I love tiny things. Love them. Tiny things, filled with tiny details. This is why, somewhere in my closet, I have a box of random tiny dollhouse items that I’ve bought in various places or made myself, despite not ever having owned a dollhouse or the dolls that would accompany it. (My dolls were either baby-sized or tiny. Polly Pocket, anyone?) I have tiny newspapers and books that open; tiny jars of fake Necco Wafers and peppermint sticks; tiny wrapped “Christmas presents;” tiny forks and knives and mugs…I can’t resist them, because they’re just so intricate and cute. And tiny!
It’s also why I own and dote on a tiny Chinese dwarf hamster. Well, okay, so I’ve had bigger pets, too, but anyone who reads Twitter knows Bitty Miss Izzy is like my spirit animal or something, and I am perpetually unable to get over how tiny and cute she and her little paws and little nose and little ears are, which is why I am always photographing and filming her.
It’s also why, in my “spare time,” (haha) I sometimes make tiny models of geektastic things, like a tiny Tenth Doctor (Who) and TARDIS, or a tiny little Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, or a tiny batch of lembas bread or tiny Rorschach accessories. And, of course, a tiny “Scary Trousers” Neil (Gaiman), based on the drawing of the same name, because who doesn’t need one of those? (Though that one now resides with the real Neil Gaiman, unless he’s given it away or something.)
Aside from the general cuteness of tiny things, I think a main reason I like them is because of the astounding amount of detail that they frequently manage to include, despite size; and as a geek, I’m more than a little inclined to obsess over detail, and particularly the (haha) tiniest details. I like intricacy. And let’s be honest here – I’m not alone. Most geeks are a bit detail-obsessed. Whether it’s every detail of a beloved character’s fictional life or a beloved fictional world, or every detail of a replica convention costume or collectible item, or every detail of minutia about the real-life production process of a favorite show, or trilogy, or what-have-you, we geeks are all about the details.
And being a geek, you know what I really find fascinating? When geekness combines with detailed tininess and produces amazing, awesome, and sometimes useful things. Here are some of my favorites this week:
Via the wonder of 3-D printing (how much do I want a 3-D printer and a 3-D printing pen? So much) I give you: tiny Winterfell.
] from the beautiful, amazing Game of Thrones opening credits. Look at it! Look!! It’s made of plastic and preciousness and precision. It’s under 10 square inches! I want one. (I also adore the entirety of the opening credit of that show, which feature a clockwork map of the story’s locations that is so tiny and intricate and beautiful and clever that it won an Emmy. You can read a cool piece about how the credits are done here.)
But lest you think that 10 square inches is anything special, there’s also this 3-D printed Wing Commander spaceship that is the diameter of a human hair. (Also, did you know there was a Wing Commander movie starring Freddie Prinze, Jr.? I didn’t! Apparently it was terrible.) A human hair! That’s almost too ridiculously tiny to be real, and yet, there it is, in incredible detail, just ready to be accidentally snorted up someone’s nose while they’re eyeing it up close. It’s adorbs, and I want one, even if I’d lose it immediately. I also see great promise for a nano-printer, in that it could conceivably be used to produce tiny bits for a myriad of helpful scientific or medical things, or even to produce an incredibly tiny Iron Man. You know which one I’d use it for first.
Speaking of robotics, how about this little Festo BionicOpter? Granted, it’s not quite as cute or small as a tiny Winterfell or Wing Commander plane, but it does have the benefit of being potentially a bit more useful. It’s an arm-sized quadcopter that “looks and moves like a dragonfly,” and “despite its complexity, the highly integrated system can be operated easily and intuitively via a smartphone.” Wow. I’m kind of in awe. Watch the video; it’s pretty cool. It also makes me wonder how long it’s going to take Festo (or other quadcopter folks) to make even smaller quadcopters. (Or, in a more sinister vein than the dreamy music of the BionicOpter video would have us thinking, how long until we’re going to be seeing things like the heat-sensing, eye-scanning electric shock spider robots of Minority Report? Eep!)
Despite the possible sinister applications of making technological things smaller (and that sort of thing has been around for years in the spy world, where we have things like the key ring spy camera and the DocuPen scanner, I think the current possibilities of the technology that allows things like the above to be made tiny and real is pretty amazing, and am curious to see what the miniaturization geniuses will come up with next.
Also, I think it’s amusing that we live in an age where miniaturization can also be used for practical jokes. I’m ordering my Micro Spy Remote as we speak. So don’t be too distressed if your TV mysteriously starts changing channels on its own next time I come to visit; and until next week, Servo Lectio!
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis
THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil
