Monday, June 30, 2008

If it's Monday, that means it's time for arty links!

Architecture: imagine a building where each floor spins independently. Freaky.

Reading: BookRabbit is a UK-based site which combines bookselling with social networking.

Writing: Whitelines is a Swedish company which aims to reduce carbon impact by selling paper with white lines instead of black or blue. Sneaky, eh?

Music: "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is 100 years old this summer, and the people who wrote the song had never even been to a game.

Visual art: I love the work of Anita Mejía!

Puppetry: Fellow Americans! Are you fed up with prejudice against Felt-Americans? Here's your chance to make things right -- do your part to get Stephen Colbert the puppet on the ("fleshy")Stephen Colbert show! See the Stephen Colbert Puppet Challenge for all the info!

Friday, June 27, 2008

Happy Friday, everyone! Celebrate by flinging your toast eight feet in the air!

From Satori: Boy George's U.S. Visa has been denied, which makes his upcoming tour a little...tentative.

From Holly: those Zorbs might be a little more dangerous than previously thought. Hm.

Also from Holly: does your high school experience affect your future job choice? (Holly and I both think that our high school didn't follow this trend; maybe it's a generational thing.)

From both Holly and Cassandra: Kermit Love, the designer of Big Bird's costume, has died.

We end with a slew of great links from Cassandra:

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Hey there, arty library folks: LISjobs is looking for a logo! (Deadline: July 7th.)

It's a good summer to visit libraries virtually: the American Museum of Natural History research library has a great online exhibit titled "Picturing the Museum" that's chock-full of gorgeous black-and-white photgraphs, the British Library has joined Flickr and posted some fun images of what goes on behind the scenes, and the Chicago Public Library has undergone an "extreme" upgrade which now enables users to renew books online, peruse a kids-only catalog, and more.

You can also print out your own summer reading bookmarks from Worldcat, courtesy of OCLC, and ponder what the "library in the new age" will mean, exactly. I hope it means lots of crazy futuristic architecture, myself.

And finally, a call to action. Author and generally awesome person Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which is just plain rotten. While we can't do much about the diagnosis, we can help him in raising money for Alzheimer's research. He's donated half a million pounds so far, and the Match It For Pratchett organization has raised quite a bit so far! Spread the word.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The big happening this weekend is Glastonbury, which is usually mud-filled but mind-blowing, according to most reports. Here on this side of the pond, we have Zombie Kickball going on in Maine, Custer's last stand re-enacting itself (a little less violently) in Montana, and dog-surfing contests taking place in California. You can't complain that life is boring. Even in Chicago, things are exciting, because there are gators in the river! (Sorry, Holly. Don't click on that.)

If you're not going out, you can stay in and lose yourself in the spooky art of Arkham House. (Swiped from Matt Staggs's awesome weblog.)

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Hi there. Yesterday ended up being an unexpected day off from the weblog, but we are back today with twice the links!

Is Italian cinema poised to make a grand comeback? The Italians seem to think so. Meanwhile, we're making Barbies from old Hitchcock movies. (Love the crows, though!)

Chicago's Millennium Park will host two temporary structures this summer from architects Zaha Hadid and Ben van Burkel. Summer pavilions are a neat concept.

I use semicolons way too frequently. However, I can now argue that I'm just doing my part to keep this particular punctuation mark alive!

How popular is steampunk these days among the DIY crowd? Just take a look at the results for "steampunk" on Instructables. Awesome. There's even a first volume of steampunky fonts out there now!

Mechanicrawl takes place July 12 in San Francisco. Go, crawl, and learn.

Recent arrivals: check out the Anachronaughts Guild as they gear up to celebrate Tesla's birthday, and join me in waiting with bated breath for the Airship Academy shirts at Got-Steam.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Thanks to both Cassandra and Holly for sending in the latest on the increasingly bizarre severed feet mystery. I anticipate the discovery of an amputee cult soon.

Also from Cassandra: hunting the yeti in northern India and "photo albums of the soul." We are esoteric today on Folderol!

More random weirdness: there are massive earthquakes occurring in Antarctica, there are mermen magnets being manufactured, and there are also toys that kids can power up themselves (no batteries needed). This may be useful one day!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Special Collections materials at the University of Iowa are okay, thanks to some intrepid staff and volunteers. There's a much bigger look of the flood's effect on the campus, too.

The OED has added a few new words. Apparently "subprime" was not an official word until recently!

The Huffington Post is expanding into local markets, and they want to hire local reporters! There's something you don't hear too often these days in the journalism world. Meanwhile, some enterprising British teens have discovered a great use for Web 2.0: finding local swimming pools and organizing spontaneous parties there. (The owners of the pools are not too thrilled.)

News from the archives world: the BBC is planning to put all its shows online. I thought I'd mentioned this before and checked - I did, over a year ago. Let's hope they keep moving forward!

And lastly, something for the law librarians: how do you reconcile your own ethics with the ethics of your employer? Being a bleeding-heart liberal hippie type in a pretty big firm, I struggle with this every so often. I don't have any brilliant answers, but I'm glad to know others out there think about this sort of thing, too.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Today: the wanderlust and the spooky.

This weekend brings its share of wacky festivals, such as the Nettles Eating Contest in Dorset (?!?) and the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island. The celebration of Juneteenth also takes place, starting tomorrow, and then over the weekend it's the summer solstice.

Incidentally, if you're trying to get anywhere (for these celebrations or just in general!), Delaycast gives you a general idea of how long you're going to be stuck in transit. (I'm going to use this to plan how much reading material to take on trips.)

It's been one hundred years since the Tunguska incident. Was it a meterorite, UFO, or something else altogether?

For more oddities and unexplained phenomena, Charles Fort was the expert, and now many of his clippings and files are online in one place!

Just how mad a scientist would you be, if you were a scientist and, er, mad? Find out by playing the Mad Mad Neuron game. Muhahahaha!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Hi there. First off, a technical announcement from Nicole:
Has anyone else not been getting the Folderol RSS feed? I deleted it from Bloglines and added it again using the feedburner link http://feeds.feedburner.com/Folderol. When I updated it the last post was always June 3rd. I went back and used this one: http://www.spookylibrarians.com/folderolatom.xml and it works fine now. Just an fyi in case anyone else has the same problem.
I changed the icon on the left, so it should default to the xml file. Sorry for any RSS issues - we shall see if we can get things back on track!

On to steampunk...

The literary wave continues! Ekaterina Sedia has a new book coming out soon titled The Alchemy of Stone, which looks really interesting. You have to love a story that includes a literal key to a heart.

Brendan sent a great site about the Singularity - is it coming? When will it happen? What will happen if/when it arrives? - as I was reading another article about how we haven't got time to wait around for the Singularity. I'm always of the opinion that the steampunk concept needs more punk in its steam, so I'm fascinated by this sort of thing.

If you've got a modern photo that would look even better aged, the Bakumatsu Koshashin Generator can work magic. I'm going to try this on some photos!

Silly fun is what you find at Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre. I especially like the Victoran DeLorean.

Russell Stutler is currently in Japan, but his annotated drawing of 221b Baker Street is completely British and completely wonderful. (The rest of his site is fantastic too!)

Monday, June 16, 2008


Fun with Wordle! This is a typical page on Folderol; you can click on the image to see more detail. Create your own!
(Thanks to Dawnowar, who found this originally - I have swiped it from her!)

Thanks to everyone who made it out to the pride parade yesterday! Some photos are up on Flickr; the Club Creatures will probably have some up soon as well.

Fans of Edward Gorey, take note: the Edward Gorey House is open for the summer!

What do writers eat and drink? Several British writers are polled and the results are published.

A sculpture of Hadrian has been mismatched for a century, with the head on the wrong body! Oops!

And finally, if you want to know where all the artists are, the NEA has a new PDF report detailing which states and cities have the most artists. Unsurprisingly, New York City and Los Angeles top the list, but there are some other interesting places on the list.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Today: links from others, the all-female edition!

From Holly: you can now personalize M&Ms with photographs. Both she and I think this will be rather difficult to pull off, but hey, who knows.

From Cassandra: monkeys are learning how to fish, the dynamics of gay marriage can shine some light on gender issues, and - gasp! - girls are just as good at math as boys.

Swiped from various places around the web this week: Urban Prankster is my new favorite website (I think my current favorite prank is the San Diego "do not push this button" event), and the Obama campaign has started a "Fight the Smears" page which lists, and then refutes, the increasingly bizarre claims of some right-wingers.

Also from Cassandra: a treasure trove of documentary films, the 50 worst sex scenes in cinema (your opinion may vary), the reimagining of Strawberry Shortcake and other animated characters (neither Cassandra nor I was ever keen on Strawberry Shortcake, but this new teenage version of her is downright bizarre), and what your day of birth says about you.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! The Spooky Librarians are going to be participating in both the 48 Hour Film Festival and the local pride parade over the next few days, so it's going to be hectic, but we should be back on Monday. See you then!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Did you know that libraries need to reinvent themselves for the 21st century? Of course you do; there have been articles harping on this for over a decade. The latest one, however, takes a more optimistic tack than the usual.

Meanwhile, you can now use Bkkeepr as a virtual bookmark. It's akin to Twitter for compulsive readers. Sort of.

Fun with things resembling books: this furniture is a great idea for the children's section of a library (I would have loved one of these in Montessori school, too), and CoverPop makes virtual art of book covers. The one for mystery books is especially cool.

Fun with museums: the Library of Congress helps you keep up with current events with their Places in the News website, while the Field Museum in Chicago has what looks like an abolutely amazing exhibit on mythical creatures.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I'm at a work-related function all day today (booo!), but I have two links for you anyway (yay!). The first is a collaboration between Weird Tales and artist Steven Archer - 365 Days of Cthulhu - and will probably lead to madness before it's all over. For more current madness, check out the posts at I Am Neurotic and see what habits or compulsions you share with the rest of the world. Have fun! Back on Thursday.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

We start with steampunk-related links from others! Whee! Thanks, everyone!

From Danny: the work of Art Donovan (who, serendipitously, left a message over on the Steampunk Librarian last week) and some gorgeous imagery from Sergey Skachkov. Danny reports that he found these through playing PMOG, which we've talked about here before, but haven't investigated first-hand....yet!

From Jase: behold, here is a beautiful rolling library ladder from 1890, a mere snip at $35,000. (I can't even imagine.) More information is on the item's (PDF) page.

For slightly less expensive steampunky works of art, the crafter known as burrowburrow has some fantastic creatures for sale - the ram and the antelope are especially great, and now there's a jellyfish as well!

Still in the concept stage: a lovely pocketwatch/personal assistant thingamabob. I admit, I'd get one.

I almost never wish I was a kid again (I liked life a lot better as I got older!), but it would almost be worth going back in time to high school if it meant I could participate in the Shared Worlds program at Wofford College this summer. On the faculty is Jeff VanderMeer, who was last mentioned here autographing steampunk anthologies and drawing blimps.

Speaking of time, the neo-victorians are fascinated with it. If you, too, wish you had a time machine, you can dive into this article from Scientific American about the nature of time, and the possibility of it acting differently in other universes.

Weta makes amazing rayguns, among other amazing things, and now you can actually visit them in their natural habitat at Weta Cave in New Zealand.

And finally...steampunk goths have officially arrived. What more to say?

Monday, June 09, 2008

Well. It seems to be Monday again, doesn't it? On with the art links, then!

Artist to check out: Adam Cvijanovic.

Visual arts: the Brooklyn Museum is on Flickr now, and there are some absolutely stunning images in their collection, including photos from the 1900 Paris Exposition.

Words: the languages of Native Americans are dying out, but people are trying to preserve them.

Music: what do you want played at your funeral? Apparently a lot of Brits want to hear "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." If this is true, it's wonderful.

More music (thanks to Cassandra for sending this in): the Glastonbury Festival is going green!

Architecture: the stadium for the London Olympics in 2012 might be "recycled" for use in the 2016 Olympics. I like the idea of the Olympics adopting a traveling circus model.

Art for right now: make some PaperFoldables at your desk and entertain your co-workers!

Friday, June 06, 2008

It's Links from Others Day! But first, some links I found on my own: the Tower of Pisa is leaning no longer, and the designer of the Pringles can has just died...and, per his request, part of his ashes have been buried in a Pringles can. (The cemetery where he was buried is practically next door to where I live; I'm going to go check out his grave!)

From Holly: How do you lose a lighthouse? Well, a town in Massachusetts did, long ago, but they've just found it in California.

From Cassandra: Mr. Sulu is going to get married (yay!), former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor is helping develop a video game called "Our Courts" (really?), and in the UK, at least, Wind in the Willows is politically revelant these days.

From Bunny: FUNtains, also known as "interactive musical waterplay sculptures." Fun!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Librarians are depressed because libraries are doomed and we're all gonna die. Well, sort of, according to a recent survey. (See also: print journalists. I have a genius for picking college majors!)

On a more cheerful note, here's a reminder of why books (and, by extension, libraries) are so wonderful. More wonderfulness from libraries: Toronto's public libraries are installing "KidsSpots" which emphasize interactive play and education. I tried to find something about these on the library's website, but they don't appear to have anything up yet.

Amnesty International's report for 2008 is up. Sobering reading, it is.

For the law librarians: most of the big legal firms are getting involved with LinkedIn, and there's a lot of information out there for researchers (or for networking!).

And finally, here's a discussion topic: which books are considered unfilmmable? Most of Joyce's novels are on there, of course, and Pynchon's. Lovecraft's used to be on the list, I think, but technological advances seem to be lessening the difficulty of portraying the unspeakable!

Tomorrow: links from others! Thanks, everyone.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Today the only spooky link (if you can call it spooky) is that the people of Lima, Peru suffer so much from their foggy city that doctors recommend they leave town at least once a week to get some sun. Yikes.

Did you know there was a website keeping track of the world's waterfalls? Me neither, until today!

Everything else is a wacky festival of some sort, and if you can't get enough of the wackiness, check Oddee's list of the weirdest festivals out there! This weekend, we have the FlugTag returning to London, the Rose Festival going on in Portland, Oregon, and the Red Earth celebration of Native American culture taking place in Oklahoma.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Sorry for the no-show on Monday; annoying adventures in home ownership resulted in me not being online very much yesterday! So today we're doing a two-for-one entry.

If you're not voting in a primary today but still want to participate, you can create your own folded representation of a candidate out of paper. Then you can run around with it and get into complicated political discussions.

More links for the arty: Melissa Forman's beautiful paintings recall portraits of the past, while the Smithsonian Art Museum has a Flash game that lets you into the museum at midnight!

Moving on toward things of a steampunk nature...thanks to our (much appreciated!) UK correspondent Julie, we have additional Telectroscope information! There are tiny "minumentals" available for purchase, as well as souvenir boxes. Also, there's a weblog documenting the experience!

If you've got the sort of money to spend on minumentals, you might very well be interested in Datamancer's auction for his amazing monitor.

If you're trying to answer the question "so what's this steampunk stuff all about, anyway?" from various people, you can direct them to this 25-page illustrated article on the idea! It may not answer their questions, but at least it'll keep them busy for a while.

For those of us who love Mateusz Skutnik's Flash games, it's an exciting time, for Daymare Town 2 is out and available to play! This one even has hot air balloons!

And finally, for the wealthy interior designers among us (?), the room divider and sticker options at dVider have great potential. There are jellyfish designs for your Nautilus theme! And ironwork designs for your Victorian study! And trains for, um, whatever you like!