Ideas - inspirations experiments & notes

A fond farewell to Ikutaro Kakehashi, the man from Roland who gave the world the SH101,MC202, TB303, TR606, TR707, TR727, TR808, TR909... The list goes on. Thank you for the noise. What a legend... I was lucky enough to own several of these iconic machines over the years, and every one I ever encountered, I fell in love with.

Check out my ongoing project to develop a cheap Nest-style WiFi home thermostat from off-the-shelf components.

Some information about my ongoing project to recreate a piece of classic 1950s modern design from Charles and Ray Eames - the gravity-powered "Musical Tower" glockenspiel.

A close-up of the 2012 Olympic torch as displayed at the Design Museum

Samsung just stole my idea. Samsung are apparently intending to include eye tracking in their next smartphone release, to scroll text by looking at the bottom of the display. They filed an EU trademark - "Eye Scroll" - on 23rd January 2013. My post, suggesting the idea of ereaders using eye tracking to turn pages without hand input, written 31st May [...]

Spent the morning overhauling this beautiful Braun AW10 wristwatch. It was designed for Braun by Dietrich Lubs in 1989, and demonstrates the functionalist design ethos that also created the iconic Braun alarm clock. It needed a clean and a new battery, but I also noticed that the bright yellow second hand was misaligned, so that it never lined up [...]

I found these rather lovely bits attached to a slightly cobwebbed Hetchins bike being stored in a wood shed. Firstly, a wonderfully elegant little Campagnolo Gran Sport front dérailleur and secondly a high flange reversible alloy hub, with a six-speed casette on one side and fixed singlespeed racing setup on the other.

Great piece of packaging design - although no one should be allowed a goatee. Almost a shame to undo the brushes and start the boring job of painting. Via iainclaridge.co.uk

Watching someone using the new touchscreen Kindle the other day made me think about the eBook interface, and about how clunky it still is. I've used eBook readers on a lot of platforms over the years, and nothing has ever been completely right. Don't get me wrong - I like eBooks and the ability to carry a library around in your pocket is great, but [...]

I've been hard at work on a couple of new projects recently, and spending hours hunched over keyboard, Wacom pad and mouse have perhaps made me over-sensitive to bad ergonomics. Take the Apple Magic Mouse. It's wireless, and the surface is one big trackpad. That's good. It's very accurate and works on any surface - also good. But reach for it while [...]

Spotted this Sankyo flip clock alarm amongst the various nostalgic gems for sale at Nanovo

Want one!Jonas Pfeil has come up with a brilliant new way of capturing spherical panorama photographs, using an array of small cameras embedded into a ball. When the ball is thrown into the air, an internal accelerometer detects the highest point of its arc, and simultaneously captures 36 images from the cameras distributed across the surface of the [...]

Having spent most of the last week staring at one of these I thought I'd post a couple of images of a nautical winch. These things are beautifully made, with a solid brass machined body, stainless steel roller-bearings and a loud, reassuring tick from the ratchet during use. Perfectly designed for their purpose and built to last a lifetime at sea. Cutaway [...]

My current object of desire is this Backcountry Boiler ultralight field kettle, designed and manufactured by Devin Montgomery. I'm particularly impressed by the way he managed to raise the funding to launch this product from online backing via Kickstarter.Find out more about it at www.theboilerwerks.com Pic via www.suluk46.com

Elegant little magnetic gizmo for keeping headphone cables tidied away. Via www.core77.com. Pics via www.thesinch.com

One of my photos of Stockwell bus garage in South London. The huge arched concrete roof was designed by Adie, Button and Partners, with the engineer A E Beer. When it was built in 1952 it was the largest unsupported area under one roof in Europe, and is now a Grade II listed building thanks to the campaigning of, amongst others, Will Self, who lives [...]

When I was growing up and first riding a proper bike I had a knocked about old 10-speed racer built up from a frame pulled out of the local lake. But once my brother left home, I was allowed to ride the bike handed down to him from my dad, an original cream curly stay Hetchins produced in the mid 1960s. The curly stays were allegedly to improve [...]

One of my beloved cameras. Contaflex were 35mm SLR cameras produced by the German Zeiss company in the 50s and 60s. This particular one is a Contaflex I, featuring a between-the-lens leaf shutter in a lovely Zeiss Tessar 45mm f:2.8 lens.This thing is built like a tank, has amazing optics and has zero electrical components. On the downside, the lens [...]

Travelling on a Southeastern train over the weekend I noticed the effort that had been made on the interior. Some parts of the design were perhaps technically unnecessary, but I like the fact that someone has considered these small things.In particular the detailing around the overhead lights pictured above brought to mind classic sci-fi scenery [...]