A Climbable Bookshelf.

Oh do I ever have bookshelf and house envy right now. Raging envy. This is such a good idea! And all that spaciousness and light!

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are lovely, and can act as a robust focal point in any home. But accessing the high shelves can be a problem. The common side-kick has always been ladders, which can also add character and charm. But for smaller homes like in Japan they can be a nuisance, occupying too much space for not enough usage. But Japanese architect Shinsuke Fujii came up with a simple, yet brilliant solution that solves another problem too: earthquake safety.

The “House in Shinyoshida,” as it’s called, named for the neighborhood in Yokohama where it stands, was conceived shortly after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. The client, who happened to be an avid book lover, approached Fujii with the task to design a home around a large bookshelf that’s both easily accessible but also one that won’t spill all the books if there’s ever a tremor.

The solution was to slant the entire western-facing façade and create a built-in slanted bookshelf whose shelves also function as a ladder.

You can read and see more at Spoon & Tamago.

Pointy!

From Charly, who I think is being much too modest:

This is the first knife I have made with the help of my out-of-scraps built belt sander and my drill powered lathe. Because this was a learning exercise for me, I took a bunch of old worthless stuff – a rusty file, rusty pipe, some old hinges, broken furniture legs and a piece of cow bone dug out of the ground in the garden. I have also deliberately used only the machines to do most of the work, including polishing – I wanted to see what kind of fit and finish I will be able to get this way.

Because it was learning exercise and because the materials were of bad quality (the pipes were a bit too rusty, I sanded through them at a few places) the result is not something too great, but it is sharp, pointy and dangerous. The design is a sort of hybrid between the Fairbarn-Sykes and a medieval rondel dagger and I freehanded most of it, with almost no measurements.

Stats: overall lenght 33,5 cm, blade length 22 cm, work time approx 12 hours (not including curing of the paint)

I am not intending to stab anyone, but it is extremely good letter opener. Click for full size!

© Charly, all rights reserved.

Beer Names: Enter the Neural Network.

Saison is a pale ale, usually cloudy gold in color, with fruity, spicy flavors. Adam Barhan/CC BY 2.0.

Naming beers is a tricky business in the age of the microbrew. America has well over 5,000 breweries, and almost every beer name imaginable seems to have been taken. Cities, trees, weather patterns, and critters alike have been thoroughly mined, and brewers are wringing their hands (or, sometimes, getting embroiled in legal battles) in the effort to come up with a novel name for a new recipe.

Enter the neural network. Following a Gizmodo article about the dearth of new beer names, scientist Janelle Shane decided to sic artificial intelligence on this all-important task. And now, Old National Brewing Company, based in Williamston, Michigan, has launched what’s almost certainly the first beer named by a neural network: The Fine Stranger, a New England Double Dry-Hopped Saison.

[…]

The network allowed Shane to dial up or down the creativity. At its lowest setting, the beers were very (appropriately) French:

Saison Du Bear
Saison Du Farmer
Saison De Man
Saison De Mountain
Saison Du Chard
Saison Du Pant
Saison De Life
Saison De La Mort

[…]

But as creativity was dialed up, “the good ones got better and the bad ones got a lot worse,” she wrote. Until, that is, she pushed it up to full-tilt creativity, and the neural network went bonkers. “I stopped,” she wrote. “Perhaps you can understand why.”

Nerlious
Funky Ever
varumper
Saison De Mage
Clushing
Fleur Dull?
Beoobegie Nard
Stutty Rye
Undonchop
Plop Aged
The Sprong
Greenhunke
Mal?

The brewer eventually chose a name from one of the middle tiers, at the same creativity level as “Burcumber Jane Rad” and “Don’t The Mountain.” The Fine Stranger sounds convincingly like a saison—but great beer names for other styles are still up for grabs. Anyone for a tall, frosty Yampy?

Atlas Obscura has the full story. I think this is a fine idea, for jump-starting stalled imaginations. And ‘Don’t Tell The Mountain’ would be a good name.

Brewery Biosensors.

Just stay clear of their claws. Fredlyfish4/CC BY-SA 4.0.

There are an endless number of decisions that a brewer can make about a beer recipe, but one ingredient—water—seems like it should be an afterthought. But even for the most basic, cheap beers, brewers pay a lot of attention to water chemistry. If it’s too alkaline, or full of minerals and other contaminants, it will impact the flavor of the final product. So they carefully test their water sources to make sure they’re good enough—and now one brewery in the Czech Republic has hired some tiny new employees to take over this task. They’re paid in food. Because they’re crayfish.

[…]

At the Protivin Brewery—brewers of the Platan family of beers—Reuters reports, they can show whether water pumped from a local natural source is safe to use. Five of the clawed arthropods have infrared sensors mounted on their backs that monitor their heart rates and movement. A portion of the water headed for the brew kettle is diverted to their tank, and if three or more of the crayfish have elevated heart rates, or start moving around a lot, a computer will tell brewers within three minutes that there’s a problem.

The brewery is working with scientists from the University of South Bohemia to develop this biosensor system, which they plan to continue upgrading. Cameras that can monitor the crayfishes’ hearts are a planned addition. The system remains experimental, so brewers still have to monitor water quality in a lab.

Anything in the name of a good beer! Via Atlas Obscura.

From Finance to Fiber.

Misz Ajdacki.

Misz Ajdacki.

A motley crew of fuzzy creatures are lurking in a forest somewhere, thanks to a financial analyst turned fiber artist. Using natural wool and a combination of felting techniques, Misz Ajdacki makes a living creating unique sculptures. Although there isn’t a specific theme to his body of work, Ajdacki often combines the whimsical with the anthropomorphic, adding hats, ties, and even leather shorts to various woodland creatures that reflect the absurdity of the corporate world he left behind.

“There are hordes of creatures milling around my head. Some just pop out, some need more time to ripen. They are built from me, my experiences, memories, from the stories I hear, things I read, see, watch. Life itself is quite inspiring, but most of them come from the center of me,” Ajdacki tells Creators.

There’s much more to read and see at The Creators Project.

See more of Misz Ajdacki’s creations on his website and look out for upcoming projects, like a spider brooch, bunny epaulets, and more bears on Instagram.