Street Signs

Intended purpose: Weather proofed signage. Unintended consequence: Informative water balloon.

Spotted in London. Whoever put up the sign hoped the laminate would stop the water getting in; instead it has stopped it from getting out after its seal was broken when the holes were punched into the top. The plastic has acted as a very effective water-tight bag, and disintegrated the paper inside. Oddly, the ink has stayed on the inside of the plastic making the whole thing still legible.

Solutions-

• Don't break the seal with a hole punch or staples. Trim the paper by about an inch before laminating it so that there is some plastic left over that you can punch/staple without going through the paper.
• Custom sleeves made for this purpose - Biodegradable, built in ties, etc.

Uses-

• Cheap advertisements that stand out - maybe for products such as Capri-Sun, Robinsons Juice.
• Watering can.

Irony-

• The planning notice is for double glazing.

Wii Prototyping

Nintendo reveal the prototypes that gave birth to their lastest release, the Wii U. It's two Wii remotes stuck to a screen! Basic but effective prototyping.

via Engadget

Mechanical Birdsong

I might do a watch making course just to make this. Its fascinating.

Dyson Fixes Hair Balls

I cant help but find this fascinating.

The Revolution Will Be Home-Made

An interesting BBC article about how the second industrial revolution with be a creative one brought about by grassroots makers, hobbyists, hackers and tinkerers out of sheds and garages.

The availability of cheap components, from microcontrollers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, coupled with the plethora of crowdsourcing models to allow the sharing of everything from ideas to funding, means that production can move out of the factory and into the home.

If the garages in which the computer revolution was born were all about computers and code then the makers' garages are filled with laser cutters and 3D printers.

And this time you don't need a computer science or business degree. 

REC:all webinar

Yesterday I watched a web seminar on REC:all - 'Building a community of practice about lecture capture in EU universities'. I had previously not heard of the initiative, but from listening to the speakers and reading more into it, it seemed very interesting.

The speakers were Yacine Abboud from the University of Lorraine, Clive Young from University Collage London, Mathy Vanbuel from KHLIM, Silvia Moes from VU University of Amsterdam and was headed by Sally Reynolds, managing director of ATiT.

REC:all is a project that seeks to develop and better integrate digital lecture capturing technologies into higher education for the purpose of off-campus learning. As well looking at lecture recording and delivery, they are interested in implementing new technologies into remote learning environments, such as study trips and excursions.

One example of this was from Silvia Moes who provided a case study where students on a trip to Rome were told to form groups, each collecting evidence from around the city and depositing it on an open source mapping software. The map could be accessed by the other students who could learn from the data collected from the group.

Particular emphasis in the webinar was put on 'Flipping', a way of providing prerecorded audio or video lectures before a timetabled session so that more time can be spent in the session for the type practical, hands-on instruction that cant be effectively communicated with just a video. Pamala Kachka from Pearson eCollage gives a nice overview of Flipping here.

Another initiative that was mentioned was transLectures, which has been running since November 2011 and whose objective is to develop solutions that translate video lectures into many languages to reach wider audiences.  

W.I.R.E.

W.I.R.E. or 'Web for Interdisciplinary Research and Enterprise' is a think tank based in Zurich that sees itself as 'a platform between science and practice'. Their research is interested in global developments which positively effect individuals, communities and industry. This includes looking into interdisciplinary methods that empower people, enhance our lives and help provide for a better future. Their site says:

W.I.R.E. sees itself as a laboratory for the development of new concepts for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. The foundations for this are to be found in the breaking down of traditional boundaries between academic disciplines, the abandonment of hierarchical concepts and the integration of content and form.

I like them.