Hasta La Ideas

While we all know that Santa Claus lives on the North Pole for tax purposes, some of us may not have been aware of the man’s outsized carbon footprint, and there’s nothing jolly about killing our planet by using technology that’s hundreds of years old. General Electric’s Global Research department hopes to combat this with the design of their updated Santa sleigh, which incorporates carbon fiber, LEDs, sodium batteries, RFID-tagging and more:

GE has designed a concept Santa sleigh making use of 10 of its green focused ideas highlighted in 2009. Some of the more entertaining ones include a new sleigh frame made from carbon fiber composite materials, self-powered OLED lighting in the front of the sleigh “tuned to red to supplement Rudolph’s red nose,” a sodium battery on board that would store energy “to provide supplemental power for the sleigh and offer Santa’s reindeer well-deserved breaks on their long journey around the world” and a 500 GB holographic disc to save on the large amount of trees lost to Santa’s “miles-long list filled with the children’s Christmas wishes.”

Check it out here.

via earth techling

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Paste Magazine dedicated their November issue to the “bests” of the 2000-2009 decade. They made lists of their favorite albums, movies, books, etc. of the past 10 years. One of the lists that caught our attention was their “20 Best Gadgets of the Decade.”

As unclutterers, we were specifically fond of Paste Editor-in-Chief Josh Jackson’s poignant observation about these technologies with item #3, the Garmin GPS:

When judging new technologies, you have to remember what they replaced. And is there any vestigial remnant from the 20th century we’ll miss less than the fold-out car map? The first automotive navigation system was developed in the early ‘80s, but it wasn’t until an executive order eliminated the intentional margin of error the military had insisted for commercial use on May 2, 2000, that the dashboard GPS became more accurate and widely available. Now you can navigate with voice directions from Homer Simpson, Gary Busey or Kim Cattrall. And you never have to try to fold those maps again.

The vast majority of gadgets on the list are devices that helped to get rid of clutter in our homes and offices. Gone is the need to stash blank VCR tapes thanks to the TiVo DVR (#2). The Amazon Kindle (#6) freed up space on our bookshelves. A single USB Thumb Drive (#17) replaced hundreds of CDs and floppy disks. Other items, like the iPhone (#7) created space in our bags and purses by replacing our little black books, pocket calculators, notepads, watches, calendars, and even our iPods (#1).

For all the unitaskers and useless doo dads the past decade gave us, at least there were a few gadgets that helped to get clutter out of our lives. Check out the “20 Best Gadgets of the Decade” and head back here to weigh in on the items selected for the list. Do you think the items are clutter-ful or clutter-freeing?

In addition to teaching 3D modeling and rendering at CCS, Detroit-based designer Brian Oltrogge does fabrication for Massiearchitecture. In his spare time he does things like, oh, build CNC machines in his apartment out of MDF. As he explains,

After seeing you feature a small DIY CNC machine on your site, I thought I’d send you a link to my work. My machine is 98″ X 43″ and completely hand built in my spare bedroom in my apartment complex. After I designed my machine in Rhino, I started by plotting patterns full scale at Kinkos.

Hit the jump for tons-o’-shots of Oltrogge’s hand-rigged, DIY CNC. And be prepared to feel bad about your own DIY skills.

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Sadly, folks, one of the most thrilling events at this year’s Autodesk University 2009 conference in Vegas is something I was forbidden to record.

James Cameron (in absentia) allowed roughly 20 minutes’ worth of unseen footage and different action scenes from his forthcoming Avatar, which was rendered using Autodesk software, to be shown at the conference. The enormous hall was packed for the event, with 3D glasses on every seat and shortly, on everyone’s faces as the lights went down.

Cameras were strictly forbidden, and ushers prowled about with night-vision monoculars, scanning the crowd. I wasn’t going to risk getting tossed from this event to get Core a grainy, frantically-shot scoop (above is a publicly-released production still), so I left my camera in my bag and watched obediently.

It was mind-blowing. Unlike other CG spectacles like Transformers 2, Cameron’s movie has at its heart an incredibly compelling, relevant and well-thought-out narrative, and the technology is used to support that–just like a good product design. His lushly rendered world is there to help tell the story, not be the story, and his usage of 3D is not of the gimmicky Oh-no-a-baseball-is-coming-straight-at-me variety, but is instead utilized purely to immerse the viewer in the tale, removing the “screen plane.”

Those who know Cameron most from Titanic may not realize the man is a talented designer, having penned things both fanciful–the Hunter-Killer machines from Terminator, the Alien queen from Aliens, among others–as well as practical and real, like the submersibles he’s currently designing to investigate the Mariana Trench.

Cameron also hires designers for assistance, and the L.A. Times has a great piece up interviewing Neville Page, an industrial designer Cameron hired to help design creatures–for four years–for Avatar. Check it out here.

Lastly, here’s the latest HD trailer for the flick:

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