Torresandino, Burgos, Castilla y León, Spain

Les Tonnins, Montigny-sur-Canne, Nièvre, France

Gonges, Ville-Langy, Nièvre, France

Range Road 3074
Langham, Saskatchewan, Canada

Carretera Federal 2
near Janos, Chihuahua, Mexico

R27 Highway, Karoo region
near Brandvlei, Northern Cape, South Africa

Frontier Outpost
Port of Willow Creek, Saskatchewan-Montana border, Canada/US

Since Unicode “works” in most places on the internet these days (from webpages to Twitter to IRC in terminal sessions), I like to use all the characters that are available to me, when they make sense — like “99¢” or “-40°”. I decided go to Metrix and laser many of the characters accessible from Alt(Gr) into the keycaps on my MacBook Pro. The keyboard is backlit and lasering the key exposes the clear key underneath, so it turned out quite well. If I’m feeling like there still isn’t enough visual interference on my keyboard, I may decide to laser on the AltGr and Cyrillic characters too.

The Kronos looks like a non-cubic NeXTcube with a case designed by 1950s engineers, but it’s actually a rather unique workstation based on the Lilith (created by Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal, and influenced by his time at Xerox PARC). [wikipedia] [robotranslated Russian wikipedia article, with screenshots] [photos]

Communist goods from the drug store

Check out this video (and other related ones in the video’s sidebar) for some great Soviet-era packaging. I’d love to find out where the images came from, but for now, this will have to do.

Varia Plastilina modeling clay

RFT Industrial Clock

From the eBay UK auction: “Stunning large and sought after industrial clock from the East German electricals company RFT (Rundfunk- und Fernmelde-Technik). RFT was created when the Communist government seized control of all electrical manufacturers after the partition of Germany including parts of Siemens and AEG, and collectivised them into one entity. The tradition of quality carried through from AEG and other large German manufactures is evident in most of RFT’s output. This clock was made a time when the Soviet Bloc was desperate to prove to the West how modern and successful their production and consumer system was, and how advanced their technology.

Many German industrial clock designs are based upon the iconic Swiss Federal Railways clocks of the 1940′s designed by Hans Hilfiker (1901-93), featuring a simple pared down but graphically strong clock face, influenced by the teachings at the Bauhaus and the traditions of the Modernist Movement.”

The hexagon logo makes me think of a 1970s chemical company. Hrm… cheap cologne, chemical company? Maybe that’s not too far off.

From Jaunted || Favorite Souvenirs: Pereja Turkish Lemon Cologne.

City of Seattle(?) logo on a Metro substation, originally uploaded by afiler.

I saw this logo on the alley-side fence of a Metro electric substation on 15th in Seattle. The logo looks like the current Seattle logo, but with a green S instead of blue, and a red target in the center instead of Chief Sealth in black.