Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Building a house

Ah look, a use for a blog.

So, I’d like to build a house.

A little house.

Like the sort that might fit on to the area of a decent-sized car bonnet.

And be made of plywood.

My intention is for it to be a space to try out smart ideas for smart homes, and green ideas
for green homes, on a tiny little scale (well, depending on the car bonnet). So I’m looking for
ideas; they can be outrageous or tempered, whatever. What do you think would be a cool
system to have in a smart home, or green home? (I know those two don’t necessarily go
together.) I’d like to have a good few ideas before I start chopping up plywood, as some of
them are likely to affect the layout.

I’ll look at the ideas and give their implementation my best shot in due course. This is also
a sort of test to see whether I have any design or creative (or fabrication, or electrical, or
programming) skills at all, and if I don’t, to get some. For green ideas I’d like to do tests of
the efficiency of the systems as well, once they’re in place.

I’ve already decided that I want it voiced by Paul Bettany, which is going to be a sound-
bite hauling labour of tedious love. Or, you know, if anyone knows Paul personally and he’s
willing to do an Ironman-sized project for free…

Types of systems that I need to give some thought to:
  • Lighting
  • Air-flow
  • Water circulation
  • Water heating
  • Centralised door/window/ventilation/lighting control
  • Paul Bettany sweet-nothing whispering system
  • What else?
So when you wake at 3 in the morning with a random idea which sounds a bit mad (or not)
but might be kinda cool -- @kathrynrosie

Kathryn

Wednesday, 24 March 2010

Tinkies (with a side serving of Bar One)

I'm aware that there are many things going on around me that require more comment than this, but I have chosen to honour the Tinkie with my inaugural post.

Or rather, how absolutely crud Tinkies have become since their glory days in during my youth.

Tinkies (or Twinkies, I believe, to the more Westerly-located) are rectangular-prismatic sponge cakes infused with cream. Or they were... now they're sea-sponge textured cakes shot up with a miniscule amount of cream which results in a millimetre thick layer of cream occupying about 50 - 60% of the length of the bar.

The Tinkie brand, I swear, is surviving on the misplaced memories of my generation. Tinkies were creamy goodness in a box. Nowadays they're a disappointing reminder of what life was like before cost-cutting measures and the customer-is-an-idiot-they'll-never-notice mentality. I mean, look at the cream part in the Tinkie image above... it's fake! They can't even make a perfect Tinkie for the box! If the cream in the image is a full moon, the actual cream present in todays Tinkie is a God's-thumbnail sliver of lunule on the first day of the moon month.

Which reminds me of a Bar One rant I once had, in which I suggested that the next time Nestle are about to embark on cost-cutting measures they consider reducing the amount of wrapper in order to more conform with the volume of chocolate inside the wrapper. That way they can save on wrapper costs as they have already saved on chocolate. 14cm of (volumetrically correct) wrapper for a 10cm chocolate bar! Are you kidding me?! Asses.

Maske out.