Geek Crafts

There are at least a million different things a geek can do in London, and in my effort to do them all, alas, I failed. One major highlight was the current free exhibition at The British Library (for us yanks, it is like The Library of Congress), Out Of This World: Science Fiction, But Not as You Know it.

First, I am a bibliophile, so this was like Disneyland for me, except at Disneyland you can take pictures and touch things. Each section of the exhibition had a specific theme ranging from the birth of Science Fiction (in the 1600s!), Utopian societies, distopian societies, graphic novels, robots (did you know that the first “robots” in literature were actually synthetically made human slaves, and not machines?), and more. Among these were impeccable, perfect first editions, that made me drool, with some of the most beautiful, and outright cool cover art you will ever see. One major highlight was an original telegram sent from George Orwell to his publisher, lamenting that 1984 would have been “better” if it had not “been written under the influence of TB”, where he goes on to call Satre a “big bag of wind”.

I could write for days on the books on display and how amazing it was to see hand written pages of first drafts, books hundreds of years old, amazing posters (see?), but what really struck me were the interactives they had set up, for all age ranges. You (or your kid) can use an interactive touch screen to draw your own alien, and then watch it join other hand drawn aliens dancing around on the wall behind, there was a sleepy robot that was motion activated that carried on conversation about his favorite science fiction robots, a computer where you could challenge AI to the Turin’s Test, and at least five other things I didn’t have time for.

All in all, this would be an amazing stop in London (runs until September 25), even (or maybe especially) if you have kids in tow.

• Out of this World
• The British Library

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Craftster user Paleona bought this plush Aliens queen (from who???) for her husband for Christmas and then made a baby chestburster to go with her. Click through to see a facehugger too!

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Thank you Geek Crafts reader Kelly Szpunar for our very first Alien(s) craft! On her new blog HunkyDorky, she shares how she made this incredibly cool facehugger bookmark out of a cereal box. (If you don’t know what this is, you are a bad geek and need to watch Alien and Aliens stat!) Check out her blog – she’s also got True Blood, X-Files and Star Trek projects up (Tribble cupcakes!).

• Alien Book Hugger

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This is one geek craft that I actually made myself. I used a $40 screenprinting set I bought at Michael’s to do it. It has 3 invaders on the front right and a single invader on the back in the top middle next to the neck line. I did only one pass with white ink on a black tee and it looks kind of greyish – just like the original B&W Space Invaders arcade game.

I ended up doing about 10 shirts in various ink/shirt color combinations but none looked as good as the black and white. For the invaders, I simply used MAME and took a screenshot of Space Invaders and I enlarged it on-screen to the right size then I printed it out onto transparency paper and used that to make the screen.

It was my first attempt at screenprinting and it really did turn out great. It’s one of my favorites tees – all the better cause I made it myself.

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This is an interesting idea – it’s called Woodpixel. It’s a commercial product that lets you create your own pixel art. It comes with 100 wooden blocks with a different wood tone on each side and it comes with a holder to hold the 100 blocks in place. This would be a great way to make some classic/retro video game art. Their site shows a Space Invader, Mario, and a (poorly done) Pac-man Ghost. They are taking pre-orders now – no word on price. I bet it’s expensive though.

• Woodpixel.com

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