Hear me, O gurus of photography

I did a bad thing this week. I spent a lot of money I don't have on a camera: an Olympus E-500 dSLR.



Hear me, all you who are wise in the ways of photography, and please reassure me I did a wise (or at least, not crashingly stupid) thing.

Moom in concert - la figure humaine

Start:	Jun 9, '07 7:30p
End:	Jun 9, '07 8:45p

This year we've sung some pretty challenging stuff, and this gig is no exception. Poulenc's music is, imho, fiercely intellectual and by no means easy listening, and the Tormis stuff is... well, it's in Estonian, okay?

The programme is chosen by our conductor - he always chooses really interesting lineups. I haven't asked him, but the theme I see running thorugh all this stuff is a meditation on humanity, or perhaps humanism (although I'm a bit vague on the precise definition of humanism). Anyway, the Poulenc piece seems very humanist to me, as are the French Chansons (I'm sure that should be Chansons Francais, but what the hell), whereas the madrigals are full of lusty singing about sex (as all madrigals are). Even the Jaanilualud (which means St John's Songs in Estonian) seem to be a mix of religious and profane themes. And of course the Ken Johnstone piece, as the name suggests, is about death, and our relationship with the dead. It's kind of an interesting mix, in an intellectual kind of way.

Some samples here.

Infomatics Hysteria + Royksopp = just amazingly cool

via core77, via Bruce Sterling.

kosmos

http://www.fleischfilm.com/html/kosmos_1024.htm
Okay, this is deeply weird. It's also long (5 mins), and at 50-odd MB takes a while to download - but it has a certain aggressive, hypnotic attraction to it.

Basically, this... person... grew crystals directly onto film, and projected the result. It's odd. People with epilepsy, or a tendency to hear voices in random noise, should probably not try it. For the rest, just make sure the volume on your PC is at fairly low.

The Stake - Burning Issues at Your Disposal

http://stake.quasimondo.com/
I didn't have time to burn Kevin J Anderson's entire portfolio, but it was still very, very satisfying. Just a shame the stats don't feed through to Amazon - 'people who burned this book also burned...'

I found this on worldchanging, via the following, particularly fascinating article - I commend it to you heartily.

Colitis update

There's recently been a lot going on in my medical life, and I realized I should really put in an update, for all those people who really really want to know what it's like to have a long term immune system problem. You weirdos.

First off: a recap. I am currently on mercaptopurine (6MP), an immunosuppressant drug which used to be (but is no longer) used for chemotherapy. I've been on it for, I dunno, maybe six months? In that time, my inflammation has reduced to the point where my blood tests look normal, and my poo has become solid (you have no idea how good that feels). However, I've also completely lost my appetite, and left to my own devices I've become very lazy about feeding myself. I've also had very low energy levels (which not eating probably doesn't help). In general, I've experienced symptoms which look and feel like anaemia - tiredness, dizzyness, etc.

Oh, and 6MP and alcohol don't mix.

So that's the baseline situation, if you like - I've cut back on all my strenuous activities, and by avoiding anything overly active (GF is well trained now, and has pretty much given up on sex after 7pm) I can pretend I'm leading a more-or-less normal life.

However, the last couple of months I've been feeling particularly bad. I suspect this might be due to taking on the task of redecorating the bedroom; the textured wallpaper did come off, but it was a tough and wily opponent, and left me in a weakened state. A couple of stressful weeks didn't allow me to recover, and since then I've been struggling. Case in point: I went away this weekend with some friends to a hostel outside Edinburgh. We were rehearsing some choral music, so nothing particularly strenuous was planned; even so, I had to go to bed at ten o'clock, feeling rough, when they all stayed up and partied 'til 3. That sort of thing really brings home to you how things really are; most of the time, with nobody living with me to compare to, I can bumble along without worrying about it; but when you're living cheek-by-jowl with your peer group for a couple of days like that, it becomes painfully obviously how far off normal you've become. It's upsetting, and slightly embarrassing.

I was all ready to break out the prednisolone and start popping steroids, but having discussed it with Generic GP today, we came to the conclusion that actually, my run-downness has probably been a result of something post-viral rather than a flare-up of my UC, which according to my blood tests seems to be pretty normal. That's heartening; at least I'm suffering from something normal people get, and it doesn't have to be walloped with something potent and chemical.

On top of this, I've just had the results of a bone density scan. Irritable bowel illnesses (Crohns, UC, etc.) reduce the uptake of nutrients, and over a long period of time this can lead to reduced bone density. In my case, it appears that while my hips an joints are normal, my spine has a considerably lower density than normal (two - well, actually nearly three standard deviations). So now I have osteoporosis in my back. Great. Anyway, I've been given some alendronic acid to take. As far as I can work it out, the bone is undergoing a constant process of breaking down and being renewed; this stuff slows down the breaking-down part of the cycle, which kind of gives the building-up part a chance to catch up. Apparently. It's a once-a-week thing, and doesn't sound particularly scary at all, compared to some of the stuff I've been on - but I guess I'll be wary of lifting anything heavy for a while. Great; so now when I avoid helping anyone with heavy equipment, people will think I'm rude and lazy, as well as a malingerer. Hey ho.

In any case, I have another appointment with Kindly Consultant in a couple of weeks (he's a nice man), when we'll really know if the last few days (which have been much better than anything previous) have been an aberration, or whether I'm genuinely coming out from underneath something that normal people get.

It's been a bad day for architecture.

First of all, I discover via inhabitat that Kisho Kurakawa's Capsule Tower is to be demolished. This will make all fans of Transport Tycoon very sad (incidentally, I never realized that Chris Sawyer took so many of the buildings in the game from local landmarks in Glasgow). It makes me a bit sad, too - all of Japan's major architecture institutions have pleaded for a refit rather than demolition, and it seems sad to me that a design which has modularity as its central concept is not being allowed the chance to really put that modularity to the test - after all, so far, none of the capsules has ever been removed. Residents have complained (And with good reason, imho) that the pods are small, and have become increasingly unpleasant to live in; but why not replace a bundle of two or four capsules with a single, larger, more modern living space? All sorts of exciting possibilities suggest themselves.



Money, that's what it boils down to. A new-build can fit more people onto the land, which means more money. Shame.

And then on top of that, BBC's PM programme has just informed me that the current architect in charge of completing Gaudi's famous Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona has warned that it could collapse even before it is finished, thanks to an underground railway which is planned to run under the site. I can't find any confirmation on that, though, not anywhere on the web - so I might be spreading scurrilous lies. I truly hope so.

Cirrus Aviaticus

http://www.astro.ku.dk/%7Eholger/IDA/S/page0092.html

Part of a quite interesting slideshow about plane contrails. I always assumed that the world was too big to really be affected by one li'l plane, but these photos would suggest a different story.

Air

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Geoff Ryman

Geoff Ryman is an interesting author; his books are often both deeply sentimental and full of hard-science innovation at the same time. The first book of his I read was The Child Garden, and it pulled at my heartstrings so powerfully that I was both exhiliarated and slightly scared when I saw Air on the shelves. It certainly comes highly recommended though - it won the James Tiptree Jr (no, I don't know either), Arthur C Clarke and Sunburst awards, and was shortlisted for the Nebula. That's not bad.

I'm older now, and I'm rather better at seeing the emotional manipulation coming, but Ryman is still a very powerful author. The story of Air is set in a tiny village in the nation of Karzistan, an utterly poverty-stricken backwater that has basically missed out on the entire internet revolution, and now must prepare itself for the next big informational transformation, when information will free itself from wires and computers and become ubiquitous. Most of Chung Mae's fellow villagers assume this will be like a TV in their heads, where they can watch football and soap operas while they go about their daily lives. When they test the system, however, Chung Mae gets a terrifying view into what might actually be in store for all of them, and struggles to educate her fellow villagers, even as her own personal life starts to unravel...

If that sounds unprepossessing as a story line, then don't worry, there's plenty going on - but this isn't one of those future history books documenting the Great Events of the Future. This is about one woman, one village, living on the brink of change and trying to come to terms with it. It's a great and simple story, with charming characters who became deeply important to me as the tale progressed. Ryman seems to belong to a similar school of thought to authors like Adam Roberts and Charles Stross, who see technology as not necessarily good or evil, but a profoundly powerful agent of change in our attempts to live, to understand the world, and to work out how to be human.

I think I ate a bug.

I had the weirdest
dream last night.

I dreamt we had a
fishtank at work, and that there were some little fish in it which - despite
looking very much like miniature koi carp - were supposedly whitebait (for the uninitiated, whitebait are great to eat whole, deepfried in batter). At
lunchtime me and my boss decided to have sushi, so we each took three of these
little orange 'whitebait' and dared each other to eat it. He chickened out
completely; I let two of mine go, and went to swallow the third... but I
snatched it away from my mouth at the last minute. All I bit down on was a
little fragment of spine at the tail end, which tasted crunchy and
bitter.

I think I may have
swallowed a bug in my sleep.

The problem in my area

At the moment Scotland is in the throes of an election, so on Saturday morning I had the joy of a big wodge of political junk mail being thrust through my door, all wrapped up in a pizza delivery leaflet.

One leaflet in particular caught my eye. It was from the Liberal Democrats, who I would normally vote for (being solidly bleeding-heart liberal and middle class). However, in a bid to encourage people to vote tactically, they included the following bar graph:

It's a two horse race: Tories and SNP have no chance of winning in this area, so vote Lib Dem or get Labour!

It took me a while, in my addled pre-breakfast state, to work out what was wrong with this graph, but when I did I was extremely irritated. The Liberal Democrats have a bit of a reputation for sharp practice in local election campaigns, but to me this is a vote-loser. The most charitable explanation is that it's a formatting error - they chopped off the top of the Labour bar to fit more stuff on the leaflet - but frankly, so what? As far as I'm concerned, this is a blatant and stupid attempt to mislead the electorate. Having politicians who lie to you is one thing - but you at least expect them to be good at it.

The ironic thing is that on the back of this self-same leaflet was a big blank area, headed by the question, "tell us about problems in your area" - so if anybody bothered to reply, the Liberal Democrat office will be awash with these bar graphs. Wonder if they've noticed. I wonder if they care.

Johnny Ball at the Royal Society

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/event.asp?month=5&id=6200
Those of you who were kids in the UK will probably remember Johnny Ball. His wikipedia entry doesn't do him justice - when I was a kid, he was this relentlessly joyous bundle of energy talking about crazy maths and sciencey stuff on TV, and I thought he was great. To my mind, he's still one of the greatest communicators of maths and science this country has ever had, and his stupid grin has probably launched more young people onto science careers than anything or anyone else.

He's giving a talk to the Royal Society on Tuesday, which will be webcast live, about his career. It's also free to go to, if you happen to be in the area. I guess that's why I'm really posting it - given the decline in popularity of science subjects in schools, I would have thought there'd be a lot of interest in finding out more about how and why Johnny Ball was so good at popularizing it. It seems strange (and maybe a little sad) to me that nobody thinks it's worth charging money (or even pre-booking) to hear him.

WhatTheFont : MyFonts

http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/


If you've ever come across a particular bit of writing and wondered what font it was in, then this is the tool for you. Upload a picture of the text (gif, jpeg, etc., etc.) and after a bit of jiggery pokery it'll suggest a list of possible fonts.

I tried it a while back and it worked brilliantly - but I was idly wondering about some text on the side of a drinks carton this afternoon, and I remembered what a brilliant tool this was.

Don't cross the streams (if you're UPS, that is)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/eeedfa08-d108-11db-836a-000b5df10621.html
Wasn't it one of Steve Martin's characters (man with two brains?) who couldn't turn left? Well, apparently UPS are following his lead. By cutting out left turns (which are cross-traffic turns in the US) the vans spend less time waiting for traffic to pass, and less time sitting with the engine idling means less fuel... I know, it sounds like those 'shortcuts' you take on the way to work, just because moving beats sitting stationary in traffic, but there must be something in it.

I'm curious about the 'family in Oregon' mentioned in the article, though.

Crikey, it's Earthday!

http://www.earthday.net/
Quick, everyone think of earth.

(annoying scare story about wi-fi on the earthday homepage - grrr. There are better things to focus on, people!)

The Evil Mad Scientist 3D Printer Project

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/3printerpreview
Another home-make 3d printer, this time from evilmadscientist.com. Unlike RepRap or Fab@Home, this one prints out relatively coarse sculptures in suger, using 'pixels' of about 2-5mm. They are claiming a ver ylow price for it - they reckon a 'resourceful' soul should be able to make one for $500 or so. Wonder how 'resourceful' you have to be...

I seriously covet something like this, although I think Fab@home still gets my vote.

Sao Paulo No Logo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508212/


Since Sao Paolo city passed radical new restrictions on the size of billboards in the city, new Cold War-style surveillance aerials have sprouted up across the city. Or at least, that's what it looks like from Tony de Marco's photoset. You can feel the sudden silence descend, and the aerial-like quality of the former billboards only serves to heighten the impression of a sudden, breathless, attentive silence descending.

via core77, via boingboing, via the whole freakin' internet.

Call for list: darn that predictive text thingy

With only one slipped digit, I just managed to turn:

Well done!

into:

Elk food!

I think that's pretty impressive. Anyone care to share any other pearls they've (almost) sent?

Cool Hunting: Tea Time

http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2007/04/tea.php

Ceci n'est pas un Philippe Starck paintbrush. In reality, c'est un infuser de tea.

I've backed off a bit from the habit now, but at one point I was getting worried about the depth of my tea fetish. Seems I needn't have worried - however low you go, there are always those who've taken it to the next level. And some of them are gadget obsessed. Coolhunting has collected a bunch of these little gizmos. Personally, I thought I was doing okay with my Bodum Assam teapot and my beloved long handled infusers... not for me the variable-temperature electric kettle from Nothing But Tea, which does sound like every tea fetishists must-have...

Normal Room (normal my arse)

http://www.normalroom.com/index.php
It's a nice idea - people around the world take photos of their homes and upload them, letting you do a bit of sneaky voyeurism under the guise of ethnographic research. But really, how normal are these rooms going to be? Not very, and not for very long, is my guess. See how quickly this place turns into an audition space for 'Home and Garden' magazine.

Having said that, it's really interesting. What strikes me is how similar these rooms across the world are - there doesn't seem to be a vast amount of cultural difference apparent.



via core77

Call for some sort of competition: Frappucino Sculpting

Okay, so it's childish, and silly, and I should know better, but... I like to play with my food. and to be honest, I'm surprised I can't find any references to this on t'internet - crushed ice is great for making ice/sandcastles in, I'm surprised Starbucks or someone haven't sponsored some massive ice-slush-sculpting competition already

I'm calling this one 'Mocha Ice Goon Attempts Escape'. It errs on the side of simply finding out what's possible, and the answer is, actually, quite a lot. I was particularly surprised at the amount of tonal variation which was possible. I'm sure someone with actual talent must be able to do something attractive.

Anyone fancy having a go?

What the iPhone really has going for it

I've just recently got myself a new phone - a Sony Ericsson k800i (in a rather fetching silver colour), and while playing with my new toy, I downloaded and tried out various 'themes' - colour schemes, basically. I tried out a fair few, mostly made by amateurs, and they were uniformly flashy, ugly and badly designed. But then I found one theme that was far prettier and infinitely easier to use than any of the others. It left Sony Ericsson's default options looking decidedly clunky and awkward.

My one slight niggle with this far superior piece of graphic/interface design is more ideological than practical and it is this:

It's an iPhone clone.

Worn Again: First pants, then shoes

http://www.wornagain.co.uk/
The idea of wearing a pair of trainers made of someone's old underwear might not seem so appealing, but the shoes themselves look pretty damn good (although I was particularly tempted by the satchels rather than the shoes)


Via superuse, which I've mentioned before. Also among its top picks at the moment is this awesome table made from a bit of DC-3:

This is an open source car

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/cmmn_the_worlds_first_opensource_car__5847.asp
... it could only come from Holland. "Stichting Natuur en Milieu" (The Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment) and the three technical universities of Delft, Eindhoven and Enschede have teamed up to create the 'c,mm,n' (no prizes for guessing how it's pronounced). All the bluepriunts and technical drawings will be freely available online.



I'm not sure how this will work; clearly they're not expecting people to be able to knock these up in their backyards, and surely there are a large number of parts where open source will miss out on the sort of economies of scale which the big carmakers enjoy. Nonetheless, it's nice to have the information - and for free, too.

Call for Support: Link to Google Will Eat Itself

http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/2007/03/22/call-for-support-link-to-google-will-eat-itself/
Deep ubergeek oddness. I believe they'll do what they say they will, but I'm not entirely convinced that'll be such a great outcome, don't ask me why.

Sears sells CNC machine for the home

http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?pid=00921754000
Someday every home will have one... but that day isn't yet, judging from the mixed reviews for the CompuCarve. But as the guys on core77 point out, the very fact that this is being offered at all - and marketed as a tool for the layman - is quite cool. And at the bargain price of $1900, too. Hopefully, they'll release a better one at about the same time that I can afford a workshop.

Science fiction and Industrial Design. more hanging around at the intersection.

Following on from ogling the pretty pictures of sf architecture, here's an article on how the sequel to the famous anime movie Ghost in the Shell has actual Nissan concept cars in it. Clearly there's a lot of mutual admiration going on here, and as anime becomes more internationally popular maybe ID can tag along for the ride. What an interesting celebrity subculture that would be: I look forward to the day when Hello! magazine has their first animator/industrial designer special issue.

'Bob's loft-style apartment in central Detroit is a testament to the new too-busy-to-even-do-grunge aesthetic. Functional, neo-modernist strip lighting provides a brightly lit interior, and the floors have the interestingly crunchy texture of blue-foam shavings... everywhere the perfume of freshly-cut MDF floats in the air...

Science fiction and Industrial Design. more hanging around at the intersection.

Following on from ogling the pretty pictures of sf architecture, here's an article on how the sequel to the famous anime movie Ghost in the Shell has actual Nissan concept cars in it. Clearly there's a lot of mutual admiration going on here, and as anime becomes more internationally popular maybe ID can tag along for the ride. What an interesting celebrity subculture that would be: I look forward to the day when Hello! magazine has their first animator/industrial designer special issue.

'Bob's loft-style apartment in central Detroit is a testament to the new too-busy-to-even-do-grunge aesthetic. Functional, neo-modernist strip lighting provides a brightly lit interior, and the floors have the interestingly crunchy texture of blue-foam shavings... everywhere the perfume of freshly-cut MDF floats in the air...

Meanwhile, is it me or does this concept car look very much like a stretched Mini?

Science Fiction and the City: Film Fest Update (just pretty pictures really)

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/science-fiction-and-city-film-fest.html
Of course I'm on the wrong side of the world to actually go to the event, but I just like looking at the pictures. These sketches of science fiction architecture from James Clyne, Ryan Church, Ben Proctor and Mark Goerner are simply fabulous.





I just didn't want it to stop.

via BLDGBLOG.

Ooo purdy: 30 The Bond, Sydney

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/03/19/30-the-bond-sydneys-greenest-building/
Billed as Sydney's greenest building, it's just the latest ecobuilding to be bragged about. Yeah yeah... but what caught my attention was the big fat sandstone wall in the atrium. When (yeah, when, not if) I design my own house, I've always promised myself it would have a big fat thermal mass in it to regulate the temperature. Imagine doing that with a couple of massive blocks like this... yeah, I'm so doing that.

NanoWriMo revisited: About the Bantolith

Back in November, when I was writing Government Joe must Die,
one of the parts which caused me most frustration was the little
episode on the Bantolith. I wanted the Bantolith to not speak, yet
still run his little domain with perfect ease, using nonverbal cues to
communicate his orders and wishes to the people on the station. The
descriptions I used left me deeply unsatisfied - his communications, by
opening doors, shining lifts, discouragingly cold blasts of air, seemed
very crude. But I couldn't quite put my finger on why, or how I could
do it better. Tonight I was suddenly struck with why this was such a
difficult problem. I wanted the Bantolith to manoeuvre people by
non-verbal methods, by misdirection and subliminal cues, by appealing
to them at a basically subconscious level. That's a difficult thing to
write about in a book, especially when you favour dialogue over
description. Essentially what you're writing is, almost by definition,
of the conscious rather than the subconscious. I wanted the Bantolith
to use the sort of tricks that that guy Derren Brown used on TV, the
sort of pseudo-magic which we don't even notice, where cues are fed to
us in the background, only to impel us at some later point, in what
appears to be a free-willed action. That's a tricky thing to write
about - how do you talk about the was the Bantolith operates, when the
cues happen a long way back from the actions, and they're things you
probably - no, not probably, absolutely definitely - did not notice in the first place? They are fundamentally disjointed. That's really gonna screw up your narrative.



I guess the only way to cope is by post-hoc explanation, but I really, really hate doing that.



I'm starting to understand, too, how much potential richness there
could be in that little caricature of a universe I dreamt up. Titan in
particular could easily have a gothic richness to it - ancient,
powerful, immensely wealthy, the fat spider loitering at the edges of
the web of Saturnine moons. There's a lot of potential there for
digging into some rich seams of history, as well as money and power.
And the cold, closed asceticism of the Triumvirates, rich in their own
way but always overshadowed by the golden disc of Titan. The
Triumvirates could be very interesting, socially. Socio-politically.

Main Page - Fab @ Home

http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Make your own rapid prototyping machine. Who wouldn't want to? Fantastic. This can be yours for about $2300, supposedly. Definitely want one.

Nokia's Design Research for Everyone

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2007/id20070314_689707.htm
Interview with Jan somebody or other from Nokia. Interesting comments about how they go about their research, but the most interesting part (I thought) was how prepay mobile phones are being used in the Third World as ATMs...

Pedal powered rollercoaster

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/motional_rollercoaster_5722.asp


...in Japan, of course (where even the trains have cute little ears).

Work have blocked treehugger as being an 'advocacy group'. Grrr.

My first political cartoon

If only I'd looked at some photos and discovered he had a moustache and no beard. Hey ho. Like I said, haven't got time for perfection.

I'm trying not to aim for perfection, because if I do then I'll never get anything done.


This is my response to Khaled Sheikh Mohammed admitting he's guilty of everything.

Open Architecture Network

http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/
Still only a baby network really, mostly stuff that is already covered in the book Design like you give a Damn', but has the potential to be really, really interesting, I think.


via core77 which also has some interesting ideas on ways of using lulu.com for printing portfolio books, supposedly very cheaply...

Boris

C'est tout c'est fini: Boris the floor-sweeping robot

Okay - this is Boris...um... Boris VI, I guess. He picks up about 80% of the muck on the floor, and can negotiate pretty much anything on my floor, including the sheepskin rug (the lizards still give him a bit of trouble, though).

Boris VI is a mini-Boris - I've stripped out all the gear trains, directly connected the motor units to the wheels and the floorbrushes, and used smaller wheels so he now has a much smaller footprint.

I'm declaring him finished - considering what a difficult problem this is - the different obstacles, then different types of stuff to pick up - I reckon he'll do. As long as he doesn't come into contact with his nemesis (the phone cable) then he's fine. So I'm declaring him done, his field testing finished, and now he can get on with cleaning the fliippin' floor. Get to it, robot! (Bless his little metal heart).

Social Explorer

http://www.socialexplorer.com/pub/home/home.aspx
..because you needed to know where all the Egytian-descent Floridians were living.

Wired has an article on Thomas Heatherwick

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/brightstuff.html
The man is a god. A god, I tell you!

I nearly got to do some work for him once, but turned it down. If I'd known who he was at the time... one of life's untaken roads. Still one of my all-time heroes, though. I mean, just check out the bridge:

My mate Tara on core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/hosting_a_guest_design_project_5649.asp
When Tara just happened to mention a few weeks back that she'd just got back from teaching in Zurich, I must admit to being curious (but being far too polite to ask). Admittedly, core77 give the project short shrift, but considering that Napier's not exactly known for its design department, and the students are relatively young, I'm very proud of her for getting some good stuff done with them. Hey, at least it got noticed.

The actual project is blogged on Architonic here

Call for list: Made-up statistics

1 in every 24 people can teleport using the power of their minds.

There's a greater biomass of aunts on the planet than there is of ants.

Two-thirds of Malaysia's cultivated land is dedicated to growing computers.

Technical question: Can I use this to monitor domestic power consumption?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46931&doy=5m3&ForceUpdate=Y


I want to monitor my domestic power consumption. Now there are any number of gadgets that will do this for a reasonable price - plug-in things that will tell you how much an individual appliance is using, or monitors that sit by your electricity meter. Being a cheapskate, though, can anyone tell me why I don't buy a cheap clamp meter from Maplin, which I can clamp round any wire in the place?

I suppose it will rely on certain assumptions, like fairly constant input voltage and fairly constant consumption from my bits and pieces, but as an energy saving measure, can anyone see any flaws in my plan? Do you think it will be sufficiently accurate?

Green living: BBC Newsnight's Ethical Man blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/ethical_man_justin_rowlatt/
Only clicked through a couple of entries (and I'm not sure how much longer it will be updated, if the program has aired), but still interesting to those of us interested.

If that makes sense.

Question: What do you do with worn-once clothes?

core77 covered this debate on apartment therapy, which asked the question: when you've worn cloths once, what do you do with them?

Most people (although judging from their comments there seem to be several exceptions) are reluctant to mix them up with the clean stuff, or chuck them onto the dirty washing pile prematurely. I guess the standard approach is to drape them over a chair or something (that's what I do, anyway), on the assumption that they're going to be worn again soon. Of course, this means that every morning I transfer a big pile of clothing from the chair to my bed and back again while I rummage for things to wear. Other approaches seem to include using coat racks, clearing a space in your closet, or hooks on the backs of doors (I'm thinking that's not going to cope with the sheer quantity of clothing my chair has to deal with).

I have a special interst in this from two perspectives: I'm planning to redecorate my bedroom in the near future, and if I could design out that big pile of clothing that would be a bonus; and also, as the core77 article points out, it's bizarre that nobody has designed an item of furniture which deals with this thorny (and pretty much universal) problem.

So, in the spirit of ethnographic research (or just sheer nosiness), I'm curious - how do you deal with this issue?

Superuse.org: Where recycling meets design

http://www.superuse.org/
"Superuse is a online community of designers, architects and everybody else who is interested in inventive ways of recycling."

Most of the references seem to be Dutch, but that's just another good reason to register and post more stuff that's local to you. My favourite is the 'materials' section, which ranges from the eminently sensible through the perversely attractive to the pointlessly desirable...

Instructables : How to make your own (mini) Plastic Vacuum Former

http://www.instructables.com/id/ELPFLBN6A9EYJ3I2F0
God bless instuctables! I am so doing this.

Check out the comments: "To make it larger use peg board siliconed to a cat liter tub and attach it to a shop vac." Oooo....

Must admit I rather fancy a slightly larger version. Think I might need a slightly larger flat first though...

The answer to my living room artwork quest

i have a couple of white walls, currently unadorned, so how 'bout this for my flat?

Quite old but...housing that makes your brain hurt

Okay, this is from way back in 2005, but I find it interesting so I'm posting it. So, like, two years ago, an artist called Shusaku Arakawa created the Reversible Destiny Loft apartments, an apartment block designed to keep your brain alert by constantly challenging your spatial awareness. The logic is more or less the same as those road junctions where they take away all the road signs and make it superficially more dangerous in order to get you to drive more carefully; this place uses distorted floors, optical illusions and light switches in counter-intuitive places, in order to keep the brains of the occupants active.

Cripes (more pictures here).

Leaving aside whether one would want to live in these places (and when they first went on the market they went for about twice the normal price of an apartment that size)(which is lucky when you consider how much they must have cost to make - what a fortunate coincidence that the price covered it), this made me think. One of my most valued precepts of design is that any design should be intuitive, easy to use, and generally free up the user to think about other things... and of course, Arakawa is going in completely the opposite direction.

On one level, it's deliciously counter-intuitive, but makes a charming sort of sense - if the occupants genuinely struggle to find stimulation, then here it is, on a plate. But personally, I think this represents a triumph of materialism over humanity. Those who need more stimulation are those who are isolated from human contact - especially the elderly. Making Granny live in a psychedelic obstacle course is going to isolate her further - elderly friends will be wary of visiting such a hostile environment, and she's going to find it harder to get out the door. What's required in such situations is more human contact, rather than more artifacts put in the way. Not for nothing is the architect described as an artist rather than a designer.

I have something of a personal interest in this because I have a granddad who is suffering terribly from Alzheimers. He's unable to distinguish between reflections and the genuine article, he struggles for words, he barely recognizes even his closest family (he certainly doesn't know who I am) - and I think he finds living alone with my grandmother very difficult. And although he's a nightmare to live with, the times I've seen him relax are when there's people around. The TV does nothing - it's hopeless, he can't follow it. People - human contact - is the only stimulation that works. So when Arakawa talks about 'halting mental decline', it's him that I think of - and I can only see him retreating from this environment, spending all day in a chair.

Sure, you'd need to be a pretty sharp cookie to live in this place - but I doubt very much whether living in this place would keep you sharp. I think it would just hurt.

For Dentworth: Boris V, the floor-sweeping robot

Yes, the floor sweeping robot has been given a name: according to my girlfriend, he is now Boris, and he has gone through several more reincarnations since the first prototype I wrote about. In that time I've tried many different variations - most of them variations on a theme of 'combine harvester style Boris', with a horizontally rotating brush. However, those brushes always got choked up with hair, and the gear trains always picked it up and ground to a halt eventually. I tried a servo-powered, more-or-less static brush which only moved when Boris was backing off from obstructions (so he didn't just shove piles of crud to the walls and leave it there) - but the power consumption on the servos was astronomical for some reason, so I ditched that and went back to motors.

This particular reincarnation, sadly, is already dead and gone to make way for a smaller mini-Boris. I found these wide flat brushes resulted in a mechanism which was too low to the ground and picked up crap - same problem as the combine harvester style - so the current plan has kind of gone full circle, and is using the original brushes from Boris1 (which sit much higher up), albeit on a much smaller chassis and without all the pesky gearing down - which I've discovered was probably unnecessary. Ho hum.

Also I have dark suspicions that this particular Boris managed to kill my wireless router - no mean feat considering he never went within a foot of the thing. But the power cables are under the sofa, and when he went under the sofa it was fine, and when he came out the router had died. Muy suspicious. Still, I don't begrudge him that - the router was always dodgy, and it was with some relief that I went to buy a new one.

Of course, in the six months or so that I've been tinkering with this several low-budget, floor-sweeping robots have come on the market, but that's so not the point.

(sorry about the graininess of the photos - I should have put some more lights on when I took the photos!)

Anyone tried Google docs?

Opened up my browser this morning, and Google greeted me with this message:


I'm just curious: has anyone? Is it any good?

Ooo pretty: Explorius Hydrofoil Yacht

Now, I flatter myself that I know a thing or two about yacht design, what with being a designer and having done a lot of sailing and being involved in commissioning two new yachts, so I'm fairly confident that as a real-life yacht this concept is not going to fly (you'll notice how flat the water is in all his renderings)... so I'm clicking through the presentation going 'Nope... nah, don't buy that... not a chance...'... and then I come to pictures like this and I go all gooey.



I just wish I could draw like that, to be honest.

Depressing

Subtopia has an article on inflatable prisons which I am directed to by BLDGBLOG. It makes for pretty grim reading. I knew migration was a problem, but as a solution, these seem pretty inhumane: '“the tents are windowless and the walls are blank, and no partitions or
doors separate the five toilets, five sinks, five shower heads and
eating areas. [..] Lacking utensils on some days, detainees eat with
their hands.”'

Thee's something seriously creepy about these disposable Guantanamos, housing a burgeoning demographic group. Who knows, maybe the next great novel of the twenty-first century will be written about those who live in these growing populations - about their births, their deaths, their lives and loves, entire dynasties incarcerated by a state which provides everything but freedom and privacy...

Call for list: Anyone know any good podcasts?

We've probably done this before, but...

Thus far the podcast revolution has really passed me by; along with RSS, the software managers for it have always seemed intimidatingly difficult to use (and quite resource-hungry). So I've stayed away, and contented myself with radio and TV and internet and all those safe, twen-cen forms of media.

But now I have a nice little podcast client (and RSS - yay!) for my Sony Clie, which is easy to use and not too fat. I've gone looking for stuff; and I've found plenty of enormous directories of podcasts, most of which are bewilderingly vast and badly organised (and most of the podcasts are badly described). I'd much rather go by word of mouth, in any case. So:

Anyone know any good podcasts?

I'm especially interested in sciencey ones or 'green living' ones. Not so bothered about news or current affairs, and anything from the BBC I'll probably have heard on the radio; what I'm interested in is the obscure stuff, the guy in Montana talking into his computer about how he turned his garden shed into a Mars colony simulator, or the architect who's making an audio diary of his tests on making houses out of cardboard tubing, or the relief worker blogging about attempts to organise tea farmers in Turkhmenistan into a fairtrade collective... you know, weird stuff.

So far, I have only one podcast on my machine, and that probably tells you more about what I'm looking for than anything else, so let's start the list with that:

European Space Agency Advanced Concepts Team podcast

So: anyone?

Fragment

The Garden of Martyrs could more accurately be called a cloister, rather than a garden - barely more than a wide, curved walkway, overlooked by the tourists' glassed-in route through the palace, it is one of the emperor's least favourite places. He gives the statues an ill-favoured glance as he strides through.
"You know there weren't even any real martyrs, don't you."
"Majesty." The Chancellor's response is minimal, hoping to cut off the emperor's usual rant before it can start. Above them, the wall of martyrs stands unheeding. Each figure is nine feet tall; their bronze chests are out-thrust, their chiselled features and business suits rendered in bold, planar slabs, in a style which in a previous era would have been more suited to Hollywood cartoons or Soviet propaganda. The arrows sticking out from their chests form a formidable fence, jutting up and out over the two mens' heads.

Housekeeping: Belkin wireless router

I own a Belkin cable wireless router (model F5D7230-4).
Over the time
I've had it, it's generally been rubbish, and certainly never stayed up
for more than twenty four hours. In the beginning, I didn't even notice
the problem, but it got worse and worse - the thing would just stop,
and hang until I turned it off and turned it on again.



Doing some research, I found this is quite common, and the thing is in
general deemed to be a piece of shit. The general advice appears to be
'take it back to the shop and get something that works'; however, being
a lazy soul (and being unsure of what I did with the receipt), I
experimented. I figured it looked like an overheating problem, so:



I took the lid off.



So far, it's been on solidly for about a fortnight, and no problems. It
appears that the heat sink works a lot better without the top shell. So
far so good.



Anyway, thought I'd post this as it may be of help to someone who has problems with this device.

UPDATE: after working for another week, the thing died completely and utterly and resisted all attempts at resuscitation. I have gone out and bought another router from a different manufacturer. I won't be buying Belkin any more.

Salem Witch Hunts and Mooninites

http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/02/litebrite_noseb.html
Being savaged by a sociology professor might seem about as scary as having your ankles viciously drooled over by an elderly terrier, but Boston's recent (over)reaction to a viral marketing campaign is given the once-over here by Dion Dennis:
"Not surprisingly, there's been a steady outflow of educated Millennials from the Bay State to points South and West, where a younger, educated demographic is welcomed and treated with greater public courtesy. [7] The Bay State response to a benign set of LED graphics, when compared to how these crudely drawn Mooninites were viewed in other venues across the U.S., makes the point unusually clear."

Via Bruce Sterling.

Yet another reason why we should get off this planet

...because the longer we leave it, the harder it becomes. This NY Times article makes pretty disturbing reading - apparently space junk, once a nuisance, is becoming a distinct threat to future space missions. Of course, it might provide a good answer to The Fermi Paradox - there are aliens on other planets, but they've all trapped themselves under blankets of orbital shrapnel.

Designy tidbits

First of all, a resource: The Design Encyclopedia
seems like it might be a very interesting resource. They're trying to
bootstrap it up to wikipedia scale with a 'fill in the blanks'
initiative right now.

Next... ooo. Gotta love this Electroluminescent chandelier by Naoto Fukisawa.
I have a bit of this stuff knocking aobut, although I'm not sure it's
enough to do one of these. Shame; it'd look fantastic in my bedroom...


Finally, if that's the good, then this is the bad and the ugly rolled into one: a collection of Super Bowl Party gadgets, including a $200 motion sensing trash can. "there's nothing worse than having to step on pedal just to open a
trashcan. You're not a feudal serf! Ditch the medieval tech and go
modern with a waste receptacle that does most of the heavy lifting for
you." I'm sorry, what?