Meanwhile #033
Putting the gear under cold ocean water could fix the problem.
This is an old edition of Meanwhile from an inferior, more simian newsletter platform that has unhelpfully severed all the hyperlinks. It’s included here in the archive simply for sake of completion.
Who lives in the Barbican Estate?
Photographer Anton Rodriguez shoots and interviews residents of London's brutal utopia. I'm sure they're all lovely people, but seriously, damn them all.
Barnes/Dean
For twenty years, author Julian Barnes has worked with the same book designer, Suzanne Dean, creative director of Vintage. In an interview with journalist Alex Clark, they discuss the design of Barnes’ new novel, The Noise of Time, and their working relationship.
Microsoft are trialling underwater data centres
“Today’s data centers, which power everything from streaming video to social networking and email, contain thousands of computer servers generating lots of heat. When there is too much heat, the servers crash. Putting the gear under cold ocean water could fix the problem. It may also answer the exponentially growing energy demands of the computing world because Microsoft is considering pairing the system either with a turbine or a tidal energy system to generate electricity.”
Secret router inside rock streams files when powered by fire
“Visitors are invited to make a fire next to the boulder to power up the wifi router in the stone which then reveals a large collection of PDF survival guides. The router which is NOT connected to the Internet offers the users [an opportunity] to download the guides and upload any content they like to the stone database. As long as the fire produces enough heat the router will stay switched on.”
Morioka Shoten
This tiny Japanese bookstore only sells one title at a time. Interesting idea. Curationism taken to its logical extreme, and a refreshing antithesis to the overwhelming variety offered by other booksellers.
+ Two girls, two shirts
From Berlin's warehouses to London's estates: how urban design influences music scenes
“The vast majority of Motor City residents in the 20th century lived not in high-rise apartments, but in two-storey, single-family homes – which made it easier for the local piano manufacturer Grinnell Brothers to deliver pianos to families, including Gordy’s. The particular construction of homes in Detroit, unlike many other predominantly black factory cities in the US, meant that they were crucial to the development of the Motown sound.”
Coffee shop, home or co-working space?
Where’s the most productive place to work? Working from home often means endless procrastination, but sparse plug sockets and noise can make other places difficult, too. I'm all for secret option number four: the library.
ANTIBOOKCLUB
This one-man publishing house may be the book world's smallest press. Apparently not a venture for the faint of heart or delicate of bank balance.
York, new
Maraid Design, delightful fabricators of webbed things, have put together this excellent guide to York's independent shops, cafes and galleries for On the Grid. It's not all Vikings and floods, you know.
That is all.