A. Kachmar

After opening in Soho, London, earlier this year, guests of the Ham Yard Hotel have been mesmerised by this beautiful 135-dial digital clock. Each of the hands on the smaller traditional clocks have been synchronised to work together to display the time on a much larger scale. As well as displaying numbers, the clocks can also work together to form complex geometric shapes.

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It’s no secret, I’m a fan of Pilot. And pens like the new Pilot E95S show you why. Sure, I’m a retailer of theirs and you should always take what I say about products I sell with that in mind, but I try to be pretty honest and objective despite that. I won’t go saying that the E95S is the best pen ever made, but I will say that it’s a pretty unique pen and one that I was more impressed with once I had it in my hands than I was just looking at pictures.

The E95S is known in Japan as the Elite 95S, which for copyright/trademark purposes had to be named something different in the US. So the “Elite" became “E”. The pen comes in two different color options: black with gold trim and burgundy and gold with gold trim. The black one is pretty straight-laced, but the burgundy/gold is really interesting. That’s actually the color I like more, but it’s a personal preference thing.




It’s a small pen, a really small pen! Only measuring 119mm long (4.7in) closed, it kind of looks like a stick of mascara or lipstick or something! But when you open up and post the pen, it lengthens up quite a bit to 147mm (5.8in), which is about the length of a ‘normal’ pen. This makes it a nice, compact pen. It’ll be a little too short for bigger-handed folks like me unless you post it, but the almost effortless sliding cap actually makes it a pleasure to do so.

The E95S is really light, too, only weighing about as much as a Lamy Safari, even though this pen is made of metal. It’s a cartridge/converter pen that uses the proprietary Pilot/Namiki cartridges and comes with a Pilot Con-20 squeeze converter. It’ll also fit the similar squeeze converter that fits the Parallel and Metropolitan (that’s not available apart from these pens). Here’s the thing though, the Con-50 won’t fit in it, the metal band around the converter is too wide to fit in the pen. And the Con-70 is just way too big, don’t even think about it.

Pilot E95S comes with Pilot Con-20 converter and accepts Pilot/Namiki cartridges

Now let’s talk about how it writes. It’s awesome. I really haven’t met a Pilot nib I don’t like at this point, they just really know how to do their nibs (which they make in-house). And this nib is cool, it’s 14k gold and inlaid into the pen body which gives it a really unique and kind of vintage look. It’s also smooth and has a lot of spring to it. Press the nib and you can get some line variation, but I’d go easy on this because it’s not advertised as a soft or flex nib at all. Don’t overdo it. But wow, that EF nib especially is really, really small, and writes with a little bit of tooth which is perfectly alright and expected given how thin a line it draws. The fine and medium nibs are very smooth, and the medium in particular is a nice, wet writer. 


Here are my personal thoughts on the pen, take it or leave it:

Take it:

• Very light, portable
• Incredibly easy (and fun) to cap/uncap 
• Classy looking, definitely looks the price
• Price is great, at $170 list ($136 at GouletPens.com) it’s the most affordable 14k gold nib pen I sell
• Inlaid EF, F, and M nib is unique, looks cool, and writes really nicely

Leave it:

• Con-20 limitation means you’ll never be able to see your ink level
• Because the pen is light, I wonder how well it’ll hold up to abuse. Treat it well.
• Short length means it pretty much has to be posted to be usable, by most hands

The Pilot E95S might not be the easiest name to remember, but one glance at the pen and it’ll definitely stand out to you. If you’re in the market for a Pilot Vanishing Point, Pilot Stargazer, or Pilot Falcon, basically a gold-nib pen that’s really convenient as a pocket pen, I would certainly give this one a look. Pick one up for $136 at GouletPens.com, and if you have any questions be sure to ask in the comments below.

Write On,
Brian Goulet 

indikhan:

YOOOOOOOO

prguitarman:

MY BRAIN!!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/minimonkey/monkey-light-pro-bicycle-wheel-display-system

I am overcome. 

Movie Trivia: The original version of Alien didn’t cast Sigourney Weaver in the lead role. She ultimately landed the role when it was learned that the original lead, Mitzy the Cat, had a debilitating allergic reaction to cephalopods. 

Photographer Richard Silver's photo series Time Slice captures all the beauty of a time lapse video in a single image. From left to right, you can see a ;andmark go from morning light to evening dark.

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by @iamtew

(Photo: Baker's Donuts)

Baker's Donuts is a bakery in Sacramento, California. Susie and Randy Hem, the owners, call their latest treat "ice glazers." It's an adaptation of a simple treat that she used to make for her children on hot summer days: ice cream wrapped in ordinary bread. This can be only improved by replacing the bread with donut dough.

Every day, the Rems make eight dozen glazed donuts for ice glazers and inject them with ice cream when customers buy them. They often use exotic flavors to entice interest. Sactown magazine reports:

The unique ice cream flavors come from Pittsburg-based Magnolia Tropical Ice Cream, which uses California milk and fresh fruit in their recipes.

“We have an Asian-American background, and we used to eat [Magnolia ice cream] when we were younger,” Douglas Hem says. “A lot of Asian-Americans and Filipinos love that brand, because it’s very rich and creamy and not watered-down.”

The shop has also fulfilled customers' requests for other wild and crazy spins on the ice glazers, like red velvet doughnuts stuffed with vanilla ice cream, ice cream-filled cronuts topped with Trader Joe’s cookie butter, or tropical-flavored ice glazers sprinkled with Fruity Pebbles cereal.

-via That's Nerdalicious!

I have been on such a donut kick lately. I wake up all the time wanting to hop in my car and try out new donut shops in town (if you live in the LA-area, my favorites at the moment are here & here- I love a good classic). Not only are they insanely delicious, but just looking at them makes me happy. Be on the lookout this week- I have a little donut-inspired download coming soon.

Sources (from top to bottom): Paper & Stitch, How Sweet It Is, Francisco Marin, Paper Source, DESIGNLOVEFEST, Sweet Style Blog, Instagram: collegeprepster, Style Me Pretty, Maison Cupcake, and Studio DIY.

dafuq?! where the fuck?

From onion peels to kiwi seeds or even bits of chocolate, it seems any canvas is sufficient for Turkish artist Hasan Kale (previously) as long as it meets the requirement of being incredibly tiny. Hasan delights in the challenge of depicting landscapes of his native Istanbul in the most infinitesimal of brush strokes, a feat that requires the use of a magnifying glass to appreciate the details of each piece. While the longevity of each object he paints is questionable, the steadiness of his hand is impressive to witness. See much more over on Facebook. (via Illusion)

Dans les années 1960-1970s, le photographe américain Arthur Tress s’est intéressé au monde des rêves et des cauchemars avec ses clichés et notamment avec la série « Theater of the Mind », dans laquelle il s’amuse à illustrer et mettre en scène les rêves d’enfants ainsi que ceux d’adultes, proposant ainsi des images en noir & blanc étranges et d’une grande qualité.

L’artiste français Gilbert Legrand crée des petits personnages très marrants à partir d’objets du quotidien : des ciseaux, des pinceaux, des tire-bouchons et des robinets se transforment en couple d’amoureux, serveur, fillette et renards. Une belle manière de donner vie à des objets inanimés.

"The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it."

Amongst the fruit you can shape, apparently you can make pentagonal oranges like these japanese farmers.

(Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com)

Los Angeles animator Fran Krause has created Deep Dark Fears, a Tumblr that translates irrational, lurking fears into comic strips. You can read more of the gripping short comics at Deep Dark Fears.

images via Deep Dark Fears

via Super Punch

With snowstorms being so frequent recently, this winter might seem rather dark and cold. Well why not light up your life with some new Pop Culture “religious” style candles?

From Etsy seller DMAGIC, this line of candles can be the key to brightening things up while also bringing a little joy to your life. Using the likenesses of famous stars and characters like Walter White, Ron Swanson, Spock, and many more, these candles feature them dressed as religious figures and are much more fun than your normal boring candles. In no way, are these to be confused with religious candles or blasphemy; they just happen to be dressed in garb similar to figures from a similar era. These pop culture icons are featured on 8” tall white wax candles and could be the highlight of whatever scene you place them in. They’re so much fun, you might not even light them, but just use them as display art.

So are you interested in bringing a more pop culture inspired lighting experience into your life? Let us know in the comments.

Seeing a smart cat walk on a treadmill to its plate of food tickles me more than it should. I scream out aww under my constant laughter. I must be a bad person. But let's be honest. Metaphorically, we've all been this cat before. We've seen our goal but we kept walking in place not knowing how to get there. Literally though, we should put a treadmill before every fast food restaurant so it'd motivate us all to be a little more healthy like this cat.

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A hurricane, a car accident, a roadside bomb, a rape — extreme stress is more common than you might think, with an estimated 50 to 60 percent of Americans experiencing it at some point in their lives. About 8 percent of that group will be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. They will have flashbacks and nightmares. They will feel amped up, with nerves on a permanent state of high alert. They won’t be able to forget.

One of the only effective treatments for PTSD is ‘exposure therapy,’ in which people are repeatedly exposed to their fear — such as a painful memory — in a safe context. This treatment works partly because of how our brain encodes memories. Whenever we actively recall a memory, it transforms into a pliable molecular state and becomes vulnerable to modification.

About half of people who get exposure therapy for PTSD get better. But that still leaves a lot of people who don’t. A mouse study published last week in Cell throws the spotlight on a drug that acts in concert with exposure therapy to help extinguish fear memories. The drug works by changing the epigenome, the chemical markers that attach to DNA and can turn genes on and off.

“It’s remarkable,” says Li-Huei Tsai, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who led the work. “If we inject a single dose of this drug it actually is sufficient to reactivate neuroplasticity.”

The drug works by changing the way DNA is expressed in the brain.

In order to fit into the nucleus of each cell, DNA wraps tightly around spherical proteins called histones. (You can see how in this animation.) Histones are littered with chemical groups, such as methyl and acetyl, that influence how nearby genes get turned on and off.

For many years, Tsai has been studying enzymes called histone deacetylases, or HDACs, which switch off genes by removing acetyl groups from histones. In 2012, she showed that one such enzyme, dubbed HDAC2, is overactive in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease and shuts down genes related to learning. In that study she also showed that blocking HDAC2 led to dramatic gains in the animals’ memory.

“HDAC2 is a master regulator of the expression of neuroplasticity genes,” Tsai says. “And HDAC inhibitors seem to be very beneficial for memory formation.”

In the new study, Tsai’s team investigated whether this enzyme is also involved in the way that fear memories cement themselves into brain circuits.

Mice don’t get PTSD, but they can acquire fear memories. Using so-called Pavlovian fear conditioning, researchers train the animals to fear a particular cue, such as a sound or smell, by pairing it with a mild shock to the foot. After a few trials, the animal freezes at the cue alone.

There’s also a mouse version of exposure therapy. After a mouse learns to fear, say, a certain tone, researchers can extinguish that fear by repeatedly playing the tone without a shock. Gradually the animal learns to associate the tone with the safer context.

But in mice (and, importantly, in some people with severe PTSD), this extinction therapy only works for recently acquired fear memories. If a fear memory is old, then no amount of retraining will erase the animal’s fear. “One of the major challenges in developing treatments for PTSD is that traumatic memories can persist for a lifetime,” notes Matt Lattal, a neuroscientist at Oregon Health and Science University who was not involved in the new study. “It is therefore critical that laboratory models of PTSD include this long interval between traumatic experience and testing.”

Tsai and her colleagues trained mice to fear a tone and then gave them extinction therapy either a day later or 30 days later. When extinction training happened a day later, the HDAC2 enzyme was inactivated in brain cells, the study found. With HDAC2 quiet, acetyl groups stayed latched on to histones and various memory genes stayed on. Presumably, this window of plasticity allowed the mice to un-learn the fear memory. In contrast, when extinction training happened 30 days later, the HDAC2 enzyme was active. It removed those acetyl groups, effectively shutting off neuroplasticity genes.

But here’s the exciting part. The animals were able to un-learn the fear memory 30 days after it was formed when the researchers paired extinction therapy with a drug that inhibits HDAC2, dubbed “CI-994.” It only took one dose, and the researchers saw no side effects, Tsai says. “We did a lot of control experiments to show that this mechanism doesn’t wipe out other memories. It really is very specific to the training condition.”

HDAC inhibitors are becoming a hot class of drugs. In 2012, Yossef Itzhak and his colleagues at the University of Miami reported that giving a different HDAC inhibitor to mice before they acquire the fear memory accelerates the extinction of the memory weeks later. “Hypothetically speaking, HDAC inhibitors may be useful prophylactics against the persistence of fear memory,” says Itzhak, who was not involved in the new study.

Researchers are investigating HDAC inhibitors for all sorts of other conditions, too, including heart disease, HIV, and cancer. Because HDAC enzymes are expressed all over the body, though, some experts are worried about their translation into the clinic.

“HDAC inhibitors have a wide spectrum of biological effects, and only when they will be targeted for the treatment of a specific malady [will] their therapeutic value be of great importance,” Itzhak says. ”The goal is to identify specific HDAC inhibitors which target specific brain circuits and genes.”

Mondays.

In welcome news for urban arachnophobes everywhere, it turns out that certain types of spiders just aren't cut out for city life. Apparently, spinning webs on concrete and steel kills the vibrations spiders need to sense prey—meaning dinner ain't coming easy.

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You may think it might be the common mint flavor of toothpaste clashing with other flavors, but in the case of orange juice and many other things, this isn't actually what's going on. The culprit here is thought to be two compounds almost universally added to toothpastes -sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium lauryl ether sulfate, which are anionic surfactants, meaning they lower the surface tension of water.

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