Category: Hobbies and Projects

It took a few years of angry searching. Condescension at wide-ruled “plebian” notepads. Eschewing of perfectly nice notebooks brought thousands of miles and placed at my feet as gifts. Finally, I have found The One True Notebook. Or at least the closest thing I’m likely to uncover. Meet the Rediform Chemistry Notebook, 9.25 x 7.5 [...]

OK, folks, I hate to distract with minutiae but I have spent some time doing some things with the ol’ site here. Normally I keep quiet about things like this (I am quite often tinkering, but I imagine most of you read via RSS anyway), but this is something I haven’t quite exactly seen done [...]

Sometimes the grandest of efforts have somewhat deflated outcomes. Take, for example, my grandly conceived, labor intensive, engineering miracle of a holiday ornament project this year. I decided I wanted to make something interactive, something that had a kinetic three-dimensional quality, something that could involve letterpress. Thus, after twenty or thirty hours of slicing and [...]

My mother gave me a copy of the Tao Te Ching a few years back that was, rather intriguingly, a rendition crafted by Ursula K. LeGuin. I was taken with it. Of late, I have been having deeper thoughts about the meaning of leadership and the empowerment of those lead and found that the 17th [...]

I needed to say I was sorry to someone important, so I was inspired to make these cards. Flexible, relevant cards that I imagine I’ll use a lot. Set in 18pt. Caslon Old Style 337e and 48pt. Excelsior Script Bold. The challenge here was setting the ruled lines, which I found in a package of [...]

I made these cards for someone very special to me. I printed 50 but only made eight hand-drawn (colored pencil) finished cards. Set in 18pt. Caslon Old Style 337e. Unfortunately I have no accents; it should really read “embellit le desért”.

Last night was our first local autumnal rainstorm, and it got dark early thanks to the dastardly end of daylight savings time. At 6:30 or so in the evening, right after my friend Mike arrived to study verilog with Mr. Pencil, our electricity went kaput. I had just started getting ready to redistribute some type [...]

One I am trying to formulate a logotype for my private press (that is, a logo for the stuff I print). I’m relatively set on the name “Pencilhaven”, and I want to create something visual that involves letterforms, most likely “P” and “H.” I’m getting close. Believe it or not this represents about four hours [...]

I obtained some transparent white ink today. I had had this brilliant idea that I’d print thank-you cards in the blind (that is, with no ink whatsoever) but even when I was doing a blunt-force amount of impression it just wasn’t enough, so I printed them tonight using a mix of transparent white plus just [...]

Due to my recent freeze on all unnecessary discretionary spending, my stream of new music has taken a bit ill. However, there are those who depend on me to mention at least occasionally some new music. Sasha: “Invol2ver”. “Involver”, released in 2004 or so, is on my top 10 list of best electronic albums ever. [...]