Category Archives: Uncategorized

Guido Daniele, artista multimediale


Guido Daniele is an Italian artist whose specialty is a little more hands-on than many others. That’s right, the above animals are all painted hands, or “handimals” as the artist calls them. Of course, Signor Daniele has a lot more at “his website”:http://guidodaniele.com including more “handimals”:http://guidodaniele.com/en_bodypaint01.htm, “trompe l’oeil murals”:http://guidodaniele.com/en_trompe1.htm and “body painting (nsfw)”:http://guidodaniele.com/en_fotografie1.htm. His “biography”:http://guidodaniele.com/en_biografia.htm has more about him.
A big thanks to Gary for the reference.
Previously featured on Duenos:
* “Chalk art by Julian Beever”:http://duenos.net/article/64/chalk-art-by-julian-beever – A true master of trompe l’oeil, Beever is a master of perspective. His portfolio is a must-see.

Sea levels showing no signs of stopping

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/trends-in-sea-level-1870-2006 comes from a group called "GRID-Arendal":http://www.grida.no/ in conjunction with the UN Environmental Programme's "Global Outlook for Ice and Snow":http://www.unep.org/geo/geo%5Fice/. The report is fascinating and long, but full of interesting things. The conclusion is obviously not good. With rising oceans, a lot of people living at or just above sea level might be in trouble soon. The impact of global warming is something we've barely scratched the surface on feeling, and I fear that it will get a lot worse before it gets better. To try to get my head around this concept of rising sea levels and the real impact it can have, I've found some resources more helpful than others, and I'll share those with you now. This first resource you may have seen before but it's worth looking at again. It's a "Google Earth plug-in":http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/847094 that simulates the rising sea levels over the next 100 years. Some places do alright but there are a lot of cities (New York, London, Amsterdam, etc) and even countries (Bangladesh for example) that lie low enough to be almost completely flooded. Secondly, this is a good "illustration":http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/ice-sheets-schematic-illustration-for-greenland-and-antarctica of how the ice shelves "calve" icebergs which dissolve away into the sea. Of course if you have seen this before you probably saw it in Al Gore's _Inconvenient Truth_, and you probably don't need any convincing that this is real and bad. Really bad. Previously featured on Duenos: * "Permafrost no longer":http://duenos.net/article/286/Permafrostnolonger: An Alaskan village struggles with a deep thaw that leaves the land unable to support buildings and has cut it off completely from the mainland. * "Google Earth maps the Darfur genocide":http://duenos.net/article/140/GoogleEarthhighlightsCrisisinDarfur

Open-source Sewing


Self-styled as “your tool to design and sew your own wardrobe!,” “Burdastyle.com”:http://www.burdastyle.com/ is the “instructables”:http://www.instructables.com/ of the sewing world. Site members can post their own sewing patterns and other people can then post pictures of their creations using those patterns. Like any good design-centered site, there is also the facility for rating patterns, discussing them in forums, and even “learning new techniques”:http://www.burdastyle.com/howtos. Now I’ve never had any inclination to create my own clothing in my life, but if I ever did I’d imagine I would drool all over this website.
Thanks to yet another “infodoodads”:http://infodoodads.com/?p=281 post for this wonderful find. An oldie but a goodie. The above sewing pattern is the oh sew sweet “Kasia skirt” and can be found at its “project page”:http://www.burdastyle.com/patterns/show/3633. You will need to sign up for a free membership to see details.
Previous open-source innovation featured on Duenos:
* “Build your own skis, really”:http://duenos.net/article/217/Buildyourownskis
* “Build a computer out of lego bricks”:http://duenos.net/article/82/lego-computer
* “Patagonia sells their scraps for a diy shoe”:http://duenos.net/article/122/patagonia-sells-their-scraps

Poetry and the "avant garde"

Austin Kleon is a poet whose basic tools include a black marker and the New York Times rather than pen and paper. Kleon, recognized by NPR and Toronto’s National Post as an original, insightful poet with a fresh take on the world of poetry, has a blog featuring new poems every few days. Many are funny, some are weird, and a few are insightful. An interesting take on form and restrictions when there are so many debates going on in the poetry world about what constitutes avant-garde, whether there should be a return to traditional forms, and what the role of poetry is today–how relevant is it and how relevant it should be, what the act of poetry is (very controversial when you get people like Levertov saying that ‘writing the poem is the poet’s means of summoning the divine”).

Thanks go to Aaron for the discovery of Kleon.

Prefab skyscraper

Here comes another amazingly complex and expensive skyscraper from Dubai. Unlike the super-tall “Almas Tower”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almas_Tower and “Burj Dubai”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai or the sail-shaped “Burj al Arab”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Al_Arab, this building innovates in more than just size and grandeur. I am very excited about this.

The “Rotating Tower”:http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/09/rotating-wind-powered-tower-to-begin-construction-in-dubai/#more-10134, designed by David Fisher and his firm “Dynamic Architecture”:http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/ is amazing in a number of ways. First of all, every one of the building’s 51 floors will independently rotate around the central concrete spine. This makes the face of the building dynamic and gives every apartment/room an ocean-view for at least part of the day. Also, between the rotating layers there will be 48 wind turbines which should not only make the tower energy self-sufficient, but also allow it to generate $7 million a year in excess electricity revenue.

As if rotating floors and excess power generation wasn’t enough, the Dynamic Architecture building will also be the first skyscraper to be built mostly in a factory. Apart from the central concrete core, all the floors are being built off-site and will be slotted together–electrical, plumbing, heating and all–at the construction site. This system of prefabrication, already becoming popular in residential construction, will shorten the build time from 30 to 18 months as well as reduce the on-site crew from 2000 to 90 people. Not only will this make the building cheaper to build, it will also vastly decrease the environmental cost for construction.

Fold-able handle bars… Amazing!

On Friday I wrote about “Bloom”:http://duenos.net/article/426/Pedalpoweredplanting, the pedal-powered planting device from the “Power to the Pedal”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11 design competition at “Design 21”:http://www.design21sdn.com/, but since then I’ve discovered something way cooler from the same competition.

This entry by Joe Wentworth is rather obviously called “Retrofit Folding Handlebars”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11/entries/3095/gallery/18523 . Like the Bloom, this entry is innovative and stylish but whereas the Bloom was frivolous and intended more for statement purposes, these handlebars are oh so practical. The benefits of these bars are two-fold: Firstly they serve as a wheel/steering lock when closed which helps with storage (no infuriating slide down the wall/fence/lampost) and with security. Secondly, along with standard folding pedals, these handlebars narrow the profile of the bike to make storage more efficient which really matters when you have a lot of bikes.
In college my roommates and I used to hang our bikes on the wall using big old utility hooks and we would have paid dearly (at least 12 packs of Ramen noodles) for something like this. In fact, I would still pay a fair bit for this, but this being a design competition, there’s no link to buy it.
Other design entries I wish were real:
* “eBooks in the round”:http://duenos.net/article/350/eBooksintheround: A beautiful concept eBook reader that is just too pretty to be made.
* “Flying Men!”:http://duenos.net/article/337/FlyingMen: Imagine diving out of an airplane thousands of feet in the air, reaching terminal velocity and then landing right back on the ground, all without a parachute.

Keep your finances minty fresh

http://www.mint.com. http://www.mint.com/investments-beta-invite-tell-a-friend.html but if you'd rather not use their tools, the site is still worth visiting for advice. Mint has teamed up with "Motley Fool":http://www.fool.com/ to produce a "finance blog":http://blog.mint.com/blog/ that has great tips on saving, investment and all that sort of thing. Some interesting links I've come across are this "renting vs. buying calculator":http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAPHIC.html?_r=1&ex=1188014400&en=03cc4186608359a8&ei=5070&oref=slogin from the New York Times, and these "30 free eBooks":http://blog.mint.com/blog/finance-core/30-free-ebooks-to-learn-everything-you-want-to-know-about-personal-finance/ about personal finance. This post is running on in length and I don't want you to stop reading so I'm going to link now to some good old Duenos articles about money management that Brian put together under the title _Save Money_: * "Canceling Credit Cards":http://duenos.net/article/300/SaveMoneyCancelingCreditCards * "AmEx Mortgage Rewards":http://duenos.net/article/295/SaveMoneyAmExMortgageRewards * "Stop Junk Mail":http://duenos.net/article/252/SaveMoneyStopJunkMail * "Get Your Free Financial Report Card and GPA":http://duenos.net/article/198/SaveMoneyGetYourFreeFinancialReportCardandGPA * "Don't Sell Your Books at the Bookstore":http://duenos.net/article/176/SaveMoneyDontSellYourBookstotheBookstore

Pedal-powered planting


Some of the stuff I’m most interested in are “bicycles”:http://duenos.net/article/bikes, “design”:http://duenos.net/article/design, and “the environment”:http://duenos.net/article/environment: which is why I was pretty excited at “this post”:http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/05/bloom-bubble-and-seed-spewing-bike-device/ at “Inhabitat.com”:http://inhabitat.com.
The thing pictured above is called “Bloom”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11/entries/3147/gallery/18791 and it was one of the entries in the “Power to the Pedal”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11 design competition at “Design 21: Social Design Network”:http://www.design21sdn.com all about innovative designs in the world of cycling.
Aside from being a _subversive and inspirational tool for our concrete jungles_, Bloom is a device that attaches to any bicycle and distributes plant seeds in soap bubbles that land and plant themselves as you go through town. The appeal here is irresistible and though I don’t think I’d ever actually use this device/art piece myself, I’m glad that it exists. For more bright, pretty pictures, see the “Bloom contest entry”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11/entries/3147/gallery/18791 at Design 21 and rejoice in the frivolity.