It's the end of the world as we know it

Hammacher Schlemmer has introduced a product that will come to be seen as a turning point in the collapse of the American Empire. I bring you exhibit A.

From the catalog:

Satisfying a mutual desire for companionship, this high chair permits your dog or cat to accompany you at the dinner table. The high chair clips securely to tables up to 2" thick and its height adjusts without tools to elevate your pet to near eye level. It has a frame of powder-coated 5/8" steel tubing and its arms are rubber-coated so they will not mar table surfaces. By providing an alternative to sitting on your lap, running disruptively underfoot, or outright banishment, the chair assuages a pet (and its owner's) frustration, and promotes more refined behavior. The chair's 600-denier tan/brown nylon fabric cleans easily. Two tethers on the chair protect your dinner guests against any lapses in etiquette. Folds for convenient storage and travel. For pets up to 10 lbs. 10" H x 12" W x 9 1/2" D. (4 lbs.)

For less than $50 you can continue to pretend that your dog is a child and stay good and distracted while the walls crumble around you.

In a world where millions go without adequate food or safe water, resources get directed to crap like this. We're doomed.

SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization

SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization: Beginner's Guide shows you how to master SketchUp's unique tools to create architectural visuals using professional rendering and image editing techniques in a clear and friendly way. You'll be able to get started immediately using SketchUp (free version) and open-source rendering and image processing software. The book also shows you how to create watercolor and pencil style sketchy visuals. In no time you'll be creating photo-realistic renders, animated fly-overs, and walkthroughs to show off your designs in their best light!

And so begins Robin de Jongh's SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization. Every word of it is true.

I have been using SketchUp for nearly three years now and my embrace of that software has opened up avenues of expression I never knew were available. Over the course of time that I've been writing this blog, I've reviewed three SketchUp books. The first was Aidan Chopra's Sketchup 7 for Dummies. The second was Mike Tadros' Real World SketchUp. De Jongh's new title is a fitting and perfect addition to my SketchUp Library.

De Jongh's SketchUp 7 for Architectural Visualization sounds like a heavy tome, but in reality it's an approachable and sensible guide to turning SketchUp renderings into mind bendingly photorealistic visualizations.

In the first chapter alone, De Jongh talks his readers through the basics of drawing a room in SketchUp. If you can take SketchUp that far and want to go even further, then this book's for you.

Here's the SketchUp model from chapter one.

Three pages later, he (and his readers) turn it into this.

DeJongh's book is about SketchUp sure enough, but he delves into the world of open-source software that SketchUp works with beautifully. For photo manipulation he uses Gimp. For video production he uses Virtual Dub. And for his renderings he uses Kerkythea. All four of those incredibly powerful applications are available at full strength to anybody and they are all free. Software costs are an enormous barrier to entry for start ups and it's nothing short of a revolution that those barriers are falling by the wayside.

Between those four applications, anybody can open a business and make a living with an investment of time and a decent computer. I use those applications every day and it's a real thrill to see them getting the respect they deserve.

DeJongh's 377 pages are filled with logical and easy to follow instructions. His tone is conversational and supportive. After every action he directs there's a sidebar explanation of what just happened. People who read his book will not only pick up new skills, they'll understand them and it's that understanding that makes this such a valuable addition to anyone who's serious about three dimensional visualizations.

Robin de Jongh's SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualizations is published by Pakt Publishing in Birmingham, England. You can buy this book from them directly in the currency of your choice and they ship free to the US, the UK, the EU and select Asian countries.

It's on my very short list of recommended instructional books for SketchUp. What are you waiting for? Climb aboard the SketchUp train!

A spidery dilemma

I have a patio. It's on that patio where I grow my orchids and other plants. It's covered and one of my favorite things in the world is to stand out there while a thunderstorm rolls in. I have a dining table out there and my second favorite thing in the world to do is to have people over for dinner al fresco --my Christmas Eve dinners are legendary. I spend a lot of time on that patio and I do what I can to encourage geckos to hang out, they keep the mosquitoes at bay. Similarly, insects like paper wasps eat the caterpillars that crop up on my ferns and spiders keep the rest of the undesirables in check.

I don't have any prejudices against pesticides and I'll use them if the situation warrants it, but I prefer to have something resembling a functioning eco-system out there. Watching the cycles of life and death play out, and observing the dynamics of predator and prey is fascinating. I like to imagine myself to be a passive observer and so I tend to let the system out there regulate itself.

Well all of that changed on Sunday. I was watering my plants and I noticed something in the base of the pot I have a tangerine growing in. By base, I mean the drainage hole. The pot has side drainage (that allows the roots to air out between waterings --citrus trees love to have aired out roots). Anyhow, here's the the drainage hole.

I don't have a decent lens so the rest of the photos I'll use here are ones I found around the internet.

What I saw lurking around was this spider.

via Picasa

As a rule, spiders don't freak me out in the least. They are absolutely fascinating creatures and despite the fact that they are everywhere, how much we know about them doesn't amount to much. Most of them aren't too tough to identify but beyond that, nobody seems to know a whole lot about them.

The spider I saw was pretty small, about an eighth of an inch long, but I've been around enough to know what it was. I suspected from its body shape that it was a juvenile black widow and sure enough, I got a positive ID from The Bug Guide. The Bug Guide and its companion website What's That Bug? Are fantastic resources for IDing these sorts of things.

It's too small to be able to tell if it's a male or a female but based on my location , it's a safe bet to call it  Latrodectus mactans, the Southern Widow Spider. L. mactans ranges as far north as New York State by the way, and there are members of the genus Latrodectus found all over the world.

Here's a photo of a mature Latrodectus mactans. Note that the hourglass shape is on its underside, not on its back as is commonly believed.

via Appalachian Light

That marking by the way, varies greatly from spider to spider and many of them do have red markings on their dorsal sides. Here's another photo of a mature female.

via Wikimedia Commons

Florida's also home (as are a lot of other places around the world) to another widow spider, Latrodectus geometricus. No one seems to know where L. geometricus originated but its range is spreading rapidly.

via Wikimedia Commons

Anyhow, widow spiders have a job to do and they're particularly good at it. While it's true that they can bite and that bite is not very pleasant, they aren't an aggressive species. Few spiders are. The only way that the L. mactans on my patio will ever bite me is if I pick it up once its an adult. Even if it did bite me, I have an intact immune system and no underlying health problems. Though it would hurt like crazy and not look real pretty as it healed, it wouldn't kill me.

When it's mature, it'll be nearly an inch long. That's big enough to take down a palmetto bug and that's makes L. mactans OK in my book.

At the same time though, it could also do a number on me. Though I'd never pick up an L. mactans, I could grab it accidentally while I'm puttering around out there some day.

So what to do? Do I mete out the terrible, swift justice of a can of Raid or do I let it go about its life in the base of my tangerine? On one hand, it's a beautiful creature. It's perfectly evolved for the life it leads. On the other hand, it's my patio and my interests trump the spider's.

What would you do?

A custom mosaic of my very own, courtesy of Trend USA

Trend USA, an Italian mosaic producer with offices around the world, announced a new process for making mosaics recently. It's something they're calling an elaboration, and to achieve it they use proprietary CAD-based software to assign colors and patterns to replicate in mosaic form photos, fabrics or other works of art.

Sometimes it's easier to show than to explain. So here's an image of a fabric.

And here's its elaboration as a Trend USA mosaic.

It's been assigned a different color way of course, but notice too that it's made with cut mosaic pieces. That's an ancient process for achieving rounded shapes called tessellatum tesserae. The same proces is sometimes called a cut mosaic. In addition to tessellatum tesserae, Trend USA's new process can be used to create mosaics using whole 3/8", 5/8" and 3/4" mosaic tiles as well.

In the example below, there's a photo in the top right corner. Below it are the full image of the photo as a mosaic created in 5/8" tiles and then there's a detail of the mosaic. I'm uploading these photos today in high resolution. Click on them and you'll see the detail. It's a small price to pay for the slower loading times.

Trend USA asked me to submit a photograph of my own to use as an example of this process. Trend USA is represented by a friend of mine and she's well aware of my near obsession with Fibonacci Sequences and she suggested that I submit an artistic example of one to use for my custom mosaic.

My favorite video of the last year is Nature by Numbers, a short film by Cristóbal Vila that uses three examples of natural geometry.





I have a still from Vila's film and so I sent this image to Samara Gould, Trend's Artistic Design Consultant. I wanted to test this new process, so I picked an image specifically because I thought it would be a challenge. The transparent wings alone would make me sweat if I were Samara. She accepted my image without hesitation. In fact, she was excited to give it a go.

I told her that I would love to see that dragonfly elaborated as a mosaic in a size somewhere around 10 feet wide by five feet tall.

Samara used 3/8" tiles and by using that smaller size, she created a mosaic that would be readable from four feet away. That's pretty good for something this large.

If I were to buy this dragonfly mosaic, it would come to me in sheets 28 tiles wide by 28 tiles tall and all my installer would have to do is take the sheets out of a box and attach them to my wall. That's pretty slick.

In addition to Trend USA's new custom program, they have pioneered the use of recycled glass in glass tile and their products have recycled content percentages that range from 55% to 78%. You can read more about the company and their commitment to sustainable practices on their website here.

I've seen many custom mosaic services that use a computer to assign colors and patterns before, but I've never seen one that results in this level of detail and clarity. A process such as this is yet another reason to keep an eye on Trend USA and Trend Worldwide. Thank you Samara and thank you Trend.

It's a urinal! It's a sink! It's both!

Lloyd Alter is the lead irritant of the usually irritating website Treehugger. On Friday, he posted something on that site that stood head and shoulders above anything I'd ever seen him write about before.  And here's what he wrote about.

It's a sink and urinal combination. After a gentleman finishes his business, he washes his hands in the sink in front of him and the water from the sink drains into the urinal and flushes it. It's absolutely brilliant.

This sink/ urinal was designed by Yeongwoo Kim, a young designer from South Korea. He won an International Forum Design, Design Concept Award this year for his efforts and he had this to say about his creation:

To save water, Eco Urinal is designed to use the water that was used for washing hands to flush the urine. By this process, we don't have to use water twice after using the urinal.

Moreover, it reduces the establishment expenses by optimizing the materials. Upper space of this urinal is made with glass, and it helps to secure a clear view for users. It also promotes people to keep their sanitation because people need to wash their hands to flush the urine after use.

It's the ultimate gray water solution and it'll make plumbing something like this half as complicated and half as expensive. I think it's brilliant.

In looking over the comments though, people really flipped out. From the tone of of a lot of them, you'd think they were being asked to bathe in pee or something.

What do you guys think? Good idea or bad idea? Am I too much a libertine (hah!) to have a problem with this? What do The People think about this?