluminum -- the definitive metal. E for carbon fiber (the fiber without a resin matrix) > 200 GPa. E for aluminum (7075 T65) = 72 GPa. Yield strengths: Carbon fiber >3 GPa. Aluminum ~= 500 MPa Aluminum has a density of about 2.7 g/cc while carbon fiber is more like 2 g/cc. Note that the choice of matrix (the resin that holds it together) and layup of fibers affects the strength and stiffness of the fibers, but these numbers are a good start on raw material properties
Clearly, composites are not necessarily flexible -- in fact, if there's a distinctive property of carbon fiber, its that its very, very stiff. In fact, that is the property my composites professor emphasized in class time and time again -- possibly because its such a pain in the ass to do failure analysis on carbon fiber laminates. Composites are complicated materials.
One last note: flexibility is not necessarily a bad thing. But I'll save you the lecture... check out the Active Aeroelastic Wing F/A-18.
--sabre86 -
Re:Gonna say "No"Technically, we still have ALL those items. All we have done is IMPROVE on them, not (necessarily) obsoleted them.
Can I make a clay tablet to jot down information on? Yes.
Can I still get sheets of papyrus to jot down information on? Yes.
Can I still get sheets of parchment to jot down information on? Yes.
So, will I still be able to get paper 500 or even 3000 years from now? I'm betting the answer is yes - even if we have monochromatic polysilicate sheets that can be reused by running the erase wand over them.
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Re:Gonna say "No"Technically, we still have ALL those items. All we have done is IMPROVE on them, not (necessarily) obsoleted them.
Can I make a clay tablet to jot down information on? Yes.
Can I still get sheets of papyrus to jot down information on? Yes.
Can I still get sheets of parchment to jot down information on? Yes.
So, will I still be able to get paper 500 or even 3000 years from now? I'm betting the answer is yes - even if we have monochromatic polysilicate sheets that can be reused by running the erase wand over them.
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Re:So let me get this straight...Intaglio presses are huge, somewhat rare, and cost in the millions of dollars, so you ain't gonna but putting one in your basement anytime soon. If you had the financial capability to do so, you wouldn't need to counterfeit money.
I have one. Ok, my wife's a print maker, but they aren't all that hard to get. This press now sells for $2.2K. She has three really nice ones at work. One has a very large print bed. None of them cost millions.
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Karma: none (mostly the result of posting AC)
