Ten Thousand Cents
Archive for play
Damn.
We missed the inaugural Office Convention for our favorite TV show, the Office. 4,000 people showed up! Gotta go next year, b/c after that it’s gonna get crashed and ruined by people that don’t get it. Just like what happened to Buffett.
Concept cars from Honda
The first pic I saw of this car, it didn’t have the headlights on, I thought, where are the lights?? Doesn’t look terribly safe. This is one of those things that’s so new and alien, your brain struggles with, it looks like X, but it’s missing things X usually has. So maybe it isn’t X? I can’t even decide if I think it’s ugly or not! It’s silicone, and changes colors.
I think it’s hilarious. It reminds me of Scrubbing Bubbles. “We work hard, so you don’t have toooooooooooo…..” Or a bug (click the pic to see additional images, including funky upswing doors), or some anime character. I bet the engineers had a field day coming up with this one.
I also like the new hybrid sports car they came up with - the Honda CR-Z.
Manhole covers from Japan
I totally dig when design finds its way to utilitarian, taken for granted surfaces. There are several pages of these guys - click the ==> sign at the bottom of each page to scroll forward.
Interesting note from electro plankton on the symbols that look like swastikas:
“…it’s a Buddhist symbol that was used long before the Nazis.”
visualizing time
On my accumulated list of things I really want to do is to curate a show for which the only theme is “Time”.
Weirdly, this showed up in my RSS feed list yesterday. Icastic, a visualization specialty firm, asked people how they visualize time. There are some truly beautiful entries, like the one at left.
It’s also interesting to see the age/gender/profession of some of the entrants. The younger folks have some unexpected angles that I identify with, as well as ones from engineering minded folks. The ones I submitted haven’t shown up yet.
State Fair fix
I got my 5 year (ok maybe 3) state fair fix yesterday morning. There weren’t any batches of new rabbits yet, but we did check out the pigs (mama pig had a litter of about 8 cuties, all sleeping except 3 who were busy chowing down), goats, cows and donkeys.
Our favorite was Smithfield, a pot-bellied pig who paints. His owner sells his paintings on eBay to help cover his medical costs for treatment of nasal cancer at the NCSU vet school. The vet school is across the street from the fairgrounds. He was terribly excited to have people come over and see him - he wagged his tail relentlessly! Video here.
The other highlight was a 40th scale model operable crane like the ones newly installed at the port of Wilmington. There was a life size operation chair with all the same levers and doodads as the real thing. Kids, mostly little boys, took their turns at moving shipping containers from boat to truck and back. I asked the PR chick if only kids were allowed to play and she said, “Oh no - adults can do it too, want to try?” I declined, b/c I didn’t want to take up a slot & there were plenty of kids in line. They also had a looping video of the arrival of the cranes which were made in China.
Laser cut book
German artist binds 454 pages of laser cut profiles of his own house into a single book. What a cool way to experience space - like a series of building sections in sequence.
Thanks to Eric Gjerde for the link.
5 day weekend
rally underway in downtown Raleigh….one moment….Ok I’m back. Good luck to these guys at their upcoming DC rally.
There are a couple of interesting things about this campaign from a creativity perspective. One: it is a marketing campaign for the city of Asheville (Spend 5 day weekends here!) which has morphed into a serious movement to cut work hours in this country. It’s backed up by numerous statistics about the quality of work being unrealistically tied to the amount of time one works.
Two: it’s much easier to tone down a wild idea than to dress up a boring one that’s been done and overdone. So the idea of a 5 day weekend opens up the exploration of, ok if we can’t have 5 days off, how about 3? or how about building down time into project budget & timelines?
Sea driven pipe organ
There’s also a diagram of which holes play which notes - scroll to the bottom of the link. It sounds amazing.
The Sea Organ (morske orgulje) is located on the shores of Zadar, Croatia, and is the world’s first pipe organ that is played by the sea. Simple and elegant steps, carved in white stone, were built on the quayside. Underneath, there are 35 pipes with whistle openings on the sidewalk. The movement of the sea pushes air through, and – depending on the size and velocity of the wave – musical chords are played. The waves create random harmonic sounds.
