The Grumpy Owl

In 2006 I posted about an interesting new tech that printed bacon using a simple inkjet printer.  It’s now 2010 and printable food is well on its way to becoming a product.  Allow me to introduce the Digital Fabricator by MIT.

Welcome to The Jetsons, bitches.

The Digital Fabricator is a personal, three-dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients. Its cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate food combinations with sub-millimeter precision. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by the Fabricator’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but, through a touch-screen interface and web connectivity, also allows users to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

While this is still “conceptual” (meaning it’s not for you and me) both Philips and Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are working on making it into a product.

I’m looking forward to a few things here, not the least of which is printable food.

1. Various copyright fights from cookbook manufacturers.  How will the Julia Child estate feel about her recipes being copied and used?  Will Apple produce its own digital fabricator and then charge people for recipes at their iFood store?  If they do, I bet the Macheads still worship Jobs and figure he’s doing them a favor.

2.  Clever people figuring out how to use this device to manufacture explosives and drugs then sharing those recipes and modifications online.  The anarchist cookbook might have a much more literal meaning.

3. Computer viruses that infect your fabricator and creates food that will get you high or poison you.  This might be that hippie dream of spiking the water supply come true.

4.  Massive government bailouts to help suddenly unemployed farm animals.

5. Foursquare of Food — “I just cooked bacon and eggs.”  ”I am now the mayor of chocolate.” — and the amazing obesity that such competition will engender.

The future looks bright, friends.

Tags: 3D printing, digital fabricator, evil mad scientist laboratories, food, mit, robot food

the art of alex varanese – alt/1977: we are not time travelers.

Alex Varanese looks at modern products through a 1977 lens.

Tags: advertisement, Alex Varanese, art

I have some pretty clever comrades.

One of these, an incomparable chap who probably doesn’t want his name used, has long collected my empty pipe tobacco tins in order to repurpose them into various electronic devices – most of which have something to do with music.  A while ago, he hosted a little workshop where he taught a few people how to make such things.  I only recently got a look at one of the devices.

Ian Blurton's "Big Muff"

This is a Big Muff made by Ian Blurton (iconic musician/producer and notorious gear hound)   out of an old tin of Symphony Pipe Tobacco.  This blend is not in my regular rotation and I can’t remember how it tasted.  I’ve also never heard how this device sounds.  All I really know is that it has a funny name.  (VAGINA!)

But it’s nice to see these tins put to some use.  They always seem too nice to toss out.

Tags: big muff, gadgets, guitar, ian blurton, music, toys

I had high hopes for steampunk.  By combining the technological with the hand-crafted, it might have carved a path into a pleasant future.   It circled back into the Victorian era but even that was forgiveable.  Sometimes you have to take a step back to go forward.  Steampunk, I thought, just needs to mature.  But, like all high hopes, mine are proving to be wrong.

As evidenced by this phone, it’s just a cumbersome and ridiculous affectation.  It’s an aesthetic done by rote.  A geekish dogma.   It serves no purpose other than to make something “steampunk.”  It’s aesthetic does not emerge organically from the logic of its function.  Instead it’s just pasted on top of something else.  It’s just copper bullshit.

When I look at the phone, I cannot think of a single way that all that effort has improved the device.  It’s made it heavier, larger and clunkier.  The thing is not better.  The phone has just become a weapon in  identity politics, an assertion of tribal loyalty to the cost of function.  “I’m a steampunk,” it screams.  “Pity me!”

Beauty always emerges from function.  A bird’s plumage or the shape of tiger is striking because it is efficient.  This phone is an ugly contraption and too crude a flag to wave.  And this is what steampunk has become.

These problems were once forgiveable as growing pains.  But steampunk has had time to grow.  Now it’s like a twenty year old with the mind of a two year old.   Its retardation is cause for concern.

I was spending my Saturday evening looking through a local thrift shop for owl statues when I was overcome by a sudden technostalgia. I could not pull myself away from the abandoned and useless pieces of electronica past. One thing in particular demanded to be purchased. The ELECTRODEX PLUS.

This looks like it was Rolodex’s answer to the computer age. You can flip through screen using a wheel on the side, just like how you might flip through your rolodex. It allows you to keep a business card file, letters to write, reminder notes –that’s mine up above– a morning review and a monthly calander.

The calendar isn’t much good. The only date I am so far able to bring up on it is January 1989 and I doubt the Electrodex was Y-2K compatible. Also, some of the buttons are worn out. Like zero and A.

But I like the device. The wheels are fun to turn. I wish my computer had knobs and shit. It’s interesting to see how Rolodex attempted to adapt their interface to computing.  This weird mash-up between the office of the eighties and nineties gives it an unintentional Bladerunner aesthetic.

And it beeps. I like that.

This pistol costs about 3000 pounds, is about 2 inches long and fires bullets at 270 miles per hour. You can kill someone with that.

And I want one.

I’m not saying that I want to shoot anyone, I’m just saying that it would be nice to have the option. Some people would be much improved by a bullet.

This coffee mug PC is the best idea since . . .  Well, it just may be the best idea yet.

It has a touchscreen display, shows you alerts about weather etc. and you can also display your own images on a screensaver.    Besides all of that, it also holds coffee.

Like I said, this may be the best idea I’ve ever seen.  It sure beats the hell out of a camera phone.   Those things just don’t make any sense.

Owls attracted me somewhat. With their big, all-bright eyes – seeing everything. Tendencies to sit snuggly on lofty perches, observing the world as it trundles by.

Just recently I was entranced by a particular owl I found floundering in a dilapidated antique shop in my neighborhood. It was so small, I would have passed it by, but it sweetly called out to me with a tune I could not resist. Nestled in a mess of cracked tea cups, bits of fluff and loose sheet music I found my musical owl. Slipping it into my pocket, I sped for home.

Let me introduce you to my new Sankyo Owl; a musical box in the guise of a metal Strigidae.

My new pet has me completely intrigued. I know little of its origins except for a few clues left by its maker. The bottom of the box is stamped – JAPAN. And inside the head of the owl, is a tiny turning key which is engraved with the word Sankyo. Turning the key releases its song and with it my heart melts to the tiny tin tune.

The mystery propelled me to investigate more about my Sankyo. I am delighted to discover, with a little research, that Sankyo means “third one” in Japanese. And the Sankyo Seiki brand of Japan is considered to be a reputable maker of original and highly collectible music boxes. Sankyo was the first company to mass produce music boxes, with the goal to make Japan world famous for music boxes.

Sankyo Seiki of Japan started up after WWII, using the latest in automation. June 1948 the company produced its first musical box. The brand offers a variety of music boxes in Japan, and supplies movements (the musical gear-works) to other manufacturers. Sankyo Seiki proports itself as the biggest manufacturer of music boxes in the world, and advertises that it controls 50% of the market. Recently, it has started selling licenses for its music box tunes to cellular phone companies, for use as ring tones.

The company also makes magnetic and hologram card readers, appliance components, industrial robots and miniature motors. Yamada Akihiro, in Sankyo’s PR department says, “You might say we make products, but we think of ourselves as producing culture.”

For a generation that thinks a music box is a MP3 portable player, let me enlighten you.

Music boxes started as a 19th century automatic musical instrument, producing sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to strike the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from the musical snuff boxes of the 18th century; referred to as carillons à musique. Alec Templeton, an avid collector of music boxes and a professional concert musician, once noted that the tone of a musical box is unlike that of any musical instrument.

For those of you who think this sound may be out of fashion, you may wish to reconsider. Icelandic musician Björk makes use of disc-mechanism music boxes on her album Vespertine, with specially cut discs. Amsterdam-based composer Richard Barrett has written a four minute piece, Trace, for two diatonic music boxes. French musician, Colleen,released Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique in 2006 – an album composed of only music boxes.

Personally, I like to describe the sound as something precious. One which induces sleep, as well as a child-like nostalgia for simpler and gentler times. I dream that someday I will have my very own Sankyo robot to perform household duties, such as tucking me into bed at night.

Tags: owls

Eureka Aereopace has developed a microwave beam that can fry a car’s electronics and thus stop it from going anywhere. The idea is to give this to the police and/or army so that they can disable cars at will.

It should be available to the general public.

Aside from the obvious fun, it would certainly improve highway etiquette.  The person you just cut off might, instead of flipping you the finger, flip his death-ray switch. It’s not quite as good a rooftop mounted machine gun but I’m sure that it could cause quite a bit of havoc in the right hands.

My dream of having a death ray mounted upon my head just got a bit closer

I tried an alarm clock. It now sits unplugged beside my bed.

I can’t stand the things. They’re torture devices. I’ll wake up when I wake up, secure in the knowledge that the day will get stupid and annoying soon enough. There’s no need to start by having some drug-addicted radio personality shouting traffic reports or political opinions at me. The alarm clock is fucking dystopic.

Yet some people have such distrust of their own bodies and lives so at odds with their natural rhythms, that they want a gadget to attack them in the safety of their bed. Every morning. Until retirement.

They need a Sfera. This ominous green ball dangles from the ceiling and wakes you with the usual noise. Then you have to sit up and tap the thing to make it stop. Every time you make it stop, it rises even higher and starts again in ten minutes.

Some of you may think this is a good idea. I suggest you think about your life. The only people who should be chasing big green balls out of bed are ex-hookers on acid.

This year, when you want to bribe Santa with milk and cookies, consider the Dunk Mug. That way he’ll be able to keep a hand free while he shovels those gifts beneath your tree.

There’s a couple of things that would make this better. 1) they should put a face on it. That way, it would look like the mug was eating the cookies. 2.) They should have a device to keep the cookies in place.

Otherwise, I like this. It will keep my cookies off my filthy desk.