Friday, December 10, 2010

Build Yr Own Dodo

So, thanks to Janice, here's the link to an interesting little display of ingenuity and obsessiveness: a fifteen minute talk by Adam Savage, best known as half of the two-man team that puts on MYTHBUSTERS, talking about why and how he came to make himself a full-sized model of a Dodo skeleton. Which, you learn from hearing him talk, is a lot harder than it sounds. From there he segues into discussion of how, and why, he became obsessed with making an exact model of The Maltese Falcon. But the kicker for me, and the reason Janice forwarded me the link, is the Tolkien reference. You just knew that someone devoted to minutia like this was probably a Tolkien fan, and sure enough at one point he shows, among other past projects he keeps on file, the hand-drawn map of Middle-earth he made once. Looks kind of like the one I made years ago and now have framed up in my office, on parchment, which has now aged enough to look more authentic than it has any right to.*

Anyway, here's the link. The Tolkien bit is very brief and can be found just before the three-minute mark, but the whole thing's worth watching, I think.



*part of its accidental 'antiquing' came from when Tiger, our half-manx cat, threw up on it once many, many years ago now.

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