Transform and… double-park

typed for your pleasure on 31 May 2007, at 9.17 am

Sdtrk: ‘Hide away’ by Midnight movies

It’s hardly a secret that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Japanophile, but who can blame me? Seriously, what other country would come up with the idea of marketing one of their auto company’s latest vehicles by using a giant robot?


Now THAT’S a sport utility vehicle

Technically, the Nissan Dualis isn’t a robot, but a ‘powered suit’ (think the Garland from Megazone 23, or the Knight Sabers’ Motoslaves from Bubblegum crisis), but then technically, the real Dualis, which is merely another SUV, doesn’t transform. Way to get my hopes up with your false fecking advertising, Nissan. And the videos hosted on YouTube, that feature the Dualis skating around Japan’s busy metropolitan streets, don’t help either. Still, it certainly gives one something to look forward to.

The Dualis powered suit was apparently designed by Shoji Kawamori, the most overworked mecha designer in Japan. Good lord, man, wasn’t working on most of the Macross series / the Armored core series / GUNHED / Escaflowne / Eureka7 / Aquarion / the AIBO ERS-220 enough for you? When was the last time you slept, sometime in the Seventies??

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Moderns

typed for your pleasure on 29 January 2007, at 11.39 am

Sdtrk: ‘An American in Paris’ by Severed heads

When accumulating info/pics/facts/crap for my world-famous ‘This was the Future’ series, now and again, I’ll run across some neat bit of architectural or design anachronism, but it’s simply too modern to feature as a segment of that series. However, noteworthiness always deserves recognition, which is why they stuck stars to kids’ foreheads back in gradeschool. So here’s a couple of retro-future things that have a wee bit more emphasis on the future than the retro.

First off, the ‘“Oneself” Bathroom for Person who Lives Itself‘. I couldn’t have put it better myself, honestly.

Our world packed sewer, packed barriers. The Oneself project – a bathroom for person who lives itself. For it each wall spare and him necessary each square metre for selfrealization. There is no bathroom, there is simply wall.

And there is no Dana, only Zuul, for that matter. For those of you who don’t speak fractured English, basically it’s the component parts of a bathroom, secretly integrated into the wall of the bedroom. That bog in particular kinda reminds me of Mal Reynolds’ toilet onboard the Serenity. When your business is done, you just slide it back into the wall. Quite efficient!

Next up, the apartment building known as Suite Vollard, located in Curitiba, Brazil. Upon first glance, it seems like a regular, if somewhat chi-chi, resort hotel. But it has a secret feature — all of the 11 apartments of the building rotate. It’s as if someone saw Marina City, and decided to strap engines to its infrastructure.


Does whimsical pipe-organ music play when the flats are in
motion? It had better

From the interior of the Suite Vollard building, no landscape is fixed. With the mere pressing of a button, residents of each of the 11 apartments can have 360º panoramic view of the city.

Each apartment has its own independent engine system, which can be engaged with a remote control. A complete clockwise or counterclockwise 360º turn takes one hour and the system is equipped with a programming timer.

The apartments have 2885 ft and are surrounded by 323 ft of glass balconies that give access to all rooms through the doors, placed at every 90º. The central area of the apartment does not move in which the kitchen, bathrooms, maid bedroom, laundry area, and barbecue grill are located.
text taken from this site

All that, plus a bedroom for the maid, eh? Huh. Well, I suppose that if you’re living in a high-rise penthouse in Brazil that rotates, then having a maid is merely part and parcel.

When I was younger, I thought my ideal situation would be to buy an RV and live in it. I’d simply drive it to the lot of whatever workplace I was at and park it there for an extended period of time, and have a Vespa or a Lambretta to tool about the local roads on. As I grew older, a couple of realisations occured:
1) I began buying more and more space-consuming things
2) Having your home on the same lot as your workplace isn’t really conducive to skiving off work — not that I ever do that sort of thing, you understand
3) Riding a scooter during the Winter is probably not the best idea a person could have
Despite all of that, I might readopt my plan if I could afford one of these — a refitted London double decker bus that you can live in, courtesy of Double Decker Living. How fab is that?


Of course I’d paint a Union Jack on mine somewhere

On the outside it looks like an ordinary London double decker bus. But take a step inside and you will find a kitchen, shower, sitting room and five beds.

A fleet of Leyland Olympian buses that were retired from service two years ago have been given a new lease of life as the latest solution to the capital’s housing crisis.

A company called Double Decker Living has converted eight buses with private sleeping areas upstairs and living space downstairs.

[…] There are solar panels on the roof and recycling bins to make the buses as environmentally friendly as possible.

Kinda reminds me of one of comedian Steven Wright’s hoary Surrealist joke chestnuts: ‘I put my car key in my door lock by mistake, and when I turned it, the whole building started up.’ *pauses for added comic effect* ‘So I took it for a drive. A police officer stopped me and asked, “Where do you live?” I said, “Right here.”‘

And finally, two week-ends ago, Detroit was host once again to the North American International Auto Show; or as we just call it round here in the tri-county area, the Auto show. Every couple of years I try to catch it, as I like wandering round the Volkswagen and the MINI exhibits, even though the last couple of times, I haven’t been able to climb into a MINI, as there are too many damned people milling round. And it’s around that time that I remember why I hate crowds. Anyway, I missed the 2007 one, as I was skint — my paycheque was laughable, due to missing four out of five days because of the grippe — but I would’ve been there in a heartbeat had I known the Aero X by Saab was to be displayed there. Have you seen this thing? It… it is magnificent.


It also transforms into Flight Mode

Now I, much like any aesthete, love the concept of gull-wing car doors. But the Aero X features an entire canopy that lifts open to admit occupants. It also boasts an economically-friendly engine, the ability to go 0 – 60 mpg in 4.9 seconds, and some other bollocks, but I’m looking at those pics, and all I see is ‘sexatronic perspex green-illuminated dashboard’ and ‘opening fecking canopy that’s so awesome it’s awesomn‘. This is the result of European engineering that also develops aircraft in its spare time. Well done, Sweden!

Modern design: it’s not all rubbish!
Well, I think I’ve gotten that out of my system

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Compupers and techmology on May 16th, 2006


G-CANS: silly name, fab place

typed for your pleasure on 29 May 2006, at 10.50 pm

Sdtrk: ‘Floating Eloy / Baby James’ by Merzbow / Ladybird

Ahh, Japan. Seeing something like the G-CANS underground flood control system just proves that once again, the country is going out of its way to inject the very future itself into our current present, as per usual. Good job, Japan!


If you get lost, you’ll be found eventually. Just keep yelling

The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city (A serious problem for Tokyo during rainy-season and typhoon season). The underground waterway is the largest in the world and sports five 32m diameter, 65m deep concrete containment silos which are connected by 64 kilometers of tunnel sitting 50 meters beneath the surface.
from an article on boingboing.net

There’s a video on how it works as well. I remember first seeing this used as a set in ‘Ultraman: The Next’, and going oooh and aaah over it. After seeing it used in the live-action Tetsujin No.28 film I began to wonder if it was indeed a real place. And it is! Not only that, but G-CANS is apparently also free to visitors! Very savvy.

I’d love to see that system in action. From a vantage point above the water level, naturally


Compupers and techmology

typed for your pleasure on 16 May 2006, at 4.48 pm

Sdtrk: ‘Torture by roses’ by Death in June

Hrm. This is the Space Cube. It’s a personal computer.


Please do not ingest PC, unless you really want to

The Space Cube is the world’s smallest personal computer. The unbelievably minuscule cube (2 x 2 x 2.2 inch case) packs 300 MHz CPU and 64 MB of SDRAM. The Space Cube offers a healthy number of ports, including USB, Ethernet, flash memory, monitor port, Space wire, serial connection, and microphone. This micro PC runs on a Linux named Atom Linux.

And they said it couldn’t be done. In a decade or so, the Space Cube is going to be seen as being enormously outsized, but in the meantime, I’m thinking: this + RealDoll = Persocom. Mmmm. Or, at the very least, an improved version of Katsuya Matsumura’s custom PC cases..

Also, there’s this — the City Car concept, from Smart Cities, one of those utopian idea factories:


Rather like bowling balls in the ball return

One of the proposed designs for dense urban areas is a stackable car for two passengers. Vehicle Stacks are located throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility.

Don’t know how well this would do in the States *coughrampanttheftandvandalismcough* *coughnotbigenoughcough*, but it’s a really fab idea nevertheless.. When I first saw that pic, I was instantly reminded of the ‘elecar’ electric cars that people living in colonies in the UC Gundam universe use to get from place to place.
So does this mean that Mobile Suits are next in line for development??

thanx to Zip Gun for the City car link

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

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A grand idea / ‘Oh toh toh toh’ / It’s on the 11th

typed for your pleasure on 11 December 2005, at 10.51 pm

Sdtrk: ‘Just like honey’ by The Jesus and Mary Chain

I’ve just recently discovered another tiny Euro car to obsess over for the next couple of months: the Peugeot 1007. Upon first glance, it seems pretty bog-standard, by contemporary tiny Euro car standards. However, the vehicle’s construction contains a crucial, innovative difference, as witnessed here:

The doors? They slide open. They slide. Open. They slide open! To me, that makes about as much sense as, I dunno, breathing. They slide open! That’s one of those ‘shit, why didn’t they think of that years ago?’ type of revolutionary ideas, really.

Also! Simon of ‘Undercover in Japan’ has a link to a high-larious documentary about sushi and sushi-ya etiquette. Won’t you take my hand, and join me in watching it?

Also! Go wish MontiLee a Happy 33rd birthday, you bastards. It’s not too late

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Well, I think it’s newsworthy, Part II

typed for your pleasure on 27 October 2005, at 8.05 pm

Sdtrk: ‘Kenkäneekerien nenäkekkerit’ by Mats Swan

This is a really fab idea, but I think they’ll need to install some really tight security measures for it, otherwise it’ll be A FESTIVAL OF THEFT.

Mazda Ditches Cylinder Locks in Favor of USB Key

By Scott Clark on Tuesday 30 August 2005, 8:24 PM

I never thought it’d be possible, but Mazda of all companies has embraced the inner geek inside me to make me want to run out and test drive one of their cars. Thankfully this is only a concept car for now, and my Honda is still running strong.

Designed for “net-savvy youngsters”, the new concept hatchback, Mazda Sassou, ditches the traditional cylinder lock key system in favor of USB flash drives. In addition to starting the engine, the flash drives can be used to transfer driving directions for long trips along with the latest songs for the day to the Sassou’s internal hard drive.

Just be sure to vent the windows though, it looks like the extra large sunroof would literally cook any electronics you have in the car during your lunch break.

Mazda also has to refine the technology, so that people over the age of 35 can use it. You know.. all those individuals out there who aren’t exactly ‘tech savvy’. Which is probably half the US population. JOE SIX-PACK: ‘Why do they call it a key drive, if it ain’t look like a key??’
I can see this car doing well in Japan, of course, and maybe Europe, but unfortunately not so much in the U.S and A. Which is a shame, cos it’s a pretty ace-looking car..

More about the Mazda Sassou here

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Not as fun, but certainly safer, than a fireman’s axe

typed for your pleasure on 31 October 2004, at 7.49 pm

If this thing actually works, I am so ordering one. From the press release:

New Key chain Tech Gadget Turns Off Any Television

What: TV-B-Gone™ universal remote controls, is an amazing small handheld new gadget that has the power to turn off virtually any television set.
How: TV-B-Gone™ universal remote controls generates the ‘off’ power codes for every model of US, Asian and European televisions. Hangs discreetly on a keychain.
Why: Because a tv that is powered on is like second-hand smoke. It fills the room with its sights and sounds, impinging on everyone in the room. If someone were smoking a cigar in a public place, you would probably leave or ask them to extinguish it. With TV-B-Gone™, you have the power to turn any tv off, with others’ approval.

Thumbs up for subversive-but-practical technology!

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

This was the Future, Vol.35 on August 16th, 2007

O, don't get my hopes up on September 11th, 2008


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