yetis love too

I'm sure everyone in NZ has seen this already but I just love it so much.



Also love:

Cutting shapes
Jesus

I hate haters but I hate steampunk more

My stomach curls in pain every time I see a piece of copper, a grill and old knobs and dials on a piece of new technology in the name of steampunk. Why people add useless and pointless ornamentation from the past, therefore making the technology harder to use, completely evades me. And this hideous kitsch is everywhere and loved by all faceits of technology world from embedded and programmable logic design engineers, to makers, to technologists and film makers!
I can admit that there is a time and a place, as in a few amazing anime movies, like steamboy, that I bought for my little brother a few years ago, I loved reading H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and some beautiful classic watches could be considered steampunk, but for the most part this craze is a poor attempt at creativity. From time to time (being an electronics engineer myself) I will pick up an old style switch from a junk shop, or toy with the idea of building a nixie tube clock from scratch and with the purpose of creating something functional and learning something new.
Perhaps there are just a few in the group that have brought the rest down and have created this loathing I have towards the 'meme', but too bad the damage has been done. After googling a little bit more on the topic I found this article that articulates and sums up so well what is so misguided about steampunk.

Plant some trees!

So for this DOC project a few people in the class are working on projects that assist in the growth of native plants. The most interesting one in my opinion is a very cheap, laser cut capsule made from peat that strengthens and provides a housing for natives in their early stages of development and when they are planted in the wild. Rather than planting from seed, natives normally have to be grown to a good size first so that they are strong enough to survive. The capsule, which degrades and opens over time, provides protection so that they can be planted at an earlier stage, thereby allowing for more natives to be planted more often. It currently has a flower like construction with petals that open as the plant matures.


I just saw this posted on boingboing - a ready made herb garden, catered for the different seasons, that can be rolled out in your garden. It uses nutrient enriched recycled cardboard and lets you create a herb garden in minutes. When I started this post I was quite excited about it, but now, thinking about it a little more, it's actually just for lazy people, takes some of the fun out of planting seeds and the cardboard is bound to look like ugly rubbish in the garden. Ahh well, I'll show it to Kevin tomorrow anyway.

Augmented Reality

The blog I currently visit most regularly would have to be rubbishcorp.com. It's run by a single guy who appears to be a web developer and although his tastes are a bit questionable at times, he writes very little, and much is reposted from other sites, I am often amused and entertained by what he posts about. And he only makes a few posts a day on average.

A topic that he is obviously quite interested in is the development of augmented reality cell phone applications.


There is so much potential in this, like, who didn't want that ability when they first saw it in Terminator!? (though some geeks have pointed out that there would be no reason for a robot to print stuff to a screen only to read it again..)

So for this Industrial Design project I currently working on we are required to design products for DOC, these products will be used by DOC to make their jobs easier. For the second hand-in we had to present three different concepts/ideas/inventions that in some way met this requirement.

One idea of mine that I really would have liked to go on with but didn't go with was combining augmented reality, microsoft photosynth and a google maps type web interface based around an iphone. The 'product' would also have a physical component that would provide a case and an improvement to the iphone's built-in camera by extending the optical zoom (there are already a few products like, but they are really ugly!)


So the idea was that trampers or walkers on DOC tracks around New Zealand could take photos of their travels and upload them to a web database, over time there would be enough photos to create a photosynth style 3d environment that could be looked at on the web. Imagine being able to type into Heaphy track google and be able to virtually walk to the track and plan your trip from anywhere in the world.


The product would be useful for tourists and locals, and would allow for DOC workers to remotely monitor track and hut maintenance. Unfortunately the idea didn't have enough of an Industrial Design component and so didn't go any further, but I would really love to build it myself if I could find the time.

Andrew Bird

I've recently been listening to Andrew Bird, a friend Joe put me on to him. He is an amazing musician, a trained violinist, plays guitar and quite uniquely uses whistling extensively in his live performances. His myspace has a full album worth of songs on it, he has a take away show and his cemetary gates performance on pitchfork tv is life changing.

Apparently he came to New Zealand a few years ago.

Other music I've been listening to recently:
CHLL PLL
Casiotone for the playfully alone
Handsome Furs

a place to put some stuff

I've been wanting to create a blog to share industrial design stuff, a place to keep links to bands I've found, somewhere to put my good essays or work from uni and once and a while an opinion or two. Somewhere I can repost cool links I've found without people knowing. This will be somewhere I can put all this stuff. This may go nowhere.