I wish I could see the original post to verify it and/or get better images, but it's locked up in a private group. In any case, this fellow that I'm guessing is from Portugal or Brazil had this post of his shared on Reddit:
The best comment in the thread:
"Could be missing half his fingers and still be more capable than most of the idiots I get stuck with on my team.
"That's awesome tho, props to that dood."
Good product design can be seen in the transitions of an object, that is, the way the designer handles the areas where different surfaces or materials meet. This is particularly true when you've got hard surfaces meeting soft surfaces; look closely at office chairs, car seats or sneakers to see how these can be handled well or poorly.
As an example of this, check out footwear designer and runner Richard Kuchinsky's video where he discusses Nike's Alphafly in detail, from the perspective of both a designer and an end user. Even if you're already well familiar with the ins and outs of footwear design, you're bound to learn a thing or two by seeing what Nike got right--and wrong--in the Alphafly's latest iteration:
"Neuroscience has demonstrated sleep is crucial for memory consolidation, creative insight generation, learning, emotion regulation and more," a research team at MIT Media Lab wrote a couple of years ago. "Yet there exist no reliable technological interfaces to sleep."
With that in mind, the team (researchers Adam Haar Horowitz, Ishaan Grover, Pedro Reynolds-Cuellar, Abhinandan Jain, Oscar Rosello and Tomas Vega Galvez) created the Dormio, a wearable device that tracks sleep stages and provides "auditory biofeedback." What the device does specifically is detect when the wearer has entered a stage called hypnagogia:
"During sleep onset, a window of opportunity arises in the form of hypnagogia, a semi-lucid sleep state where we all begin dreaming before we fall fully unconscious. Hypnagogia is characterized by phenomenological unpredictability, distorted perception of space and time, and spontaneous, fluid idea association. Edison, Tesla, Poe, and Dalí each accessed this state by napping with a steel ball in hand to capture creative ideas generated in hypnagogic microdreams when it dropped to the floor below."
The Dormio
The Dormio doesn't drop a steel ball, but it does put ideas into the wearer's head using sound. Once the wearer has entered hypnagogia, the Dormio then "speaks" a keyword--"tree," "fork," "rabbit," et cetera--using a cell phone as a speaker. This keyword magically works its way into whatever dream the wearer happens to be having at the time. "Thus far we have seen consistent incorporation of themes into dreams using Dormio wherein subjects produced 1+ hypnagogic dream reports incorporating the presented word," the team writes.
So what's the point of dream control? The team reckons it boosts creativity:
- Results indicate subjects (n=6) score higher on the golden standard creativity task, the Alternative Uses Task, after contemplating an object in Hypnagogia versus time matched control condition of contemplation while awake. Experimental hypnagogia condition yielding both higher average creativity ratings and 18% more alternative uses.
- Each of our subjects wrote a creative story for longer, showing more motivation, after our experimental condition versus after control conditions.
- 4/6 of our subjects mixed media (drawing and writing) after hypnagogia, versus 0/6 after control condition (solely writing)
- All of these findings suggest greater creativity after the hypnagogic presentation of target words.
The Dormio was developed in 2018, and since then the project has expanded into a larger one called Targeted Dream Incubation. The team is now using a range of devices beyond the Dormio, including an eyelid-monitoring mask called the Masca and an EEG-scanning headband called the Hypnodyne.
The Masca
The Hypnodyne
"The reason this method is so exciting to us is that it opens up new avenues for research," writes the team. "Having a method to control dreams means that we can now do controlled experiments on how dreams influence emotion, creativity, memory, and more."
I'm glad I don't have to regularly disassemble electronic components; it looks like a tedious task. But if you do, whether for work or hobby, here's a tool for you. The SS-02 Solder Sucker is made by Japan's Engineer Inc., the same company behind those wicked Neji-saurus screw extraction pliers:
"The flexible nozzle adheres to the substrate and strong suction force can be obtained," writes the manufacturer. The nozzle, made from silicon, can withstand the heat of the soldering iron (up to 350 Celsius/662 Fahrenheit), and the tool can of course be operated with one hand.
Made in Japan, 'Stateside the SS-02 can be ordered on Amazon for about 30 bucks.
"I've always been fascinated by unusual clocks," writes Craig Colvin over at Hackaday. Colvin, no stranger to fabrication, has come up with a doozy of his won, called the Refrigerator Magnet Clock. Take a look:
Alas, this wouldn't work if it was actually inside your refrigerator, unless you removed much of the food. Here's how it works:
Now that we are working virtually, it feels like we spend more time than ever in meetings. Unfortunately, meetings can be awful wastes of time, but I've got some encouraging news: they don't have to be.
It may start like this—an ineffective organization today looking to solve a problem might feel compelled to get 'the right people in the room and let them figure it out.' That doesn't mean there is a plan or anything that resembles a goal involved. A lot of people just...wing it.
And unless you're working in a consultancy or agency that bills hourly and doesn't tolerate inefficiency, "winging it" might feel like a non-issue. Because of this, bad meetings often go unrecognized. But why, when they are prone to taking up so much of our time?
This aimless approach can lead to the tell-tale signs that you're in a bad meeting: we don't know why we are there, who is leading the discussion, what we are talking about, what the goal might be, or what we are expected to do afterward. If this feels familiar, it's time to help your team correct on past mistakes.
So here are a few things that you can do to set yourself up for success if you 'own' the meeting in question.
Here's a scenario for you: Let's assume you have a design goal that addresses a business problem, but you need some clarifications. Maybe a whole lot of clarifications (ever get that specifically vague or vaguely specific brief?). A meeting might be better than a bunch of emails or one-off phone calls.
Before you even make that attendees list (slow down—that's the next next section), I want you to stop and think about what success looks like. What do you need to accomplish? Are you going to benefit from others' input? Do you need a thought partner on something, or are you doing more showing than telling?
Where to start: Identify whether or not a meeting is the best approach to the problem.
IF a meeting is a good idea, clarify the goal in the invitation.
Add a schedule or list of topics in the meeting description.
Generally speaking, there are three types of meetings:Input-Gathering, Problem-Solving, or Communication-Driven. All of which can be Collaborative, which I will address in my next post in this series. Stay Tuned. Let's define the mission of these three meeting-types.
It does mean that I value the input of others and know when I can use another perspective. Sometimes I get too close to a problem and lose a broader context. Other times I think it's been too long since I have shared anything out and I don't want collaborators to think I'm intentionally leaving them out of the process. Herein lies the effectiveness of the input-gathering meeting.
It has been my experience that if I share designs while I am working on them, I get a better end result. That doesn't mean I will change my mind about all the pixels and throw away all my work.
Creative confidence isn't just the belief that you have the answer. It's also the humility to ask for guidance or the opinion of others. Gathering input can take place in a formal setting, like a critique, but it doesn't have to. What is essential is to take the opportunity to ask for help when you feel stuck.
Typically early in a project, I need the most amount of help. Plus the more I partner with other disciplines, the more my idea becomes our idea. Concepts that have indirect, shared ownership tend to go further.
If you have shipped something that you are proud to have in your portfolio, it's likely because someone else fell in love with it. Or better yet, they feel like it was also their baby. In the end it doesn't matter.
At some point, you likely had a discussion or working session or workshop where you and others discussed or worked through the solution—this is what's known as the problem-solving meeting. It's best that you set up a dedicated meeting for these efforts. When you do, it's easier to get people to close their laptops and/or the 14 browser tabs to focus on the task at hand. People tend to remember these meetings.
Of course, communication at times can be a one-way street. It is important to recognize when people are talking past one another. It happens all the time because it can be embarrassing to ask questions.
Shed this mindset and lead a meeting with a priority on communication. There is nothing wrong with asking people to clarify what they have said, ask someone to repeat something or unpack an acronym. Semantics are everything, and asking clarifying questions prevents assumptions from being made.
It has been my experience that making an unhealthy assumption results in a far worse outcome than not asking a question. One word of advice I have is: Listen. Listen more than you talk. Rather than focus on what is said, we can be guilty of waiting for our turn to speak.
What to do: Identify the goal of the meeting. Decide what type of meeting is going to best support that goal. Avoid assumptions, clarify the goal in the Subject of the meeting.
Post-2020 meeting goals?
Once you know the Goal and the meeting type, you need to make sure you have the right people. You want the right tools for the right job, so to speak.
If you invite the wrong people and don't provide guidance or perspective, it's a confusing gathering of people who earn a paycheck from the same company.
It's best to keep the number of people invited small. Try to do this as much as possible. You can always bring more people into the conversation later since you didn't want to waste anyone's time.
And you don't want to waste anyone's time. Think about who is absolutely necessary—usually a subset of a broader team. Afterward, you can host a follow-up to communicate the outcome to a broader audience. It has been my experience that it often takes too long to coordinate schedules, so why wait?
Set expectations. Tell everyone invited what you want to accomplish and give them a sense of what you need from them. You can do this in the meeting description of the invitation if you find it useful. Aside from identifying a goal, curating the guest list, and setting expectations, there's still one crucial item remaining that ought to be discussed.
Try to: Be selective and only invite a small number of people. Identify the who/what/how to attendees in advance. Clarify the purpose of any meeting you host.
Setting an Agenda is important. Mapping out how you want to spend the time sets expectations. You don't need to strictly adhere to a schedule, and more often than not, an outline is enough. I rarely provide timing because I find it easier to work in modules or sections--this way if you need to extend the conversation on a topic its no big deal.
All I am advocating for is some basic preparation. Having structure sets expectations and prevents you from having another meeting that feels like it could have been an email or Slack thread.
I have a way to make that Agenda work harder than you do when you aren't in meetings. It is a simple approach to follow. Every good meeting I run (or attend) involves a simple construct—Open, Engage, and Close. It looks something like this:
Open by clarifying what you want to accomplish. Engage in the topic or topics that address the common goal. Close with a Summary of the meeting and Identification of Next Steps.
Allow me to elaborate further.
Start by revisiting your agenda. What you want to cover, what problems you are trying to solve, what you are interested in getting input or providing feedback on. Then stop talking and listen to find out if there is anything additional to address or scope to reduce. This way, you can drive mutual focus.
Work through the topics you wanted to discuss. Get that feedback. Provide that input. Be open to being wrong. Most importantly, take the opportunity to listen and to ask for clarification. Avoid making assumptions, as they lead to wasted time. If you think you heard something that leads you on the wrong path, you can run the risk of solving the wrong problem.
Identify the next steps. As designers, we can be guilty of falling in love with the process. I am most definitely guilty of that, and the risk of being too process-focused is you can lose sight of the goal.
Without identifying the Next Steps, the due date for a project looms and we can act like freshman cramming for an exam—unnecessary late nights in rapid succession. As you listen during the meeting, jot down some items you need to address and what you expect the next time you talk. It's a simple enough habit to get into.
Ending a meeting on Next Steps is vital to ensure you are focused on driving toward an outcome. Everyone who attended either has something to do or not to do to move the effort forward.
Try to: Open with topics to address to drive direction. Engage with focus, taking notes that you can summarize. Conclude with clarity--who is going to do what by when.
Be the person that hosts meetings people don't mind attending. Maybe even discussions that people actually want to go to. Start with a goal, identify what type of meeting to run, invite the right people, and be clear about what you want to accomplish. Give it a try, and remember that you would look forward to most meetings if this were easy.
This article is part of a series for Core77 by Design Director Joe Meersman about tips and tactics for working, networking, career path, and driving concepts into production through the lens of unforeseen circumstances. Check out other articles in the series to get your work life more in order, including "Here's How to Make Long-Term 'Work From Home' Work".
What has 234 5-star reviews, costs $300 and is sold out at Home Depot? This 12 ft. Giant-Sized Skeleton with LifeEyes:
The "LifeEyes" feature refers to the LCD eyeballs.
Since first popping up on "horror blogs" (who knew that was a thing) over the summer, according to the NY Post, the hotly anticipated Halloween decoration sold out earlier this month. I guess being cooped up by COVID has made people eager to go big on spooky decorations this year. As a side bonus, the skeleton's so tall that people can easily see it from well beyond the recommended six-foot social distancing range.
This thing, and the fact that it's sold out, is so quintessentially American:
- It's expensive and it's only purpose/function is decorative
- It's made of plastic
- You need a gas-guzzling SUV to get it home (it comes in a 4' x 5' box)
- It's being re-sold at outrageous prices
On that latter note, at press time the oversized skeleton was going for $880 to $1,500 on eBay.
Integralis, developed by Artemide, is a disinfecting UV light combined with sensors that detect if humans are nearby or not. Incorporated into a variety of Artemide fixtures, the UV apparently kicks on when humans are absent (i.e. overnight) to disinfect line-of-sight surfaces, killing pesky pathogens (and presumably COVID, though that word doesn't appear in the copy).
"INTEGRALIS generates UV light that acts against pathogenic microorganisms, such as viruses, without harming the space and individuals surrounding the emission. What's more, the technology's use of UV light inhibits the development and growth of bacteria, fungi, and mold.
"In museums, hotels, offices, hospitals, and retail shops, the dosage can be adapted to perform an emission frequency that best accommodates the cadence of visitors. In small spaces, such as service areas, elevators, and waiting rooms, intermittent sanitization is available; presence sensors, which are controlled by the Artemide App, activate to help to manage safety and intensity."
What we expect to see next: As admission of COVID aerosol transmission finally sinks in, a line of designey personal (wearable)? air purifiers will surely come to market.
When I lived in NYC, it was common to see (typically older) people doing their grocery shopping with one of these:
Granny cart by Reflex Blue used under CC BY-NC 2.0
Colloquially called "granny carts," they make good sense in urban environs, where the nearest supermarket might be ten blocks or more. I've used one on two occasions and found the UX to be less than ideal (it's difficult to retrieve things from the bottom).
The open-air design pictured above is the most commonly seen, but in one of my Urban Design Observations posts, I recorded that older folks in Chinatown prefer this more weather-resistant variant:
Those were the only two forms of granny cart I'd seen, until spotting this Polish variant with a more task-specific design:
Called the Nano-Handel, it was designed by ID firm Razy2 as a concept for the street vendors in the Polish city of Gdynia.
The vicinity of Hala Targowa, the spaces around the railway stations in Gdynia Leszczynki or Chylon are filled with micro-stands, in which you can often find handicraft pearls made the previous afternoon or freshly picked tomatoes from your own allotment garden.
This type of activity allows sellers / handicraftsmen / gardeners to live with dignity, but also to have a purpose and a pretext for contacts with other people. They become an inseparable element of the landscape of a given street or district.
Through the "Nano-commerce" project, we would like to introduce this type of sales method to the center of Gdynia - on the one hand, by designing a mobile, light stand adapted to the needs of the aforementioned sellers, and, on the other hand, by developing a simple system of renting stands and stimulating this venture by the city.
Though the Nano-Handels were obviously designed with a display function in mind, it occurs to me that a similar design might be useful for shopping as well; watching an older person bend and stretch to reach into the bottom of a traditional granny cart reveals room for improvement.
I'm thinking if the bottom drawer of the Nano-Handel design was deeper, to accommodate larger/taller items, I'd prefer shopping with one of these than either of the two designs above. It admittedly wouldn't have the low cost of the first design or the weather-resistance of the second design, but I'd love to see what Razy2 would come up with if tasked with incorporating elements from all three.
Yesterday we covered a footwear designer showing a Nike cut in half for analysis. Today we've discovered a YouTube channel that does nothing but cut footwear in half, to analyze the quality and design.
Here Weston Kay, a man who knows leather--he's the owner of leather goods company Rose Anvil--shows you the insides of a pair of Carhartt work boots.
He starts off by showing you the red flags that you yourself could spot at the store, without cutting into the boots: Disguising low-quality leather as full-grain; visible manufacturing errors with the welt; a poor-quality outsole. Then he gets into the insides, where things kind of go to hell.
Being generally unfamiliar with boot design, I learned a few things by watching the vid. The necessity of reinforcing the heel slip area, for one. I was also surprised to see that there is a footwear design equivalent to the architectural trick of McMansion foyers.
To explain, McMansions often have front doors that open into a two-story open-air space with an impressive-looking, sweeping staircase. The idea is that this feature impresses you into wanting to buy the home. Only after living there for a while do you realize that the space is useless and the staircase needlessly long.
In the case of the Carhartt boots, it's the voids in the heel. It makes them comfortable when you try them on in the store, likely leading you to buy them. It's only a few weeks later, when they've already got your money, that the heel compresses into oblivion. A neat, and dirty, trick.
Running sneakers wear out way too quickly--in the city I was going through a pair a year, and I'm not even a runner--and there's been no easy way for a manufacturer to pull them apart and recycle the individual materials.
Adidas has correctly identified that that problem is created at the design level. Their proposed solution is the UltraBOOST DNA Loop, a 100% recyclable and monomaterial running shoe made with no adhesives. The designers started by using just a single material for the entire shoe (bar the laces)--100% reusable TPU--and avoiding glue. "It's spun to yarn, knitted, moulded and clean-fused to a BOOST midsole," the company writes. There's no further details provided on what the "clean-fused" process is, so we're guessing that's the secret sauce.
Once the shoe is spent and returned to Adidas, "they are washed, ground to pellets and melted into material for components for a new pair of shoes, with less waste."
The UltraBOOST DNA Loop shoes that they've just unveiled are actually the third iteration; you've not likely heard about Gen 1 and Gen 2, because they were tested in-house with small groups of 200 end users for each batch. Now, having tweaked the Gen 3 design, they're seeking public volunteers to take a pair--for free--and put them through their paces to develop feedback.
"1,500 Creators Club members will be invited to take part in a beta test of a specially designed digital experience through the adidas app….
"The 1,500 members will be given the shoes for free by adidas and become part of a sustainability microcommunity who will co-create with adidas in a true open source fashion to further shape and fine tune the experience. The 21 week program will be driven by the adidas app with the communities actions and feedback helping futureproof the engagement model. By signing up for the raffle they are making a commitment to return the shoes to be grinded, shredded and turned into something new."
To join this "Creators Club," you need to download Adidas' app, and "prove [your] sustainability credentials by taking part in a quiz. Everyone who completes the quiz will be entered into a global raffle and randomly selected for the experience" for free, the company says.
You can get started by registering here.
I'm currently building a Murphy Bed from a DIY hardware kit. This is the third I've built but the first in an enclosed cabinet, and all of the plywood pieces mean there's a lot of finishing required. I absolutely hate applying finish.
For years MixWax's Fast-Drying Polyurethane has been my go-to for any cabinetry or furniture project, and I even used to use it for the floors of my old photo studio. I wouldn't recommend it for high-traffic flooring situations, but other than that it's reasonably durable.
What I hate is that it's oil-based, which means you have to clean the brushes with mineral spirits. I've got this down to a fairly non-messy science--but it takes freaking forever and the fumes are awful. So I think once the current pieces are cured, I may switch to Polycrylic for the others.
I was poking around for a good explanation from an end-user on the practical differences between Polyurethane and Polycrylic, and sat through some bad and misguided videos before I finally found this informative, straight-to-the-point explanation by the Welcome to the Woods channel:
As someone who sits through a lot of DIY YouTube videos, this is an example of a good one, because the host avoids all the "Don'ts" of a bad DIY video. I'll list those "Don'ts" below:
- Don't spend the first two minutes of the video re-hashing what the problem is. We already know what the problem is, that's why we came.
- Don't give us a long intro sequence, as if we're watching the opening credits of a 1950s TV show.
- Don't use shaky handheld camera footage.
- Please don't add music, and especially not at a volume that obscures the dialogue. The chances that we viewers all love your preferred genre of music is slim.
If any of you have additional tips on Polyurethane vs. Polycrylic, I'm all ears. Also, if you've got a preferred finish manufacturer other than MinWax--they always seem to be the only brand I can get locally, so I use them out of incumbency, not loyalty--please sound off.
What's in the back of your average graphic design studio? Books of those Pantone swatches--bor-ring. But go into the back room of any ID consultancy and you'll see one of these:
For you ID students that haven't seen one yet, those aren't sets of game cartridges, but plastic sample sets that you'll use to evaluate whether to go with ABS, HDPE, PVC or a plethora of other plastics for any given project. Each piece gives you an idea of each materials' weight, feel, stiffness, surface appearance, draft angle requirements, sensitivity to sink marks, suitability for living hinges, et cetera.
The molds for these sample pieces are complicated by necessity, as they have to demonstrate every manufacturing trick in the repertoire of injection molded plastics:
Depending on where you shop, these can get expensive. The 20-piece set you see above, sold by MaterialSampleShop.com, rings in at €370.00 (USD $436). However, the 20-piece set below, sold by PlasticSamplesKits.com, offers many of the same features but sells for just $95.
Junior designers: As a form of subversion, you can hide the pucks of just the plastics you don't like. It'll drive the senior designers crazy. "Where the f*@# is the Polybutylene Terephthalate?"
Here's a bit of subversive marketing: The forthcoming "John Bronco," a mockumentary covering the all-American (and completely fictitious) cowboy and race driver after whom Ford's iconic SUV was supposedly named.
Some have said that if you were famous before the internet, you might as well never have existed. Such is the case for John Bronco, the greatest pitchman who ever lived. In 1966, Ford tapped him to race their new prototype SUV at the Baja 500 in Mexico. Not only did he win, but he gave a rousing speech that rallied a nation. Legend has it that Ford named the new car "Bronco" after John, made him the face of their campaign and skyrocketed him to stardom.
His commercials were on every channel and his jingle went triple-platinum. John launched his own cologne, breakfast cereal, video game, action figure, you name it. He was the very embodiment of the American dream, that is, until it all came crashing down.
It doesn't hurt that it stars Walton Goggins, who I think is one of the most criminally underrated actors working today (he killed it in "Justified" and "The Shield"):
"John Bronco" starts streaming on Hulu tomorrow, October 15th.
Here's an unusual assignment for a product designer: Create an inexpensive handheld object that can detect human trafficking at borders.
A devious trick used by human traffickers is to cram dozens of people inside a refrigeration truck. At the border, if customs officers request a look-see inside the container, the drivers can argue that the valuable foodstuffs supposedly within will spoil.
The practice has had deadly consequences. Refrigeration trucks are of course sealed, and don't offer any airflow. That's why British police found 39 people who had suffocated to death inside a refrigeration container in Essex last year.
What to do? Because the vast majority of refrigeration trucks actually are carrying food, it would be economically ruinous to open all of them and potentially spoil the contents. Infrared scanning or X-ray equipment might work, but would be too expensive to comprehensively implement. So London-based design firm The Imagination Factory came up with a clever and relatively inexpensive solution.
TIF's designers studied refrigeration trucks to learn how they could be breached without damage. They developed a thin stainless steel blade that could be slid between the rubber seals at the doors. This blade has a narrow channel within it that feeds into a hose connected to the handle. This hose then feeds into a device that can detect carbon dioxide. While fresh produce and frozen lobsters don't give off CO2, human prisoners do.
The Sampling Blade, as it's called, went into production for the UK's Border Force in 2017. Sadly it was apparently not in use at the Essex checkpoint where last year's grisly discovery was made. As with a lot of beneficial product designs, the designers can bust their asses developing it, but the distribution is typically up to others.
Netherlands-based Jennifer Townley is one of those both-sides-of-the-brain artists who is fascinated by science, specifically physics, engineering and math.
Coupled with an interest in mechanical workings, this has spurred her to create some mesmerizing kinetic sculptures:
Geometric patterns in Islamic art or mathematical drawings of Dutch artist M. C. Escher often serve as an inspiration. Images where lines and figures match each other so perfectly they could be repeated indefinitely. This infinity, regularity and obedience is what Townley also finds fascinating about mechanical machines; they are robust, strenuous and seemingly immortal. She is captivated by how a machine can convert a simple circular motion (rotary engine) into a very complicated nonlinear or chaotic movement pattern.
Check out more on Townley's Instagram.
Maine-based Howe and Howe Technologies is a self-described fabricator of extreme vehicles; they're the folks behind that Ripsaw Super Tank thing you've seen in Mad Max: Fury Road or one of the Fast & Furious flicks.
As it turns out, the Ripsaw's two little brothers with a more clear-cut vocation: The Thermite RS1 and RS3, a pair of tracked firefighting robots that resemble Wall-E with water cannons.
The RS1 model is small enough to climb staircases, whereas the larger RS3 can be fitted with an obstacle-moving plow. Powered by diesel engines, both models aren't autonomous, but are controlled remotely by humans.
Here's what the POV looks like from the remote operator's screen:
Kind of looks like a videogame, no? Yet these are designed and built to actually do the job of firefighting, not star in Vin Diesel movies or games. To that end one of them was recently shipped not quite to Hollywood, but to the nearby Los Angeles Fire Department, which rolled it out this week.
The LAFD's RS3 was reportedly used to fight a commercial structure fire on Tuesday, its first day of service.
"New challenges continue to emerge in the fire service and the LAFD is committed to leveraging technology to enhance firefighting operations while reducing risk to firefighters. While the RS3 is not the answer to all types of firefighting, it will assist with safe interior fire operations on large commercial fires, wood-framed structures under construction, structural defense at wildfires, large animal rescues, fuel tanker fires, auto storage fires and much more."
Until they invent an RS4 that can climb into the back of a fire truck, the 'bots do raise a small logistical issue: They must be trailered to site.
What we're hoping to see next is what the West Coast desperately needs: Wildfire-fighting robots.
As amusement parks go, Japan's Yomiuriland was already concerned with the economy, even before the pandemic; the park features four "Good Job Attractions" that celebrate prominent Japanese industries (Car Factory, Food Factory, Fashion Factory and Stationery Factory). At the Car Factory attraction, for instance, youngsters get to install components of their choosing on a car mock-up, then get to drive it around.
Now Yomiuriland has launched a new initiative focused on the office economy. The park's administrators have wired the ferris wheel up with wi-fi, and are renting it out to companies who want to treat their workers to a social-distancing "workation." For ¥1,900 (USD $18) per worker, employees of participating companies can choose to work from the ferris wheel or an outdoor lounge at the swimming pool. And after work, they get free access to the driving range, to golf off some steam.
Sadly the roller coasters, water rides and haunted house have apparently been deemed unsuitable places for laptops.
If we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, I'd decry this product; but now it's easy to see why the Infinity Game Table is the latest Kickstarter smash.
The Infinity is essentially table with an HD touchscreen for the tabletop. Developers Arcade1up have licensed a slew of popular classic boardgames--Scrabble, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Battleship, etc., totaling more than 50 games--and programmed them all into the Infinity.
If that was all it did, I'd hate it; boardgames offer simple, tactile family entertainment without the need for electricity, and they need no technological upgrade.
However, the brilliance of the Infinity is that it's of course connected to the internet. This means that in the age of social distancing, you can now play Scrabble with family members across the country.
Doing so requires that all parties have an Infinity, of course, and the units aren't cheap. Even with the Early Bird pricing knocking $100 off of the $599 retail price, you're looking at a minimum $1,000 buy-in to remotely play games with one other party. But the high price hasn't stopped backers: At press time they were up to $603,854 in pledges on a $50,000 goal, with 45 days left to pledge.
Why is this shaped like this?
Let's talk about two things that used to not go together: Japan and butter. Like other East Asian cultures, butter was never a part of the traditional Japanese diet, and was actually treated with disgust when introduced by Europeans in the 19th century.
(Fun politically-incorrect fact: When living in Japan, I learned that the word "butter" was used in an outdated anti-foreigner slur. Both Westerners and overtly Western things were referred to as bata-kusai, "kusai" being Japanese for "stink." It was thought that eating butter produced uniquely European body odor, hence the slur was "butter stinkers.")
Today Japan has accepted butter (particularly where baked goods and confectionaries are concerned). Uptake isn't as brisk as in America or butter-crazy France, but it's produced locally (in the Hokkaido region) and consumed in enough quantities that the country experiences occasional butter shortages, like this one in 2014.
Also, butter in Japan doesn't come like butter in the 'States: It comes in slabs, as they've adopted the traditional European form factor.
Image credit: Jada Yuan
I believe it's just us Yanks that shape butter into sticks. Which explains why Japanese butter dishes look strange and wide-bodied to Americans:
Yoshikawa EA?CO Butter Case Container
Yoshikawa EA?CO Butter Case Container
Yoshikawa EA?CO Butter Case Container
Yoshikawa EA?CO Butter Case Container
Yoshikawa EA?CO Butter Case Container
This one's even got an integrated cutter:
You probably noticed that funky knife in the photos of the Yoshikawa Case above. If you saw it out of context, you'd probably not know what it was:
Yoshikawa EA?CO Nulu Butter Knife
The angle in the handle is a function of the slab form factor of European/Japanese butter. The little holes are to extrude separate noodles of butter, which (the Japanese find) are easier to spread.
Yoshikawa EA?CO Nulu Butter Knife
Yoshikawa EA?CO Nulu Butter Knife
Yoshikawa EA?CO Nulu Butter Knife
The serrated side is for cutting toast.
Yoshikawa EA?CO Nulu Butter Knife
This design for a butter knife/grater takes the manufacturing a step further, stamping nacelles into the surface to guide the butter noodles:
Arnest Butter Knife Stainless Steel Grater
Arnest Butter Knife Stainless Steel Grater
Arnest Butter Knife Stainless Steel Grater
Arnest Butter Knife Stainless Steel Grater
Arnest Butter Knife Stainless Steel Grater
Lastly, there's this bizarre thing. Why on Earth should it be shaped like that?
KAI Rectangular Cut Butter Knife
KAI Rectangular Cut Butter Knife
My speculation--and this is based purely on the year I spent living there, during which time I witnessed fantastically anal-retentive table manners--is that a) This is for those who don't want to grate the surface of their butter, which probably gets messy as you work your way down through the slab, and b) this satisfies the Japanese need for order.
In other words, for us Americans who want a pat of butter, we just cut one from the stick; but for Japanese users faced with a slab, a crosswise slice would be too unwieldy to balance on your average butter knife.
An alternative would be to cut more manageable diagonal slices--i.e. cut a corner off of the slab--but I'm guessing a slab of butter with 45-degree angles cut into it would be too visually chaotic for Japanese sensibilities. This "tool" leaves behind an orderly 90-degree cut.
KAI Rectangular Cut Butter Knife
