sleepinginmyhead

summer break

Sleepinginmyhead will be off air for the next ten days, whilst i recharge my batteries in cornwall. Apologies for the lack of posts during this time. If you do get desperate for links next friday, try the dump trumpet.

back into the groove

It's been a while since I've played records to a discerning public but last night i broke my hiatus. Remember the Playstation 3 space i blogged about earlier this year? well last night, i was called upon to entertain the crowds there, and what wholesome fun it was. I think i might get back into it, dust off some old 45's and get to pressing some buttons.

it's true, there really is gold at the end of a rainbow....

my Dilla Tee came just in time...

another one from the vault...

webwatch 92

when you watch a video like this, you realise just how insignificant we are...

...but it's amazing what we can do when we put our mind to it...

...and how much stuff we achieve or mess up.

This has been covered in a number of other blogs, but it's good work. Taking colour pallettes from the paintings of the masters.

When you saw Damien Hirst's diamond and platinum skull, did you wonder how he made it? Errrr, he didn't.

Hell's teeth, Issey Miyake has such a nice animation at the introduction of his website

Really nice domestic fire extinguisher, looks like a grapefruit with a spout.

Apple's iphone calculator is a ripoff/ homage to the braun et66 pocket calculator.

Richard Seymour stars as the black seal in the new Guiness campaign (thanks to everyone who sent this in)

The original nano headphone was cute but bulky. This shuffle headphone is compact but ugly. how long until we have one which is cute and compact...

brians brain 30

Firstly, i'd like to say thanks to Brian and congratulations on reaching 30 posts - Fosta...

Lost and found......

The other day I walked out of my office and found a strip of small sticker pictures on the pavement. They were all identical and, as you'd expect a bit grubby and stained. I decided to stuff them into my pocket and unfortunately washed all but two in the washing machine. Of the two i kept, i decided to find out who he was. I wasn't sure who this man was but he looked vaguely guru like, and very afro like. So a quick search on Google for "Afro Guru" turned up this chap: Sathya Sai Baba. He's obviously quite famous, so much so that he even has a number of look-alikes, with varying degrees of success.

how is it made 6

ETCHING
Now this is a really old technique which went out of fashion for a while, but it’s getting popular again recently, more on that later. Etching involves the use of chemicals to burn away at layers of material in a controlled manner. Remember around the acids cupboard in chemistry, there were all those burn marks on the desk, well this is the same. The main problems with etching are a) It takes a long time b) it requires a lot of preparation and processing and c) it can only be done onto flat sheet. Here’s how it works:

1. And 'etch proof' ink is printed onto both sides of the metal sheet, where etching isn’t wanted
2. The metal sheet is placed in a chemical bath and left alone
3. The bits of metal not covered in the etch proof ink begin to erode.
4. After a set time, the metal sheet is removed with the pattern etched into the surface
5. The etch proof ink is removed, leaving a clean, etched metal sheet.

This lets us create patterns such as numbers and lines in metal sheet, or allows us to create weaker parts, where the sheet can be folded. If we leave the metal in the bath of acid long enough, then it will etch all the way through to make holes, just like on the speaker grilles on apple powerbooks. Quite often, in order to speed this up, the hole pattern is printed in on both sides. The problem here is that lining up the printing is incredibly difficult, and if it's not perfect, then the holes won't match.

This technique is becoming very popular again with product designers as we are forced into the world of thin products. The Motorola RAZR phone managed to really slim down for many reasons, but taking the moulded buttons away, and replacing them with an etched metal sheet saved them precious millimetres.

music monday 22

I don't know what it is about a large bass sound, but it gets me excited in a way that any other sound doesn't. It makes me frown and curl up my lips, which i'm sure isn't attractive, but i can't help it. I have a wide ranging music appreciation, but growing up on rave, techno, then drum and bass has given me a particular interest in the 'electronic bass sound'. The heady sounds of some of UKG, the samples of ragga and the snares of Drum and Bass have, it seems, morphed into a new mini genre called Dubstep. A confusing and bewildering mix of Ragga breaks, rolling snares and hats, sat atop the most ridiculous bass squelches. I should hate it, it's tacky, not particularly innovative, and very minimalist, but i still make that frowny pursed lippped face, so it must be hitting the spot. The major exponent of Dubstep appears to be Skream, and from what i have heard, he's pretty good. I have snatched a little sample of his Essential mix for you today as a taster, but if you like it, then you can download the whole thing here. Headphones on, turn it up loud and let me know what you make of it...

Skream - Essential mix section

Go Find - Wikipedia, skream on tempa, Myspace

FLOOOOD!!

Here's proof once again that there is no god, and if there is, then he's an asshole. My girlfriend phoned me at lunchtime today to tell me that water was pouring into our celler, that it was a metre high, and that it was rising, so i understandably jumped into a cab. The storm drain which runs under our house seems to have been incapable of handling the crazy rain which hit London today, so decided to come into our flat. I've spent the last seven hours working alongside my trusty water pump, which we managed to hire from HSS, even though they wanted to keep it because they were flooded too. I have lost loads of my power tools (sob!), lots of odd crap down there, like an old TV and such, but worst was the last 10 years of my girlfriend's sketchbooks, all under a metre of shitty water. I managed to find my grandpa's medal and letter, which seems to be drying out OK. We're insured, so i guess it could have been worse but, pah, crap weekend ahead.

nothing says "go fuck yourself" better than submerging your pride and joy under a metre of paint and shitty water...

webwatch 91

French design studio 'normal studio' has some really nice stuff. The Ricard pourer is especially nice for one reason alone. Lots of brands treat their logo with kid gloves, and protect it with all sorts of guidlines and rules, but it's nice to see a logo being used purely graphically. The site is only in French, but it's still nice.

I went to college with Pascal Anson, and am always impressed by his output. His site popped into my subconscious recently, and hopefully you'll like it as much as i do. One of my particular favourites is the alessi griddle pan.

Juxtaposition can be a fucker.

hey apple, some of your designs are nice, but some really sucked.

oh, the iphone is nothing new, it was first concieved in 1983. It was a little different back then, but you could write a cheque on it! More pictures of early apple concepts here, but the text is in German.

My only knowledge of 'Pottery Barn' is from an episode of Friends (sad eh?), but it looks like they're getting into smart interiors. I particularly like the 'Laura Ashley' aesthetic combined with chargers etc. Sweet!

Really weird idea, put a full DJ and VJ setup into a grand piano chassis. It looks well built though, but it's still odd.

This ring would be incredible, if i didn't know that 3D CAD and rapid prototyping existed. Still clever though.

I was in Origami club at school, seriously. Doctor Klein was our teacher, and he could fold a mean peacock, but he never made anything quite as amazing as this. This Koi is particularly amazing.

brians brain 29

Short but sweet....

I'm a sucker for a bit of black comedy. Fosta got me into Maakies with a lovely hardback book he showed me recently. (it's called 'pre millennial Maakies', and Charlie got me into it... (F))
Now you can enjoy the PBF-esque humour without all that pesky paper and ink. And if that's wet your appetite for slightly off colour humour try these...

how is it made 5

This time we’re looking at a much maligned technique which isn’t used as much as it really should be:

EXTRUSION.

There is one really simple way to explain extrusion: toothpaste. What we’re basically doing with extrusion is squirting plastic (or metal) through a hole. In the case of toothpaste, this is a round hole, so we get a round rod. When we extrude things in production, we can make this aperture any shape we want: L shaped, T shaped, E shaped, whatever. The hot plastic or metal is then squirted through this aperture (or die) and takes on the shape. It is quickly cooled and sets to stay in that shape.

The genius of extrusion is for making tubes (‘O’ shapes). Imagine a length of drainpipe, we can make a circular hole and squirt plastic through it, but it will come out solid. If we suspend a slightly smaller circle inside the bigger one with fine wires the plastic will flow around the wires and fuse back together on the other side. This means that when the plastic cools, it makes a tube!

Of course, you can be more creative than that, just take a look at a PVC window frame, they’re all extruded, and are really complicated, with lots of floating bits in the die to make the hollow sections. In fact loads of pasta is made in this way, such as penne, but with flour and water instead of plastic!

The best bit about extrusion is that you can have a die cut really cheaply, and take it to an extrusion company, so it’s perfect for batch production or student projects.

Another benefit of extrusion is called ‘co-extrusion’. Did you ever have that toothpaste as a kid which came out stripy? Co-extrusion is the same as that. By forcing different plastic from two different nozzles through the same die we can get stripy things, or things with a hard spine and a rubbery edge or better still, things which are opaque but have a clear stripe in them, like those plastic oil cans which have a clear stripe, so you can see the level. Clever eh?