HRSFANS.org

Take a look at this gorgeous photo series from The Boston Globe, featuring “balloons of all shapes, sizes and purposes – ranging from a child’s toy to a football-field-sized research instrument”. It’s such a simple theme, but so beautifully executed.

If you’re looking for ways to spice up your book storage, here are two fun ideas from Lifehacker:

For the gravity defying, there’s an Invisible Floating Bookshelf:

Or if you’re just out to confuse people, try the Inverted Bookshelf:

This has to be seen to be believed.

At first look, the opening picture just looks like a stack of toys.  But when you realize that it’s all edible, mostly made of fondant — and not just impressive fondant statues of Marvin the Martian, Audrey II, and the Alien queen (piping gel drool!), not just Han Solo frozen in carbonite, ALF, Tom Servo complete with translucent Life-Saver head, a Dalek victim, and more, but also a cake pan underside made into HAL’s brain room, a fondant Tardis, and an inside joke only a SF geek could love — that’s in addition to the Obvious Exploitable Weakness — then you start to realize it’s pretty amazing.  Oh, also, she made a brick wall out of 1,500 fondant bricks mortared with royal icing, and two tiled movie-theater carpets out of caned fondant.

Look, really you just need to click on the first link and look at the whole thing piece by piece, to appreciate its utter majesty.

The awesomeness of the creator, Kimberly Chapman, is not to be underestimated.  Her other works of cake and sugar art include a Periodic Table of Cookies, a Fraggle Rock cake, a Shelob cake and an Orc head cake.

HRSFANS supporting HRSFANS, especially those in greater Boston, should know that two HRSFANS are soon to open a restaurant, called “Journeyman,” in Somerville.

I don’t want to say too much more at this time, although many HRSFANS will be able to guess which two people I’m talking about.  I’m certain it’s going to be good.  In the past their cooking has been described as second in Boston only to L’Espalier (in print, no less!).

I encourage all interested parties to follow their blog (feed) and try them out after their expected open in late May 2010.

I’ve always been pretty skeptical of conventional greeting/thank you/etc. cards, in general. But I ran across a guy selling some really excellent cards of various sorts at a farmer’s market a couple of weeks ago, and couldn’t help but buy a few.  If you can imagine a Romanophile Edward Gorey and some of his friends going into the card-design business…that’s more or less the idea.

Anyway, today I received a thank-you note from the first recipient of one of the cards I bought. She wanted to know more about the creators, which led me to their website:

http://www.archelaus-cards.com/

The website was clearly designed by the same people who designed the cards. It’s worth checking out even if you haven’t (or hadn’t previously) the slightest interest in greeting cards.

Apparently (so says The Guardian), there’s a popular new poster in the UK, which reads, “Keep Calm and Carry On”. This poster was originally made during World War II, in case of a German invasion. Recently rediscovered, people are supposedly thronging to it (on the order of thousands), in an age where people want some security and comfort.

As you might imagine, I’m not a huge fan of this idea. Instead, what really appeals to me is this response poster from Matt Jones: “Get Excited and Make Things”! I think that we all have some (reasonable) tendency to simply enjoy things in fandom, but I think that we do better when we take it further and expand upon what others have done, when the things we love inspire us to new things. Don’t just be a passive observer and rely on someone else to take care of everything: take an active, positive role in creating something new! Get Excited and Make Things!

I feel like I shouldn’t need to preface this, because everyone should know Calvin and Hobbes already. But for those who don’t, it’s one of the best comic strips of all time, drawn by Bill Watterson from 1985 to 1995 (and rerunning on the web at gocomics.com). If you’ve somehow never seen it before, you’re missing out. I don’t really have words for how much I love Calvin and Hobbes.

Anyway, I was recently debating with a friend how Calvin and Hobbes ended, and came across this interesting collection of post-series takes on Calvin and Hobbes. The last one is the fake Calvin and Hobbes ending that broke my friend’s heart (and temporarily mine, before I came home to confirm that it was false). If you need a boost after seeing it, you can find the real final strip here.

I’m starting a collaborative blog at http://craftsblog.wordpress.com, so that HRSFANS with an interest in arts and crafts can write about the various projects they’re working on, detailing their travails and displaying their triumphs for the benefit of friends who live far away. So far, we’ve got posts on origami, cabling, two-sided embroidery, crocheted potholders, and a gryphon tapestry.

I know there are lots of HRSFAlums out there who are interested in crafts of various sorts, and you’re all welcome to join in the fun. Whether you’re an expert or a dabbler,  whether your particular passion is portraiture, papier-mache, spinning, or smithing… we’d love to have you.

You have to join word-press in order to become a member of the blog (though fortunately, this is quite painless). If you’d like to be added, comment below and I’ll send you an invite.

Kibbitzers are also welcome. We’ve got an RSS feed, and are syndicated on livejournal as “hrsfanscrafts”.

Apparently the freshmen of Caltech’s Blacker Hovse have constructed a 1500 sq. feet Catan board, upon which they played a truly epic game during finals. The pictures are pretty impressive.

I’m not generally inclined to encourage people to buy stuff, but since By The Sword is having a holiday sale this week, I thought this might be an appropriate moment to mention that it’s a really fun site for those of us whose aesthetics are grounded in another century. It mostly sells anachronistic clothes and weapons, but it’s got lots of other interesting stuff too: goblets, jewelry, artwork, miniatures, musical instruments, “home decorations”, etc. It also sells collectable merchandise in various fantastical settings (e.g. LotR, Pirates of the Caribbean), and equipment for LARPs. Essentially, it’s a little bit like shopping at a ren faire online.

Anyway, if you like that sort of thing, it’s a neat place either to shop or (more usually for me) to browse.