How to Soundproof an Apartment to Muffle Your Wife's Drumming

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/06/soundproofing
Um... that's what this article in Wired is about. V interesting. I'd never heard of Green Glue - sounds like cool stuff.

The future is going to be awfully expensive

I really need to start saving. There's not just the constant spiral of property prices in this stupid country - there's the upgrades on the kids' genetics, the kids' education (after all, the UK has the lowest social mobility of anywhere important, so I'll have to shell out for a good school for the little brats), plus any tricky drug treatments I may need in the future (the NHS does a good job, bless it, but it probably won't be able to afford my Alzheimers treatment by the time I get there).


And of course my death inoculation, which is going to need another mortgage.

Gecko-inspired tape sticks to Teflon

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2007/06/19/gecko-inspired-tape-sticks-to-teflon
Worth it for the first comment alone. Pretty cool anyway.

Floaters

Have you ever had little floaty things move across your vision?

Matt, you really are a complete freak. What is this new medical weirdness?

 

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Oh yeah, I've always had these

 

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I had this happen to me once, just before my legs melted and I went bald overnight.

 

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This happened to me once, but I figured it was all that time staring at rats' asses.

 

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...no, not that sort of floater.

I've been having some trouble with my eyes today - feels like some sort of spasm, or clot, or something, which makes the world appear to move as if you're sitting on top of the washing machine during the spin cycle - most unpleasant and not a little alarming, especially when you're operating heavy machinery at the time. Anyway, I did a bit of research, and while I was bumbling around the internet I came across the following, unrelated bit of eye-wrongness trivia:

You may sometimes see small specks or clouds moving in your field of vision. They are called floaters. You can often see them when looking at a plain background, like a blank wall or blue sky. Floaters are actually tiny clumps of gel or cells inside the vitreous, the clear jelly-like fluid that fills the inside of your eye.

Floaters may look like specks, strands, webs or other shapes. Actually, what you are seeing are the shadows of floaters cast on the retina, the light-sensitive part of the eye.

Now, I know some people don't see them, but I know that most people in my family do, and I'd always assumed that most people did and the freaks were those who lacked them. But apparently not. Have you ever come across this? It appears that things can be done about them. Not sure if I consider it sufficient a problem to ask anyone to fix it - after all, I've lived with them for as long as I can remember and they seem harmless. To be honest, I've never regarded them as a problem - in fact, it can be kinda fun chasing these things around your eyeballs. I know, I need to get out more.

I also booked an appointment with the optician, before anyone asks.

Calton Consort Recordings

http://cc.konx.net/caltonconsort.html
Oooo! This is us! Recorded, from the back of the hall, via dubious means. And probably with attendant dubious sound quality, I have no idea. I don't dare listen, frankly.

It's official: the universe has excess time in it

http://jeffdeboer.com/Galleries/CatsandMice/tabid/77/moduleid/433/viewkey/photo/photoid/120/Default.aspx
Otherwise, how do you explain this?


I mean, yeah, it's cool and all - amazing, frankly - but really, one or two pieces would have made the point, yes? Producing thousand of variants starts to look slightly, well, like you need to get out more? That's my humble opinion, anyway.

via my little brother.

The Google Carpet Marker

http://www.robertsollis.com/page/pages/google/google.html
Ah... I've got a feeling this isn't the first time this has been done, but since it's someone at my old alma mater (hah), the Royal College of Art, I kind of have to post it. Plus, it's cute. Although I'm not entirely certain where the tent would be, it doesn't appear that the satellite photos have been updated fast enough - predictable, but still, how cool would that have been?



On a completely unrelated note, why the heck did the designers of my computer keyboard put the quotation marks as a 'Shift +' key? I use them far more than I do, say, #, or [], all of which have their own keys. Dammit people, get a grip.

I've been climbing the walls

I've been doing a bit of DIY, gradually (oh so gradually) doing up the flat so that it no longer looks like a rather tired 1970s DIY magazine centrefold. (What it looks like now, I don't want to speculate on). Just finished this set of shelves last weekend, and I'm pretty pleased with them. I wanted a set of shelves I could climb up - I was bored with having top shelves which I never used because I couldn't be bothered to fetch a ladder - so I designed and built these. On the left, you can see my original computer mockup; and to get the picture on the right, I had some fun with my camera and some very long exposure times.


As long as you never get close enough to see the quality of the build, they look pretty good. Happy with that.

Rizhao - China's solar-powered city

I just love this photo. It's from an inhabitat report on Rizhao, the Chinese city which claims that 99% of the households in the central district use solar water heating, as well as nearly a third of the outlying houses. What everybody does when it's cloudy, I don't know.

I was reminded of this while reading this good-news story about education in Tibet which mentions that solar cookers are apparently extremely popular in Tibet - and the list of benefits has a few unexpected items on it. Apparently, yaks produce more milk if they can drink warm water! How lovely.

Designer//Slash//Model

http://www.designerslashmodel.com/
Oh this is good. "Perfect people create perfect design" - of course! Why didn't I see it before. As core77 puts it, "a sort of mockumentary site that pokes fun at the nauseating glam-o-rama image fest otherwise known as the design scene." V good.

When will Dubai sink?

As yet another stupidly tall building is proposed for this little desert oasis, I'm starting a sweepstake: when will Dubai sink beneath the combined weight of all these buildings?

I'm plumping for 19th July, 2029.

BBC NEWS | Bear robot rescues wounded troops

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6729745.stm
"The Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot (BEAR) can scoop up even the heaviest of casualties and transport them over long distances over rough terrain.

New Scientist magazine reports that the "friendly appearance" of the robot is designed to put the wounded at ease. "

Isn't he cute? How long before someone gives him a gun, do you think? Mental images of a row of cute little teddy bear robots, armed to the teeth, mowing down anything in their path...



Anyway, fans of Dan Simmons will know what I mean when I say this thing looked suspiciously voynix-like to me...

What the World Eats | Photo Essays | TIME

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html
Fifteen families from around the globe show off their weekly food shop. Photographs by Peter Menzel from the book "Hungry Planet". Fascinating.

Sony unveils My First Ecogizmo

Talking of narratives (well, I was), Sony has unveiled a new range of eco-friendly product concepts (check out the 'no photos' sign in the back of this, er, photo). Most popular seems to be the 'Spin 'N Snap' digital camera (it's the one that looks like a slightly flattened video cassette) - stick your fingers in the two holes and give it a twirl to power it up.


Personally, I'm a bit baffled as to why Sony unveiled this range (which is called 'odo'). From a styling point of view they're deeply unprepossessing, and let's face it, since windup radios have been around for a while, these aren't particularly revolutionary in concept. I'm normally a big fan of Sony's industrial design department, who do an excellent job in spite of being hampered at every turn by their bosses' insistence on lumping everything with a proprietary format... but this leaves me totally cold. I mean, what is that viewer thing?

Personally, my feeling is that somebody took their eye off the ball here. IMHO, there are relatively few people that actually need to watch a DVD in the bathroom; basically, it's a prop for your make-believe life where you live in the future. These gadgets do not, it seems to me, have that "just dropped in from 2059" look which is the prerequisite for this sort of gadgetry. They're clunky - even the camera, which is definitely the best of the bunch. They just don't fit into the 'living in the future' story that gadgeteers like to tell themselves. And maybe I'm missing something, but the technology, while admirable, doesn't seem to me to be sufficiently exciting to distract from the clunky design.

On the other hand, this is Japan we're talking about. Where even the trains have cute little ears. So maybe it's just jarring to my Western sensibilities.
A few photos here

Maths and internal narratives - a random thought

I'm sitting at work, doing a bit of maths (something I'm not used to, although I should be), and it occurs to me how the process of doing maths has a very strong, single narrative: A plus B equals C, multiply it by this, divide it by that, integrate it, add a constant, etc., etc... concentrating on one single thing the whole time. And I'm reminded of a story which I've blogged previously (sorry, I'm doing this via email so can't manage links) of a kid in a young offender's institute who was freaked out by discovering he actually had an internal narrative... and I'm wondering this: modern society is very good at chopping up and scattering our attention over wide areas. You could argure that a lot of marketing is aimed at doing exactly this, in order to prevent us from thinking rationally and logically about things and promoting an emotional response (so much easier to manipulate, my dear). So, are we shooting ourselves in the foot? Are we creating an underclass which will never be able to conceive a logical train of thought, because the concept of the single internal narrative is completely alien to them? There have certainly been times in my life when I've struggled to focus on one thing and my attention has been scattered. Are there people for whom life is always like that? Does modern society promote such a state? Personally, I suspect so.

Extreme Personalisation of mobile phones

http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/2007/05/extreme_persona.html


Some professor in Istanbul does crazy stuff to phones. I like the one with the AA batteries.

Genetic telltale identified for Crohns Disease

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6724369.stm
Okay, so Crohn's Disease isn't ulcerative colitis, but the two are pretty close, so this is quite encouraging. I've always felt there was a genetic component, since my Mum has psoriasis and my sister has psoriatical arthritis - and like UC, those are immune system disorders. So it seemed reasonable.

Still, good news.

Congratulations Tom and Ellie!

My little brother got married at the weekend.

Indian billionaire builds urban Tracy Island

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/net/mmpaper.aspx?Page=article§id=15&contentid=20070530022210718d7460de5

...well, that's what it reminded me of.

"According to the plan, the house will rise to a height of 173.12 meters, equivalent to that of a regular 60-storeyed residential building. However, Antilia will have only 27 storeys in all, which means each floor will have a ceiling considerably higher than the current average of nearly three meters."

The first six floors are for parking. It will also have 'refuge floors' spaced throughout it, so that people can temporarily shelter from the enormousness of their dwelling.