Christmas card 2023

 I am taking watercolour painting lessons next year, so that is why I choose to do this for this year's card.

Happy "I survived winter" everyone.

Happy "I survived winter 2022" everyone

 Another year has passed. 

Recently, I've been working on a YouTube video about Teletext, so some of my time this December has been spent on this program.

zxnet.co.uk Teletext page editor

So for this year's card, I made this.

It's basic, but it'll do.

Invented Word 5 - Buggernaut

 A curse term/TV series.

I was playing pool with a bunch of former work colleagues today when one mentioned this term. I had to write it down Its great!

Happy "I survived winter 2021" everyone

Sorry for the lack of posts here this year. The Snacking Otaku took most of my attention.

Snacking Otaku book idea

 Last month I wrote down a few ideas for future Snacking Otaku publications. Today I just had an idea about one possible future book - What Makes Atoms Explode.

A while ago I aquired an old book. The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend The Atom, first published 1956.

Here are a few photos of it. Honestly, I bought it for the artwork.

Great endpaper 

If I finally make a book about nuclear power, I'll use this book for inspiration.

Snacking Otaku book title ideas

 While making What Makes Computers Tick, the idea of making it part of a series of nibble books exploring a deep topic came to me.

I already decided on what the next should be about. The decision was made by current tech trends in cars - the phasing out of internal combustion engines.

So, my follow up to What Makes Computers Tick, will be ....

What Made Cars, Bikes, Planes, Trains, etc Purrrrr

I have come up with other future titles -

• What Makes Movies Flicker (film and TV)
• What Makes a Video Game Zap
• What Makes Vinyl "Warm" (sound recording)
• What Makes Atoms Explode (nuclear power)
• What Makes Robots Beep
• What Makes A Camera Flash (photography)
• What Makes Electricity Shocking (electrics and electronics)
• What Made Trains Puff (steam engines)
• What Makes Planes Zoom

But if they get made in the future is unknown. Its just a list of possible ideas for now.

Why i'm buying old car brochures

 

For those curious why I posted this photo on the Snacking Otaku Facebook page is because of a subject I'm researching - cars.

Cars are a thing that has a massive fandom, to the point that if you want to research a particular model, there is at least one people out there with encyclopedic knowledge.

Because of such fantom  anything to do with them (accessories, toys, ads, etc) is magpies and kept for prosperity.

Research is one aspect to the Snacking Otaku. The other is graphic design. In the case of cars, there is ample material to read through. But when it comes to designing the resulting nibbles, where do you go? The answer is simple - sales brochures. 

If you ever visit a car dealership you'll find racks of brochures of their products, showing every aspect of the model advertised - their specs, profile images, trim levels, optional extras, etc.

I recently been on eBay finding such brochures on sale and found them selling at agreeable prices - £5 minimum to nearly £40 for rarer ones. This makes collecting brochures a good cheap supplement to collecting actual cars.

So, why am I researching cars? The same way I did nibbles on various video formats. I'm curious about human ingenuity that mostly comes in the form of technology. Be it audio-visual devices, ballpoint pens, and cars, I got an interest in it. I am one of those kids who liked taking things apart to see what goes on inside and wonders how things work.

As you can tell from the photo above of a Ford car range brochure from 1983 the first car I'm going to tackle is the Ford Sierra. I may also cover its predecessor, the Cortina, and its successor, the Mondeo in the future. I already acquired the brochures for research and graphic design ideas.