The first cassette player, and My first cassette player

This is the world's first laptop, designed by Bill Moggridge:

(the GRiD Compass, designed in 1979, though it didn't appear until 1982)

This is the world's first walkman, credited to engineer Nobutoshi Kihara under the direction of Sony boss Akio Morita:

(July 1979)

Apparently Sony just announced that they will stop producing the walkman.

There is an article here at Design Observer called "Keith Richards and His Amazing Portable Cassette Recorder":

“I’ve learned everything I know off of records,” says the guitarist-turned-historian of technological innovation.
What is important, Richards declares, is “being able to replay something immediately without all that terrible stricture of written music, the prison of those bars, those five lines. Before 1900, you’ve got Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, the cancan. With recording, it was emancipation for the people. “It surely can’t be any coincidence that jazz and the blues started to take over the world the minute recording started, within a few years, just like that.”

Never thought about it like that!

This is the model of portable casette player I had as a kid. Though I was more into the story telling than the Stones.

Hello, old friend.

oh, and this:

Trees: keeping it apolitical for 360 million years

Zhao Zongzao, Land of Peng Lai, 1982

from here

Glow Zoo

This would be nice to have at home. Even though I am an "adult".

Imaginary Place

from here

SATURN and the empty-space-shudders

Gas Giant
5 times more voluminous than the Earth
An average of 1.43 billion kilometers from the sun
It's nine rings mostly composed of water ice, rocks, and dust
The largest of its 62 known moons: Titan

incredible photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft, found at Wired magazine here.

Ugly Alarm!

Looking for an alarm clock. I thought digital would be nice - no TICK TICK TICK through the night. Radio! Why not. I don't even have a radio at home. Off to ebay!

Practically 100% of all new alarm clocks on ebay (and Amazon) are hideous. Sure, there's your $200 designer alarm clocks, which are nice, but, geeeeeez, all the old ones are so much better looking. What is happening?? 80's - 30's it's all pretty thumbs-up. The new ones I am ashamed to even post here. But I will. At the bottom. In small.

First, look at these beauties (I'm having a hard time deciding which one to bid on, though I am partial to peach, as always):

and blech:

This Is So Interesting, I Postponed The Other Post

My ancient nokia cell phone (tiny, robust, and lightweight - ah, those were the days) recently lost its last useful function, which was that of an alarm clock. After it enjoyed a brief stint as a friend's emergency replacement phone, the alarm just wouldn't ring anymore.

The tiny animated bell on the display would roll from side to side, and the word "Alarm!" would flash aggressively, but all was silence. Perhaps my little old phone was overwhelmed when it came into contact with my friend's sim-card, which was full of complicated Blackberry data. Maybe, being of old age, it couldn't handle the abrupt change in its routine. Suddenly it was supposed to make calls again, when it was used to whiling away its days by the side of the bed, ringing every morning, and watching the seasons change through the window.

The only visible clue I could find was a tiny symbol in the center of the display that was always, idly present. It was barely 10x10 pixels big, and it looked vaguely like a tiny VW Bug-like car in profile. It had two little windows and two teensy wheels. I figured, in the car, you use your headset, so all is quiet. This is a usefull setting. So I scoured the phone's menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-menus, and so forth, trying to undo the setting that caused the litte car to appear and my phone to be mute. I went as deep into the phone's brain controls as I could penetrate. Which is not all that far.

I never found the setting anywhere. Maybe it wasn't a car, maybe it was a tiny skull. Maybe it was a herald of death, announcing the end of my phone's life. And so I did my part. Since it was no longer able to fulfill faithfully its wake-up services I eventually let the batteries run out. After using my iPhone for a week or two (which has obnoxious sound effects and lacks the haptic qualities that make more sense in half-sleep) I decided to look around for a new alarm clock. And this is what this post was really supposed to be about: Radio Alarm Clocks!

One more thing before I get to the other fascinating thing I want to discuss: I wanted to snap a photo of the mini-death-car to illustrate my mesmerizing tale. I went to grab the old Nokia, which for some reason, was charging on the window sill. But I wasn't able to get a picture of the mini-death-car...becasue it's gone! The phone is all buttons-a-beeping and alarm-a-ringing again! A magical resurrection form the ashes of exile! Of course by now I have spent 2 hours on ebay looking at so many great old radio alarmss that I'm having trouble picking one out, let alone cancelling the whole idea of buying one. I will hold on to little Nokia though. I'm sure it will come in handy. Haha! (This was a stupid pun for German speakers.)

Thank you for your time.

hands play with rubber bands

Rubber bands are hard to transform. They're intriguing, stretchy, and colorful, but their distinct texture and shape makes it difficult to turn them into something more. This is a successful transformation - the results are beautiful.
You can read more about this project by New York based Milev Architects in this deezeen article.

nosing around the interwebs

The Internet: immediate curiosity / idea spinning satisfaction. I can already see some creatures coming to life...

Blüten

texture, color, shape.
saschanordmeyer.com

hair ball pin etc.

This hilarious piece of jewelry reminded me how I wanted my friend Tom, at Ultimate Shirt Co., to print a t-shirt that alread had sweat stains on it! Nice, big ones. He wasn't a big fan of the idea... I don't know if it would be such a big seller. I think it could be good, maybe if you use bright colorful colors. It would be funny.
Which reminds me, growing up in Austria, we never had hypercolor t-shirts, but I always wondered if you wouldn't just have hypercolored pits the whole time?? This great picture I found was just too good to be true....it's american apparel.

Taste Test & google maps of my intestines

LBRB - the imaginary store

The left brain items are the rational-order-reality-based products. Sensible, in one word. Like an affordable, lightweight, sturdy folding chair.

The right brain items are the emotional-intuitive-fantasy-based things. Like plates with intricate decorations or an ottoman covered in scraggly wool that looks like it might come to life.

And then there's some objects that are really difficult to categorize because they're a little of both. Like this one:

hooty hooooo....

Awesome owl macrame adjustable necklaces. At $13.80 (this includes shipping) it's a sweet deal! My sausage fingers could never dream to produce something like this. That's right, my fingers have dreams too.
Turns out, the two women who make these little friends live in Argentina, and are the top most active "hearters" of things on etsy: 2284 pages and counting. FYI.
You can buy their 3 species of owl here.

want want want

Yago Hortal.

It's all about the materials

Better late than never from the ICFF:

Nice to meet you, Mr. Willenz

The path of research often turns into a fractal pattern of tangents that lead you in ever growing circles somewhere not entirely different. In this case, I was researching lamps in the two bastions of indexed design, stylepark (Germany) and architonic (Switzerland), where you can bask in the reassuring glow of well organized information. I kept stumbling over the name Sylvain Willenz, and this is because I am, as it turns out, a fan of his work. Here is why:

1. print lamp for established&sons. made from 1 piece of blown glass which has a "built in" diffuser.
2. lock for tamawa. ashwood & bakelite. nuff said. (well, no: I like bakelite. it also comes in red.)
3. torch lamp for established&sons, 2008. soft plastic shell. floor, table, or suspension.
Sylvain Willenz hails form and works in Brussels.
4. homerun chair. also nice.
5. stuff bag. seamless flat rubber. also nice. want.