Don't take photos of buses in the UK
A bus-spotter says it is no longer safe to practise his hobby of 40 years after being branded a terrorist and a paedophile.
Anoraks everywhere are outraged.
The $400 Ikan, which is in beta in New York City, is a bar code scanner that stores information on items in your kitchen you need to replace. When you run out of something that has its own barcode — coffee, milk, grapefruit juice, bread — you pass it under the Ikan scanner, which then stores the information until you have enough items on your list to warrant a trip to the store.
Rather than getting in your car or biking to the store with your shopping list, the Ikan sends the information to its warehouse and the company packs up your essentials from a partnering supermarket and brings them to you. (via Apartment Therapy Unplugged)
Lauded as the future of shopping but it doesn’t bode well for the mom & pop stores does it?
Ah, but this only works for staples. If I want to make a Thai curry, and I have no curry paste, I’ll need to pop out to the shops.
There’s room for corner stores if this thing takes off, but they’ll have to become more specialised or offer something over and above bread, milk, juice and a friendly “come again!”.
“As Clarke’s Third Law almost states, “Any sufficiently Japanese technology is indistinguishable from magic”.”
Don't take photos of your kid playing sport
According to recent reports, parents have been forced to ask for permission to photograph their kids at some children’s sporting clubs. Other clubs have prohibited the taking of snapshots altogether.
Ridiculous.
Vertigo Theme
Jakob’s orange crocs may have stolen my thunder here a little, but if you’re still reading, I made a Tumblr theme called Vertigo that’s also orange. Luckily for you it supports custom colours, so you can change the orange to something else. I’ve released it under Creative Commons so you’re free to make derivative works, with some provisos. If you use it, drop me a line and let me know.
Damn, that’s cool.
Grand Prix - Title Sequence by Saul Bass (via 21stCenturyRumBoon)
A Saul Bass title sequence with (1) no animation and (2) no music. Still unspeakably good.
The New Sincerity
Irony is dead. Their account of its death, however, was greatly flawed. Irony died not in a fiery explosion, but slowly, quietly, of old age. And it wasn’t replaced by a return of the old guard. This time around, there’s a new cultural paradigm, itching to get in the ballgame. This radical new ethos has a name. It’s called: The New Sincerity.
I can’t shake the feeling I’ve tumbled about The New Sincerity before.
No matter.
A perfect example of the New Sincerity is Evel Knievel. There’s no way to take Evel Knievel literally. It’s impossible. The man has a leather jumpsuit and he drives a rocket car. The leather jumpsuit has red, white, and blue stars and stripes on it. It’s absolutely preposterous. On the other hand, there’s no way to appreciate Evel Knievel ironically. He’s too awesome, right?. He has — I don’t know if we’ve mentioned this — a leather jumpsuit with the Stars and Stripes on it and a rocket-powered car. That’s why we appreciate Evel Knievel with the New Sincerity.
“Design research as I see it has two functions; one is increase our knowledge of how to make products and what, in fact, might be made and the other is to improve our understanding of how products function as part of the social world.”
Even if Margolin can’t count (I think he describes three functions), that’s about as good a definition of Design Research as I’ve come across. Which is no surprise as it’s Victor Margolin.
