Explorations in Nomadic Dietary Habits

Workview

2009-01-30T02:26:00.000-08:00

What was supposed to be a short answer to my view on what work is got a little out of control...

I would define work as the activity through which sustenance and shelter are attained, and consequently, survival is allowed. In the ideal model of society, every person fills a necessary role such that the community is provided with the means for comfortable survival. In such a way, each individual does not need to have knowledge of or the resources for every facet of the local lifestyle. Each tradesman, if you will, is then also permitted to perfect his craft in such a way that would not be possible if he also had to manage all, or even some, of the others. This cycle should lead to a more content, friendlier society in which jobs have seasons and people depend on one another for not only support but companionship.

In our modern times, however, there is much more freedom in choosing your work, i.e. you do not have to simply fill your father's shoes, and so this system gets much more complicated. Not only is the community subject to fluctuation in population due to families moving to find "better" jobs but also the young population is literally sent away to increase their chances of such opportunities.That is not to say that no one should ever leave where they grew up- farm your field and deal with it- but rather that there is much less a sense of settling, because no one "does work" anymore, they "have a job". And we all know that if you have something, you can sell it, burn it, get a new one, barter with it, etc. The means by which people used to obtain commodities they needed has morphed into a commodity itself.

I would say that plenty of good work exists, but also plenty of bad work. Good work is such that it provides some value to society, other than financial efficiency. Work that exists to support an entity that manufactures goods nobody needs is not good work. (Especially if that work is to promote and force the sale of such goods.) Many of these types of jobs, as one might expect, offer little stimulus to the mind and such employees often find themselves questioning why they are doing what they are doing. Of course, the reason becomes readily apparent- to support a lifestyle that requires an adequate amount of income so that they might purchase and maintain all of the goods that they believe they need. The connection generally isn't made that such "bad" work only leads to more bad work because the culture of such large companies promotes itself through its network of employees. This is a whole other discussion, though.

In such a fashion, more particularly capitalistic economies, people are generally adverse to any education for work that is not conventionally marketable because the financial risk is too great. There is such a great divide between "Creative" and "professional" personalities that it is borderline unacceptable for either to participate in an activity that does not fall into their specific mold. An engineer who paints for personal enjoyment (and hence at the expense of time and money) is ostracized in the exact same fashion as an artist who tries to sell his work on t-shirts via the internet. However, I would argue that people who would tell you that having an art degree is worthless, because it means you can't get a real job, still on some level recognize its importance and value as they will, say, pay money for an album or to see a movie.

Design, on an individual level, offers a nice middle ground where artistic endeavors are not only encouraged, but knowledge of such principles is essential to the process. The community fosters this deep personal exploration and satisfaction and coincidentally, some of the most innovative and moving work comes out of our field. I think that a stable society is made up of people who enjoy what they do and so it is really the responsibility of each individual to make himself content. Designers certainly seem to have no qualms with their work or lifestyles, and even at times I myself can perceive many of them as annoyingly smug. However, the fact remains that they have committed themselves to human centered design, and so I think I can live with it. I like and want to help people- I see that as one of the most prominent driving forces behind my actions. Personally, I think that this path I have chosen to enter the design world will lead me to find and develop what it is exactly that I want to do in my life and so benefit society. (And do what I want all the time ;) )

da Vinci

2008-11-23T13:19:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I went to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the Tech Museum in San Jose. It was an awesome display of the many things that Leonardo worked on in his life, along with some good back story of the Sienese engineers.

Leonardo sketched and produced an extraordinary number of mechanical devices, often times just to see how many ways he could do it. While this can not truly be confirmed, it is said that Leonardo was the first person to think of machines as a system of separate parts and mechanisms rather than just a whole that was for a specific purpose. In such a manner, he was better able to conceive of and successfully manufacture innovative devices. He also viewed our internal organs as mechanisms, and the body as a machine.

A small side note; the sketches themselves were peculiar in that multiple perspectives were used in a single drawing view. (More so in the case of the Sienese engineers than Leonardo.) In the case where an important piece of a device was on the top or side, its plane was simply rotated and drawn so as to let the viewer see its function without adding a second drawing or detail view. I thought it was interesting because to me, as a modern viewer, the first thought that entered my mind was to liken it to the work of Picasso. Yes, such stylistic works did not appear until the time of Picasso and the cubist movement, some four hundred years later.

What I found most intriguing was the way Leonardo looked at the world. The way he drew conclusive similarities between tree branches, water flow and vascular structure. He found out that in a branched structure, the diameter of a trunk was equal to the sum of its branches, and so n up the structure. Why, in a time of such elementary medical and surgical knowledge, did he even think of measuring such a thing? I don't know but it is inspiring.

Blog

2008-11-09T22:51:00.001-08:00

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Place Pre-orders by November 1st

2008-10-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

The Motorized Bean Bag Chair - Practical Logistics in the Design Process
Andrew and Ed’s ME203 Final Project Concept

Imagine a bicycle that you power by thrusting your pelvis back and forth. Now imagine a motorized office chair which is completely hands-free. Briefly consider but abandon an office chair with tank treads and you'll arrive at the motorized bean bag chair. How, you ask, can I learn such flawless developmental logic techniques? The shocking truth is: you already know them. Firstly, and most importantly, stick it to the man. Then the trick is to tune your imagination into the little kid that still lives inside of you.This might help.

The linear to rotary motion converter, or thrust bike, started as a jest but its value to society was quite frankly instantly obvious. While not only providing an entertaining body motion, marketable catch phrase (hump bike), and eco-friendly transportation, it also simultaneously develops and tones the muscles needed for the reproduction of our species. The key design requirement, however, is that there be no linkage between the rider and the drive mechanism. Such a connection would destroy the magic of the vehicle, as it would be readily apparent exactly how the bike functions, and, of course, would obstruct the view of the riding motion. (This is absolutely unacceptable.)

The proposed design utilizes a counterweight system, i.e. a pendulum, and a one way clutch to drive the rear wheel. Unfortunately, the weight and size of the pendulum required to adequately provide enough force for practical riding is too great. Initial prototypes indicate that the proper development and refinement of this mechanism could not be completed in the next five weeks and so it is not suitable project for our timeline. The consensus of our engineering team, however, is to develop a tandem bike in which the second rider is in fact the counterweight. The final concept bike release date is scheduled for May 17th, 2009 so that it might be ridden in the popular San Francisco cross city Bay to Breakers race. If you do not find this concept amusing, Rule #62 might help. (Coincidentally, it can also help you with your drinking problem.)

The complexity of the thrust bike was never considered lightly and hence a back up project was already in place when the decision to put the bike on hold was made. The Motorized Office Chair was an idea that I developed (and fell in love with) about four years ago in considering ways to get my rather resilient and inactive roommate, Joel (alternatively spelled "Jole" and always pronounced as an exclamation), to leave the apartment. After two years of careful study, it was concluded that Joel's favorite activity was to sit in his office chair. (Most often to listen to techno music and use the computer.) Therefore, it perfectly follows that should his office chair somehow become motorized (and function on a variety of surfaces), he would be more inclined to venture into the outside world.

Unfortunately for Joel, we did not have the facilities at hand to properly manufacture such a device. The beauty and appeal of the motorized office chair is not simply that it is powered and can be used as a commuting vehicle but also that it looks like an office chair, in all ways. The drive system is completely contained within a base that conforms to the style of office chairs. It is not simply a chair with huge tires on the bottom.

You see? I’ll bet you can’t even find the motor on that one. While this project is completely within our production capabilities and timelines now, the price of the motors and batteries that are ideal is rather out of the budget. As of yet, our NSF grant (for either project) has not been approved. We also discovered that a standard battery operated drill has enough torque to move a person on a rolling platform at a borderline acceptable speed for an office chair. A corded drill produces more than enough speed, and when it gets caught and throws you off the moving test platform, it will also produce tears in your jeans, underwear, and right butt cheek.

Alas, cruelly outcast and exiled in a world of sedentary bicycles and human powered office chairs, scolded by second year grad students, and having pushed our TA to the limit with our cockamamie project jumping, where we to go? To whom were we to turn? Outsourcing our project to China apparently isn’t enough an exercise manufacturing. As if pretending the global market doesn’t exist is going to save the PRL…

So this brings us to our final product- the motorized bean bag chair. Talk about a relaxing ride. With half the power of a Honda civic at the fraction of the cost, the all wheel drive Beanster solves all of your commuting needs. Independently driven tires provide the ability to turn on a dime, and the hidden support structure supports the bean bag chair while enabling the center of gravity to stay low. As of now, it will be controlled with a wii steering wheel, in such a fashion that the driver is just it in midair. Should the accelerometers in the controller prove to be nonoperational on a moving platform, hidden foot controls will be utilized. Now that you have some insight into our work, you can see how this fits the requirements for an acceptable use of our time. It has never been done before, it provides entertainment, the mechanism is entirely hidden and so shrouded in mystery, and, of course, no woman can resist such a stylish ride.

Thanks for reading, and you’re all invited to the combined mass production launch event and my marriage to Selma Hayak. (Ok, ok, I’m kidding. We won’t really hold our wedding at a business event, but Selma and I will drive away in a bean bag chair after the ceremony.)

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On a loosely related note, I have discovered where J.K. Rowling got her inspiration for Harry Potter:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Bean-Bag

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Design vs. Design Engineering

2008-10-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

Round 1...FIGHT!

In my last professional position, my title was “Design Engineer”. Of course, I started as an Associate Design Engineer and was promoted at a later date, which infers that I in one way or another improved my design engineering ability. I think it was quite the opposite, in fact; my ability to design was stifled and what I had actually improved upon was project management and navigating the company’s operating standards. I was not encouraged to experiment but rather to generate a solution well within the confines of our current production abilities. Essentially the request was to fix the problem without actually changing anything (i.e. work within the print tolerance).

While this is not the case with all engineering positions, I have found similar situations in many different sized companies. The direct link to manufacturing forces the design process to revolve around what can be done “now” as opposed to what might be done with a little more development. I think that the key difference between what we are calling design and a normal engineering design process is that failure is not accepted at any point in the latter. There is a pseudo acceptance of the “fail often and early” concept in that simple prototyping is acceptable only if it works. And even then, in my experience, after showing a simple working simple (scaled up quite a bit, in the case of the medical device industry), I was met with the “yes but” type of resistance. Yes but, this will require a tooling modification. Yes but, the scale is different. Yes but R&D is working on putting this into the next generation, we can’t worry about it.

The most frustrating part of being directly driven by manufacturing and profit is that people are so afraid of messing something up that they won’t change anything. It is understandable but at the same time, being told that “someone else” will deal with a problem later is totally unacceptable to me. If I see a problem, I want to fix it, even if for nothing else other than not having it interfere with whatever I was charged to improve in the first place. I think that is a main drive behind my desire to become educated in design, as I want to be in an environment where experimentation and shifting project scopes are expected and encouraged. Juggling paperwork and wiggling between red tape is not what I would call design engineering at all.

Even on a small scale, crucial design elements are ignored and yet a working product is produced. I designed industrial x-ray equipment for years and the industry, let alone the company, was so small that you knew everyone (even competitors) on a first name basis thanks to quarterly conventions. When I started working on a project, I approached it from a purely mechanical viewpoint. I had a task to complete and I had familiar tools with which to do it. The result was a nicely functioning product but lacking in appeal. The notion of expending time and effort (i.e. money) on trying to make the device look good or (god forbid) enhance the experience was ludicrous. It was generally accepted that the community of x-ray users would not be able to handle the shock of a different look or experience, apparently because the technology has not (in essence) changed in thirty years.

I think in both of these cases my approach to these obstacles still could have been better, I just didn’t know how to go about it. While I have no desire to return to either industry in two years and try out my new design skills, I think that the mindset would have been invaluable in these settings. Rather than being frustrated by accomplishments that functioned great, I could have applied design principles and ended up with a new design that made everyone, including myself, feel good. All in all, these past work experiences were valuable and definitely educated me in many ways. I have a feeling that in the future I will design one or two products that fall into these industries as a kind of throwback to the things I was blindly trying to accomplish back then.

Mind Map of Design and Designer

2008-09-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

Initial Mindset

2008-09-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

As I begin to be exposed to “design” and its various aspects, I think it might be appropriate to express my own thoughts and visions so that we might watch if and how they change as I progress through this program.

I think I should start by expressing my intentions for the future: I want to start my own company, rooted in design consulting. And by rooted, I mean that quite literally. This base will feed various other ventures, which may or may not be related specifically to engineering. It is my hope that these ventures will manifest themselves as legitimate enterprise and so help the overall business to thrive. (You might think of them as leaves ;) ) To make it clear, here are a few examples:

An ocean power generator, a music recording studio, a brewery.

What do these have to do with the consulting business? Nothing, other than that they are dependent upon its revenue and facility in their early development. By building out into different areas, I can explore my own interests and apply my expertise in a variety of fields without incurring a startup cost every time. It also allows me to build my firm’s credibility in both technical and creative areas, which, of course, will only facilitate the ultimate goal of truly merging art and technology. I feel that in essence I can make my business a sort of patron of the arts as it will provide a facility for such activities where normally they would be discouraged.

Of course, the first thing out of people’s mouths when I tell them about wanting to open my own business is, “Ah, so you want roll in the dough?” The answer to that is not “no” but it is certainly not “yes” by any means. My intent is not to line my own pockets but nor am I a mother Theresa. I really just want to be able to make a living letting my mind control my endeavors and not be restricted to one technology, industry or profession. The readily apparent flip side is that if my ideas take off in any sense the income would be inevitable, but that is the whole point- throw it back into doing something interesting, not into a Ferrari. I can’t honestly say that my quest is to outright save the world, but the ideas that I want to develop tackle some big issues and I myself always want to help people. I think that given my personality, this foundation will be in everyone’s interest because I generally go out of my way to help people. I have these crazy ideas of using profits to start college funds for kids who can’t afford it. Is that how all business owners start out? I hope I don’t lose sight of sharing success with the world.

Moving along, why am I here? Partly the credibility that comes along with this degree, mostly because (as is likely apparent from the paragraphs above) I am interested in so many different types of projects that I couldn’t shy away from such a program. To learn the design process in the presence and with the support of so many talented people is priceless. I want to see how an “artist” approaches the same problem I do and see what happens when I try the same thing. During our orientation, Bill Burnett said that “we are in Florence in the Renaissance” and that got me pretty excited. That is exactly what I was thinking this would be before I got here- a time to explore and develop my notions, whatever they may be.

Don’t get me wrong- this isn’t meant to be immodest- but sometimes I feel like Leonardo da Vinci because of my varied interests and curiosities. Even as I write this, I remember now being obsessed with Leonardo da Vinci in third grade. I seriously actually forgot about this until now- I used to check out the same book from the library week after week and just revel in his skills. I mean, what a guy, right? He moved form art to medicine to engineering and nobody seems to think he was fickle, unfocused or a “jack of all trades but master of none” as the saying goes. Maybe that is what inspired my thinking all these years, without me realizing it? I have always thought that our childhood desires often still drive us, and I guess this is just proving the point. My dream is to live a lifestyle like that, even if no one ever hears my name. A perpetually churning workshop open to all excursions- that is what I’m going to attempt to build. (And I want to grow a really big beard, too.)

I can’t say why I haven’t just started this shop already, other than that I didn’t realize it was what I really wanted until more recently. I think my da Vinci complex sometimes works to my disadvantage, as I constantly have something that I am working on and I forget to look at what is really in front of me. Or I complete something and move on, without developing it further. I think that the methodologies that we are going to learn are going to not only force me to focus on the ideas I develop, but open my eyes as to when I need to apply that focus. It will provide a solid base from which to build my company’s solid base and then from there, I can let loose a little in the sense that I will feel like I’m taking less of a risk in exploring these other avenues when I’m probably taking an even bigger one. (It’s ok to fib if it’s to yourself, right?)

I think that a lot these sentiments probably seem either naive, self indulgent, or superficial, but I think they do honestly represent my intent. There is not space enough to explain the rationale behind every thought, but let me shed a little light. It probably does seem odd to hear someone say they want to start their own company but they don’t want to be a millionaire. It is quite true, however, because money is not my motivating factor.

Almost four years ago I was underwent emergency surgery and was hospitalized for two weeks for a burst appendix. It actually took over a year to set in, but one day it hit me- I almost died. It seemed weird to me that it took so long to really grasp the gravity of the situation and how close I actually was to death. I hate seeing pictures of me from that time period, even months afterwards, because I really look pretty creepy- so thin and pale.

Anyway, it set me off on a rampage of exploration. I did things I had never done simply to do them. Some of them were a lot of fun, some were stupid. I actively did things at work (within my own moral guidelines; i.e., I wasn’t stealing things or anything like that) that might get me fired because I didn’t care if they did. I'm sure this type of behavior is a most common reaction to a near death experience. Somewhere in there I applied to film school, because I had decided that was what I “loved” and I had to do it for a living. I was accepted but at that point, the “live every day as if it was my last” phase had started settle down and I didn’t really think it was the best choice. I liked making movies, but it wasn’t really a passion. It was more of a way to goof off and pretend I was working. So I really reevaluated my life and goals. I tried to figure out where the medium of running off into the woods for the rest of my life to actually having to work was.

I looked at what I was pursuing- a career in engineering, likely moving in to management- and what it was offering me- possible fulfillment, definite money. I looked at what I did with my money- I bought equipment to woodwork, record music, record video, and fabricate electronics, but I hardly ever had time to use any of it. So there was this huge void between my passions to create, in all senses, and my work. I also thought about dying with a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of crap (e.g. music equipment)- what would I really have accomplished? NOTHING.

That was how I developed this whole business plan, if you want to call it that. I take my money and I use it to fund what I want to explore, just like I was trying to do now. However, the difference is that I am building the ability to legitimately use my time for actually utilizing the fruits of my labor. I work hard and always have, so I figure that if I invest my efforts in myself I stand a good chance of merging my interests with my work. I think that the satisfaction of succeeding on my own and really opening my mind up to the world is worth more than any amount of money that a corporate job can offer, and I simply have to make it happen.