The only issue I see is that it not only guides your key tip but dust and dirt as well. Oh, also it requires a custom key format because of the additional length required to reach the tumbler.
The bigger opportunity: retrofit existing locks?
I wonder whether someone could design a cover for existing locks?
A portable electric bike that can travel at 25km/h? Another world first (for electric bikes) is that it has electronic anti-skid brakes so it stops really well. Apparently.
The Harmon Kardon Soundstick II speakers are stunning — there’s no two ways about it.
Versatile
Notice the base? It’s a heavy ring so they can be hung upside-down from an upper shelf. So they’re super versatile, yet with very, very impressive quality. The bass unit is unidirectional so you can tuck it away while placing the high frequency ’sticks’ wherever you like — they’re very discrete.
Works of art
And as for looks: my wife paid them the ultimate compliment by placing the base on her desk because ‘it looks nice’.
We removed our boots and covered ourselves with care, closing all the gaps and pulling our heads down into the malitsi*. We were able to keep warm but we found it somewhat difficult to breathe. Because we were so tired, we fell asleep at once, and for seven or eight hours we were lost in a dreamless slumber.
But our awakening was terrifying. There was a dreadful cracking sound and suddenly we found ourselves in the water. Our double ’sleeping bag’ filled with water and began to drag us down to toward the bottom. We struggled desperately to get out of this sheath, which, to our downfall, we had bound up too well; the lower edges of the fur had been tucked in tightly, and the whole thing was frozen and stiff as a board. We were like two unwanted kittens thrown together in a sack to be drowned.
IN THE LAND OF WHITE DEATH, Valerian Albanov’s record of his calamitous 2-year icy struggle in 1914 is a captivating read from beginning to end. Page by page you follow him wandering around the arctic circle abandoning a ship that had been stuck fast in the pack ice of the Kara Sea for 2 previous years, with the most meagre supplies and a largely apathetic team members. It is simply astounding in so many ways: that he and others survived again and again through the most extreme cold, the most barren landscapes, and just when you think you know, heavens above this poor wretch really has had enough, the unthinkable happens (no spoilers). If you ever start whining because its an unseemly 5C and a little bit rainy or windy, or perhaps the steak you’re eating isn’t quite cooked, or the banana you’re eating is maybe a bit bruised, just think of Valerian and what he had to go through.
Life really isn’t so bad. Cheer up.
Originally published in Russian in 1917, this was superbly translated into English in 2000 by William Barr.
* “A malitsa is a coat made of around 4 reindeer skins, the fur being closest to the skin on the inside and the leather on the outside. The Malitsa has an integrated hood and gloves and is similar to a poncho with no zips or buttons”
Porsche have outdone themselves with the new Porsche Cayenne ad (requires flash — yes more on the below). I have absolutely no intention nor means of buying such a car but their ad is impressively engaging and a thing of beauty. It is engaging and its integration of Porsche branding within user goals (such as ‘Experience for yourself’ which uses Google maps along with aspirational branding imagery in a really beautiful way. No I can’t link to it because its FLASH see below).
But they could’ve done better — why can’t I promote it?
The fact that its basically impossible to include any media or graphics here is somewhat of a glaring oversight. Even a simple video with the highlights plus the great music would be enough. They had ‘download wallpaper’ and ‘recommend on Facebook’ but I just want a little pic in this blog entry. On principle I’m not scaling down the enormous wallpaper pics because they don’t suit my ‘viral social media’ needs.
Flash only?
Despite being just gorgeous this ad shows some cracks in using Flash. My biggest complaint is
the somewhat arrogant ‘take over the screen’ philosophy which this presentation has, along with the
complete inability to bookmark sections — its all one flash app
Popup madness. Why so many popups? My computer is a mess afterwards.
Doesn’t work on the iPhone. Well maybe they have a special iPhone version but I suspect not. No flash means a big lost opportunity here.
It’s still completely gorgeous though. I’ve watched the ad three times already. It is truly a thing well made, with an extremely talented design team who has also spent a huge amount of time thinking about user experience. My hat off to them.
Oh I thought this was about the car. Is the car well made?
Yeah I’m sure it is but my policy is only to advocate things I have direct experience with and.. well unless you out there happen to live in London and have a 2010 Porsche Cayenne you don’t mind lending me for a weekend… it’ll have to be just about that ad
I’m a pretty big fan of Ruby on Rails and occasionally I come across some particularly well-made parts. Rails’ ability to track changes in objects in memory has been around well over a year but its staggering how much thought goes into what people might want.
How do I check the value of an object before it was changed?
Let’s say you want to keep track of the total amount a user has across all orders. Rails has built-in not only a convenient place to update the value, but it has the previous value so you can find out the difference.
So nice!
In the example below,
there is a field in the order table called ‘order_total’.
order_total_change is Rails-generated array returning e.g. [20.53, 21.52] if say, the order_total had gone up by 1.99.
order_total_changed? is also Rails-autogenerated.
class Order
...
before_update :update_total_user_spend
...
def update_total_user_spend
if order_total_changed?
previous_value, new_value = self.order_total_change
self.user.total_spend += new_value - previous_value
self.user.save
end
end
Rock on!
(yes and I do need to adjust this blog template so it has a little more room for CONTENT
Andrew Hoyer’s javascript skills are awesome as you can see with this 2D cloth physics simulation with gravity written in Javascript. He uses Taylor expansion to avoid square roots in javascript (which are expensive). The code he’s written is also a thing well made — mostly very clear, concise code (except the occasional curiosity like ‘inv_m’) which by and large doesn’t need any docs.
What makes this simulation special is the speed at which everything is computed. Javascript (the language this is written in) is not exactly the most efficient language for this type of computation. This being said, much time was spent squeezing out every little detail that slows things down.
NOTE if the simulation below is jerky, try some of the faster browsers such as Google Chrome * or Safari as their javascript support is faster than Firefox / IE currently as of March 2010.
* In the interests of full disclosure this is my own opinion but Google is my employer. But Chrome is still faster
Princess Mononoke. Spirited Away. Howl’s Moving Castle. There is something tremendously beautiful about all these movies and Ponyo is no different. The way Hayao Miyazaki conveys a sense of innocence, magic, and love which is extraordinary. The music, the symphony of images and the touching storyline are intricately woven together. It completely carries me away.
But its a cartoon
Its an animation. He uses a number of devices including flat 2D sketches of extraordinary detail, and 3D animation as well. Don’t be naive enough to think that these techniques can’t deliver a powerful movie!
Lemme see!
Here’s a clip. Its for the US English version — the original Japanese with subtitles holds a little more of that faraway world magic for me and luckily I saw that version.
If you like that clip you should definitely see it, and hopefully become a Hayao Miyazaki fan like me!
Playing at a bunch of theatres in London right now; I saw it at Curzon Soho.
We’ve been looking for candlesticks for a long time and just never were happy by the clumsiness or fiddliness of what we saw. Howeve then we got this candlestick by Robert Welch Arden for Christmas and its a stunner:
It is superbly elegant. It looks like it nearly disappears and this is enhanced by the reflective surface to appear almost impossibly thin.
Available from John Lewis and Peter Jones (same place). Yeah, not super cheap but then, things well made rarely are I’ve found.
I’ve always appreciated things that have had love, care and attention put into them. Where its obvious that the thing that was created was created for reasons above purely commercial gain.
Don McGlashan says it best in ‘Thing Well Made’ by the Mutton Birds:
To make a thing like that you’d need to know what you were about.
You’d have to know where you were going and go there in a straight line.
And everything else you’d have to shut right out.
Can you see the man who made that?
Can you see him putting it down and standing back?
Can you see the moment when he said “That’s it. That’s perfect.”?
At a time like that you wouldn’t care about your job,
Or your mortgage, or the fight you had with your wife.
‘Cause when a man holds a thing well made,
There’s connection,
There’s completeness when a man holds a thing well made.
