Smiling Savage Kiosk #8

A list of related, tangental, or inspirational links shared from this week's browser history

An image of the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277 with a red filter by the NASA James Webb Space Telescope on March 13, 2022. One of the first images from the telescope, it marks the successful completion of the the “fine phasing” stage of alignment.

Photography

• Show your support of Smiling Savage with the limited edition Airplane tee…

  

  Available right here

• I’ve been enjoying the “Glass” iPad app and definitely think viewing photos on the iPad is enjoyable. Here are some black and white gems I liked from the last several days (One, Two, Three). It’s easy to appreciate the niche they’re trying to fill, left by Instagram both choosing to ignore the iPad and being loaded with advertising. That said, I wonder how many people will find it worth $5/month.

• I’m looking forward to trying out two paper sample kits — Photo Base Sample Kit and Fine Art & Photography Discovery Kit — from Red River Paper. I’ll plan to post results.

• Related, I’ve been studying up on black and white digital darkroom technique and thought these were all helpful…

• And I’m reading up on how to engrave photos onto wood and other materials with a Glowforge. Again, I’ll plan to post results when I have some…

Music

A couple of new songs from old bands that I recently enjoyed are Voyage by Berlin and If the World Should End Today by Men Without Hats.

Leave it in the Dust, new alternative folk music by The Accidentals, is simply great.

This week’s earworm: Complete Mess by 5 Seconds of Summer. (No snark intended, but this song sounds really familiar but I can’t put my finger on why.)…

Retro Computing

This BBS — available through the web as well as dial-up — offers the ability to send a tweet from your classic computer.

Here’s a wifi cartridge for the Commodore 64, which could be fun.

Equally cool, here’s a floppy drive replacement for Atari 8-bit computers that uses SD cards…

retrotechtive @retrotechtive

The SDrive-MAX 😍 This new arrival took a while to get here, but should at last open up the real potential of my #Atari 800XL. #retrocomputing

Gaming

• Elden ring is hard. Personally I liked this guide to making the magic-user class live a little bit longer…

Writing

• This thread about mysterious building in the English countryside is entertaining…

Paul Whitewick @PaulWhitewick

The Mystery Air Shafts. 1 THREAD 🧵 A few weeks back whilst looking for some plague villages on the Dorset Chalk uplands, I came across this. Not the Hill Fort. The Two Airshafts.

• And if you’ve ever wondered about why some pizza — as I’ve seen in the Midwest — is cut square, this thread will hook you up…

Doug Mack @douglasmack

So I’ve done the research and now I need to tell you the long and glorious history of square-cut pizza, a true delicacy of the Midwest (and beyond). It involves both blue-collar bars and international diplomats. Also pipe organs. HISTORY THREAD. (1)

• This article about Burnout by Charlie Tyson in The Baffler gives some nice background on the malady which is everywhere in the 2020s. (Spotted from Arts & Letters Daily)

• Something In the Way from Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind hit the Billboard charts for the first time in 31 years thanks to being featured in the movie The Batman. (Spotted from The Retro)

Electric Transportation

• This article says E-bikes are booming — again — because of high gas prices, but I’m not convinced there’s much correlation there. E-bike sales have been trending up for years now.

• In any case, this related article makes the point that electric bike incentives are languishing because it’s a blind spot for both politicians and environmentalists — and that makes a lot of sense.