Yesterday morning, Improvised Life’s blog platform went wildly wonky —planetary influences? We heard from a few members who had trouble getting Tinypass to recognize their login info. Others sign in and see the notice on the sidebar that says “0 free reads left”. If you did have a problem, here’s a couple of fixes, while we try to solve the problem:
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My latest experiment to temper the mysterious vibration that shakes me awake each night was to apply a vibration directly to the bed to neutralize the irritating one.
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Since we first wrote about the mysterious mechanical vibration that shakes us awake at night, we’ve tried endless fixes to no avail and at times, have despaired of finding a solution. But amidst this difficulty have come many unexpected gifts, in the form of strangers reaching out to help, and research leading to rich layers…
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(Video link here.) Ikea’s creative team is rivaling Apple’s…AND using Apple’s classic myth-making approach to its latest technology to describe the…power…of…a…BOOK. This brilliant ad for IKea’s 2015 catalogue lays out just why REAL books are so wonderful. With thanks to Susan Dworski for making sure we watched a video we’d ignored!
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When we first saw this cardboard laptop stand we thought: Who needs that? We can just rig a stack of books to raise our laptop. Then we saw it in action and thought of all the places it would be useful.
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The other day, a friend texted smartphone snapshots from a book she was reading: whole pages, with passages she found illuminating marked in pencil. It’s one of the best uses for SMS messaging we’ve seen, as though our friend was putting the book into our hands or reading the paragraph directly to us.
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We confess to not paying much attention to Lady Gaga (is it our age, or just interest?). But we are charmed, smitten and amazed at the crazy-wondrous flying dress she had commissioned. This video about it offers a compelling overview of clear possibilities in the realm of personal travel. Will we soon each be able to…
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For our money, one of the easiest ways to transform a problematic space is with good lighting. Many of the spaces we have consulted on suffered terribly —as have their inhabitants— from dim, murky lighting due to the pressure to move to energy-saving lighting. Now that manufacture of the classic warmly glowing incandescent bulb has been banned, the question “what to do?” is even more pressing. There are a number of options.
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It took us abandoning Safari and loading Firefox. iPads won’t run it altogether. But it is worth getting yourself to Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson’s wondrous website Moon. At first you see a shimmering globe, then the sign, above, which distills in one fell swoop everything we believe and love: Ideas, wind, and air no…
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As we compile many innovative uses for Skype and FaceTime, we realize how “virtual” really CAN allow us to “be there”.
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Having had a mother who was obsessed with busy, French-provinical wallpaper, I’ve always steered clear from any semblance of a wall covering. Until, that is, companies like HP devised a latex printer that will digitally print your own designs to make cool wall-coverings. A number of companies will help you do this…like New Era, 4walls, FlavorPaper. Apparently, the HP…
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Dig this picture of the original apple computer, now known as the apple-1, designed and hand-built in 1976 by Steve Wozniak in Steve Job‘s garage. It’s one of a number of “primitive” early computers that Christie’s will auction in ‘First Bytes: Iconic Technology From the Twentieth Century’. It represents the very first step in Apple’s quite amazing history of…
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Zef, a wonderful endlessly-improvisable color doodling program by Patakk, gif-maker extraordinaire, sent us on an unexprected psychedelic journey and we found ourselves curiously refreshed. Just go to the blank page, move your cursor, and see where it takes you….
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fridge + duct tape + tablet-or-phone…. A strangely swell idea, low on style (though it sure beats those ugly water dispensers.) It reminded us of the great video Jesse Rosten made showing how-to secure an ipad to just about anything using velcro, possibly a slightly more elegant and practical solution to the one above. We could see…
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This swell little visual toy by Koalas to the Max came via Michael Warren of Mike and Molly’s House. If you scroll your pointer over the image above, you’ll set it in motion. Being an ardently curious soul, Michael checked out its source code and made an interesting discovery: It turns out it’s built with a javascript…
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We are smitten with Tinybop, a site of books, apps, videos, toys for kids. The curating is GREAT here. Many of their suggestions will help your child-in-mind (or you) to bloom. We’ve found a ton of stuff that WE want. Dig these cool apps:
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(Video link here.) Gangnam Style, South Korean hip hop artist PSY’s video was so insanely over-the-top, it went viral. But the original is not nearly as funny or amazing as this brilliant hack YouTube user Moto2h made with it: he took away the music and added in some sound effects to PSY’s a capella blather. …We hope it brings…
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(Video link here.) As an artist in residence at MIT, Trevor Paglen worked with materials scientists to develop an ultra-archival disc of images, capable of lasting in space for billions of years. He meant this disc to contain a “cultural mark”, that would portray our world long after it might have disappeared altogether. He interviewed scientists, artists,…
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As we’ve mentioned, ‘the improvised life’s laboratory is something of an homage to plywood. We’ve used it for many things, from window sills to cabinets to floors. We love the stuff, and are constantly hatching plots in our head for furniture, housewares, endless inventions. So we are smitten with carpenter and author Philip Schmidt new book PlyDesign which…
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Our friend Jody Lotito Levine sent us an email filled with images, some of them really wondrous. With them came this message: …from my former boss and dear friend recovering from pancreatic cancer: he says his ipad has been so healing and connective – We mention it on the heels of our post about disconnecting…
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