The Intricate Makeshift Signs of Mr. Sato

"If, over the past several years, you have had the privilege of joining the 3.3 million people that pass through Tokyo's Shinjuku station each day, you may have observed the work of Mr. Sato. A construction worker by trade, Sato uses strips of adhesive tape to create elaborate makeshift signs that help people navigate the temporary chaos of ongoing renovation work at Shinjuku station. Sato's signs, which feature a peculiarly attractive gothic font, are the focus of a 15-minute documentary video put together by TrioFour, a small group of independent filmmakers. The video, which can be seen in two parts here (part 1, part 2), consists mainly of a long interview with Sato, entirely in Japanese (no subtitles), but it also shows lots of photos of his work from 2004."

Via pink tentacle, with more at the link.

Announcing A Sister Wiki: Toyinstructions

I was assisting at a training all weekend, but I'd rather pin my silence at TiP on toyinstructions, a new wiki ZRecs has launched which deep-links to toy instructions online and is poised to be much more if we can find some passionate contributors. We're currently posting not only links to the exact pages where you'll find toy instructions on manufacturers' websites, but human-edited links to blog search (Technorati), photos (Flickr), user groups (Yahoo Groups), and DIY projects (Instructables and Make, with more sites to come). We also have a handy toy recall search tool and a couple of cool community features, with more planned for later.

Take a look and by all means let me know what you think; thanks to links this morning from Hackszine and the Make blog, we have a lot of folks stopping by; now all we need is for some folks to start editing pages, posting instructions to Flickr and tagging them "toyinstructions," and making suggestions for the site. [Link]