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Check out these strings of Soviet-era christmas lights for sale on eBay by (who’s always selling awesome USSR-related stuff). Of course, these weren’t called “Christmas” lights — the big yuletide holiday in the USSR was New Year’s. Instead, these are called електрогирлянда (in Russian) and електрогірлянда (in Ukranian) — elektrogirlanda, or electro-garland, and the two styles are “астероид” (asteroid) and “космос” (cosmos).
Santa Cruz de la Zarza, Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Torresandino, Burgos, Castilla y León, Spain
Les Tonnins, Montigny-sur-Canne, Nièvre, France
Gonges, Ville-Langy, Nièvre, France
Range Road 3074
Langham, Saskatchewan, Canada
Carretera Federal 2
near Janos, Chihuahua, Mexico
R27 Highway, Karoo region
near Brandvlei, Northern Cape, South Africa
Frontier Outpost
Port of Willow Creek, Saskatchewan-Montana border, Canada/US
, originally uploaded by .
Photo by Duncan at [].
Since Unicode “works” in most places on the internet these days (from webpages to Twitter to IRC in terminal sessions), I like to use all the characters that are available to me, when they make sense — like “99¢” or “-40°”. I decided go to and laser many of the characters accessible from Alt(Gr) into the keycaps on my MacBook Pro. The keyboard is backlit and lasering the key exposes the clear key underneath, so it turned out quite well. If I’m feeling like there still isn’t enough visual interference on my keyboard, I may decide to laser on the AltGr and Cyrillic characters too.
The Kronos looks like a non-cubic NeXTcube with a case designed by 1950s engineers, but it’s actually a rather unique workstation based on the (created by Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal, and influenced by his time at Xerox PARC). [] [] []
Communist goods from the drug store
Check out this video (and other related ones in the video’s sidebar) for some great Soviet-era packaging. I’d love to find out where the images came from, but for now, this will have to do.
Varia Plastilina modeling clay
RFT Industrial Clock
From : “Stunning large and sought after industrial clock from the East German electricals company RFT (Rundfunk- und Fernmelde-Technik). RFT was created when the Communist government seized control of all electrical manufacturers after the partition of Germany including parts of Siemens and AEG, and collectivised them into one entity. The tradition of quality carried through from AEG and other large German manufactures is evident in most of RFT’s output. This clock was made a time when the Soviet Bloc was desperate to prove to the West how modern and successful their production and consumer system was, and how advanced their technology.
Many German industrial clock designs are based upon the iconic Swiss Federal Railways clocks of the 1940′s designed by Hans Hilfiker (1901-93), featuring a simple pared down but graphically strong clock face, influenced by the teachings at the Bauhaus and the traditions of the Modernist Movement.”