I took the bus down the road yesterday morning to Morecombelake and walked back over the top of Golden Cap, the highest point on Dorset’s coast, through Seatown and Eype and back via West Bay.
South West Coast Path looking east from Golden Cap
South West Coast Path looking west from Golden Cap
South West Coast Path looking east towards Golden Cap
Just spent the day with my friend Mace, who runs green wood working courses. We set a pole lathe (a traditional foot powered lathe) up for turning bowls. Here’s the results, an 8 inch bowl in ash (you can clearly see the long spiral tool marks which are found on medieval bowls):
Pole lathe turned bowl in ash
I burnished it (polishing it with a handful of shaving while still on the pole lathe) which even slightly burnt the edge of the bowl:
Detail of edge of bowl - see where it's been slightly burnt while burnishing
The bowl is so thin (about 7-8mm) and it’s still green so the sun shines through it quite easily (but not easy to photograph!):
Sunlight shining through the green wood bowl
This is the coolest piece of modelling software I’ve ever seen. If you’ve ever struggled to even resize a cube in Blender then you’ll love this:
http://www.sculptris.com/index.html
Here’s a demo on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DNRg6pdNeE
Better still, it runs beautifully under Wine on Linux.
Cory Doctorow is an unusual writer. His “Down and out in the Magic Kingdom” is an absolute classic and gave us the word “whuffie”.
He also gives his books away for free. He’s just been interviewed by New Scientist.
He talks about priracy and DRM and comes out with some beautiful quotes:
Obscurity, not piracy, is the biggest problem writers face. In the 21st century, if you are not making art with the intention of it being copied, you are not making contemporary art.
That’s how we are, we are descendents of molecules formed a million years ago because they figured out how to replicate themselves. We have a name for things that don’t copy themselves: dead.
His new book, For The Win, is out now:
http://craphound.com/ftw/
and amazingly is available for free download:
http://craphound.com/ftw/download/
I can’t vouch for it since I haven’t read it but Down and out in the Magic Kingdom is brilliant:
http://craphound.com/down/download.php
Enjoy. And welcome to the strange world of 21st century publishing.
