Mister Doortree’s time traveling scanner does it again with a collection of sixty-five covers from Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine, featuring art by Virgil Finlay, Frank R. Paul, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, Raphael DeSoto and Norman Saunders.

Famous Fantastic Mysteries ran from 1939 to 1953. I have a particular soft spot for this magazine because it was the original home of so many stories by H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy, A. Merritt and others which I read in reprints when I was a tadpole. It’s now struck me that the logo from the later issues looks like a parent to the title plate for Fantastic Stories, in which I read new fiction in those same tadpole days.

You just can’t go wrong with titles like Radio Planet and the Ant Men.

Technorati Tags: pulp magazine covers, famous fantastic mysteries, virgil finlay, norman saunders, frank r. paul, science fiction, fantasy, art

Okay, that headline might be a little misleading, even though it’s more or less accurate. Because at MIT’s Media Lab, Pranav Mistry has developed a system that uses a small laser and an infrared camera to track your hand movements as though your hand was a computer mouse, and your first two fingers were that mouse’s left and right buttons.

According to Gajitz the hardware cost about $20. Because that’s an end user’s price you can figure that a manufacturer would be able to install the system for even less – enough less, for example, to include the system on the left and right sides of a laptop so that both right handed and left handed users could mouse away, right out of the box.

And because the software interprets the movement of the user’s fingers any number of gestures could be supported. Your desktop could become a multitouch surface that you could use without leaving fingerprints all over your display (I’m looking at you, iPad).

Cartoon mice are a free bonus!

Once upon a time when Virtual Reality was a phrase you actually heard, I used to daydream about a 3D modeler that I could set up like a wood shop. Grab a box primitive, run it through the imaginary band saw, clean it up on the imaginary planer, drill it with the imaginary drill press, carve it with the imaginary chisel… this isn’t that, but it’s tantalizingly like it in the abstract.

Technorati Tags: input device, mouse, mouseless, mit, research, multitouch, manual, human computer interface

Remember the Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship from last year’s Burning Man? Wired has posted this video tour of the completed installation – with its engine room, life sciences lab, and pilot’s station. According to its rocketeers the rocket is headed for San Francisco where it’ll get a new “bus stop” entry (or maybe that’s an observation area: I can’t quite tell from the description).

Technorati Tags: raygun gothic rocketship, retro future, rocket ship, science fiction, life size, art, prop, installation

An idea whose time has gone! Just what I was looking for.

The USB typewriter is a non-destructive mod for a mechanical typewriter that converts it into a keyboard that can be used with any Mac or PC – it’s shown here being used with an iPad, which is the only productive use I’ve heard of for one of those.

The conversion does require some sanding of the typewriter’s crossbar which makes contact with the keys’ arms.

You can purchase complete USB typewriters (current offerings are $400 or $450), a prefab kit ($150), or a bag of parts ($75) to solder together yourself. For $200 you can ship your own antique typewriter to the maker and have it converted.

I would love to pair an old portable typewriter with a mini-ITX or Via computer and a little LCD screen for the world’s weirdest and most wonderful laptop. Throw in a retro telephone handset for a cell phone, and look! A mobile vintage office!

Installation instructions and more information at the USB Typewriter site.

Technorati Tags: usb typewriter, computer mod, retro, keyboard, steampunk, vintage, ipad, mac, pc, clackety clack

Thrill! to twenty-five covers for Fantastic Novels, from 1941 to 1951, at Golden Age Comic Book Stories!

Gasp! at the striking cover art by Frank R. Paul, Virgil Finlay, Norman Saunders, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, and Raphael DeSoto!

Be Amazed! to discover that most of the A. Merritt stories I read in the early seventies seem to have first seen print here, in these Astounding Pages!

Well. Or not. I mean, that’s probably more amazing to me than to you. And doesn’t that space ship on the left have a duck’s head? Yep. I thought so.

Great stuff here. Everything from Finlay’s rifleman on the back of a giant mutant bee to the unashamed mad science of this beaker-bearing biologist with his tiny man in a tube.

Just the thing for a Monday morning. Trust me on this one.

Technorati Tags: vintage, retro, science fiction, pulp, cover, art, virgil finlay, Norman Saunders, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, Raphael DeSoto, A. Merritt, Fantastic Novels magazine