Car bed

This relates to design because it's about the importance of DOING as much as planning, thinking, drawing.

I've had on my mind for a while to buy a Berlingo van (or similar)

And to drive from Ireland to Wales and have a wonderful Amdro Jumpkit installed so the wee van could be a camper van. Somewhere to sleep in but small enough to be (almost) mistaken for a car.

The Amdro is designed, invented, manufacted by Iwan Lloyd Roberts by the company he has built up in Wales. It's great to support designers like this. There are copies of the Amdro jump kit doing the rounds too - the idea has taken off. 

But a conversation with a flatmate who works as a panel beater and is around cars and vans put me off a bit... because he talked about VAT on vans and DoE tests and all manner of complications.

I don't know how right he is but it got me thinking.... I should work with what I've got. Which is a 2001 Toyota Corolla.

That pic is not my car... but my car is a three-door! So it's tricky to maneuver in and out!

I found some videos. Some about people permanently living in their cars :(

So I took some measurements of my car with the passenger seat down.

 And then worked on a design

I needed:

18mm plywood (in two sections so I could fold it into the boot)

Hinges

For a mattress, I have a Thai Kapok mattress

For support under my head (between the passenger seat and the back seat), I used Ikea Adils table legs - the holder is peranently screwed to the plywood and the legs can be twisted on when needed.

And at my feet, I rested the plywood on a box, Ikea again: Samla (Width: 56 cm; Depth: 39 cm

Height: 28 cm; Volume: 45 l)

There is a lack of support, however, in the middle of the bed. I had to use pillows here (4 of them!) under the plywood. This still needs to be resolved. It probably is the biggest issue in designing a car bed - the distance that must be spanned.

So I've slept in it and it works! Comfy enough. With duvet and pillow proper bed-like. It offers great freedom to just head off and not be worried about having nowhere to stay! I can visit friends who live on smallholdings and farms with nowhere to put me up.

The condensation issue is a bit crazy, loads of moisture generated overnight even with the window a bit open.

So the message from this post is... Go ahead and do it!

Paper Geodesic Dome

I used two sources when building my paper geodesic dome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym1388CcwuQ&t=176s
http://makezine.com/2008/02/29/how-to-make-a-geodesic-do/

The YouTube video inspired me to make a dome from paper and gave some tips on how and the diagrams on makezine were brill.

This is a 2V dome. That means there are two different strut lengths. I made them from yellow and white paper so I could see the pattern. One strut length is 88.3% the length of the other.

Sparks Joy decluttering flowchart

Based on my own experiences moving house and decluttering using the Marie Kondo method. The "does this spark joy" test really works for me.

Bilingualism and how it affects how we think of things

This is an example of how my brain works independently of language.
I was raised bilingually (Irish / English). I assume that my way of thinking of things has been influence by my bilingualism. I don't think in terms of words necessarily but, rather, in terms of things.
For example...
I wanted to describe my diary/notebook, how it looked. Here is a picture of it:

"it's black with an orange...[?]..."

I couldn't think of the word.

"Rib?" Is it black with an orange rib?

I knew that was wrong.

I could picture this bone-like thing. And was trying to think of the English word for it. Rib was wrong. Bone? A part of the body? No it wasn't a "back" because it was a kind of straight line bone the entire length of the body (well not quite entire length of the body but length of torso anyway).

Spine!

I don't know if this is due to bilingualism; if bilingual people think like this. That our brains our geared more towards context and objects and ideas than words...? The look of it, the feel of it, the "it" of it more than the word. So that's what I was doing, searching for the English word that fitted the "it-ness" or the "thing" that I had in mind.

As designers, involved with things and objects, I think it's important not to get too caught up with words. Not to be anglo-centred. Or indeed any-language-centred.

Ivar v Hejne

I've moved house 6 or so times in the past two years. When I was moving first, I needed to buy shelving. I knew that it was likely I'd be moving again so the shelves I bought had to be capable of moving with me! And boy, was I right about moving again...!
I dismissed the idea of buying Ikea Billy shelving - bookshelf units that seemed permanent once built. And bulky to move.
So I narrowed the choice down to Ikea Ivar or Ikea Hejne.

Hejne was sooo much cheaper. And they won me over. I bought three Hejne units and 1 Ivar (for testing purposes!). And what am I left with? 0 Hejne + many more Ivars that I've bought over the years.
I didn't like Hejne at all. They were flimsy and cheap. No choice in height. Supposed to be adjustable but really the adjustable heights were so wide apart that the options were limited. I think there was a deep/narrow shelf depth option. I used them both in my utility room and in my sitting room. They didn't look well in the sitting room, the books were never the right scale on the shelves. The utility room was a bit scary cos the shelves didn't feel sturdy enough for all the paint and tools piled on, but then I didn't attach the shelves to a wall which would have provided sturdiness. I thought it would be handy to have four stand-alone posts at the corners that could be used on narrow or deep shelf depths but I think the stand-alone posts caused some of the wobbliness and lack in firmness.

Whereas, Ivar, I love. Very easy to deconstruct and reconstruct. Easy to move (well, with a big car for the super-tall side posts!).
In order to change the shelf heights of Hejne, the unit had to be moved away from the wall to access the allen key screws at the back (and an allen key had to be located) whereas with Ivar, the pins can be pulled out of the holes and the shelf heights adjusted without moving the shelving unit.
Dunno if I'll have them forever and ever, if they'll last *that* long. But they've lastest the 6 moves so far and there's more moves on the horizon.

Moon-reactive street-light

These winter months, I am walking home in darkness from college. There is one particular patch on my walk which is quite precarious as it is outside a building site. The rest of my route is well-lit. So I particularly notice when the moon is out because a full, bright moon makes this section of my walk easy to navigate.

Streetlights can turn on/off in daylight when they are not needed. Why couldn't streetlights turn off at night time too - on those nights that are illuminated by the moon? How much energy would be saved? Surely a minimum of 12 nights per year, i.e. 1/40th. But every watt of energy saved is a drop of oil still in the ground or an ounce less carbon in the atmosphere, eh?

So for the purposes of this blog, I did a bit of googling.
"Lunar-resonant streetlights". They exist!
 Designed by Civil Twilight Design Collective. The lamps use led bulbs and respond to moonlight, dimming according to the level of lunar brightness.
A book reference which may potentially provide info on calculations etc: Light and Color in the Outdoors By Marcel Minnaert

Size, scale: earphones

How and why do some things get used and work... and others don't?
The latest example of this in my life is earphones.
I got a gift of these large pink earphones for Christmas a few years ago (not these ones but similar).

And since I started walking to college last September, I used them nearly every day. Apart from the fact that they blocked out the sound of traffic and were comfortable, the size of them meant that I found them in the mornings, stored them in my college locker during the day, and saw them again in the evening to remember to bring them with me on the walk home.

But they broke. Dunno how. The sound stopped working.

So I sourced a wee pair of earbuds that I had lying around.

Disaster.

The size and scale of the earbuds in comparison with the large pink headphones meant that I was always leaving them behind, putting them in pockets, losing them behind things in my locker. They weren't effective in my life!

I think it's interesting regarding design and intuitive design. And designed objects that get used.