Luxury Things of Importance

I love this trend. I love the art and the style and the blood of these sorts of ideas.

So yea, Designer Gasmasks. I want to make one now. The artist is also pretty neat. 

Does anyone know a good blog for more of this kind of stuff.

Cars Without Engines

So for a little while I have been thinking about modular based vehicles that would take advantage of electric components. I considered a few possibilities and started building some mock ups in Sketchup. The main idea of what is represented so far in this mock up is to isolate as much of the drive and control hardware in modular pockets near the wheels. I think this could lead to more efficient chassis design and also improve repair ability of some aspects of a car. 

In any case. Here the further set of wheels is an earlier model including internal drive with off centre steering  and external suspension. Then I thought it might be interesting if the wheel assembly could be functional on a wider selection of devices so in the second, closer, set I have incorporated drive, steering and suspension into a hub mechanism that uses long life neodymium magnets set up as linear stepper motors for direct steering control. I think a drive system that has highly controllable step coils would be convenient as it could help in increasing efficient at higher speeds and improving torque at lower ones. This system is mounted at the rim level so I am going to look into solid, airless, tires to avoid needing any extra room at the rim.  The I-beams used to depict part of a chassis are not specific to the design and ere just used as modelling aids.

I am trying to develop this idea further before I actually test it or realise it won't work for some reason I have neglected to consider. I would love advice or comments if you have any. 

People and working with them

Today I was informed that someone was interested in part of something I said a while back on Issue Mapping. I was a little surprised but as a result I have spent the afternoon thinking about work flow in compendium and also considering what it will actually take to build a good version of compendium online. I really wish they would do that. The basis of compendium's current collaborative tools is really week and if it were built to run in a browser I think the audience would also widen greatly. In any case. That is a project for later.

For now, I am thinking about business models but I would really love some help. I am trying to work out some good approaches to dealing with various problems and opportunities I think are ever more popular, and though this is not necessarily impossible, I am yet to find a particular business to start that is ideal. Most recently I considered the prospect of building a working community which essentially is not designed to provide any given service but more designed to provide open doors to services or products within the community. I think this is a little like a economy via social network, however I would like to have consideration for technologically isolated actins as well. We will see what comes of this, if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them.

Humble Domination

Take a look at this great TED talk by Ben Dunlap. Please click through to watch if you are on the feed.



I wish I were more humble. I think there seems to be an direct relationship between humbleness and holistic achievement. I don't think I live to achieve, but I would love to imagine I could provide some good on such a broad spectrum. 

Appropriation

I have been writing a personal statement of sorts to give to companies for employment prospects. During this process I have tried to understand what I really love in design and in the thing we call the future. I think, after some time, I have come to the conclusion that I really like the idea of simply making things better by making them more appropriate. This process is not uncommon, of course there are things like the appropriate technology school of thought however I think they are only getting half the picture. I think the other half is outside of the technology and the outcome but in the methodology and the sources of decision making context. 

I also really like the idea of the future as being an achievable end, as is demonstrated considering an effort to bring the future sooner. I think this is the role of design and will be the result of appropriation. 

Perhaps I am not saying anything new here, just reiterating what most designer know, but I think the lexical difference is enough to provoke a new approach to the same information. 

The Hole in my Soul

There is a hole in my soul somewhere in Seoul.

I miss so many things at this point. Good food, good speakers, movies, sun, real winter, rain, thunder, chairs, desks, a house, pets, swimming, working hard, not working at all, China, the USA, the world, and some great Koreans.

I think there are so many things to miss but only one or two of them actually matter.

I Love Audio Technica

For the past few years I have been using Audio Technica ATH-EW9 Sovereign clip on headphones and I must say I really am happy with them. They have lasted me well and sound really brilliant with incredible clarity for their size and an easy to drive design, capable of working with even the puniest of portables. 

Recently however, the left phone has started to fail due to a whirring issue. Of course I can probably fix it and will try to do so as soon as possible, but in the mean time I have been looking into all sorts of future solutions and alternatives for my next set of phones. After spending some time looking and reading a lot of 6moons reviews among others I have decided firmly that I will go with Audio Tenchinca once again with either their ATH-W1000 Sovereign, the sealed can older brother version of my current clip-ons, or the ATH-D1000, similar in stature but not appearance to the W1000's, a set of cans with an optical input and an on board custom DAC. I am very happy that I have not had to stoup and buy a set of Sennheiser and I will hold out on getting a set of top end Grado's until I have some extra money. 

Anyone who wants to buy a set of Audio Technicas should go to Audio Cubes, a direct importer from Japan. 

The Stuff that is not the Actual Stuff

So recently I have felt that things are not as good as they should be in some way or other. Actually I have always felt this but recently I have noticed in more in a particular way. Even more recently, as in, last night during a dream and for the past day or two, I have come to begin to realize something about this issue. I am starting to see that a thing, like an activity or an object is more valuable and more interesting to experiance when it is surrounded by something else. I think an example of this would be the event of going to a movie with a friend. One option is to simply go to the movie and the other is to enrich the experiance by adding little things to it. For instance going with a few friends and buying candy or some other value adding experiance option. Now this is quite strange because I am not at all opposed to doing things the simple and easy way, for instance I go to movies by my self about once every two months. Which is about one time out of twelve. However I think that this noise adding value notion can really make or break an experience. In the example of a class discussion or a lecture. The package is so much more valuable than the words that are being said or any other indevidual aspect of the experience.

At the moment I think this sounds a bit like somone who has never had friends meeting someone for the first time, but it is not. I think in reality this could be an interesting observation but I have not had a chance to understand it yet. I think in essence I am starting to believe that the value in any experience is the extra stuff that is not usually discussed, the rigmarole and the noise.

I would really love comments if anyone actually knows what I am struggling to understand.

8 Women

There is a really great movie called 8 Women.

That is not all.

I am thinking about changing some things in the world. Primarily I am thinking of either reinvigorating my For the Work of the People blog for the purposes of schools stuff. Do you think that is a silly idea?

Also, there is a new tool I came across called 8 Apps it seems really nifty and it seems like the ideal tool to solve the problem I am working on in Individual Projects at the moment. If I get an account I will invite some people.

Film Projects

A friend just showed me this quick little movie on a site. I think the cause is not that good but I think it a fun little project.

I also think that people, especially me and company should take on more video projects. Is anyone interested?

By the way. I have started a projects database on Dabble DB. It is not public at the moment but it might move so at some point. If people are interested in project teams and the like to take on and manage large and hopefully interesting projects then please say so and arrangements will be made.

Harvesting what we mine

Some things were found. Ideas on harvesting from the many data mines we have. Using Google to answer questions it was not designed to answer or using it's answers in an unexpected context.

I am sure there are some really tricky and smart things to do with this but I am not sure what they are.

Perhaps one would be to use Google trends to get past data on locations or some other relevant search-able thing and then a 4 dimensional representation could be made of the data which would indicate how interest has evolved and how it has done so comparatively. I think there are surely better uses.

Here are a few samples of this idea in place:
1. Chess and things
2. Go keyboards
3. Suicide

In addition to mapping things like this there is a lot of work to be done with connecting images and videos based on search. Photosynth is a early effort at making this realistic.

Any ideas?

The image is one I made from a video off my phone. It demonstrates the idea of dimensional reduction to add richness. I think similar tools have great application in vibration removal.

Portfolios with no pictures

Today discussion of my future and a portfolio for my work came up again. It seems evident that graphical assets are not my most valuable and that non graphical things will need special treatment of sorts. The discussion lead to creating a body of content that can act as a portfolio for me that most well represents me in the context of what I want to do.

Discussion also covered dealing with images well on the internet. Intellectual property is a problem that is going to have to be dealt with. It is starting to seem that now is a good time to begin drafting and thinking about this issue.

For the Love of God, Pray

I think this thing is wonderful. Some one buy it for me or buy me a print, or make me one.

It is by Damien Hirst and prints are available at White Cube, which is where this image is from.

Thinking about the format

So...

I think a few things.

I have decided I think it would be nice if everything that is work was considered work. That is to say. If I have made a rendering that should exist as something that could be separately looked at or as part of the greater project it was actually made for. On that note, I think everything should have a few core properties, including date and others.

Properties: Notes

1. Title: A unique name for a specific element
2. Date: This would probably be start to finish date and things would generally be ordered by finish date unless a separate ordering date property was mentioned.
3. Content: This would be images or movies or other files. Just core content.
4. Description: This would be a quick description about the project and perhaps broken up.
   
1. Client
2. Context
   
3. Role
   
4. Goals
5. Issues
5. Containing projects: Projects that contain this work such as classes, or larger projects.
6. Contained projects: Projects that lie within this work. Such as a render, within the larger project of an automotive concept pitch.
7. Tools used: just a listing of the tools used. Both ideologically and technically.

I am sure there are a lot more interesting data classes I could have but those are the immediately obvious ones to me. Please add comments to the post if you have anything to say about this.

After an information model is built I need to be able to access the data online through pages using XML as my data language and CSS to store the layout preferences. Visually I will need the folio to be quite nice and I will need it to be able to deal with a wide selection of asset types without breaking.

Lastly I need to be able to generate smart groups based on all sorts of pre-definable and viewer definable constraints. For instance, someone would like to be able to view all the projects where I used a certain tool in the last year. Another example would be when I want to create special subset folios for a specific client. I want to be able to make selection groups that I can put links to without a problem and without any changes to the visual format.

It does not sound like something that is hard but it might need a specialized piece of software. At the moment I know of a package that can do the data modeling but it can not store my images and I am not sure how well it deals with being accessed by other websites online.
The software is called Dabble and it has free to use component.

Please leave any suggestions or comments you may have.

The real portfolio

As part of my application for jobs as I come close to graduating from university I want to create a complete portfolio of my work to date. However, being someone who is quite concerned with keeping things theoretically neat I want to start by working out a good way to make a portfolio who's format I can adjust in the future without any costs and who's content can be added to without reprinting. I also think it is important to be able to control access and create versions that cater specially to different viewers. For example there are certain projects that pertain more directly to certain companies or interested parties that I may show my folio to so I would like a good way to filter things without generating a new special edition of the data set.

I would also like to do it all online so that it's state is independent of the state of my current computer and it is more easy to access for a greater number of people.

The first solution that comes to mind is one like my recent project summarising my work and experience in China, My China Reflections, however I am not sure that this is the ideal approach. This project was held on a blog and subsequently suffers from the lack of depth that the blog information model seems designed to handle. I am interested in creating my own information model but I am not familiar enough with any software to do that at the time being. For this reason my first step is to look into various possible ways to deal with the information and attributes of the information model that I eventually use that would be useful.

Please comment if you have anything at all to add. Thanks.

China is the new designer

I came across an interesting website today on core77. Most people probably read core77 already but if you don't check out what is the new

You may have noticed I have moved my blog. It will probably be moved back soon though I am not sure what I am going to do with it yet. I am starting up my new site Metophile.com and I want to keep naming consistent. Also I am doing more with Mark.Whiting.GooglePages.com

On another note I am in the states at the moment but I will be going to Australia soon. If you are interested there are photos of my recent activities at my photos shared on Picasa web albums.

Pepero Day

This is a relatively important day to many people around the world. All the Koreans may celebrate Pepero Day.

11:11

It is November eleventh at eleven minutes past eleven. This is the most important day of the year. At the most important time. Pirate time.

Something I heard of once

Get Skype and then Call Me for free.

Orkut the Orchid

Hey can someone please invite me to Orkut. Thanks