Hasta La Ideas

From a design standpoint, how do you increase the information made available to the driver of a car? More and more cars are coming with built-in dashboard screens, but it’s obvious that anything that takes the driver’s eyes off the road is a bad idea. Audio cues provided by turn-by-turn GPS are a step in the right direction. Another non-visual method of communication, now being experimented with by a research team at Carnegie Mellon, is to use steering wheels equipped with haptic feedback mechanisms.

In conjunction with AT&T Labs, Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute researchers are using mechanics more sophisticated that current iterations of the technology, which can merely vibrate:

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Show support for two new supportive undergarments

Kickstarter helps get an array of independent endeavors off the ground every day. While many of these entrepreneurial projects revolve around the arts, we recently found two creative minds using the funding platform to up the underwear game. Each with a different motive, both JoeyBra and Flint and Tinder aim to enhance our lives with a new take on the ubiquitous undergarment. Check out the “kickstapants” projects below.

A concept sure to be a hit among ladies who love to go out and dance or go for a run, the JoeyBra gives women the advantage of a hidden pocket in their bra. The small side compartments are big enough to fit an iPhone, but the elastic seams keep it all conveniently secure. The JoeyBra is the brainchild of two business students at the University of Washington who will use the funding to first create an adjustable sexy push-up style with a sports bra to follow.

Former FHM Magazine editor and Buckyballs founder Jake Bronstein would simply like to bring men’s underwear production back to the US. His idea is Flint and Tinder, a line of premium Supima cotton skivvies made in a family-run factory. Comfort and function are key components to the three styles in his collection, but another driving force is job creation—for every 1,000 pairs sold, one full-time job is generated.

Questa lampada a sospensione è la Bloom di Prandina. Fa parte della nuova collezione, vetro soffiato.

Earlier this week, our landlord brought in floor layers to pull up the carpet in our master bedroom and replace it with wood flooring. This meant we had to get everything except for the bed frame and mattress out of the room so the flooring guys could work their magic.

Once the crew finished, we moved our dresser, alarm clock, lamps, nightstand, and a bench back into the room. Then, we made the bed, rolled out a new area rug, and stopped moving things back into the space. We didn’t move anything else back into the room because we loved the way it felt with nothing else in there. Without clutter and extraneous furniture, our bedroom felt calm and relaxing again. When talking to each other about the room, my husband and I have used the words refuge and retreat numerous times to describe it. Now, we’re in the process of finding new homes for all the other things that were in the room, such as we moved the hamper to the bathroom, relocated family photographs and books to the bookshelf in the living room, and took a box of charity donations to Goodwill. We were surprised by the amount of stuff that was living in our bedroom that we didn’t want to have in there.

This exercise was a good reminder that there are significant advantages to moving everything out of a space as the first step of a full-room uncluttering and organizing project. When you remove everything, you get to see the bare bones of the room. Additionally, you can bring items one-by-one back into a space to decide if you really want something in that room and be attuned to its presence and its best place. It’s also immediately obvious when a room looks and feels the way you want it to, and you know that everything outside the room needs to be trashed/recycled/donated/relocated because it doesn’t belong in the room.

When you’re uncluttering and organizing a full room, keep these questions in mind once the room is empty:

• Structurally, does any repair work need to be completed in the room? Do walls need to be painted? Do floorboards need to be cleaned? Do any holes need to be patched or cobwebs vacuumed?
• What are the purposes of this room? What are my goals for this space?
• Is the large furniture in its best place? Should the furniture be rearranged?
• Does all of the furniture need to come back into this space? Why? How does each piece of furniture help me to achieve the goals for this space?
• Do the decorative elements in this room add or detract from the purposes of this room? Do they inspire me? Do I find them beautiful?
• Do the other items that are going into this room belong in this room? Is this the best place for these items to live? Do I need these items to meet the goals of this room?
• Are items placed where I use them? Is there a place for everything, and is everything in its place?
• Once the room is set, decide if the items that didn’t make it back into the room need to be trashed, recycled, donated, or relocated. Be careful not to let the clutter from one room become clutter in another room.

If you don’t have the space in your home to temporarily hold all the furniture and items of another room, set down a tarp in your yard or driveway and move your things outside (obviously, only do this in good weather). If you’re in an apartment or condo, give your neighbors a head’s up, and then take over the hallway for a few hours. I’ve found that when you use a space outside your home as a temporary holding location, you’re motivated to work quickly and efficiently, which is also a good thing.

The image above is not of our bedroom, but it certainly represents how our room feels to me now.

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

Refashioning scrap material into uniquely meaningful works of art

Accompanying a growing awareness of the wastefulness underlying the modern global economy, a new approach to art has flourished in recent years, one dealing with the repurposing and utilization of materials discarded or viewed as useless. Written by street art commentator Tristan Manco, the new book “Raw + Material = Art” delves into these techniques and philosophies by exploring the works of 38 artists using low-tech, low-cost media and methods. The selected artists provoke thought on both subject and medium, and continue to push what’s possible by working at “the raw edge of contemporary art.”

Spanning old skateboard decks to plastic children’s toys to teabags, the works highlighted in “Raw + Material = Art” have a dual purpose. In an age of digital production and computer-engineered perfection, they signify a back-to-basics approach, bringing a new respect to the cultivation of a craft. Through their choice of materials, artists also convey a message of awareness of our environment and the resources we use or abuse within it. Although often indebted to past artists, notably Marcel Duchamp, the raw art displayed in Manco’s book is a response to veritably modern phenomena.

“We take it for granted these days that art can be made from any substance or object…it is not surprising in itself if an artist presents us with a work made from unusual materials” writes Manco in his introduction. “However, even if we anticipate spectacle, we can still be struck by such a work.” The works Manco focuses on transcend mere gimmickry, working within unorthodox media without being tied down by them.

The book’s layout is fairly straightforward. Listing the artists alphabetically, Manco provides an insightful background for each alongside a generous allocation of large, color photographs. Locations range from Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, giving a comprehensive portrait of the fittingly global expanse of a scene that deals with the detritus of globalization and mass production.

Artists include AJ Fosik, who constructs technicolor creatures out of hundreds of individually shaped pieces of plywood, Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, who, often working with scrap materials such as shrink foil, salvaged wood, or flip-flops, erects large animal sculptures in public areas, and Brooklyn-based Mia Pearlman, who carves intricate “cloudscapes” out of sheets of paper.

Several artists previously featured on Cool Hunting also make an appearance in the book, including Gabriel Dawe, who creates prismatic structures out of miles of colorful thread, Ron van der Ende, whose modern bas-relief work is done in recycled wood, and Brian Dettmer, who carves intricate sculptures by carefully peeling away layers of the pages of books.

“Raw + Material = Art” is available for purchase on Amazon and from publishers Thames & Hudson.