Ordinal's Cabinet of Ephemera

A selection of steampunk, Victoriana and Second Life news about which I do not really wish to write at length.

For longer nonsense, please see An Engine Fit For My Proceeding, and for shorter, see my Twitterings.

Aug 27

“ Famous inventor Thomas Edison is probably the most experienced note-taker in the world. His diary which is still maintained as an important part of the United States historical record contains five million (5,000,000) pages. Important developments such as his work on perfecting the light bulb and electric lighting systems are captured in great detail. He never met a sheet of paper he didn’t like.
What lessons can we take from his work today, a century later? How did his note-taking help him to become the world’s most famous inventor with over a thousand (1093) U.S. patents in his name for a wide range of technologies from movie cameras and phonographs to cement making and electric lighting? In short, what made his note-taking and filing system so great?
Edison’s system was developed to support his life work and was very successful in doing so. The main elements of his system are as follows:

— How to Take Notes like Thomas Edison - Stepcase Lifehack

Aug 21

“Idea Pad lets you easily draw a diagram - mind map, concept map, or flow chart - and convert it to a text outline, and vice versa. Diagrams can be exported to any desktop graphics program, and Outlines can be exported to any word processor via the Memo Pad. Use Idea Pad to brainstorm new ideas, illustrate concepts, plan presentations, and create organizational charts.”

nosleep software

Jul 30

» Hive Five Call For Contenders: Best Note-Taking Tools?

Jul 17

“ WebFlock is an application for private-labeled, Web-based virtual experiences. It provides a visually immersive environment for social interaction, media consumption and game play.

— The Electric Sheep Company: Products: WebFlock

Jul 10

New Babbage - A Steampunk City in Second Life (via Lokiboy)

Jun 29

“ Endorsement for resident help groups is an effort to allow good-standing resident-run resident help groups within Second Life to become endorsed by Linden Lab and be a part of the Resident Help Network. Groups with emphasis on helping new or experienced residents with Second Life related learning or immersion without charge are eligible. The desired outcome of the Resident Help Network is to stretch the boundaries of group efforts by uniting and collaborating in a network. For more details, see below!

— Introduction to Endorsed Resident Help Groups - Second Life Wiki

Jun 15

» he's a cold-hearted snake, look into his eyes (disgraceful Desmond Shang SL5B antics)

Jun 12

“ Shoshana Epsilon’s latest post backs up this account, and further reveals that Dusty Linden is attempting to block any image with a child and adult in the same picture, or any image of a child on or near a bed — even completely nonsexual, family-oriented pictures. Shoshana describes it as a blanket policy (no pun intended), not a case-by-case review to screen out images which are or could be construed as erotic images of children (or child-like avatars).

— Jacek Lives » Blog Archive » The Meddling Eye-in-Hand (via Massively)

May 26

“ In the 1930s, after his historic flight over the Atlantic, Lindbergh hooked up with Alexis Carrel, a brilliant surgeon born in France but who worked in a laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute in Manhattan. Carrel - who was a mystic as well as a scientist - had already won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the transplantation of blood vessels. But his real dream was a future in which the human body would become, in Friedman’s words, “a machine with constantly reparable or replaceable parts”.
This is where Lindbergh entered the frame. Carrel hoped that his own scientific nous combined with Lindbergh’s machine-making proficiency (Lindbergh had, after all, already built a plane that flew non-stop to Paris) would make his fantasy about immortal machine-enabled human beings a reality.

— BBC NEWS | Magazine | Lindbergh’s deranged quest for immortality

“

Given pride of place in an unassuming museum on the East Coast of America is a pair of 200-year-old duelling pistols shrouded in mystery.

The intricately decorated guns were said to have been forged from the iron of a fallen meteorite.

They were a unique gift from the commander of a South American region, which would later become Argentina, to the fourth US president, James Madison.

— BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Science probe for ‘space pistols’

Apr 15

» vintage ephemera - a set on Flickr

Mar 18