Bladesmithing a Sgian Dubh

No groom in a kilt is fully dressed without his trusty Sgian Dubh tucked in his hose. So, in preparation for my upcoming nuptials I started hunting around for one. Finding one I liked, however, proved to be a much more difficult task than I had first imagined. The commercial ones proved to be mere shadows of the real thing - flimsy, cheap, purely for show. By no means a fitting tool for defending my ladies' honour, nor prying open those pesky bottle tops at the reception.

Like all good interneters, my next thought was ebay. I figured heirloom, heritage, or at least military antiques wouldn't be too hard to find. Again, squat out of luck.

And then it hit me: somewhere in Ontario, outside of Black Creek village, a blacksmith must still be a toiling over the forge, ready to hammer out weapons great and small for the discerning and concerned. And were they ever. Enter Darrell Markewitz and Wareham Forge.

5 months, 41 emails, and a Canada Post shipment later, ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to introduce you to:



The full details of its materials and construction can be found here: "Pattern Welded Sgian Dubh" on Hammered Out Bits.

My great praise and thanks to Mr. Markewitz for infusing so much of his skill, talent, and passion into my beloved Sgian Dubh. I could not be more thrilled, nor appreciative. It's good to know that in a world where progress and efficiency are considered prime virtues there are still those who keep practiced in the old ways.

Smile

No disrespect but what's the point?


via: factum blog

The Vader Sessions

Tubes Remixed

For those who were not aware that the Internet is actually not "a big truck", but is instead "a series of tubes", we can thank Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens for setting us all straight on that point.

The full content of his speech is available here and affirms three things:

1. Senator Stevens is not very informed, intelligent and loves to interupt himself.
2. We cannot trust politicians to represent the users on the subject of Net Neutrality.
3. Ill-considered words spoken in public make for awesome DJ Remixes.

Image courtesy of Fremlog

Rethinking The Obvious

My brother Graham Walker makes some pretty cool travel videos from his visits to some pretty cool places at his video blog TravelVlog.
About a minute into the video you will see a very physical demonstration of how the obvious way isn't the only way. In this case the disruption isn't just different, but actually seems to be both more efficient and more elegant.

TTC Relics

When I was a kid, my great uncle, a TTC enthusiast extraordinaire, had occasion to reminisce about the history of our beloved subway system. He'd go on at length about the birth of the Yonge Line, 10 cent fares, and was even known to sing a rousing rendition of Hamill's Subway Song from time to time.

But it's always been the physical relics of this history that have really fanned the flames of my imagination: Toronto's Lost Subway Stations, The Rocket Graveyard at Wychwood, and the ditched tracks at Rogers Road and Mount Pleasant.

A part of me can get really Indiana Jones about these things. I've even given thought to mounting expeditions to explore the secrets that no doubt exist therein. Alas, from the looks of sites like UER, Urban Exploration Canada, and infiltration, exploring these dark recesses is difficult and dangerous to put it mildly.

That said, if the crews of Darkman, Johnny Mnemonic, and Due South can gain access perhaps all is not lost?

Virtual Vendors

According to CBC radio 3, real-life clothes retailer American Apparel is selling outfits to avatars in Second Life. No surprise, your virtual duds will cost real money.

CBC Radio 3

more unwise projects by an underemployed bachelor

Yes, and since my last project (a tottering ancient cedar rail octagon ten feet high) didnt kill me, I continue to tempt the gods with this. Also building on the back breaking work of our noble yet doomed Eastern Ontario pioneers, I am dragging out the rocks they worked so hard to move to the edge of this field and putting them right back. this time in wall form. no mortar at all, just sweet, crushing gravity. The wasps seem to be taking an interest in it.

Hi I'm a Mac!

Funny and sometimes true :)

Failure

I used to dread long drives on summer weekends, but now I just see them as opportunities to catch up on podcasts. So last night while driving home I caught up on Business Week's Eureka, We Failed, which really got me thinking about how fear of failure is really plaguing the communications industry.

In Canada, we love to delude ourselves, that our clients are the decision-makers, but truthfully many marketing clients in Canada act like branch plants (or even just distribution arms) for their American/Global counterparts. Product development, communication strategies, web content, 30-second spots, and you-name-it are often rammed down our throat unless we can manufacture a focus group or white paper proving that "it won't work here". Now sometimes "Canadianizing" American content makes good efficient sense and sometimes it doesn't, so I am not railing against the practice in general. What does irk me is how this practice compounds the Canadian risk-averse nature (note that I didn't use the term conservative). Sometimes, we just act like chickens.

I firmly believe that communications operates like an evolutionary system, meaning the messages/memes/ideas that get noticed are the ones are best suited to their audience. This suitability is extremely difficult to predict. So trial and error in messaging and delivery is the very lifeblood of successful communications. This doesn't mean randomly replacing word's or images and seeing if it works (as evolutionary mutation does with genes), it is more like how domestic animals have been artificially selected for desirable traits and selectively bred (i.e. cows with big milk udders or dogs for every function/appearance imaginable).

So let's create a culture where it is okay to experiment and fail, as long as you are smart about it. The Business Week podcast, mentioned the notion of a writing a "failure resumé" where various personal and professional failures are detailed and lessons learned from them are discussed. This seems like a great idea to me for communications professionals, which is supposed to be a creative industry. At the very least, I am going to start asking some leading questions to prospective employees about past failures in my next interviews.

Create. Fail. Adapt. Succeed.

Cross-post from Webwalker

Giggles and Wisdom since November 2005

Need to know about Net Neutrality, Podcasting, or how to avoid watching Merchant Ivory films? There's only one solution: ask a ninja.

Genetic Genealogy

The DNA ancestry project is a really interesting and useful idea - send away for their kit, swab the old mouth, send your spit in to their labs and:

"Find out where your ancestors came from, their ethnic background, and how they have scattered throughout the world today."

As an avid genealogist this is perhaps one of the most tempting and powerful ideas since the LDS database. Yet I can't bring myself to do it. The idea of having my DNA on file scares the crap out of me - especially when it's on file in Bush's fatherland.

Am I crazy? Paranoid? Would you?

The 1959 Electric Blender

My mother has an old upright GE blender, bought in the late 1950's. Its white and brown with a variable speed slider on the bottom. It is the only blender she has ever bought, not because she's cheap (she isn't), but rather because the damn thing still works perfectly. My mom is an excellent cook, so it's had a great deal of use in the last 46 years or so.
I can't imagine, in this day and age, owning an appliance for 46 years. I don't know what the lifespan of the average appliance is, not in how long it works but rather how long you keep it.


Maybe we need a new word, rather than lifespan, it's keepspan.Can you imagine the economic consequences of keeping an appliance for 46 years, I am not talking about digital appliances, but simple motor and switch appliances. It would be catastrophic, I know that's not news to anyone, but it's fascinating nonetheless.How did they get that blender, so damn right?, I mean its never been serviced, tuned up, tuned down or even had the blade replaced (and its chopped more Ice than an Eskimo).
My mother, born from tough Glasgow Scottish roots, (As opposed to Edinburgh roots, there is a difference you know, just feel thier hands as my grandma used to say) just seems to understand that that the brand new programmable $400.00 blender with 52 customizable settings, makes pretty much the same milkshake as her's but with an exponentially higher amount of confusion and grief.

Which brings me to, somehow, something else I find fascinating. The 1950's.I wasn't born in the 50's so there's no first hand experience here, just conjecture and historical persuasion.
It is actually (from a North American perspective) the decade I like the least;Mcarthyism, Eisenhower, Diefenbieker, Bad Music (I cant stand Elvis, and no he didnt invent Rock'n'Roll), Atomic proliferation, the Nuclear family was born (you know the one, Dad sitting on the wing chair, reading the newspaper, puffing his pipe. The two children, usually a boy and a girl sitting dutifully on the floor in blissfull serenity and Mom baking away in the kitchen). That's the family values archetype on which the Republican Revolution has ridden its corrupt manifesto on, in the last two elections, The Korean War and the demise of the Avro Arrow.
One thing though oddly stands out, Design and Innovation flourished, in every element. Every facet of modern life went through a makeover. There was no Retro or looking in the past for ideas, everything was bold, new and invigorating.It's possible that was simply a reaction to fifteen years of economic depression and War, and I am sure that played a large part in what happened, but I think there was something else going on and I'd like to find out what it was, any ideas ?