Beach Creatures

Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures

I have never seen anything like this before. This is definitely a creative spark. Mr. Jansen is the creator of these "Strandbeest" which are these beach creatures.

he has invented life like kinetic sculptures, built from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. There are many different designs that he has created and they are all built to move and even survive on their own.

They are still a work in progress so they can't quite survive on their own yet but the end result is for them to survive on their own. You would think that plastic tubes ad lemonade bottles would create an animal but they are more sophisticated then you would think. hey have a brain, and legs, and a nose that all have a specific job.

They move by the wind and live in the wet sand. They can detect if they are in the water or on dry sand and each part is design to help them survive in these situations.

There biggest challenge is the storms. However they have a detector in there nose where they can hammer there own stick into the grown to stabilize them selves from not blowing away.

If that is not creative I don't know what is!!!

Computer Interface's

Anand Agarawala: BumpTop desktop is a beautiful mess

This TED talk has to do with interfaces and how they are not up to date with the technology they provide. They have been the same since computers have come out. There has been no big change.

Apple has had some advances in there interface with making it more stylish but for the most part still the same. The concept of his talk was to open our eyes to possible updates to our interfaces. His ideas are pretty funny with the way he can manage the icons. The pain point is it represents his desk at work. It is a bit scattered. There are piles of icons, you can organize them neatly or have them in the corner. You can put them on the side like a shelf, or even make one icon bigger to represent it's importance.

It is very creative and I think it is a good step in the direction of updating our interface. When you thunk about what is the first thing you see when you open up your computer. It's you interface and just think if that was more creative it would inspire you to be more creative in your work.

I think a possible solution to start this update is supplying these creative ideas like the BumTop to individuals and let them run with it. Let them be involved with there own interface. They will have the opportunity to be creative and create there own design for there personal interface. It may spark creativity.

Net Neutrality, Internet Free Speech,and Censorship

My research project was on these three topics. Here is my PowerPoint and a cool Youtube video on the subject of Net Neutrality.




Here is the YouTube Video I used in my PowerPoint

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If the title doesn't clue you in on my experience with HTML I will break it down for you. There is no experience what so ever!!!


I know it cheesy but I though it was hilarious!

To be honest when I first started this class and found out we would be blogging I wasn't really looking forward to it. I had never blogged before I had only just heard about it.

Taking this class has allowed me to advance in my knowledge of new internet technology and be more confident with the subject.

I really enjoyed how we used blogger to do our assignments. It was very creative and inspiring to do something different and not the same ol' same ol' book work.

Environment Issues

Our environment is an issue in many social groups of our society, as it should be. You can even go as far as saying it is a political issue. I feel people are realizing that this is a growing matter and we need to stop taking it lightly or we will have no more existence here on earth.

Alex Steffen: Inspired ideas for a sustainable future, is who I did my TED talk about. He is the founder of worldchanging.com, who offers his views of our world what it’s doing and where we are going.

A few random facts throughout his presentation that really got my attention:
*Our 1 plant uses enough resources to provide for at least 7-10 plants
*We are building a new city the size of Seattle every 7 days
*In the year 2025 there will be 8 billion people on our plant

I feel we should be ashamed of ourselves for taking advantage of our planet the way we do. I don’t know if people understand the magnitude of this situation. What will happen to us if we deplete all of our resources? Will there still be us?

I googled the population of Seattle and as of 2006 there is about 682,174 living in the city and an estimated metropolitan area population of approximately 4.3 million. Now just imagine that every 7 days we have a new city the size of Seattle that can house that kind of population. So what is that doing to our environment? Well for one I know it has to be taking up a lot of land to build a city that big. So there go the trees, and the poor animals that had a habitat, and our O-zone layer even more.

Our worldly population as of this year is estimated to be a little over 6.6 billion people. In the year 2025 we estimate our population to be 8 billion. That means from now to the year 2025 100 million people will be born every year. Now do the math here we are going to need a lot more Seattle’s to accompany that number. The problem is where are we going to find the space and resources to handle that growth if we are struggling at this moment to keep up with our environment now.

So obviously if we want to sustain life on this planet a few changes are needed in the immediate future!!!

Blog Action Day

This is a very interesting concept to me. I think it goes to show how effective blogging is as a mass communication media. My topic of interest for this was Medical Waste. It is hard to believe what we are doing with this toxic material. I did some research on the web and found out general information about medical waste.

Medical waste is an increasing issue that is troubling the world. Large urban hospitals can produce more than 2 million tons of medical waste each year. A big cause in this issue is clinics and hospitals throwing there medical waste in regular trash, which can cause contamination and spreading of diseases. Others burn their waste in open fields or in small incinerators without pollution control, exposing communities downwind to toxic byproducts such as dioxins and mercury, and generating potentially hazardous ash.

Over the years the world has learned that incineration is a leading source of highly toxic dioxin, mercury, lead and other dangerous air pollutants that threaten human health and the environment.

HCWH (Health Care Without Harm) is an organization that was formed to help decrease the amount of toxicity generated by the health fields medical waste. There purpose is to ensure proper management and disposal of medical waste and to decrease the dangerous practice of incineration by promoting and implementing alternatives.

Plans to reduce this issue are being implemented around the world, some of these alternatives include:

Waste minimization, segregation
Alternative technologies
Alternative technologiy suppliers
The GEF Project.
Immunization Waste



noharm.org
medical waste picture

Get in touch with you inner tortoise

My TED talk was on Carl Honore:Slowing down in a world built for speed. He is a journalist in London who wrote a book about slowing down.

Our society has the worst reputation of "road runner" attitude. Where if we aren't doing something at every moment then we are wasting time. And what is time to a lot of us? Money!!!

So how did we get so deep into this issue. Over time our culture has put a taboo on the word slow. When someone is referred to as slow it is a negative label. We take on task after task without looking at the consequences it may cause. Weather it be short term and/or long term.

Now how do we fix this problem. We are going to have to reteach ourselves and our society that it is ok to stop and smell the roses. That taking a vacation really is needed.