^back
to home  digitalkOmiX
RSS feed |
|
29 Apr 2008 THE DESERT WITHIN |
|
Talking about fatherhood, I suggest you the novel "The Road",
by Cormac McCarthy.
Father and child stumble across a nuclear desert avoiding contact with what
remains of humanity. The landscape is gray, ashy and oppressive, colors
survive only in dreams, or on the surface of a coke can skipped by looters.
And from landscape, McCarthy lyrically diverts to hallucinated concerns on
mankind. Occasionally I had to shut down the book, due to the anguish and
pity overwhelming me: protect the child, because if he dies, life has no
meaning at all. |
 |
|
|
|
24 Apr 2008 CRACK! INTERNATIONAL
COMIX FESTIVAL |
 Illustration:
Anna
Ehrlemark. |
|
|
|
18 Apr 2008 THE SILENCE OF THE BASS
GUITAR |
|
Finally I saw "The
Future is Unwritten", a documentary by Julien Temple on Joe Strummer,
leader of The Clash. As a fan, the movie often touched my heart, as a man it
made me question: "Where am I at?" But one thing, maybe more than Joe
Strummer's loss, left me highly disturbed: the silence of the bass player,
Paul Simonon. I've always admired him, because he was handsome, cool and
tender, clumsy in his first performances, classy later on. A hard worker, a
classmate rather than an elder brother like Strummer. His absence in the
movie seems to endure the hostile atmosphere that poisoned the backstage as
The Clash disrupted. Beyond death. |
 |
|
I saw Joe and Paul play toghether twice in Rome,
mid eighties and mid nineties. Second time they performed "Straight to Hell",
one of my favourite tunes (I used it as a lullaby to put my daughter asleep!).
In that moment, they were playing for me. |
 |
 |
|
|
|
06 Apr 2008 SHRINKIKEA |
|
IKEA products are
undergoing an interesting shrinking process. A case history of this
disturbing phenomenon is described further. |
 |
|
Image shows LAMPLIG, a stainless
steel travit purchased in 2001 (boiler is a non-IKEA item). LAMPLIG has 10
ribs spanning 30cm, and it weights 1500 grams. |
 |
|
Same article seven years later. Two
ribs disappeared, width shortened to 25.5cm and weight decreased to 600
grams. Rib diameter is constant, while rib interleave slightly increases. |
 |
|
The graph above assumes that
shrinking process is linear in time. According to this, LAMPLIG will become
weightless during the summer of 2012, and will continue to lose ribs at a
rate of two each seven years. |
 |
|
LAMPLIG as shown on the 2029 edition
of the IKEA catalogue. |
|
|
|
25 Mar 2008 SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE |
|
Last week (19 March)
Sir Arthur C. Clarke performed his final
lift off and now probably occupies a geo-stationary orbit above the Indian
Ocean. He was widely known for writing "2001, a Space Odyssey", but I prefer
his early works, rock solid, hardcore sci-fi like "Prelude to Space", "Shadows
on the Moon", "Islands in the Sky". |
 |
|
My grandfather bought the
italian
edition of "Islands in the Sky" in 1954. I can imagine my father (a
pre-teenager at that time) reading it, and I imagine his feelings, as the
main character of the story was a boy and a space-age enthousiast, just like
him. I devoured the same pages about twenty years later, I remember Sir
Arthur explaining me the basic physic principles of space travel. |
 |
|
There's another book by Sir Arthur that I consider a
milestone of my personal sci-fi addiction, a short tale collection. Among
them are some of the pinnacles of his production, i.e. "Rescue Party"
("Spedizione di Soccorso" in italian), "The Star", "The Nine Billions of
Names of God", "Summer on Icarus". What left me breathless, reading them
over and over, was their final, the last ten words that overturned and gave
new meanig to the whole tale. Since then, I stated that a good story should
be written beginning from it's end. |
 |
|
Here are some of my drawings from the
mid eighties. They are not directly related with Sir Arthur, but they
strongly witness my background. |
 |
|
Computheroes was intended to be a
serie of short comics. Fellows with jacks sticking from their brain where in
direct contact with powerful machines. |
 |
|
An aracno-mobile. A similar vehicle
can be seen in
"Ghost in the Shell". |
 |
|
Hibernaut. Space travels are
something for lonesome folks. |
|
|
|
10 Feb 2008
COMMANDER |
|
I like homemade carnival disguises.
My son wanted a Transformer outfit, he loves the
1986 version of Optimus Prime (Commander in italian). |
 |
|
First we did some research, drew
sketches, took measures. The mask proportions were obtained folding a sheet
of paper around my son's head. |
 |
|
Elements of the outfit were drafted
with CAD and plotted in full scale. Download
here the AutoCAD file (64kB). |
 |
|
Paper was spray glued on cardboard
(light for mask, heavy for body and other elements), cut and folded. |
 |
|
Below you can see my son proudly
wearing his Commander disguise. Check out this site for amazing
paper robots! |
 |