Sifting the krill of the cybersea a few tastey morsels got caught in my baleen. I've pictured them above. From the top left to right: Erector space set Ebay, US Fighter Planes Flickr, East German rocket Ebay, Kosmos East German space LP, Omega CSSR space car Mosfilm photobucket, Kays Bus Conductor set Ebay, Imai DB5 Ebay, Gumball bracelet Etsy, Futuristic Truck Ebay, Epoch Delta-X Galaxy Jeep Ebay [relative of the Delta-X Scramble Bug set].
But without doubt my favourite bit of interflotsam is this vintage carded Cape Kennedy Rocket Station with it's brilliant cold war graphics on the card and the monitors [Ebay].
theres my mate the Msn from Mars on the gumball bracelet! like that big truck too!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, the Mars man! hee hee. Didn't see that. Did we have such cool gumball gifts in the UK and Europe as they seem to have had in the US?
ReplyDelete(smiles) Yes, nice to see the Man fro Mars there.
ReplyDeleteI do like the artwork for the "Erector" set. Is that like Mecanno?
And for anyone who might be interested, you can get a free copy of one of the Rip Foster novels at the link below. Sadly, it's not the "Assignment in Space" seen in the treasure trove Woodsy put up - it's one called "Ride the Gray Planet". You can download it in various formats. I got mine as a Kindle document cos my Significant Other just bought me a Kindle. (holds it up so everyone can see). Now all I have to do is learn to read ...
Here's the link for the book:
http://www.manybooks.net/titles/goodwinh1813918139-8.html
Update: seems "Ride the Gray Planet" might be "Assignment in Space", according to this blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2006/07/rip-foster-and-blake-savage.html
Yep, Erector was a US Meccano-style toy Toad. I'd not heard of Rip Foster till I posted the picture. Thanks for the Rip link. I like the review ' A rollicking good read'. Fissionable! Now that's a curly word! Is reading a Kindle like holding a book Toad?
ReplyDeleteUm, no. At least, it's not like how I hold a book. I've seen some people bend books in half at the spine and hold them in one hand. So, it is similar if you read that way.
ReplyDeleteBut I mostly use both hands to hold a book, especially if it's a heavy one.
Best way I can describe it is to say it's like those data-pad things people use in Deep Space Nine for books and letters. I've often wondered what those might be like ... now I know, sort of.
It won't replace hard-copy books for me. There's none of the feel or smell of a book. Especially old books. And although there is a "progress bar" to show you how into the book you've read, it's a whole new skill to interpret it.
But there are several advantages too. You can "highlight" text in most books. That's like underling with a pencil in a real book. But ... and this is so cool ... you can come back to the Kindle book and ask it for a list of all the places you've underlined. So it is so easy to find passages which you wanted to take another look at.
And you can search for words in books just like with a text document on a computer. So, as an example, if you wanted to find every mention of MEV in one of the SpaceX novels (yeah, yeah, I know there AREN'T any yet. Still waiting on you guys to write 'em), you just open up a search box and type in MEV on the tiny keyboard .... and you get a list of every occurrence of that word. Wonderful!
But the really great thing for me is that there are lots of pre-19th Century books I want to read. Most would be too expensive for me to buy as real books, even if I could find them. At least one book I want would cost more than the Kindle!!! And then there's the problem of where to put them. But a large number of them exist online (most free, including that expensive one above-mentioned) and it's easy enough to convert them to a suitable format for the Kindle. Which means I can carry a small library of them around in my handbag!!!! It's amazing. Really.
It could be argued that books like that could be read on a computer. And that's true enough. But have you ever tried curling up on a sofa with a laptop? It's just not the same as doing so with a book ... and a nice drink, and maybe some biscuits. But the Kindle is a way that allows which comes close to that.
I'm sold on the idea ... works for me, both for fun and as a research tool.
And by "small library" ... we are talking about thousands of books. You can literally store thousands of books on these devices.
ReplyDelete