Naming Children
The biggest decision I’ve ever had to make - deciding the name of my first son. Made me think of this song:
Amazing Robot Dog
Won’t try to match Geekologie with a witty description. But this robot is amazing and looks like a headless horse - especially when the nasty man boots it 
Animal simulators
Some students from the RCA and the Oxford Said Business School have produced the above toys that allow kids to experience what it’s like to be a giraffe, bird and an ant. The giraffe simulator uses a periscope to give the user a feeling of being much taller and changes the child’s voice to that of an adult. From what I can tell the bird simulator uses tiny motors to lightly stimulate the skin when you follow a preselected direction. The ant simulator replaces your normal vision with a 50x magnification with a camera housed in the hand attachments.
The article also features a rabbit simulator that uses mirrors and cameras to show you what it’s like to have eyes on the side of your head and be only 6 inches tall:
Hamster powered paper shredder
Saw this in the paper this morning. It takes 45 minutes to shred a piece of A4 - which doesn’t make it the ideal choice for somebody trying to destroy ledgers before the police turn up - but I like the fact that the machine doing the recycling uses the recycled matter itself. Also made me think of this:
The revolving door that generates electricity - a great idea. Makes me think what else humans voluntarily move - exercise bikes, rowing machines etc - and how we could harness the energy.
DRL TEN Pavillion, London
Stumbled across this whilst walking through my favourite London square yesterday:
Looked it up and it’s the winner of a competition to design a pavillion that “offers spatial experiences to DRL TEN visitors as well as passers-by on Bedford Square”, so there you go.
Whoa there!
Thought this was a staple gun:
“get’s nasty, get down to business”. Indeed.
Everybody dance
Coming soon to the wii:
Rainbow book
Thanks for this Sam
Pageless website
Saw this site on a good blog called Talent imitates, genius steals. Modernista! is an independent advertising agency whose site is an interface that links to content about the agency on the web. So the “About us” section is a Wikipedia page, their web work is on delicious.com, their print work is on flickr.com and so on.
I think it’s a great idea for a site as it’s quick to produce, easily updated and probably avoided most of the usual problems/headaches associated with designing a site for your agency.
Above all it’s a way of communicating who you are and what you do in a non-subjective manner, I’m about to embark on putting a folio site together for myself and want to come up with an design that doesn’t annoy/offend anybody - so nothing could be the answer!
Reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld when they came up with the idea of writing a show about nothing - instead of worrying about the design of your portfolio site, make one with no design at all.
Pop(up)tastic
Seen a few nice pop-up executions lately - the Persil ad uses it to come across all warm and friendly with an “ah-bless” voiceover to appeal to Mums:
And Shitdisco use it to look arty and lo-fi:
