I’m back… for what it’s worth
So the last few months have been pretty hectic for me. I have started a new job as a product design consultant which has pushed me in the right direction for my career which I am grateful for. On the downside, It has left me very little time to develop Kram Design and other design related tasks such as this blog.
The freelancing lifestyle left me with far too much time on my hands to dig into interesting design and tech stories emerging everyday. I honestly miss that daily fix of about 2 hours every morning, rummaging through my rss feeds and bookmarks. I’m pretty sure I learnt more in the past year than I had in my entire 16 years of education.
So now that I am a little more settled into my routine, I am going to endeavor to get some regular posting activity going on here. So stay tuned for some very mediocre ramblings on things that I find interesting.
Mark
I don’t have time to go into detail about my thoughts on the design of the 2010 Winter Olympics torch right now. I will soon, possibly, maybe, good chance no. No, I will do all in my power to… Bottom line, a very modern, stylistic, unconventional yet successful design by Bombardier.
This is nothing less than pure AWESOME. If I were the player who scored this I would claim it as pure skill obviously! Okay there is no way this was intended as you can see them “cooking” the frag grenade they thought they had equipped. But seriously you have to feel for the player who got owned because honestly that is one damn embarrassing death.
Seems like I am following the robot apocalypse with my recent posts, but they are to intriguing and impressive to ignore. Introducing you to the PETMAN. It is a robot being designed to test chemical protection clothing worn by soldiers in the US Military. The robot itself is designed to replicate human movement to be able to analyse and pinpoint how soldiers would stress areas of the suit in realistic scenarios. It will also simulate various human physiological factors such as temperature, cooling and sweating.
There are two amazing features displayed in the video that show real potential for future development of anthropomorphic robots. The first is the fact that the robot is able to self stabilize itself when pushed physically by the tester. The second being the fact that the PETMAN is able to walk in a very smooth and fluid heel to toe movement.
PETMAN is set for a 2011 launch date. Make sure you go and check out the other projects from Boston Dynamics. On a less serious note, is it just me or does one of their other projects, the “BigDog” remind you of Crying Wolf in Metal Gear Solid 4.
Via Geekologie & Boston Dynamics
As soon as I saw this article on Gizmodo I knew I would have to blog about it. You are best to view the video to fully understand the mechanics and engineering behind it, however, to sum up briefly there are two main components to this:
1. The Jamming Concept: A flexible skin with air and loosely packed particles inside it. The air inside this is able to be compressed or decompressed to make the overall shape flexible or tough/rigid.
2. The Jamming Skin Concept: A [hyper] elastic skin made up of multiple ‘jamming’ sections in constructed to make a fully closed object. Inside this skin is an incompressible fluid and an actuator [motor] that controls volumetric variation [the amount of air inside the object].
Combining these two components as you can see on the video enables the object to change its volume at will. However, the innovativeness behind this concept is that multiple sections of the overall shape can be controlled in terms of flexibility and rigidness to achieve movement. Future applications of such technology will surely see actions such as gripping. To some this may just seem like an inflatable ball rolling on the ground, others can see the potential of robots being able to navigate in until now impossible scenarios for even humans.
That’s my daily tech for today. Am surprised that Skynet wasn’t present on that splash screen at the end. All I can say is watch out of the T-1000 coming to a store near you soon!
One of the things I have come to love about twitter is that a large percentage of the blogs I read now tweet every time they release a new post on their site. For me this it means I can pick and choose what interests me without having to read through the entire postings list. Whoa, this post wasn’t even supposed to be about twitter, but… the above process led me to this gem [above video]. @dvice posted “Eigenharp a worthy successor to the Keytar http://bit.ly/BNVax” sometime friday afternoon, and I was instantly interested! I’m not going to lie to you, it was pretty much completely because I saw the word “keytar”! Btw if you are a design or tech head and don’t already follow @dvice you should.
So the Eigenharp is amazing. It is basically an electronic synth with 133 keys that allows the user to create some very original music, OR remix and recreate some already existing gold like Moby.
Some details:
+ can play and record loops, change scale and key, transpose, alter tempo, program beats, create arrangements, switch and layer multiple sounds, all while the musician is performing live on stage
Keys
- 133 keys in all.
- 120 keys on the main keyboard.
- 12 percussion keys on the lower part of the instrument.
- Plus one mute key.
Key Properties:
- Sampled at 2000 samples/second, per key.
- 11 bit (2048 values) resolution.
- Sensitive to direct pressure and to lateral pressure in both directions.
Breath pipe:
- Sampled at 2000 samples/second.
- 12 bit (4096 value) resolution.
- Bidirectional, sensitive to blown and drawn breath.
- Removable, interchangeable mouthpiece for hygiene.
It is really the buskers total package.
I need to fully finish reading the official site [http://eigenlabs.com/alpha/] for the complete range of functions and details, however this looks like it could take off. For those of you who are designers like myself, check out the below link showing the manufacturing process of the design:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFbKMfLGiUo
Ohh and btw, you can never kill the keytar…
![$1000 price tag! These would want to be sprayed with some pretty damn expensive paint made from ancient samurai artifacts. No, these are actually some very cool ‘artifacts’ in their own right. The cases are painted with a lacquer made by Zohiko who have been mastering the trade for 350 years! And apparently the ‘gold’ hightlights is actually real gold. Okay, so the deal behind each of the custom made cases is that they are supposed to replicate what specific samurai in history would have if they were to own an iPhone… This to me is the coolest aspect of the designs. For example, Uesugi Kenshin’s case incorporates the god of war Bishamonten, who he worshipped, and also his battle insignia which was the Chinese character for dragon.
Price aside, they are some very beautiful and intricate hand painted cases. So it may be time for some of you to retire that old Harry Potter case!
[via boing.boing.gadgets]](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/marksandstrom/184519695/1/tumblr_kprdleSZ121qzyxip)
$1000 price tag! These would want to be sprayed with some pretty damn expensive paint made from ancient samurai artifacts. No, these are actually some very cool ‘artifacts’ in their own right. The cases are painted with a lacquer made by Zohiko who have been mastering the trade for 350 years! And apparently the ‘gold’ hightlights is actually real gold.
Okay, so the deal behind each of the custom made cases is that they are supposed to replicate what specific samurai in history would have if they were to own an iPhone… This to me is the coolest aspect of the designs. For example, Uesugi Kenshin’s case incorporates the god of war Bishamonten, who he worshipped, and also his battle insignia which was the Chinese character for dragon. 
Price aside, they are some very beautiful and intricate hand painted cases. So it may be time for some of you to retire that old Harry Potter case!
[via boing.boing.gadgets]
Just finished stickering my snowboard in readiness for next weeks trip. Is stickering even a word? I highly doubt it, but i’m going with it for lack of a better description.
The thing I hate about being a designer sometimes is that I am far too much of a perfectionist. Cleaning, placement and blow drying 5 stickers in place took around, say 80 minutes. So roughly 16 minutes a sticker, which is ridiculous, and I know that!
I was stuck at every sticker placement considering proximity, alignment, colour and balance issues. But in the end I am happy with the outcome! A ‘little’ unproductive YES, but bottom line, holiday seems much closer to reality.
Time to get back to work…
» the trailer for TRON Legacy has been released. although I must confess to never seeing the original Tron in its entirety, this looks pretty impressive. this is most likely due to me being a sucker for CGI. I think this stems from me having an understanding and high level of respect for the hundreds and thousands of hours that can be spent on 3d modelling / animating / rendering. looking forward to seeing more from this movie though!
![bored, decided to get some practice on the wacom tablet. [20 mins / photoshop] » probably could have added some more detail.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/eFNX2YHY0qa1v4xpfdxOLblEo1_500.jpg)
bored, decided to get some practice on the wacom tablet. [20 mins / photoshop] » probably could have added some more detail.
