Hasta La Ideas

Most Common Dance Moves For Females In Clubs!..(Read…)

A dining table and benches in Walnut and HIMACS solid surface. The beauty of the pure form of the concrete grey solid surface next to the elegance of ..

Comedy skyscraper stories dominated August, when a Spanish residential tower was reportedly built without a working elevator and a Chinese businessman made himself a home resembling a fake mountain on top of a Beijing housing block (pictured).

Futuristic transport

Billionaire technology tycoon Elon Musk revealed designs for a supersonic Hyperloop transport system to link Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 30 minutes.

For those not so keen on public transport, test flights were approved for the world’s first practical jetpack.

Most popular

On top in August was a house in Bondi, Sydney, composed of long brick and wood volumes extending down a narrow plot.

Roland Halbe’s photographs of a rural beach house in Chile featured in our second most popular post.

A concept for narrow apartments that fill tiny gaps between existing buildings was next.

In fourth place, a home in Osaka with a garden snaking between its cedar-clad walls.

Hyper-realistic computer renderings showing a forthcoming concrete and glass house in England also made the top five.

See all our stories for August 2013 »

The post Dezeen’s review of the year: August 2013 appeared first on Dezeen.

Stills from Maker, a forthcoming documentary about the Maker Movement

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts · Furniture, Pt. 1 · Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire · Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future · Food & Drink

Creation culture has seen some interesting incremental advances this year. DIY remains a powerful buzzword, while “handmade” is no longer a meaningful descriptor. We’ve Kickstarted many projects and undershot even more. The trend of community (i.e. crowd) support of product development and the growth of collective tech shops is heartening, while the Etsyesque implication that anyone with a hot glue gun can make an earning without skill or hard work remains aggravating. Small scale production is on the rise, and large scale domestic manufacturing is showing flickers of a comeback.

Between the highlights and danklights of this year, you can find hints of where the makin’ train is headed next year. Here are some of my favorites with a smattering of points on the good, the bad and what’s in store.

DIY Movement

Along with exciting developments in ever-ensmallening technology and cheaper options for prototyping and connectivity, the social elements of the DIY world got some boosted signal. This year DIY culture has gotten a little more self-aware—a little more precious and corporate too, but hey, wheat with the chaff.

On the good side, the series The Makers of Things and the movie We Are Makers. While it’s easy to fall into self-congratulation and romantic notions about craft and heritage, these largely steer clear of clichés and offer a human perspective. Both documentaries highlight the innate human urge to create, and the current role of “making” as a sort of social currency. Since Doing-It-Yourself is not currently an economic or survival necessity, the choice to make things takes on an unusual air—you’re “THAT person” in a group of normal folks, providing an automatic connection point for community building with likeminded “THAT persons.” The movie also features higher-ups at companies like Make Magazine and Etsy who cop to the financial gain in capitalizing on the DIY industry. So there’s that.

On the badder side… Etsy itself. While continuing to extol its own lucrative role as an individual-empowering vending platform, Etsy also continues to relax the standards for their “handmade marketplace” to the point of meaninglessness by allowing mass produced items to vend side by side with the work of individual craftspeople. While “handmade” is a necessarily complicated designation—where does the act of “making” begin?—this move is understandably considered unfair to the small enterprises that the site supposedly promotes. The owl-loving neckbeards at the top claim that incorporating mass produced products on the site is reinventing the relationship between buyer and producer. Well that sure makes sense, considering the consumer has so few other sources for factory-produced items. Thriving handmade marketplace indeed.

The future? People will keep making things. I promise.

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I think I’m the only person I know who doesn’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I used to when I was younger, but I never followed through on any of them. When I was older I developed strategies for following through on my resolutions. I made plans. I made sure my resolutions were S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely). Yet, even with all of this planning and organizing, I still could not keep my resolutions beyond the first week in January.

After a few years of feeling guilty and beating myself up about this, I took a good hard look at why my New Year’s Resolutions may not work.

Why New Year’s resolutions often fail

January is a busy time of year

Usually there is a two-week holiday surrounding Christmas and the New Year. Vacations and visiting family and friends can cause major disruptions in routines and schedules. Getting back on track can be a chore in itself. Trying to re-vamp your life with resolutions during this time can be almost impossible.

December is often the fiscal year end

If you’re running a business and your fiscal year end is December 31, there may be the added work of bookkeeping and accounting to deal with on top of the vacations and visitors. Trying to implement your resolution of re-organizing your home when your business needs more of your time can create frustration and may lead to failure.

In the northern hemisphere, January has bad weather

For those in the north, January is cold and there is lots of snow and ice. There can be major power outages. Local governments may even declare states of emergency. During times like these, resolutions often fall by the wayside and may not be continued afterwards. You’re focused on staying warm and providing for your basic needs, in addition to it often being gloomy.

The date is arbitrary

With celebrations and champagne, the first day of January may feel like a momentous time. However, the celebration could be any day of the year. Except for adding new pages to your daily calendar and nursing a hangover, there isn’t any difference between January 1 and May 1.

Alternatives to New Year’s Resolutions

Make your resolutions on another date

Your birthday is the start of another new year of your life. It may be the perfect time to start your resolutions. Many people choose the start of the new school year as a good date to make resolutions. The Chinese New Year or your country’s “National Day” may be ideal dates to start your resolutions. Religious holidays may also work well for you. Consider making resolutions for Ash Wednesday, Rosh Hashanah, or Diwali.

Make monthly resolutions

Choosing one resolution per month may work better for some people. Don’t feel that you must start on the first day of every month, either. If your birthday is on June 25, consider starting your monthly resolution on the 25^th of each month.

Avoid resolutions and adopt a better habit

Since I’ve given up on resolutions, I just adopt better habits throughout the year. For example, my previous habit was eating chocolate as an afternoon pick-me-up. My new habit is eating a piece of fruit and drinking a glass of water. This habit took me only two weeks to adopt. It was very easy. Now, I don’t even think about the chocolate.

Some habits take longer to integrate into my life than others, but once it does become a habit then I examine my routines and see what other habits need to be improved.

The following are examples of small habit changes that can make big differences:

• Clean the dinner dishes right after eating instead of checking email or watching TV.
• Hang your keys on a hook on entering the house instead of leaving them in your coat pocket.
• Write events in your planner as soon as they arrive in an email.
• Hang your coat on a hook/hanger instead of draping it over a chair.
• Prepare your lunch for work the night before instead of first thing in the morning.

You don’t have to put a dozen resolutions into effect on New Year’s Day to change your life. Just change one habit at a time, as it works best with your schedule. As Lao Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

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