BlogDogIt

It's a picture + a few lines of text blog, featuring history, art, old photographs, maps, and more.

Dutch.Man.Amersfoort.Creative.IT.Music.History

 The World upside down

The convention that North is at the top on most modern maps was established by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD) and was adopted by other cartographers.

Happy Halloween!

ButterMyButtons

Sometimes when playing pool it really helps to have a bridge stick around for those hard to reach, across the table cue shots. No self respecting billiard parlor would be complete without one. A while back I picked up a couple of shorty pool cues with the intention of fitting one with a bridge head while keeping the other one for the "why is there a bookcase here?" shot.

Today I finally decided I would take care of my "lack of bridge head" problem. I do have a scroll saw and figured if I couldn't use it to cut out a bridge head, what's the point? So I hop on the friendly interwebs and search for "billiards bridge head template" (thinking surely I can not be the only scroll sawyer with this idea.) I turned up some pictures but not a template per se. 

I found a head-on shot of a bridge head with the shape I am most accustomed to and PhotoShopped it into a two-color image and printed it to size. Click on the image below for a PDF template - ready to print out.

Download Template: BridgeHead.pdf

I cut out the printed shape and headed out to the workshop to find a piece of quarter-inch plywood to impart this shape unto. The scraps I had on hand were slightly too narrow (and I would not waste anything larger on this project.) A glance in the right direction revealed a "drop" of quarter-inch plexiglass that would be just the ticket. This plexi had its protective paper covering still attached. I laid the template shape on the plexiglass blank and spray painted over it to transfer the outline.

A slow and steady pass through the scroll saw, a stop at the drill press and some judicious sanding resulted in the handy-dandy bridge-headed shorty pictured above. For the record, the first shot taken with this device in a real game resulted in the successful pocketing of the desired ball - what more do you want?

Oftentimes I come across something on the internet that draws me in and sends me on a grand adventure. Once again I have only my fondness for Vintage Everyday to thank for today's excursion. It was the image ["A Girl on a Scooter"(New York City, 1965)] that lead to my entering the name "Joel Meyerowitz" into the search engine.

I first chose to consume a video commentary by Joel (embeded below.) I enjoyed his insights on human nature. This lead to an image search for more of his works. I collected several images from random sites around the internet and present them here in BlogDogIt Slide Show fashion. The source pages for these images are in the list of links at the bottom of this post. Pay them a visit and see where they lead you. Take a walk with Meyerowitz and see the streets.

Enjoy!

[ MORE...]

Found at: http://www.vintag.es/
Original Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/

Continue on for:
How to make a Dive Helmet from a 5 gallon bucket

If you are serious about diving visit: PADI - The Way the World Learns to Dive.

Take some time to enjoy this Web-Series by EveryExit - It's Positively Mental!

Alan Steele must take care of his older sister Amber, because she has several mental disorders and complexes. Oftentimes, he has his two friends, David and Edwin, watch her when he isn't able. Inevitably, Amber gets them into crazy situations along the way. This series is a heartfelt, comedic look at the Steele family and how life is lived on their side of the fence. Written by Jessica Dockrey [IMDB]

Mental Space is on FaceBook

Chuck Menville and Len Janson's
Sergeant Swell of the Mounties (1972)

Sergeant Swell of the Mounties is a short film written and directed by Len Janson and Chuck Menville, with Menville starring in the title role.

The film is said to be a spoof of the '50s television series  Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. It relies heavily on the use of the animation technique known as pixilation (using human actors as stop-motion puppets.) It also relies on silliness and corn ball humor, often venturing into stereotypical humor in search of a laugh (that it very often finds.) This independent film was introduced at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in March of 1972.

I have actually owned this film in Super-8 format (w/mag-stripe sound!) since the mid 1980's. After viewing it so often on the silver screen it is a little disorienting to see it on this small embedded video screen, but it's not like that is the only disorienting thing about this film. Do you have 16 minutes to spare in the quest for a good time? Mount Up! and give this little classic a try.