The DSLR is a great tool for documenting 2d and 3d design, but for 4d design you really need something that can capture video. (It’s true that some DSLRs now capture stunning video, but only for short durations and quantities and you’re still lugging around a full-size camera.) My “should have brought the video camera” regret kicked in as soon as I started experiencing how differently Japanese people interact with technology and their environment. Sure, I could take lots of photos and copious notes, but those aren’t nearly as good as 10-15 seconds of video.

It’s not just recording video that’s important, it’s being able to record video conveniently, in high quality, then easily move the video off the camera. With my full-size, miniDV video camera it’s pretty much impossible to take quick snippets of video given the overhead of getting it in/out of the case, turning it on, etc. On the other hand, the TGV5 is small and light enough that I can carry it in my pocket and within a few seconds have it out and recording video. (It’s even faster than getting my Droid out and recording.) Cheap/free software makes it trivial to take a 10-20 second clip, trim it if needed, then “Save As” for Flickr or Vimeo.

As an experiment I’m starting to document design — especially 4d design — using only short video clips. I’ve posted a couple of short clips to a new flickr set, “Japan + Design” which I’ll be filling with video and still clips as I get around to processing the backlog of photos.

There’s no chance of my getting rid of the DSLR any time soon as there’s no substitute for huge glass when it comes to taking good photos. However, I have stopped lugging it around unless I’m intentionally on a trip to take hiqh quality photos as the TGV5 is becoming my “go to” camera for documentation and swipe files.

If you have the budget to buy a production-ready 3D printer, you probably shouldn’t be looking at a MakerBot. Production systems have better resolution, support contracts, schmancy STL conversion software and all sorts of other niceties. The MakerBot Cupcake is not a Stratasys, you’re not just going to plug it in and be cranking out pretty models a few hours later.

However, if you don’t have a huge budget and you’re willing to spend time debugging, tweaking, and generally getting your hands dirty; if you’re ok with the smell of ABS fumes, the stepper motor “songs“, and tending to an occasionally fussy machine that will botch a part for no obvious reason; and if you enjoy hacking and iterative exploration of technology, then maybe you’re the right sort of person to put together a MakerBot Cupcake or other reprap-based 3D printer.

Home scale fabrication is the domain of garage-carpenters and basement-machinists, the MakerBot doesn’t replace either. To some extent, building and running a MakerBot requires some of these related skills. Do you have a feel for how tight you can turn a bolt holding two pieces of wood together before it snaps the wood? Do you know how to shorten a screw with a hacksaw and keep the threads clean? You already own a multimeter, do you have a thermistor probe as well? How are you at diagnosing a wiring problem in a stepper motor?

Of the various reprap-related projects, MakerBot Cupcake is pretty clearly the easiest to put together. I got mine up and running without much fuss, but I’ve been building things from kits or fabbing things from raw materials for many years. I still needed help from the MakerBot mailing list to sort out a couple of minor problems and I’ve been able to help a couple of other people with their problems.

If you’re primarily a designer, there’s a reason you should consider taking the plunge even if you think you aren’t the sort of person who is ready to build their own 3D printer: self-education.

I’ve learned a lot about fabrication working in the opensource 3D printing world that I was never exposed to using commercial systems. Learning how to use Blender to create models has been painful at times, but I find myself liking it more than Solidworks for simple projects. I’ve learned about bad STL code, the relationships between temperature and speed when laying down plastic, and more about the physical properties of ABS than I ever thought I would need to know. Assembling the MakerBot from parts exposed me to a few neat tricks you can use to make 3D objects out of sheets of acrylic, and some new joining techniques for thin surfaces.

This new knowledge is also helping my ongoing education as a designer. Now that I know some of the printing capabilities, I can change my sketching and ideation process to work around limitations or integrate limitations of the printer. I’ve also rediscovered the old metalworking path of designing a mold to create a basic shape that is finished on machine tools, but instead I’m printing 3D plastic that I can finish using hand tools or machine tools.

It hasn’t been the easiest tool I’ve learned to use, but building and using the MakerBot might be the “funnest” tool I’ve learned to use in recent years.

Technorati Tags: hacking, makerbot, reprap

In the 1980s the average person didn’t own a home computer. Those who did were likely to be gamers, hackers, tinkerers, or someone else interested in owning a computer as a hobby, not as an everyday tool. ~30 years later, computers are a part of everyday life, used for paying bills, keeping up with friends, publishing photos, and a whole host of other uses we could never have predicted back in the days of the SE and AT. We knew that home computers would change things, but we couldn’t predict how, no matter how many episodes of Star Trek or Max Headroom we watched on multi-generation VHS tapes copied from friends.

Today, 25 years after the Great Pagemaker Massacre of 1985, we’re on the verge of another massive change in how our world works. I have no idea how that change will manifest itself, but I’d like to be one of the first to find out.

I just built a MakerBot Cupcake 3D printer, which is itself based on the reprap project printers. Since the first question most people ask me is “how much did it cost?”, I’m going to start off this series of notes talking about the economics of 3D printing.

In raw dollars, the Cupcake cost a little less than my first computer, a Commodore C64 with monitor, printer, and omfg, floppy drive instead of cassette recorder, all of which set my parents back a bit over a grand. While a grand or so in the early 80s bought a fair bit more than it does now, like other home computers, you couldn’t just buy the computer. We probably spent another few hundred dollars on software, joysticks, blank floppies, that weird “computer-paper” that the printer used and so on. Most of those things came from third parties, so there was competition to keep the prices down — you weren’t locked into buying blank floppies only from Commodore.

Like the C64, one of the selling points for the Cupcake is that it’s a cheap, no-frills device. Part of the fun in having a Cupcake is the DIY aesthetic of figuring out how it works, why it works, and how to keep it working. Another not so obvious selling point, is that the Cupcake is based on opensource software and hardware. If you’re not familiar with the 3D printer market, you’re probably thinking “so? I bought a cheap PC built from parts and run linux? What’s the big deal about an opensourced 3D printer?”

Commercial 3D printer companies, like most 2D printer companies, operate by selling you the “razor for cheap then making it up on the blades”. The profit isn’t in the printer, it’s in the supplies the printer uses and the support contract to keep it running. Next time you see a really inexpensive inkjet printer for sale, research the cost of a set of replacement ink cartridges. Compare the volume of ink in the cartridges and their price and compare that with the price of refill ink, or look at the effort some manufacturers put into forcing you to only buy new cartridges by using DRM. (There’s an excellent eBay scam that takes advantage of the pricing disparities: buy a printer, pull the ink cartridges, then sell the printer “like new” for near what you paid for it to someone who doesn’t know how much the replacement cost of the cartridges.)

Two things you usually have to buy from the manufacturer if you own a commercial, closed-source 3D printer are the material to print with and the base that you print on. The printing material is probably a spool of ABS plastic in a vendor-specific housing and the printing base is also ABS and also vendor specific. There’s a nice article over at Time Compression that goes into cost details to be considered when buying a commercial 3D printer, but we’ll skip to the chase and say we’re talking about US$ 1-2 per cubic inch on the proprietary systems vs. USD $10 per pound of raw ABS from MakerBot. Oh, and instead of those $5 one-use print surfaces only available from the vendor, the Cupcake prints on a variety of surfaces available at any art supply store, some of them reusable for dozens of prints. (I’ve used a small piece of acrylic for ~20 prints on the Cupcake with no signs of wear and tear.)

This is opposite to how 2D printing has worked going back to the earliest days of printing. Once someone had the idea to cut blocks of wood or cast lead as type, the printer could control costs by simply buying raw materials for the best price they could negotiate and recycling them when possible. Cast some metal into type, then melt it down when you no longer need it. Screw up a print run? No problem, we can recycle that paper. Wore out your wooden printing block? Have someone carve another and get back to printing.

When I learned to type (“yes, grandpa, on a typewrier, we know”) it was on an IBM Selectric that used a ribbon and “typewriter” paper. The ribbon was sold by IBM, but replacements were available from third parties. Likewise, I didn’t have to buy my paper from IBM, I could buy it from any office supply store. I could even buy paper that IBM didn’t approve of (as if such a thing existed). If my typewriter needed repair, I didn’t have to call the IBM tech, I could go to any typewriter repair shop I choose.   

This is pretty much exactly opposite to how 3D printers work now. If you own a FooCorp X1000 you are pretty much locked into buying everything from FooCorp. Having problems with your X1000? Is your support contract paid up? Are you allowed to even open it and try and fix it yourself without violating your contract?

While the Cupcake is opensource, and one is not locked into buying ABS from MakerBot, it isn’t a completely self-sustaining ecology just yet. The first problem is that there’s no way to convert ABS models and scrap back into spools of ABS for printing . The technology to melt and extrude ABS plastic is there, it’s just a matter of someone building a melter/extruder that’s safe for home use. Safety might end up being the real problem as ABS fumes aren’t something you want to breath on a regular basis. Instead of recycling ABS on the individual level, perhaps the local door-to-door ABS recycling firm comes by and trades your scrap for fresh rolls of ABS, similar to the newspapers for toilet paper biz in Japan. One step further would be the ability to take broken ABS items and recycle them into replacement parts. If a knob or some other small part breaks, bring it over to my place, I’ll print you a new one then give the old one to the recycler in trade for more plastic.

So there you have the costs — under a grand and a dozen or two hours of your time to assemble it, adjust it, and get it running. Some of the money you’re “saving” by buying a DIY printer is going to be translated into hours of your time assembling, adjusting, and generally tweaking your Cupcake to get a decent print.   

Next we’ll look at who the real customer is and whether you should buy a Cupcake or just ship your STL to RedEye.

Technorati Tags: cupcake, diy, makerbot, reprap

1) Any ixd doing iPhone dev who needs pixel-precise templates should be able to make their own templates in Illustrator (equiv.) and print them out.  You know what’s better than spiral, lay-flat bindings?  No binding at all!

2) A physical drawing template? Is this 1980? Are we making flow charts?  A template that precise is either proof that you need to learn to draw or that you should be comping on the screen and not on paper. (If you have access to a laser cutter you could easily make your own.)

3) There are these things called “Post-it(tm) Note”s that come in various colors and sizes. They stick to things, say a whiteboard or a clipboard, so you can do things like rearrange navigation or swap out different comps for screens. You should try them, they’re really nifty.

Ok, four thoughts:

4) The reviewer writes: ” My sketching skills are teh suck, so[...]”

Yes, and they will continue to suck until you stop fussing around with templates and learn to draw freehand. I say that as someone who spent years making sucky drawings with rulers, templates, and other drawing “aids” that did nothing save prevent me from learning how to draw.

Technorati Tags: design, drawing, rant

A “time machine” radio that allows you tune into a year instead of a radio frequency.

Technorati Tags: arduino, design, interaction, sketching

I didn’t actually “throw away” three pens as much as “dispose” of them or, in essence, “destroy” them. They’re not recyclable that I’m aware of and not refillable, either. So there’s 1.5 oz (yes, I weighed them) of plastic and a tiny bit of metal that I destroyed by sending to a landfill.

How much oil did I just destroy? Probably not that much. But those pens came in boxes, factories needed to make the ink used to color the plastic, all of that had to be delivered somewhere. Still, probably not that much oil for three pens.

On the other hand, how many pens have I destroyed in my life? I remember buying disposable ballpoints by the box in college, so I’m guessing a lot of pens, so maybe, what, a gallon of oil? A barrel of oil? I’m not going to go all Jamais Cascio and calculate the amount of oil I’ve destroyed in the form of ballpoint pens, but I’m going to hazard a guess it’s a non-trivial amount, especially if you include the fully-loaded cost of the designing, making, and distributing of the pens.

Side note: Years ago I switched to mechanical pencils just because I like the feel more. I still have some of the same mechanical pencils I bought seven or eight years ago — including my favorite, Ohto Pro-Mecha architecture pencils. I have worn out four of the Ohotos (all .3, I guess I have a heavy hand?) and need to fix/replace/recycle them. Of note, they’re made almost entirely of aluminum with only a small amount of plastic. If I can’t fix them, I can always toss the metal bit in the recycling bin with all the other metal scrap that I take to the dealer once or twice a year.

So, I threw away — destroyed — three pens yesterday. How many have I destroyed in my life? How many have you destroyed? How many have we collectively destroyed? How much oil have we collectively destroyed in the form of disposable pens?

BIC says they sell “24 million BIC(tm) stationery products every day” (emph. mine). They also say, “BIC(tm) products are the choice for any consumer who wants to protect the environment.”

Say what? If I want to protect the environment, why would I buy disposable pens and disposable lighters and disposable razors, all made using oil and intended to be destroyed instead of recycled or reused? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe it’s actually bad for the environment (and a waste of money) to buy things knowing you’re just going to destroy them.

Ok, so how do I go about not destroying any more oil in the form of disposable pens? Let’s try the “reduce, re-use, recycle” solution.

Reduce: It’s difficult to reduce the amount of drawing and writing I need to do, but can I reduce the amount of pens I use? Is there an alternative to disposable pens? I like Prismacolor pencils, and they’re good for some of my drawing, and when I toss the shavings and the stub into the trash they’ll go to a landfill where maybe they’ll decompose. They are a bit of a pain to use on a plane or in a car as they have to be sharpened often and they’re also fragile — dropping them will break the core and make them useless. They also don’t work well with some paper and they aren’t as permanent as ink. Face it, I’m still going to need to use ink pens of some sort.

Reuse: Another option is to stop throwing away — destroying — the entire pen. Copic makes a number of pens that use refillable inserts and replaceable nibs. True, those go in the landfill once they’re empty/worn, but the body of the pen is metal and will last quite some time before getting tossed into the recycling bin. I’m still using one I bought several years ago, and I’ve replaced the ink and nib a few times now. (Copic also makes a wide variety of refillable/repairable markers along with disposable pens and markers.) When I was a kid, replacing the insert was pretty standard and I still have a couple of U.S.Gov. black ball-point pens that would work fine today had I a refill handy.

For note-taking in class and general writing, I’ve switched over completely to fountain pens that can be refilled from a bottle of ink. Yes, they can be a bit messy some times, but I’ve bought a few 3oz jars of Noodler’s water-resistant ink, enough to last me a kerjillion years. I suspect the nib on my pen will also last me most of the rest of my life as long as I don’t drop it on concrete or somesuch. If I didn’t like refilling I could buy ink cartridges, but again, I’m destroying oil when the cartridges are empty.

Recycle: Not an option with any of the disposable pens I’ve seen. If someone is making pens that I can put in with the #1 and #2 plastic (all my city takes), please let me know. I’m pretty certain none of the pens I destroyed yesterday were made of HDPE.

So, there’s my solution: fountain pens for most of my writing, Copic markers and Prismas for drawing. I suspect I can go the rest of my life without destroying nearly as much oil as I used to in the form of disposable pens.

Am I saying that people who use disposable pens are evil? No, and I’ll continue to use Sharpie Industrial disposable markers when I need to make semi-permanent marks in the shop. (However, I should buy them in bulk instead of in the three pack that uses paper and plastic packaging.)

What I am saying is that we destroy a lot of oil in the form of disposable pens, and that there are steps we can take to reduce the amount we’re destroying. Each of our solutions will be different, but collectively we can prevent a lot of oil from being destroyed.

Technorati Tags: oil, pens, recycling, sustainability

Speaking of which, shameless plug for a tool I’m growing to love: Scrivener. After years of writing in emacs, making outlines in ascii then filling them in, I started checking out all sorts of outline/writing tools. In the past 5 years, Scrivener is the first thing to have me writing from the start in a tool and not an editor. Scrivener is a great tool and I’m beginning to get really sucked into for long-form writing, and it appears to have a sizable fan-base in the dramatic writing world as well.

Ok, so I’ll probably export the finished text to ascii and post it here; then load it up in emacs, mark it up in TeX and make a PDF. But I’m broken that way.

Technorati Tags: scrivener, tools, writing

The idea is great — lifting the teakettle by the handle and tilting the teakettle forward opens the pour spout. No fumbling around with a poorly insulated hot stopper, no finding a dishtowel to use while removing a metal stopper, just pick up the kettle and pour. Great idea, but Oxo isn’t able to (or perhaps does not want to) implement it effectively.

The first Uplift Kettle we had worked just fine for a few months — then the handle for the lid snapped off, making it effectively impossible to refill the teakettle. The handle was made of plastic and bolted to a metal lid in a way that pretty much guaranteed the handle would break due to the strain placed on the handle near the bolt holes. Oxo was very nice and sent us a replacement Uplift Kettle under warranty, but that took a couple of weeks. As we make multiple cups of tea and coffee every morning, it was two very annoying weeks of boiling water in a pot and trying to pour that into filters and cups.

The second kettle — the replacement for the first — stopped making a proper whistling sound after six months or so. It still made a noise, but not loud enough that you could hear from the dining room, which meant checking back every few minutes to see if the water was ready. One day it stopped whistling at all, boiled dry before we realized it, and got dumped into the garbage. Probably should have gotten it replaced under warranty when it stopped making a noise, but going for a couple of weeks without a teakettle is really annoying.

So, we bought a third Uplift Kettle. Like the second, it quickly developed problems whistling and soon stopped making much of a noise at all. After about a year of use, water started dripping water down the spout when we went to pour water into a cup. In other words, hot water goes in the cup and also trickles down the side, off the bottom, and onto my toes. It looks to me like part of the lip of the pour spout is coming apart and I don’t see any easy way to repair it.

We probably won’t buy another Uplift. I don’t like disposable things in the first place and a teakettle definitely should not be a disposable object. My All-Clad was annoying to use, but at least it didn’t come apart all the time or drip water. I sold it on eBay when I got the Uplift Kettle, now I’m wishing I’d have kept it.

I’m wondering if it’s really so difficult to design and manufacture a teakettle for $30 that lasts for more than a year being used on a daily basis. Maybe the market is such that people don’t mind buying a new one every year, or we’re an edge case in that we use it daily. Oxo has a full like of teakettles, if I buy a different one will it be toast within a year? Is there some sort of failure/repurchase cycle in which I’m supposed to be participating?

So, what to do. I could buy another All-Clad, as they seem to be indestructible. My All-Clad pots and pans hold up quite well under daily use. There are some other Oxo teakettles that look interesting, but I have some doubts about their reliability based on my experience with the Uplift.

For the studio there’s an easy answer: I bought a Zojirushi electric dispensing pot. These are a great solution if you’re going through a few liters of water a day or don’t have a stove/hotplate handy. I brought it home for the winter break and it’s quite handy to have around the house, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to buy one just for home use. It puts out water that’s just-under boiling (208 F) which is great for tea but not so great for coffee, instant miso soup, and other things that call for boiling water. It also doesn’t have any sort of on/off switch, just a “sleep timer” that you hit at the end of the day when you leave work. I’m going to guess that it uses more energy keeping water hot all day than does boiling water 3-4 times a day when I want it.

I wonder if the person (or people) behind the Uplift Kettle use it every day, or if they even drink tea in the first place? Maybe they have a Mr. Coffee or a home espresso machine of some sort.

Or maybe they do use it, have no problems with it, and I’m simply the unluckiest customer they’ve ever had.

Technorati Tags: design, oxo, review, tea, teakettle

A little background if you haven’t heard of a Capisco. It is designed to be a perching chair — instead of putting all your weight on your butt and thighs while sitting you put some of your weight on the saddle seat and some of your weight on your feet. (I reviewed Galen Cranz’s “The Chair” last year, she discusses perching and the history of sitting on chairs in a fair amount of detail.)

Some differences between the Capisco and other “ergonomic” chairs:

• The chair back is not intended for support. Working while sitting on a Capisco is more like sitting on a backless stool or on the edge of a bed.
• The chair arms are far enough back that they are out of the way during normal use. You can lean back in a Capisco and rest your elbows on the arms to take a break, but when sitting upright the chair arms will not interfere with your arms.
• The chair has more (and different) adjustment options than many chairs I’ve owned. One of my favorite is the ability to slide the seat pan forwards and backwards to better accomodate different leg/butt ratios.
• The chair seat and back are both solid and firm. If there’s an opposite to the hammock-like bucket seats of an Aeron, this might just be it.

My seated (and standing) posture started improving within a few days of switching to the Capisco. It did take a couple of days for my back muscles to get used to holding me upright, but my body adjusted relatively quickly. It’s surprising just how much muscle tone I had to develop just to sit up straight for a few hours a day, but my back developed the muscle tone needed the same way my legs adjusted to living in a three-story house. I’m also fond of the feet rests that are on top of the casters. Normally with an office chair on casters, repositioning myself would require grabbing the chair with one hand to keep it from moving while I got up and sat back down. On the Capisco, I can make minor adjustments to my sitting position by simply lifting myself with my feet on the textured footrests, shifting a bit, then sitting back down.

Another change I’ve noticed is that it’s now easier (if not required) to move around quite a bit while sitting. In my old Aeron chair I could slump back and sit motionless for hours. On the Capisco, however, the only thing supporting me is my feet and butt. I’m able to sway, lean over, turn around, do all sorts of things that weren’t possible in the Aeron because I’m sitting on the chair instead of in the chair. (If you’ve ever been stuck in the rear bucket seats of a 70s muscle car, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) Sitting on a Capisco, I’m able to put things out of arm’s reach or on a shelf beside me and still get to them easily while working. In the Aeron, an item or task either had to be within arm’s reach or I had to get out of the chair.

There are a few downsides to the Capisco, but they’re mostly related to distribution and adjustment to a different sort of chair. Here in the states Hag chairs are damned difficult to test-drive unless you live near a major city. There was only one dealer in the greater San Francisco bay area that had a Capisco I could look at in person, something I like to do before dropping US $600 on a chair. Here in Pittsburgh I could only find one company even able to order a Capisco for me — they had none in their showroom to demonstrate. It took me a couple of months from initial contact before my chair arrived for me to pick up, I suspect due to the fact I was the first person in the area to ever order one of these. There’s also the cost of a Hag, and unlike the Aeron, there isn’t a surplus of used Hag chairs on the market that were freed up in the dot-com crash.

The Capisco does take a few days (if not a week) to get used to and for the first few days of use you’ll probably think it is uncomfortable or tiring. This is mostly your body complaining about having to build up some muscle tone needed to start doing the work of holding your head and spine in place.
Once you’re in a bit better shape, you’ll find the Capisco plenty comfortable.

If you have specific questions, let me know and I’ll update this review with text and photos as needed.

Q&A

Answers for some of the questions in the comments section:

• “Can you read heavy books in this chair?”: I would never consider doing any sort of reading in this chair unless the material was supported in front of me at a height that let me look straight ahead while reading. I’ve seen people using reading stands in beds and in other chairs, so you could probably find one that fit the Capisco. However, holding a book in your lap and looking down at it would probably defeat many of the benefits of using a Capisco. Yes, your weight would be distributed between your butt and your feet, but you’d also be bending your neck over at a very uncomfortable angle.
• “Can you take it apart?”:  Mine came disassembled, but I don’t remember the exact details.  I think it was in three pieces: the base with casters, the seat, and the back.

Technorati Tags: capisco, hag, review

It’s hard to describe The Crucible without using their phrase, “An Educational Collaboration of Arts, Industry and Community”. The Crucible not only offers classes in a wide variety of industrial skills, the arts, and practical knowledge; they rent out studio space and work areas to artists and provide a venue for all manner of entertainment.

When I first took a class at The Crucible they were crammed into a horrible little building in Berkeley and our classroom was a storage room with a table in the middle. To be honest, I didn’t really notice or care — I was so absorbed in learning the tricks of working with electroluminescent wire that minor issues like lack of proper ventilation, noise from the power hammer in the main room, or rickity chairs simply didn’t register .

Now The Crucible is in a huge building in Oakland with wonderful classrooms, designated areas for various fabrication methods, plenty of power, light, and ventilation, and just about anything you could ask for in an industrial arts facility. More amazing, classes and studio time at the The Crucible are cheap. Cheap, cheap cheap, even when compared to something like the Pittsburgh Glass Center, located in a town with roughly half the cost of living as the Bay Area.

The Crucible is an amazing resource and other cities should be envious enough to fund similar ventures in their industrial districts. You can learn everything from neon to tig welding to blacksmithing to kinetic sculpture, share workspace with some truly inspiring and creative people, and not spend much money in the process. If you’ve ever wanted to build outdoor art for Burning Man, make a tricked out bicycle, blow glass, make sculpture out of scrap industrial equipment, or do damn near anything involving fire, metal, glass or electricity, head over to The Crucible. If you’re just wanting to pick up some useful life skills they also teach classes on basic metal working, motorcycle repair, sewing, and other skills useful to the modern DIY type.

Technorati Tags: art | Burning Man | industrial design | sculpture | welding

An invasive species blog. What more do you need to know?

Not just a crayon sharpener, not just an electric crayon sharpener, but a X-Acto brand electric crayon sharpener.

Do-it-yourself 3D printer made from a glue gun and Meccanno.

Twenty-Five Years of Post-It Notes

Technorati: DIY | industrial design | pizza | weird

For the past few years we’ve been using an All-Clad brand teakettle we received as a gift. The first one started leaking at the base of the spout after a year or so and All-Clad replaced it. (The leak was caused by a poor quality weld, in my opinion) . Now after a year or so, the replacement has started leaking at the very same place. We’ve never been terribly fond of it: the polished stainless shows every bit of dirt or grime splashed on it while cooking something else on the stove, it’s easy to burn yourself on the handle or lid or while removing the stopper, the handle’s awkward, and so on. But it was a gift, it was certainly better than the $6 department store special I had before, and if you hold the kettle with a rag while you remove the spout, you probably won’t burn yourself…

But now that it’s started dripping boiling water while you’re pouring water for tea, the grumbling about “Yeah, but all the other teakettles suck, this one sucks less” started up again along with “what are we going to do for the three weeks we’re without a teakettle?”

Then while getting my afternoon mocha over at Peet’s the other day, I discovered the amazing Oxo Uplift Teakettle.

Why is it amazing? Well, when you pick it up and tilt it to pour out the hot water, the handle acts as a lever to open the spout. When you set it back down, the spout closes. It’s not only a great idea, it’s a great idea that works. On top of that, the handle is well insulated, it’s available in a wide range of colors, and it’s about half the price of an All-Clad brand teakettle.

I am reminded of two imporant observations:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
– Albert Einstein

“Duh!”
– Amy Wong

Technorati: design | tea