Vestal Design Blog

How the Internet Will Outlast Us..

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 06:09:00 +0000

Doing a bit more research to find a song featured in a previous post (which, incidently, is DJ Z-Trip featuring Whipper Whip's "All about the Music"), I stumbled upon DJ Dusk's myspace page. Turns out, DJ Dusk (above), a prominent dj in LA, passed away on April 29, 2006. The date is also listed as the last day which he logged in to his account.

I found this peculiar for a number of reasons. First, the comments (about 7 pages of photos, grafiti art, stories, and condolences) acted as a euology for this man's life and was much more vocal than the average obituary. It made me start to wonder if this was perhaps a more effective way of telling our pasts than the ever wearing mounds of tombstones barely worth a few lines for a few hundred years.

Second, this puts well into perspective how relatively young the Internet is. In our daily lives, it is merely present, as an engine to make our lives easier, not something we are leaving our oily fingerprints all over it. I have never given a thought to the fact that the Internet will most likely outlive me. This myspace account may outlive me. And future generations may mull over these remenants of whispers left disjointed in cyber-past, as one views a shipwreck left in midfloat at the bottom of the sea, trying to piece together the words left by ghosts into a coherent story. What timecapsules am I unknowingly leaving the future?

Glad to know this probably means our ancestors were yokels too. :)

Buy the Book Bar!

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:28:00 +0000

Remember that Book Bar we built last summer? Well, we're selling it! That's right. We're relocating to a new office and we've decided to auction it off rather than dismantle it.

Bid on your once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy this sucker here!

Trippy Rorschach-esque Music Video

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Wed, 31 May 2006 19:35:00 +0000

What do you get when you combine Rorschach's Inkblot Test with the Santana Album Cover Art? This sweet video by Gnarls Barkley. (His site's pretty trippy too, by the way.)

Link (thanks ACD!)

The Three Twins Treat!

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 22:55:00 +0000

There's nothing like enjoy yummy, organic, home-made ice cream to celebrate another business gone green!

When Neal Gottlieb decided to open his business, Three Twins Ice Cream, in San Rafael, CA, he was determined to make it green. And Mike and I were determined to see it in action. Not only was the ice cream phenomenal, but the store was a friendly, kid-centered, mecca of fun and sustainable practices.

This compost, recycling bin, and itty bitty trash bin is all that's needed to keep Three Twins in good working order.

Among the eco-friendly runnings of the shop are PLA (plastic from corn) and Spudware (starch utensils), as well as Vegan options and reused metal utensils.

Be sure to visit Neal and tell him that Vestal sent ya!

Three Twins Ice Cream
641 Del Ganado Road, San Rafael, CA 94903 (map)
(415) 492-TWIN
threetwinsicecream@yahoo.com

Granite Gear's Green Packaging

Dave Pitman — Tue, 30 May 2006 07:34:00 +0000

I've always liked the quality of Granite Gear- their compression sacks are rock solid and good for years of use. Needless to say, I was presently surprised when I went to buy new compression sacks at REI and found that Granite Gear has some of the best packaging practices I've seen.

The top of the package features the label seen above, right on the top of the package where no one can miss it, is a far cry from the usual hidden label near the UPC barcode. This means that the package uses a cool, almost origami-like, system of tabs and slits in the place of adhesives. Even more importantly to me though is that Granite Gear is proactively confronting anyone who buys or even looks at their package in the to store to think about eco-friendly packaging.

Image of Airline Compressor Package

Image of Slits and Tabs

Granite Gear Airline Compressor Product Page

NASA TV

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Mon, 29 May 2006 19:52:00 +0000

NASA has always been strong in visually depicting high-level scientific concepts through multimedia. Now NASA is taking public outreach one step further: two web-streamed TV channels, complete with schedule, and links to continually updated educational TV "channel" shows. Here's to making edutainment fun and accessible!

Link via Astronomy Picture of the Day

One Box of Organic Boysenberries Later...

Dave Pitman — Mon, 29 May 2006 05:50:00 +0000

As you may have noticed, the Vestal Blog has been a little bit dormant these past two weeks. Fear not though - we have simply been very busy as of late. Jeff graduated from Yale on Monday with a BA in Architecture. Less than 48 hours after graduating, Jeff flew out and met up with me in Silicon Valley. We met with Mike Lin to discuss exciting future plans for Vestal. Jeff and I also had the good fortune to meet up with PodTech.NET, a great group of folks we've been consulting for recently. As if this wasn't enough, Jeff has been busy with an exciting new venture, Cut & Paste, based in Lima, Peru. Mike has been working with Stanford's Green Building Initiative, and I am planning a 6-week vacation to Europe. Whew!

Jeff and I also managed to find an excellent organic farmer's market on Alpine Road before 280 while lost, mere minutes before our meeting with PodTech.NET. The boysenberries were excellent, but I believe the honeydew melon is still in Mike's car...

We'll be back in force soon, though, and look out for a redesign of the blog as well...

Automated Recycling

Dave Pitman — Tue, 23 May 2006 06:50:00 +0000

A while back, AnandTech wrote up a tour of NewEgg's shipping facility. NewEgg (a descendent of Egghead Software) is a popular online merchant for DIY PCs and electronics in general. How an order is filled and shipped is interesting on its own, but what really caught my eye was that NewEgg has an automated recycling process- workers simply "toss away" cardboxes into holes in the floor, and the rest of it is done by machines! I firmly believe that people only adopt new technology when it, at the least, doesn't hinder what they're already doing, and this is an excellent example of how recycling going mainstream.

AnandTech's Tour, pg 5

How Hip Hop is redefining a culture through music

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Fri, 19 May 2006 22:11:00 +0000

Source: on MySpace

See the difference with this video which features legendary African American jazz dancers, Al Minns and Leon James, dancing swing for the amusement of observing white people in a time when racism was not as openly questioned. The new choice in music totally changes the meaning: they now look like they are dancing for their own enjoyment.

It also, coincidently, makes it more fun to watch. :) Happy Friday!

Stanford Lotus Living Lab wins EPA P3 Grant

mike lin — Thu, 18 May 2006 08:06:00 +0000

I'm very excited to announce that the Stanford University Lotus Living Lab Researchers were just awarded $75,000 by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

This past year, Stanford University's Lotus Living Laboratory has been an opportunity for student and faculty researchers to collaboratively develop green building technology, interdisciplinary design processes, and building metering and feedback systems. Students presented the results of this effort on May 9-10 on the Mall in Washington DC. They competed with 40 other teams nationwide that had also received $10,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency for Phase I of the People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Student Design Competition.

The Stanford group was among the six teams that won $75,000 to continue their research. The students also won the Green Globes award from the Green Building Initiative for "being the entry that showed the most potential for commercialization/expansion into the market place," which also included a $1,000 cash prize. In particular, the judges were impressed by the goals of the project which included building a green dorm at Stanford and developing a residential education program that networks with other universities to research sustainable pathways for resource use and building development.

, Wal-Mart Goes Green

Casa Malaparte

jeff@vestaldesign.com (Jeffrey Warren) — Wed, 17 May 2006 19:04:00 +0000

A non-sequitur today: pictured above is Casa Malaparte, the dwelling of mid-20th century author Curzio Malaparte, which I find to be fascinating and beautiful. Located on a cliff on the island of Capri, this building was jointly designed by the Italian Rationalist architect Adalberto Libera and by Malaparte himself around 1941. It was also the setting for Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film "Le Mépris" (Contempt).

Not many pictures are available of its interior but the house is now used for "serious study and certain cultural events", according to Wikipedia. The article also mentions that, "access to this private property is either by foot from the Town of Capri or by boat and a staircase cut into the cliff." That sounds wonderful.

Link to an article on the building.

Boredom Cures

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Wed, 17 May 2006 00:46:00 +0000

While sites like Google and Wikipedia may be great to surf when you know what you want, many of us just want the Internet to do the work. For these people, I present you with: stumbleupon.com, a site which lets you pan through randomly chosen, preselected cool sites for hours.

Get the free toolbar (Firefox only) and you can provide feedback on whether or not you like the site. Certainly more addictive (and with better content) than HotOrNot.com.

Link to a sweet sound site I stumble(d)upon

Interface Carpet Tile

jeff@vestaldesign.com (Jeffrey Warren) — Fri, 12 May 2006 20:40:00 +0000

Interface, Inc. is the largest manufacturer of carpets in the world - and is also a uniquely driven company in the environmental field. Their specialty is carpet tiles - that is, 18 inch squares of carpet which can be tiled across your floor. This is a terrific idea in many ways - it allows people to wash individual tiles in the sink if they get dirty, or to replace a single tile if it gets stained. If certain areas of carpet become worn, the tiles can be rotated to wear evenly, like tires. This extends the lifetime of the carpet, and reduces waste.

Interface has also experimented with a service-based model where they "rent" carpet to businesses, and will rotate tiles periodically or replace them if they are worn. While this hasn't met with enormous success, it is a step in the right direction. When the business wants new carpet, or gets rid of their carpet, Interface will take it back and manage its reuse or disposal.

Link to FLOR, their residential carpet tile line.

How does an average man beat 9 of the Best Chess players in England?

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Fri, 12 May 2006 03:08:00 +0000

Well you gotta watch the video to find out! A cookie to anyone who can figure out the (if there's a) mathematical pattern to the numbers in the envelope.

Link to Derren Brown's site

Gaining Country Recognition through Internet

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:59:00 +0000

The tiny New Zealand territory of Tokelau has a Internet top-level domain: .tk . While it uses .tk to create a small bit of industry for its 3 islands by selling domain names, it also gives of them away for free (minus some advanced services.) From the Dot TK site:

The primary goal for both Teletok and Taloha is to increase the awareness of Tokelau in the world, establishing relationships with larger corporations who can provide communication, education and medical expertise to the region and directly fund the island of Tokelau with royalty fees paid over domain names sold.

Good to know you still have a chance at getting www.HamsterDance.tk ...

Related Posts: Sealand

Earth Observatory

jeff@vestaldesign.com (Jeffrey Warren) — Tue, 09 May 2006 16:12:00 +0000

This service, run by NASA's Earth Observatory, allows users to create QuickTime animations of various global datasets such as vegetation, sea surface temperature, and many many more. The above images are clips from a vegetation coverage animation from 1982-1998 - it's amazing to see the vegetation spread and recede yearly like some kind of pulse... try it yourself!

Link
Other datasets

Powertool Drag Racing!!!

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Sat, 06 May 2006 23:46:00 +0000

Really, with a title like that, do I really have to say anything more? Oh right, how to get your excited selves there:

this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, May 7th (aka tomorrow) at Noon
2255 McKinnon St, San Francisco
Adults $15, Kids 7-17 $10

Link

Web 2.0 TV: a Review

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Thu, 04 May 2006 06:47:00 +0000

Forget 4,000 satellite TV channels! Let the Internet take care of all of your entertainment needs. Just as the media and news are feeling the crunch of lagging behind the blitz blogs, so too will TV soon feel the heat from all the TV blogs brewing, particularly since anyone can now post (and even charge) their own videos.

Internet TV: 3 Scenarios

Switch: Getting Girls Interested in Technology - This blog is riding the DIY-wave, a technology movement which has been far more hospitable to girls than science and technology have typically been. With periodic videos of how to hack into technology appealing to the feminine, these videos have the potential to tap into niche markets, empower young minds, and change social histories. Very cool.

Current TV: Moving at the Speed of News - From the man who invented the Internet comes the future of TV. With updates literally every 5 min, this video blog aims to keep on top of it all, giving lots of love to the utterly bored and technologically-addicted. It doesn't get more current than immediate, and this TV blog makes us all feel a bit more like the Jetsons.

TreeHuggerTV: The Traditional Blog Expanded - This well-known and recently Webby-Nominated environmental blog has continued to break blog ground by added a new flavor to its arsenal of news: the TV spot. Somehow seeing sustainability actively incorporated into daily life makes it conceivable. Thus, this lets Treehugger tell their story more dynamically and let's them show thing they wish was on regular tv.

I certainly didn't forsee this back in the days when all we had was the Hamster Dance and we had to walk to school up hill in the snow both ways...

How to Survive a Robot Uprising

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Wed, 03 May 2006 06:31:00 +0000

This book by Daniel H. Wilson, a recent PhD graduate from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, is pretty self-explanatory. But I love the idea that someone has given serious, scientific thought to what would happen if you were to get burnt by a robot laser. *Ahh*, I <3 being a nerd.

Video of Wilson speaking about his book

Energy-Aware Appliances

jeff@vestaldesign.com (Jeffrey Warren) — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:20:00 +0000

This hypothetical switch allows the user to choose what type of energy is powering their home - more an exercise in energy source awareness than anything. Yes, that's nuclear in the top left spot. The design is part of STATIC!, a project by the Interactive Institute:

Electricity, as a product, is easily reduced to an abstract, invisible phenomenon whose only concrete representations are ‘two holes in the wall’. In a series of design examples, we explore how everyday products might be designed to better express – and thus stimulate reflection on – daily or long-term patterns of energy use.

Several of the designs are both insightful and beautiful - however Vestal friend Serge de Gheldere of Futureproof/ed criticizes the Power-Aware Cord pictured to left, for actually encouraging higher energy usage. Apparently people using the prototype would often plug in as many appliances as they could to see the cord glow bright blue... not exactly the point.

3d Modeling for Everyone

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 04:15:00 +0000

Click image to open a 3-d model of the X-Wing in Sketchup.

Google just released Sketchup, the so-easy-your-grandmother-could-use-it-
and-make-sweet-stuff-with-it 3-d modeling program, free for everyone to use (originally $500.) Co-released is the 3D Warehouse, a website where users are encouraged to upload their models to a searchable database that anyone can then download into Sketchup or, if georeferenced (which anyone can do using Sketchup), in Google Earth. This totally beats model airplanes!

Download

Reuse, but Sustainable?

mike lin — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:00:00 +0000

Every now and again, I come across something that's just a little bit silly. According the the BBC

Francie Rehwald wanted her house to look "feminine", have curves and be eco-friendly. Her architect's answer was: "Let's use a 747!" The plane's parts were obtained from an aeroplane scrap yard in California. They cost around $100,000 (£56,000) to purchase, while the construction of the project, which is expected to start in June, is thought likely to cost several million dollars by the time it is completed.

Several million dollars? While I think the creative reuse is great and the aesthetic to be a bit Mad Max, I think this home is hardly sustainable.

Link

On the Efficiency of Trains

jeff@vestaldesign.com (Jeffrey Warren) — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 03:55:00 +0000

The Man in Seat 61 is a site for people who wish to use alternative transportation - alternative to air travel, that is. Sorted by destination, it offers advice and links on train, bus, and freighter travel (that's right, ships!). I looked into fares from the US to Peru by ship, but unfortunately it seems like they charge similar rates to cheap hotels - which is reasonable until you realize that the trip takes over forty days...

l traveled from New Haven to Denver by train this past December, which took over 50 hours. A length of time long enough that a 5-hour delay wasn't a big deal. I learned Ruby on Rails and wrote a graphing application in that time. And read a book.

Part of my motivation was that I had heard that a train uses up to 70% less energy and causes up to 85% less air pollution than flying. Futurepundit challenges that assertion, citing a study comparing a fully loaded train to a fully loaded car. A more thorough analysis based on "passenger miles per gallon" can be found here.

Temperatures Hotter than Sun, on Earth

jessica@vestaldesign.com (Jessica Pfund) — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 20:18:00 +0000

Above: The sun can reach up to 13.6 million Kelvin.

Last month, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico got their Z machine to created plasmas exceeding 2 billion degrees Kelvin (or 3.6 billion ^oF), hotter than the interior of stars, by converting electrical energy to soft x-rays. This non-nuclear conversion produced four times as much energy as expected and is intriguing scientists everywhere.

Link

Autodesk's Green Future?

jeff@vestaldesign.com (Jeffrey Warren) — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:05:00 +0000

Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD, and now owners of Alias (who make Maya), launched a Sustainable Design Center page some time ago. Okay, the previous sentence was indeed kind of ridiculous. Those are all rendering/computer aided design programs often used by architects and filmmakers. In any case, I'm interested to see what Autodesk, which since it's acquisition of Alias, has become "the largest provider of design software" in the world, has planned in the area of green design. Certainly the website, featuring the above photo, does not hint at any specifics.

A toolbox for green design technologies in AutoCAD, or even a standalone green design program to facilitate the use of sustainable materials and/or energy efficient architecture? The site launches in full on May 5.

Link