Jumping Pictures
Jumping with Tourists

Ascent Stage

Moleskine notebooks are somewhat faddish right now, but damn they are useful. And there are plenty of sites out there that detail ways to make them more so. Moleskine hacks, so to speak. Here’s my own: a holding mechanism for the Fisher Space Pen.

This is why the Moleskine notebook has, and will continue to out strip the poseurs; the inovative page designs. Also check out the Moleskine music book.
Moleskine Story Board Notebook, MoleskineUS

The new Moleskine Storyboard notebook is ideal for advertising creatives, graphic designers, filmmakers, and cartoonists. Each page consists of a sequence of storyboard frames for drawing mini-stories. The first half of the book has two frames per page - the last half has four frames per page along the left side, with room to write text to the right of each frame. A great productivity tool to help create graphic and narrative depictions.
pad.

FlickrBlog
Where to start? Well, while on a trip to Tokyo, Flickr user Matt took the picture to the left. It’s a neat “meta” picture of an interesting looking phototgrapher taking a picture of an interesting bunch of teenagers in hip Harajuku putting on some sort of performance. A nice photograph. (Matt took a few more of these meta pictures while in Harajuku .)

But then… He posted the photo to Flickr, where someone saw it and recognized the interesting looking photographer from her tattoo. He sent her a link to Matt’s photo, she joined Flickr and posted the photo (below left) she was taking at the time Matt took his photo! (CherryVega posted a wonderful collection of photos, including this one, that she took in the Tokyo Streets.)

Sanctum mekkanicum: My notebook Terry pen holder hack
I have an original Terry that has been with me since the late seventies. Most of time it has gathered dust in my box of useful-someday-things. Of couple of days ago, in a sudden rush of inspiration, I hacked the pen clip on the back cover of my notebook:

Yahoo! News - Co. to Advertise on Neb. Man’s Forehead
Andrew Fischer, 20, of Omaha, who put his forehead for sale on eBay as advertising space, received $37,375 on Friday to advertise the snoring remedy, SnoreStop.

Fischer will display the SnoreStop logo on his forehead for one month.

Critters Writers’ Workshop
Critters is an on-line workshop/critique group for serious writers of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. You get your work critiqued in exchange for critiquing the work of others, both of which are invaluable ways to improve your writing. It’s run by Dr. Andrew Burt, currently vice-president of SFWA, and his army of software minions. Critters is free (except for the work of doing critiques!); if you find Critters useful, you may make a donation (appreciated but in no way required).

The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjo
The only difference between this document and the book sold in stores is that this one is free. You can read it, send it to a friend, display a copy on your web site and, most of all, use it to learn how to play the banjo without spending a dime. You can even print it out if you wish. However, you will most likely spend more on paper and ink printing it yourself than you would by just buying a copy of the book.

SiliconBeat: Video search and the future
Clearly, the Yahoo Search team is not going to let Google steal all the good press anymore. So even before the embargo lifted on the Google news, Yahoo announced that it was linking to its new beta video search service from its home page (Google Video is staying in the Google labs for now) and adding the ability to search closed captioned programming.

If you give a man a postcard he’ll write a note; give him a place to send the postcard and you have an art exhibit.
PostSecret
My favorite postcard was lost before it could be displayed. When I pulled it from the mailbox, I noticed that it looked weathered and had creases indicating it had been folded into quarters. The card was filled with two vertical lists of grocery items; milk, cheese, chicken, etc. But squeezed in the lower left corner was a revealing admission, "I am still struggling with what I’ve become."