Hasta La Ideas

As the year winds down, my husband and I are embarking on The Great Paperwork Filing Project of 2009. It’s such an undertaking it feels appropriate we give it an official name with capital letters. (Similar to The Big Move of 2004 and Project Remove Splinter from My Finger, which unfortunately is still ongoing.)

Most of the papers we’re dealing with right now are from our son’s adoption. We have about eight inches of documents that need to be scanned and destroyed or scanned and filed. It’s a relatively easy process, but, even with the help of the new Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M we’re test driving from the manufacturer, it still takes awhile to review every sheet of paper to decide its fate.

We’re following the method I describe in the “Tuesday at Work: Fixing Your Files” section of Unclutter Your Life in One Week. If you’re also looking at a Great Paperwork Filing Project of 2009 or 2010, try the following method to get it under control:

• Determine what papers you have that need to be processed. If you don’t have a firm understanding of what work you need to do, you can’t create a plan for handling all of it.
• Determine what rules should define what to keep and what to purge. You’ll end up getting rid of too much or not enough if you don’t have firm guidelines in place before you begin.
• Determine how you will classify, categorize, and arrange your documents. You hope to one day be promoted/sell your company for millions/have someone help you with your work, so your system needs to make sense to you and others. Create a system that you can maintain and that can easily be explained to others when your big promotion comes in!
• Sort, scan, and file your documents. I recommend tackling an inch of paper at a time. As long as you have less than an inch of paper coming in a day, you’ll eventually make it through your stacks.
• Back up your digital system to protect from loss or damage. If it’s not backed up, you run the risk of losing everything when your hard drive fails. And, as we all know, there are two types of hard drives — those that have failed, and those that eventually will.

(The image associated with this post is from the FreedomFiler website. Check out our post on Paper file organization systems for more information about FreedomFiler. It’s a solid tab labeling system, especially for home-related papers. And, before people ask in the comments, we don’t receive any sort of kick backs for recommending it.)

by Tisha Leung

Mau, a design company and nickname of its founder Marian Schoettle, reinterprets wardrobe staples in Tyvek® for a collection of garments known as post-industrial folk wear. Ranging from a ruffle coat to dresses to a unisex anorak and accessories that include market bags and other totes, the artist (her previous work includes sound and light installations, teepee space modules for the Smithsonian) uses the featherweight material to make the entire line—most garments weigh less than 300 grams (about ¼ of a pound).

The high-performance non-woven material, increasingly borrowed from the building and advertising industries and repurposed in clothing, consists of 25% recycled content and can itself be recycled. In addition, Tyvek®offers both water resistance and breathability.

Mau’s clothing weathers seasonal storms, can take a turn in the washtub and dries within minutes. Softening with every wash and wear, the material eventually becomes supple like leather.

The upshot makes for provocatively innovative and easy-to-wear garments, combining artisanal patternmaking and art-infused details (which she’s known for) with the high-tech fabric.

Both functional and conceptual, some come crushed inside carry bags, which also softens the material and requires little more than a simple smooth out for wearing. And many of the garments are reversible, going from either white or cement gray (reminiscent of past duo-tone collections by fellow NYC conceptual designer Rebecca Turbow).

Made in the garment district of NYC under the auspices of theGarment Industry Development Corporation, the organization recycles all design and cutting room scraps and uses surplus materials from local computer, automotive and snowboard industries.

Mau’s line sells online, as well as throughJulie: Artisan’s Gallery NYC.

When sitting a red light in New York, you know the light’s soon to change when the “Don’t Walk” symbols facing traffic perpendicular to you start flashing; with enough experience you can even time it so your car launches into motion at the exact instant the green light illuminates. We’re not endorsing this as a safe practice, merely observing that this is common.

Serbian designer Damjan Stankovic has a similar concept in his Eko light, which incorporates a circular, visual countdown timer wrapped around the red light. Stankovic’s idea, though, is that rather than enable quicker green-light launches, the countdown light would serve to de-stress drivers by providing them feedback of exactly how much longer they’ll have to wait.

Mr Stankovic claimed the device would reduce stress felt by drivers and could even help the environment. He said: ‘Since you know exactly how long you have to wait you can sit back and clear your head for a while. No need to keep your foot on the gas. Relax.’

He added: ‘When you think about it, you don’t need this information counted in seconds, you just need to see the speed of the progress bar to give you an estimate of the time.’

Mr Stankovic said drivers could also turn off their engines while waiting for the green light and that the design may also make driving safer. ‘With the Eko light both drivers and pedestrians can be fully aware of how much time they have left before the light changes and that way reduce the chance for potential traffic accident,’ he said. For that reason he decided only to include a counter for the red light as the green light might encourage people to start off too quickly.

via daily mail

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India’s currency, the rupee, does not have its own symbol; it’s often abbreviated “Rs” and lacks the $ that the dollar has. This must make Indian cartoons confusing, as greedy characters with a big “R” in each eye must look like they’re more concerned with intellectual property than cash.

The problem will soon be solved, as a committee headed up by Usha Thorat, the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has held a design competition for the symbol, receiving over 4,000 entries. They’ve just narrowed it down to the final five, and a decision on the new symbol should be reached by March of next year.

The winner will receive a certain amount of his or her own “Rs”–250,000, to be exact.

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