The Covert Family Website

I was strolling through Borders over lunch today and I came across a very interesting book called “The Museum of Lost Wonder”.  This thing has to bee seen to believed.  I’ve told Tammy, this is what I want for Christmas.

http://www.lostwonder.org/

“Part do-it-yourself picture book, part fantastical history of science exhibition, The Museum of Lost Wonder demonstrates the strangeness of the everyday. Jeff Hoke deploys the seven stages of alchemy to order a material universe that embraces quantum physics to phrenology, the memory theater of the ancients to Descartes’ cross-eyed girl. Along the way, our synaptic pathways get rearranged; we’re encouraged to make surprising connections, to move from mere pattern recognition to the fabrication of imaginative scenes.”

  -Barbara Maria Stafford, Professor of Art History, University of Chicago, author of Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen.

For un-estimable reasons (alignment of the celestial stars?), I got a purchasing whim and decided I shouldn’t have given that pen away.  So off I go online to find the same one.  Turns out Rotring has been bought by Sanford, makers of Sharpie, etc.  They don’t currently make that exact model anymore.  eBay to the rescue.  $21 later and I’ve got a close approximation of my old pen, the Rotring Silver 600 Ballpoint.

I didn’t want black anymore.  Silver is the new black.  And, while I was at it, end-caps are so… 1800’s.  Aren’t they?  So that was gone as well.

Now I don’t want the most expensive pen around, just a few basic qualities:

• nice flowing ink
• decent weight - plastic Bics are disposable for a reason
• good looks - see line above

The Rotring 600 has everything but the ink.  Although the ballpoint that came with it is ok, it just can’t stack up to a nice G2 Gel refil.  It’ll have to go.  Overall, though I’m pretty impressed.  The extra weight makes the pen feel a bit more balanced when writing on the ‘ol moleskine journal.

Per The Guardian Unlimited, here are the top 20 geek novels.

And, of course, Slashdot’s take is here:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/21/045241&from=RSS

1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—Douglas Adams
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four—George Orwell
3. Brave New World—Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—Philip Dick
5. Neuromancer—William Gibson
6. Dune—Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot—Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation—Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic—Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs—Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash—Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen—Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon—Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas—Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land—Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle—Philip K Dick
17. American Gods—Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age—Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy—Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndhamd

The library of Congress has a new online exhibit on woodcuts.  Good stuff.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/heavenlycraft/

The New York Public Library has a really nice collection of high-quality digital images from Art, History, Culture, etc.

Very easy to browse and select your favorites.  Good stuff.

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/

Mike Shae, of http://www.mikeshea.net has a nice little article on rollerball and fountain pens.  Very good read.  I went out and immediately got the G2 he mentions in the top of the article.

http://www.mikeshea.net/articles/001271.html

Now, I just need to find a good moleskine journal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moleskine
http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Moleskines
http://moleskineus.com/ruledpocket.html

Neal Stephenson has responed via Slashdot to a number of really good questions.  His answers and narrative are on par with the quality of his work in general.

Worth the read.  Interview Here

The book section is now back up.  For a while it went down due to an incompatiblity with php5 I had installed.

Feel free to stop by and see what myself and others are reading, and if you’re registered, add a book yourself.

I know it’s god-awful slow on page loads, so I apologize ahead of time.