Wooden computers

One day, when I'm no longer flat broke, I'm going to replace my 2006 MacBook with a mini desktop (like a Mac mini), a mobile projector and some low-profile alternative to a keyboard - I say an Arduino LilyPad-based homebrew dataglove, but I'm told that the technology for webcam image recognition is so advanced now that visual gesture recognition is much more efficient than conductive fabric and an accelerometer. We shall see. In the meantime, I'm going to fantasise about a mini desktop that is light, portable, and actually looks like something you want to pick up and touch and take to bed at night for an evening of Battlestar Galactica on the ceiling. Enter the glorious google search for wooden computer enclosures. Not all of the examples I found below are small enough for my liking, and none of them are affordable - some aren't for sale - but oh my, imagine the warmth schnuggliness of a living room with one of these as its media center.


The original show and tell for this DIY modern danish computer enclosure is now long gone, but isn't it pretty? It's far bigger than what I'm looking for, but if you're going to have a massive computer tower it really better had be an item of furniture in its own right.


This mod, entitled level eleven, is pretty much exactly the size and style I've been dreaming of. The only thing I would change is get rid of the speed stripe, and make the overall shape a bit more curvy, as at the moment it looks like something that should be sat on a desk whereas I want something that looks grabbable and maybe even cuddle-able.


This beast is far too large, but so beautifully ornate and art-deco that it makes me want to charge around shouting, 'I'm a time-lord, biyatch' - something Doctor Who will, admittedly, probably never say.


And finally, yes oh my god yes that really is a computer. But they only made 10 of them. No, it doesn't look grabbable or small. But if I had one I would bow down before it every morning and bestow upon it fragrant oils, precious jewels and sprinkle gold powders. Just imagine the patina.

I had a dream last night about men

I had a dream last night about men breaking my best teacup. One by one they came into my kitchen and each did a little bit more damage until it was completely broken. I woke up really worried about my teacup, kind of wanted to give it a cuddle. I guess Freud would have a field day with that one. Why is my subconscious so Butler-esque and whiny?

Pictured: not my cup, but one in the V&A collection - see here

Weird pride

Today the brilliant Mark Nicholls wrote:

Who are those strange people who sit in parked cars at two o’clock in the afternoon staring into space? Why do they gawk at me when I walk down the street rambling to myself, trying to prepare the necessary phrases to use in basic human interaction?

Case in point. On Tuesday, I walked up the leafy suburb to cash a cheque. As I walked, muttering ‘can I cash this please’ or ‘could I cash this please’ or ‘could this be cashed, please’ I saw at least THREE passengers staring out at me. Who are they waiting for? Are they sitting there hoping someone might climb into the driver’s seat and drive them? Why do they always see me when I’m trying to be privately weird?

Let me tell you, being weird in this climate of prudence and common sense is not easy. Sometimes I want to sing along to pop songs packed into buses tight with silence. Sometimes I want to debate with myself the tone of voice someone used when speaking to me, and the implications of this tone on our relations. The only thing stopping me is the thin line between sanity and craziness, a line I am happy to straddle without medication.

Recently my housemates and I were teasing each other about our geeky inadequacies when it comes to social skills. Some of us took the Autism Spectrum Test on Facebook, because we like being given numbers to help us understand ourselves. I came out at 31, one point below the level at which doctors start looking at you funny, but a high enough number to make one of my housemates eyes swell up with surprise. Admittedly, this housemate has an unusually elastic face, so I probably overestimated the extent to which he was surprised.

When I was younger, I would spend every lunchtime sitting in the library quietly reading things in or about foreign languages, but then I realised at some point that the reason I had so few people to talk to was because I didn't go up to people and talk to them. Now I spend every lunchtime talking to someone so that I can be sure that I develop relationships with people. Relationships are important to me, not just because I need the company but because I find people fascinating - I love it when you're close to someone and you know some of the unique patterns in their head, and I love it when I say the right thing at the right time and it makes someone happy.

I'm really not good at chit chat. I don't like it at all. If there's something on my mind, then that tends to be the answer I give when asked, 'How's it going?' Here's a typical conversation:

Norm: Hi Zoya, how's it going?
Zoya: Great, I'm having a really nice morning. I just saw some children singing, holding hands in a circle, with two of them in the middle spinning around, and I thought what an idyllic image, and I loved the order and regularity of the circle with the rotation in the centre.
Norm: Oh. That's nice...
Zoya: (remembers that pleasantries should be reciprocated) How are you?
Norm: Fine, thanks. A bit tired.

I'm not even going to start on my outright refusal to recognise taboos. I spend a lot of my time getting into conversations about sex and death. Sometimes I even get people to talk about the class system.

I'm not really interested in looking at this stuff as though it were an indication of some sort of minor learning difficulty. I think it's nice to be weird. You can say things to people that they've never heard before, and that can bring up all sorts of positive feelings in them. This is why I don't walk down the street practicing necessary phrases. I quite like the way I bumble through them - many transactions for me begin with, 'I need to do Y. In order to achieve this I need to do X. I have this piece of paper which I am told can help you to help me to do X. Is this right? What do I need to do now?'

I can sort of sense that there are normal people in this world, but I tend to attract the weird ones so that we can analyse the shapes and patterns of life and talk about the stuff we're really thinking and feeling rather than the stuff we're supposed to think and feel. I think we're all having a great time together here in the weird faction.

Design / D.E.S.I.G.N.

No blog entries for a while, because I started studying History of Design. Here's a video I took of my brain after 4 weeks of study at the RCA:

Shiny cyborgs

I really like to daydream about cyborgs. I plot out stories about them, imagining what will happen if cybernetic modification is taken on by a whole community, as a preposterous but stylish solution to the challenges that face developed economies and postmodern societies. I love to try and to figure out what my imaginary cyborgs should look like.

Obviously, cyborgs would kick ass, and few imaginary future societies kick as much ass as the Borg. However, the Borg are problematic. Firstly, they are basically communists. Secondly, they are evil outsiders with whom the imagined viewer of Star Trek is not supposed to have any sympathy. My cyborgs are individualistic, libertarian capitalists with an entrepreneurial streak, and as the protagonists of the plot I'm imagining, are not evil so much as foolish but well-intentioned, and kind of afraid of dying. Not really Borg-like at all.

Also, the Borg look unfinished - many wires and circuits are left exposed. This is probably because they don't have to use product design to communicate with people, because all they do is assimilate and destroy. In a market-driven world, cyborgs have to look friendly. For example, let's say it's the future, and you want stronger legs, because you're now 80 years old and you're not as fit as you used to be, or because you're one of the few people left in the world who is under 60 and your job is to carry 90-year olds around a care home. Maybe you'd want your mechanical leg-enhancers to look like this:

This product already exists. As reported by the Economist, the designer, Yoshiyuki Sankai, is having trouble getting his government to accept its use in hospitals, because they are still unsure about its safety.

White is the colour of the future, the colour of wishes and possibilities, the colour of new frontiers. Which is all very nice, but new frontiers are risky. They might be full of aliens who want to kill you, or assimilate you into their murderous hive. New technologies such as stronger legs are safer in that they protect you from occupational hazards. But like a cutting-edge, unsinkable ship crashing into an iceberg, an unexpected obstacle could be disastrous when you're carrying pensioners.

So I haven't settled on an answer yet to the question, 'what do cyborgs look like?' How do you make modifications to the human body look safe? Apparently not by making them shiny and white.

Few and Far

Today I went to a design shop called Few and Far, which was hosting an exhibition of handcrafted wooden chairs and tables. Near the door they had a pile of blank white papers and a net hanging from the ceiling. Visitors were asked to write their wishes on the blank page, fold it into a plane and make it fly into the net. I wished for hypoallergenic kittens.

Paul Cocksedge: a gust of wind

Last night I was at the V&A museum, at an amazing, completely free event with music, art installations, lectures and all sorts of fun things. I walked away with a limited edition work of design art, and my taking it home with me was part of the art installation. I can't wait to see what is in store at next month's friday late event.

The thing I went home with was one of the 'bits of paper' that made up Paul Cocksedge's installation, 'A gust of wind.' 300 pieces of Corian, moulded into the shape of curved papers blown by the wind, were hung from the ceiling to look like a moment frozen in time: a moment of graceful flight, or alternatively a moment of chaotic disaster as your cherished work is blown away from you. At the end of the evening, each piece was given to a visitor to use as an tray for unfiled, 'wandering' papers to gather. They are imprinted with the words, 'ideas tray,' so it's also a place where wandering ideas that might have become lost can be kept safe. Perhaps so that possibilities can be captured and processed into creative work. Although the trays are a way of collecting scattered things, they are themselves scattered pieces of what was once an art installation, as their curvaceous, asymmetrical form reminds you.