Your latest fun research detour

Cindyt

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What kind of fabric is best for interior yacht couch and chairs. Zzzzs. Vinyl. Uh, no. I settled on white canvas. It was kind of fun, because most of the upholstery had cutesy-dork little anchors and birds and stuff.
 

Cindyt

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Sunbrella fabric. Visit Sailrite for a lot of information and articles.
That's where I found my canvass.


Early this morning I was searching whether Createspace would accept a 10 point font, with mixed answers. Sever font types were also mentioned. I tried Garamond with 10 point. Not much smaller than 11, but I don't like straight quotation marks. I settled for Dante with 11 points.
 

iszevthere

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I started out researching custody battles that turn international and that are between two Hague Convention countries. Guess who's turning to AW for help in two seconds. I wound up on TVTropes looking up the LiveJournal community das_sporking. Not sure how it happened, but hey, I learned cool things about a community I like.
 

Al X.

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I've spent an inordinate amount of time researching Ho Chi Minh's life history, and the two major Vietnamese war campaigns (the "French War" and what they call the "American War.") I should write a book. Haha.
 

Filigree

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Somewhat frivolous: wearable books. That covers readable, multiple-page books shaped like rings, bracelets, and pendants. Also jewelry made from paper. Another craft rabbithole. I've made them before, but wasn't happy with the results. So I'm caging notes on materials and structures.
 

Lakey

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I spent some time over the weekend trying to find out how many people worked in the US Attorney's office in New York during Irving Saypol's tenure (that would be when young Roy Cohn was busy prosecuting the Rosenbergs), and what job titles they might have had, especially women who might have functioned as researchers or investigators but not given such impressive titles.
 

gbondoni

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The lay of the land in Tuscany in 1914, just before the outset (elsewhere) of WWI. A lot of looking at old pictures and comparing it to what Google streetview shows today. But most interesting of all was a volume entitled "A Stained-Glass Tour of Italy" published in 1912 and which serendipitously gave me some of my material!
 

Lakey

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The lay of the land in Tuscany in 1914, just before the outset (elsewhere) of WWI. A lot of looking at old pictures and comparing it to what Google streetview shows today. But most interesting of all was a volume entitled "A Stained-Glass Tour of Italy" published in 1912 and which serendipitously gave me some of my material!

What an amazing find. I was excited to find in my parents' collection a book of New York photos from the 1940s - but there are scads of books about that out there, no surprise to find one. It's a miracle that you found something so on-the-nose and yet so esoteric.
 

Lakey

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Another one: I was looking up 1930s typewriters to figure out what brand my character's old portable might be, and I found this incredible site that has restored vintage typewriters for sale. I think I know what I want for my next birthday. :tongue

(They aren't cheap, and I honestly don't know how I would choose one even if I decided to pull the trigger. But I do have this fantasy of writing the next draft of my novel on era-appropriate hardware.)