ALL ART BURNS

Awhile back I went on about how much I liked the Oxo Uplift Kettle. Three Oxo Uplift Kettles later, I’m not sure I’d consider it The Best Teakettle Ever Made. I think it might actually be The Best Idea for a Teakettle Poorly Executed but Properly Marketed.

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

Jamais Cascio listed me as one of the folks to take a shot at the One-Sentence Challenge, as offered by Paul Kedrosky:

Physicist Richard Feynman once said that if all knowledge about physics was about to expire the one sentence he would tell the future is that “Everything is made of atoms”. What one sentence would you tell the future about your own area, whether it’s entrepreneurship, hedge funds, venture capital, or something else?

My current area of expertise is one where the future will look back and laugh at my puny attempts at thought. However, I’m studying design and also thinking quite a bit about things like omniscient surveillance and sustainable living using my experiences growing up in a poor, rural part of the south.

I think I might say, “Seriously consider the fully loaded cost to create and deliver each and every thing you consume or discard before you decide to consume or discard that thing.”

Or I could just be lazy and re-write Kant’s Categorical Imperitive as, “What would the world be like if everyone acted the way you’re acting right now?”

Here’s Jamais answer, but it’d be interesting to hear what a couple other people I know might respond to the same question:

Richard Kadrey

Laura Lemay

(note to self: link to their answers)

Technorati Tags: advice, future, sustainable living

School and work is consuming most of my free time. Oddly enough, I have more time than before to read books or study for class thanks to the 40 minutes a day I spend riding the bus. I’ve read a few books for school and work I want to write about, and even though we have a few days off for Thanksgiving, I’m not sure how much book reviewing I’ll actually accomplish.

A bit of rambling about school while I finish my tea…

The freshman design program at Carnegie Mellon is challenging at best, totally demoralizing at worst. I don’t get the feeling there’s any sort of planned attrition or that any of my classes are “cut” classes but the standards are high and the workload is constant.

I’m one of the few people who really had no drawing skills at the start of the semester, however being able to correctly draw abstract objects is a core skill for industrial design. This is one reason why I’m working on a BFA ID instead of an MFA — I have no core art skills. (I guess I could probably get a MPD if I wanted to focus on a management track.) I spend a lot of time drawing things, showing them to others for feedback, giving feedback to others then going back and drawing things over.

Here’s a test for those of you who think you know how to draw. As quickly as you can, draw some 2″ cubes in 2 point perspective. Freehand. With a pen. Now some ellipses. Now some cylinders. Now draw a coffee percolator, a dump truck and a lighthouse. How do they look? Are they all in 2 point perspective? How’s the line weight, are the lines in front darker/wider than the lines in back? If you showed these drawings to someone else, would they be instantly recognizable as the objects you meant to draw?

I probably spend an hour a day drawing abstract objects with a pen. It’s what I do while I’m on a conference call, waiting on a build, listening to someone go on about their social life, etc. One of my professors talks about becoming “unconsciously competent”, that is, being able to do things correctly without thinking about it. One of the skills I’m working on is being able to quickly sketch or render an object, process or abstract concept without having to stop and think “are my lines converging properly on the horizon line?”

Because we’re being taught to work using an iterative, communal process, school work can easily soak up all of our time. I might think I need 3 hours to do a project, and that’s what I’d need if I were doing it by myself in isolation. But working in studio means constant interruptions to check someone else’s work and taking your work around to have it checked by others. There are days I pack up and leave, just because I don’t have the wall clock hours to participate the way I should and still get more than 6 or 7 hours a sleep each night.

This sort of communal work is not something I (nor many other) students are used to. In my previous art classes, it’d probably considered disruptive to walk over to someone while they were working and start giving feedback. In my comp sci classes, it’d probably be considered a violation of the academic honesty guidelines.

Another important skill — be able to declare something finished, walk away, and not look back. If you can’t do this you might have a hard time at Carnegie Mellon. I botched a project awhile back, got the grade I “earned”, but I can’t fret over it or spend time trying to figure out how I would redo it. I need my energy to focus on my current projects so that I don’t botch them as well. Some of my classmates spend hours and hours redoing the same drawing or model with little change on each iteration. If I can’t improve the quality a significant bit with another iteration, I stop. My grades will probably reflect this, but as long as I’m passing I’ll be happy.

Grades. Another area where a lot of students are getting blindsided. A core set of skills are needed to practice design. Either you have these skills at the end of the semester or you don’t. This isn’t like a fine arts program where you get an “A” for improvement or a “B” because you expressed your creativity in an appropriate manner. If you can’t draw, you don’t pass. On top of that, the grades themselves are based on what is expected for the average Carnegie Mellon student, not the average person in a design program. My goal is to get a “C” in Drawing. It’s not that I’m setting my expectations low so I can coast, I am having to work my ass off to get my skills to the point where I can earn a “C”. (By the way, a “B” is “wow, that’s pretty good, not many people do that well” while an “A” is “you’re fucking amazing, we rarely see work of this quality!”)

In the midst of all this, I’m trying to hold down a job. My boss is understanding and lets me work flex time, but there are only so many hours in a day. I’ll work most of the Thanksgiving holiday trying to catch up on all the tasks I’m behind on.

A couple more weeks of school, then winter break, then we start all over again.

Technorati Tags: carnegie mellon, design, personal

Hasan Elahi, an art professor who was put under some intense scrutiny after the 9/11 attacks, has decided to let everyone know where he is at all times, what he is doing, and so on. He fashioned an electronic bracelet of sorts from a mobile phone and wears it continually while photographing and documenting details from his daily life. All of this information ends up on his website in realtime, so not only the FBI, but anyone else can track his every move.

There’s a brief article on Elahi over at worldchanging, I found this on Schneier’s blog.

Technorati Tags: panopticon, spimes

I’ve had my Hag Capisco for almost a year now and have a few thoughts to share about how much it’s changed my life. No, I’m not selling them, I didn’t get paid for this review, and I bought my Hag with my own, hard-earned money. The Hag Capisco is one of those discoveries I feel the need to share with anyone not smart enough to run away when I get that look in my eyes.

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