Hokusai Manga

For the art lover, Japanophile or shameless hipster in your life, consider this ponderous 970 page tome containing the 15 separate sketchbooks, or manga, of Edo-period illustrator Katsushika Hokusai.

Best known for his masterpiece The Great Wave of Kanagawa, which is my favorite work of art bar none, Hokusai painted and made woodblock prints in the ukiyo-e style. His great inspiration was Fuji-san, or Mt. Fuji. His collection of prints titled Thirty-Six Views of Fuji-san--of which The Great Wave is a part--is the most famous series of prints in the genre.

The book itself is a collection of his sketches and drawings, which start with a demonstration of his style of geometrical construction, which is basically exactly what it sounds like: building a drawing based on geometric shapes.

The rest of the pages are filled with his playful and seemingly effortless sketches and prints.

This is a real bargain over at Amazon for $43.

via CoolHunting

People People Speaker

So I was going to write a big HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2011 in all capital letters and make it like six pages long with a bunch of cool stuff in it. I didn't end up doing that. Instead, I'm going to make a bunch of separate posts, because my SEO consultant told me that keeping one's blog updated is important for the current Google search metrics, which in turn are important to boost traffic. To be honest I don't really know why I care about that given that I don't make a red cent off this space, but everybody likes to be noticed I guess.

Anyway, the People People Speaker will be my next audio purchase if it is reasonably priced. Actually, it has to be reasonably priced AND the box has to be able to open up so I can clean it, which I totally could because the speaker is assembled at home "IKEA style."

Also, my friend Glenn said that he could see a cat ending up in there at some point, which is probably true. I've included a picture of my cat at the bottom of this post for your review.

The speaker operates via a wifi connector and is designed to "blend in to any living room out there." Oh, and they practice sustainable shipping, so, hey hey!

Anyway, as you could infer from the above, price is TBA. The website for the project is located beyond this hyperlink.



via uncrate

AVICII

Minneapolis! You must see this man on the decks. January 6 at Epic. Tickets here. I'm just a fan, not a schlepp. This is good music. I wouldn't even tell you about it but it just so happens I have my tickets already, so we're good. You're welcome.