Smallist

Thanks, MetaFilter, for all your kind comments this weekend! And thanks, Josh, for posting.

The MeFites had some great small links of their own. Puke & Cry reminded everyone of Harvey Birdman’s nemesis, the Reductor. Rhomboid found a series of keychain drives even smaller than Sony’s. And quin had a story about this tiny cat.

On the art front, ericb had Willard Wigan’s microsculptures, and this eensy weensy street art that’s been popping up around London. And miniature books too. I really like the origami-like copy of Robert Frost’s A Patch of Old Snow. The descriptive blurb is longer than the poem.

ClaudiaCenter mentioned the fantastic Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, which were recently featured on Oprah, and was actually one of the inspirations for me to start blogging about small things. (Yes, I occasionally get ideas from Oprah. No, not that “The Secret” crap.)
They’re truly works of art, in that they challenge the way we see shelter. The house becomes a thing within a larger environment, instead of an escape from the environment. It’s the absolute opposite of a McMansion, which absorbs every square foot of its lot.

That said, they also seem to suffer from the SUV commercial fallacy: Sure, if you had acres of land in Montana to have one as a camping spot, it’d be a fun trip. But am I really going to tow one of these to an empty lot in Westchester?

I knew about shutdown day. I signed up for shutdown day. Then, yesterday, I forgot to shut down.

With their connotation of grandfatherly wisdom, reading glasses give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, especially when Kirk and Homer wear them. But presbyopia (farsightedness) is an unavoidable consequence of aging, and it means that eight years from now, I’m going to have to squint to read the spaceport schedule from my fourth generation iPhone.

For the occasional user, there’s this wallet-sized pince-nez version. But personally I can’t imagine fishing through my wallet every time I need to read something. It would serve as a disincentive to read, and before long I’d be asking people what was on the menu. There are also folding options, including these hideous reading-glasses-on-a-stick by Swarovski. But if I had the means and the need, I’d go with this quizzing glass. Quizzing glasses have half the lenses, and are a lot more styish. You might remember them from the famous New Yorker cover.

You can’t LASIK presbyopia away, but doing the LASIK for regular nearsightedness is said to help a bit. There is a new surgical option, however: The Acufocus inlay, a lens the size of a grain of rice which is placed under your cornea. It’s still in trial but the kinks should be out by the time I hit 40. So you can all rest easy: I’ll be fine.

Oh, and there’s exercises you can do to slow down the onset of presbyopia. But who are we kidding, really?

When I think of what a “Xenoglaux” could be, I imagine some sort of oracular monster that can scan your brain and explode it. But it means “strange owl”, and in fact it’s a 5-inch tall owlet. An owlet being a miniature owl, just like towelette is a miniature towel. And it hasn’t been seen in the wild since its discovery in 1976… until February. Maybe it came out to warn us of the perils of global warning. Or to tell us to read books. Or not litter. In any case, I’m sure it’s going to guilt-trip us about something right before exploding our brains. More here.

For the pony set, there’s the world’s smallest horse, Thumbelina, who made the news for a new charity auction. Miniature horses are simply bred to be small, just like a toy-sized dog. But Thumbelina is a miniature who also suffers from dwarfism. The owners probably have to beat George Lucas back with a stick.

Finally, there’s Knut, the 15-week-old polar bear at the Berlin Zoo who has become a star in recent weeks. In a brilliant PR move, animal rights campaigners suggested euthanasia because he’s been reared by humans. But OMG LOL he’s adorable !!!

Like many of you in the blog world, I have been seduced by David Allen’s promise of personal productivity. But like many of you, I lapse more than a nudist Catholic on a casual Friday. (note: rework joke, it makes no sense) Actually I lapse before I finish the book. I start out hopeful, enticed by the Lockean promise of the phrase “fresh paper,” and I start setting up buckets and contexts and whatnot. Then a few pages later, he uses the word “actionable,” and I have to put it down, take ten seconds, and reaffirm my basic political affiliations and instincts.

The basic problem with GTD is that for someone starting from complete disorganization, it’s too grandiose. I’m a fan of baby steps — incremental improvements that reward you enough to keep you playing.

Whence, the Writing Shit Down plan. Here are the rules:

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So we’ve sailed small, now let’s fly small:

The Cri-Cri ultralight was developed in the seventies by French aircraft designer Michel Colomban, whose goal was an sub-$1000 (1970 dollars) aerobatic ultralight. It weighs 139 pounds in its original configuration, making it the lightest airplane in existence. You can also put tiny R/C jets on it, as depicted in the photo, to get up to 150 mph.

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By popular demand:

I mentioned that, earlier in the show, a drug joke - and I hate to do that, because it creates a mess, and I’m not into drugs any more. I quit completely, and I hate people who are still into it. Well.. I do take one drug now - for fun - and, maybe you’ve heard of it, it’s a new thing, I don’t know if you have or not. It’s a new thing, it makes you small. [ indicates size with fingers ] About this big. And, you know, I’ll be home, sitting with my friends, and, uh.. we’ll be sitting around, and somebody will say, “Heeeyyy.. let’s get small!” So, you know, we get small, and uh.. the only bad thing is if some tall people come over. You’re walking around going, “Ah hahaha..!” Now, I know I shouldn’t get small when I’m driving.. but I was driving around the other day, and I said, “What the heck?” You know? So I’m driving like.. [ extends arms high in the air like he’s reaching up to a giant steering wheel ] And, uh.. a cop pulls me over. And he makes me get out, he looks at me and he says, “Heyyy.. are you small”? I said, “No-o-o! I’m not!” He said, “Well, I’m gonna have to measure you.” They have this little test they give you - they give you a balloon.. and if you can get inside of it, they know you’re small. Now, I’ve already talked it over with the cast - they’ve been working all week, it’s a tough thing to do, come out here live. Immediately after the show, we’re all gonna go out.. and get really small!

Thanks for reminding me, Matt!

Put a GPS unit in your camera and it’s going to get a bit larger. That’s because it needs to crunch the numbers it gets from the satellites, which takes power and more circuitry.

These guys realized that your camera doesn’t need to know where the pictures were taken until you get home. So their solution is to record the satellite readings onsite when the picture is taken. The result is a very tiny chip, and very little power consumed.

Is this the best solution? I don’t know, I’d probably pick the slightly bigger camera that can tell me where I am. But then, modularizing the antenna is a smart design move. Given the huge number of general purpose computers out there, it makes sense to split the receiver from the brains, wherever possible. I could see this being used in smartphones. The iPhone, for instance…

This little thing is making the rounds today. Very cute, Sony. But when you say something like this:

Micro Vault Virtual Expander will compress your data to virtually store about 3 times** as much data!

David A. Huffman* rolls over in his grave. Kids, remember: your mp3’s won’t compress. They’re already compressed. So are your jpegs. This will only help if you’re carrying around the complete works of William Shakespeare in text files. So when you go to your cool friend’s house and try to open your elite filez to show off, and you find out he has a Mac, all is lost.

Still though, cool drive. And it comes in four colors.

Sigh. I suppose I must mention Wired’s “Snack Attack” issue, since it seems on-topic for a block about Smallist. My reluctance stems from Wired’s editorial tone, which has been like a fifteen year crack-fueled manifesto entitled Everything is Awesome. Manifestos exhaust me.

Be that as it may, they do get some decent talent to write for them, and there’s a few great little pieces here:

• The art of the TV recap, which have gained in complexity since the days of the occasional two-part Golden Girls. Art loves constraints! (More on this in a later post)
• A chart of the 23 ways — and 403 separate SKU’s — to market a single album.
• My brother swears by these Target clinics. They’re cheap and effective.