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• …With Fairy Tales For All – Heather McDougal — of Cabinet of Wonders — provides a wonderful overview of the best fairy tale books she’s read. I primarily love fairy tales because they’re usually accompanied by a wealth of great illustration — as the samples in the post make clear. The illustrations by Margo Tomes in _Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folk Tales_ look especially enticing.
• The Changing Face of Publishing – Science Fiction author Charles Stross provides some anecdotal evidence of ebook use by editors in the publishing industry and notes that ebooks aren’t the only format enjoying more availability. Personal note: I _love_ audiobooks and I’d probably _love_ ebooks, as well, if I had a capable reader (like a Kindle). I also _love_ well-designed printed material… but, honestly, the latter starts to lose its appeal when you have to move hundreds of pounds of it.

• The Private Lives of Your Favorite Toys – “It’s a secret that has been accidentally exposed to many but never corroborated and proven beyond doubt, until today.” The Weburbanist collects humorous photographs of toys (a la Toy Fare magazine — without the speech bubbles).
• Star Wars: A New Heap – John Powers, writing for Triple Canopy, provides an excellent critique of the art and aesthetics behind two brilliant science-fiction movies: 2001 and Star Wars.

• Eames Shell Chair Step by Step – Great video — filmed by the office of Charles Eames for Herman Miller (and posted by Core77) — detailing the production of the Eames Shell chair.
• Alex Payne : How I Use TextMate – Alex Payne — API Lead at Twitter, Inc — has posted a short description of how he makes use of TextMate. Currently: TextMate is my favorite text editor in OS X, the E – TextEditor is my favorite text editor in Windows (it's directly inspired by TextMate), and Vim is my favorite text editor when there are no other options and I feel like hammering on the keyboard a lot.
• Dave Gray’s reading list – Dave Gray — of XPLANE, the "visual thinking company" — shares a list of books about visual thinking. More complex things should be explained in this way. Maybe someone should build software tools that really enable it. Hmm.

• ABC3D – What an amazing little book.
• American Pain Society – Virtual Reality Pain Distraction – “In preliminary clinical studies, researchers have found that immersive VR distraction can reduce patient’s pain ratings during severe burn wound care by 30%–50%.” Yet another reason to enjoy video games.
• Odd Squid Thing – The Shell Oil Company brings us new footage of the doom of our species. Mark these words, humans: You need to create magnet programs dedicated to draining the oceans and communicating with their elbowed denizens at once. Oh — and news flash: You don’t have to have opposable thumbs if you have nineteen arms.
• Tilted Twister – Lego NXT Rubik’s Cube solver – I’m always impressed at the engineering of automated Rubik’s Cube solvers. So nifty.

• Vladimir Nikolic, autoportraits – In which the artist juxtaposes photographs of cars with fitting expressions.
• How Helvetica Took Over the Subway – Jennifer Lee takes a tour of the 104-year old New York City subway with Paul Shaw, sign historian.
• jQuery sIFR Plugin – The jQuery sIFR Plugin is an addon for jQuery that makes it easy to replace text in a web page with flash text (sIFR). Check the link for some lovely examples of its employment.

• The Matchbox Project – Each week, a decorated matchbox with a tiny present hidden inside is left by a girl (and sometimes willing friends) somewhere in her travels.
• 741.5 Comics – Five-Card Nancy – Now you can play 5-card Nancy in your web browser. Share the best ones!
• 5-Card Nancy – Scott McCloud outlines a game based on atomic pieces of brilliant sequential art (the panels from the cartoon “Nancy” by Ernie Bushmiller). Looks fun!
• John Cleese Podcast – The speech Cleese gave to the National Radio Conference in Sydney, Australia is rumored to be excellent (it’s broken into 4 parts — podcast #24 to podcast #27). A further wealth of such moments is suggested by the summaries for the other shows — particularly the “Back to School” and “The Brain Explained”.

P.S. – My favorite 5-card Nancy sequence (thus far!) originates from anazgnos on MetaFilter: The Nancy Murders

• MAKE: Blog: The Chemistry gift guide – MAKE provides some tips on giving the gift of CHEMISTRY. (I’ve never had a chemistry set, personally, but I can certainly understand their attraction — beyond the wonder of the elemental forces involved, the sets are always depicted as an arrangement of elegant glass adorned with saturated colors. Oh, and I can’t be the only person who treated the Carolina Biological Supply catalog _exactly_ like the Sears Wish Book for years and years…)
• Down the Rabbit Hole of the Pentagon Graphics Machine – Wallstats highlights the good, the bad, and the ugly of Pentagon presentation graphics. If the armed services were were judged solely by the clarity of their proposals and documentation, half of them would be reorganized tomorrow.
• The Book Design Review Ranks Book Covers of 2008 – Great work all around, but _Soon I Will Be Invincible_, _Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me_, _The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction_, and _Against Happiness_ really stand out.

• BibliOdyssey: Original Winnie The Pooh Drawings – Beautiful, simple drawings of Winnie the Pooh by E. H. Shepard. The grace of line and form in Shepard’s work has long made him one of my favorite artists.
• Oak galls – Gall wasps create curious structures called _galls_ by laying their eggs in various parts of oak trees (roots, bark, buds, leaves, catkins or acorns). The wasp grubs secrete a chemical which causes the trees to create gall tissue to enclose the grubs.
• Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop – An acorn shortage is apparently causing squirrels to do odd things. No one is certain whether the sudden drop in acorn production this year is part of the natural cycle or due to climate changes.

• Ensuring the Future of Food – Neat little animation explaining the future of food from the perspective of Japan. Really, though, the statements within could apply to almost any first-world country. More food should be produced _and_ consumed locally.
• The Art of the Title Sequence – Exactly what it says on the tin. The presentation is great — thumbnail snapshots taken throughout a title sequence are displayed in an easy to follow manner. I also approve of the typography choices.
• Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart – The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography described him so, “With his black eyepatch and empty sleeve, Carton De Wiart looked like an elegant pirate, and became a figure of legend.” This gentleman seems a good candidate for the title of “toughest person ever”.

• Ted Staunton’s 78 RPM Labels – An incredible gallery of labels from 78 RPM records produced throughout the 20th century. If you love book plates and philately, you'll love this site — it scratches the same itch.
• CreativeTechs Tips » Papercraft Turkey Dinner – CreativeTechs serves it up! Their papercraft zombies might make excellent guests.
• Chicken Head Tracking – Chicken heads are remarkably stable.
• Top 20 Things Librarians Wish Patrons Knew – Danielle Dreger-Babbitt provides a straight-forward list of things librarians would like to see.