Tablet Mac Now Available!

Are you an illustrator, photographer, animator, or DJ? This might be the Macbook for you. No, it's not sold by Apple, but it's licensed by them and is essentially a Macbook Pro made of stronger magnesium vs. aluminum, merged with a very strong 13" glass screen covering a Wacom® tablet. Unlike the Macbook Air, it has your choice of CDROM or Superdrive, and unlike the Wacom® Cintiq line of portable tablet screens, you don't need a Macbook or Mac Mini standing by with a cable.

Of course you writers and accountants can hook up keyboards to its USB port if you really want.

Pepakura - Make Your Own Figurines!

The Internet has spawned a number of sites devoted to papercraft or Pepakura patterns. Papercraft is similar to Origami, the Japanese art of making folded paper sculptures, except that it usually involves cutting out shapes and gluing them together. Thanks to technology, we can easily share patterns through Illustrator and PDF files. We can also use 3-D software to automatically flatten the shape into a pattern.

The Year 2000 as predicted in 1910

French artist Villenard painted these lovely images of what life might be like in the year 2000. I love this depiction of high tech education -- putting books into a hand-cranked mechanical grinder that converts them into audio-books for children to listen to.

via BoingBoing.

Storytime with Cephalopods

The L.A. Book Festival is coming up this week at UCLA.

Guests include Henry Winkler, Ray Bradbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Dr. Phil, and Gore Vidal.

Sing with me: "One of these folks is not like the others. One of these folks just doesn't belong. Can you tell me which one is not like the others before I finish this song?"

If you guessed Ray Bradbury as the only professional writer in the group, you're absolutely right! (But you'd rather see The Fonz wouldn't you...)

UPDATE: I went on Sunday. Randomly, I wore my Avenue Q shirt. The moment I got there, I saw people carrying Avenue Q fans that were being passed out, advertising the fact that it will be coming to Los Angeles soon. Must have had three or more people either compliment me on my t-shirt, or ask where they could get one and the fan.

Oh, and I went to the Dr. Phil talk. Take that, you authors-without-daytime-TV-shows!

Learn how to make a Fairy from Wendy Froud!

I just found this instructional DVD on how to sculpt a fairy, taught by the wife of Brian Froud, master illustrator of Goblins and Fairies in books and in Jim Henson movies like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal!

The Ecstacy of Influence: A Plagiarism

I found this amazing essay about copying and creative works by Jonathan Lethem via BoingBoing. Make sure you read it all the way to the end.