frd.b @FredBednarski@merveilles.town

Today I spent couple hours making a little April Fools joke in a form of an RPG(?)... it's all very hermetic & "inside baseball," catering to a niche within a niche.

Needless to say, it didn't really reached many people as a joke, but I still enjoyed designing an obnoxiously *de-luxe* flyer.

I really need to make time for creative activities, because it really makes me feel better (and I kinda need that right now).

#theWorkshop #PrintOMatic

I got my hands on a late XIX century mimeograph to help with back-engineering the forgotten printing/duplicating method.

There is very little information about pre-electric mimeography, & I was struggling to recreate it with the small, mid century machine I have - simply too many variables & unknowns.

This kit is all manual, but what's more important, it comes with stencil paper and a writing plate. Now I can experiment with using materials that I know to work!

It is not often I stumble upon a 80s computer I wasn't aware of... but today is one of those days.

Jupiter Ace was a British micro similar to ZX spectrum in its hardware and form factor, but instead of running BASIC like all of its contemporaries, it's running....

FORTH! 😮

Oh, the realities of living in USA.

This is the amazingly stocked salad bar in my local supermarket today.

Thanks to Joe Bob Briggs' Last Drive-In today I discovered *The Love Witch*

It's such a stunning film and an amazing homage to 60s cinematography.

So...

...somewhere during working with mimeographs I fell into the typewriter rabbit hole: https://fdisk.space/typewriter

I guess it's time to try my hand at concrete poetry or some other kind of artyping.

This wild red haired Frenchman from a XIX century ad for a mimeograph machine is my spirit animal ever since I have started researching the tech.

I mean, this is probably how people see me when I start talking about hand cranked copy machines 😆

So, I recently discovered that in mid-century US there were fully functional toy printing presses - movable type and all.

Also, because it was before plastic overtook everything, they were all metal (well, tin) and quite stylish.

...I kinda want one.

more info here: http://www.letterology.com/2014/03/press-kit.html

#theWorkshop

The #PrintOMatic got some needed cleaning and TLC. It's still a bit squeaky, but it's now feeding paper correctly. So that's a win.

Sadly, not much progress with making DIY stencils. Tested store bought wax paper with india ink and sponge brush to push it onto a page below, but that failed 😞

Not giving up yet on it as my "blind" using a pre-cut stencil also failed the india ink/sponge combo.

Next step is to source flannel for ink pads (I only have 1) and test on the device.

...like this noir mimeograph!

60s mimeograph is the aesthetic mimeograph.

...but you can't beat the crank powered earlier/cheaper models ;)

#theWorkshop #PrintOMatic

The Print-O-Matic came in today! Here's some first look observations:

* It's bigger than I expected (banana for scale)
* It's a bit squeaky, but seems to work fine
* It uses cloth on the drum as a kind of "ink sponge"
* The stencils are thinner and softer than I expected.
* It came with awesome extras like never-used "clip-art" stencils, a "tool" for shading/half-toning and an original 1963 proof of purchase!

Will post more once I have time to do some proper tests.

#theObservatory

Titans of Brutalism.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/founders-of-the-bulgarian-state-monument

#theWorkshop

Few years ago I took a class on how to pastiche 80s ad airbrush style digitally and promptly started making a series about my favorite 80s computers.

I started with the c64, followed by a macintosh. Then stopped. Couldn't get myself to continue.

...now I figured out why. I dislike the c64 piece. The composition is stale and there's a giant mistake front and center.

Today I decided to redo it. It's still WIP, but I'm having fun working on this series for the 1st time in years 🙂

Experimenting a bit more with dithers for my site.I am trying to keep the page size small, but maybe I am going too hard?

I am stuck between using the b&w version, which is only 16kb, but loses something by not having the color scheme and the 4 color one, which gives a much better idea of the original piece, but is a *whooping* 30kb.

I just need someone else's opinion: is the double the size worth it?

#theWorkshop

Inspired by @ajroach42's research, I ordered a 60s hand powered printing/copying machine - the Print-O-Matic A2G!

While I got it with a print project in mind, I think it would be really cool to try to make an open source version of it!

There is little info out there about this kind of machine (mimeograph), but given their simplicity I hope I will be able to back engineer it and create instructions on building and using your own.

Can't wait for it to get here!

#theLibrary #theCinema

I'm really into William Hope Hodgson's fascination with fungi.

Both "the Derelict" and "the Voice in the Night" are amazing horror short stories with weird mushroom.

They even inspired a 1963 Toho film: Matango (below). I will need to track down a copy because it looks amazing.

Now I am getting ready to tackle "The Boats of the Glen Carrig" as it promises more mushroom weirdness. We'll see if I can tackle a whole novel of Hodgson mimicking eighteenth-century prose 🤔

In other news, I have decided to allow an occasional dab of color on https://fdisk.space

Adding 2 extra colors to this dithered black&white photo makes a massive difference in readability, still fits with the aesthetic and costs only extra few kb (around 20% of the total size).

Whatever happened to the idiosyncratic industrial design for personal electronics from the 2000s?

They might not have been the most usable devices, but man, they were glorious.