Sure the new California Driver’s Licenses started in Oct 2010… but since mine was about to expire, i’ve only just gotten bored enough to get one and stare at it up close… WAY up close… with the microscope. It’s quite awesome seeing where they went all Toys R Us with the backwards R… hidden little strings of text in microscopic ascii art fashion nearly invisible to the naked eye… initials and birth year are tucked all over… some birthdays and signatures are raised… when you hold it up to the light you can see the state bear appear out of tiny holes… So take a peek at the details and some of the beautiful patterns they used super close up on my new driver’s license!

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Tags: microscope

On silly late night fascinations ~ last night we were playing with my microscope and a US Visa and Border Crossing card… and the TEENY TINY strips with all of our US Presidents (up to clinton) and all of the state flags in alphabetical order on it. It is… amazing. And then we ran into John Quincy Adames… feeling like a bad american here, but isn’t it Adams? Is it a microscopic typo? Beyond that it really is fascinating to see how detailed each tiny flag and presidential portrait is up close, especially when you can barely see them with the naked eye! See more pictures on the next page!

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Tags: cards - microscope - travel

So this engraving trend has been huge lately... grab a laser engraver and you can throw everything from moleskines to macbooks to.... well, you name it! Joe from EngraveYourTech and EngraveYourBook, sent over one of his creations, and it arrived while i was out of town, so by the time i got back i was so jetlagged and tired that when dan and i first looked at the moleskine, it took a second to remember that it was laser engraved. In fact first we were there touching it and looking at it up close arguing whether it was engraved or just silkscreened in this matte brownish color, since you could barely feel the indentation...

So we did the only thing we could do... get SUPER up close (200x) shots to see what was really going on... and here you can see, its clearly engraved enough just to scrape that black layer off... and then we even cut a tiny chunk out of the corner to see the colors underneath (you can also see pics of that, and slightly less upclose pics on the next page)... and if you still aren't convinced, there is also a video on the next page of this exact pattern being engraved on a moleskine...

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Tags: books - engrave - gifts - laser - microscope - shopping - technology