Blogs

Yesterday we enjoyed an afternoon at the Oakland Museum of California. Just like most things Oakland, most of the Bay Area only vaguely knows about it and has never been there. And, like most things Oakland, it's awesomely great.

First off, they have great shows. The current one is no exception, it's called 'The Birth of the Cool'. It's all about the pivotal role California-based artists and designers played in the late-fifties early-sixties, when the whole concept of 'cool' came into being. It's a wonderfully arranged show with many original pieces from many famous Californians, the Eames included (of course). Had no idea that they designed a line of speakers (which looked awesome). The second half of the show is called 'Cool Remixed' and it's a celebration of current youth culture and art in the Bay Area. They are having a big event on July 11th as well, with bands and artists and all sorts of cool stuff.

Thanks to the case of Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International, a group called public.resource.org has been posting various codes online for free, including all of the California 2007 Codes.

This is awesome news! Autodesk just bought Ecotect. Ecotect is a nice modeling & analysis tool for building designers and Architects.

Buildings consume something like 40% of the energy produced. So even making a building 10% more efficient has a huge effect. Also, by being able to do real analysis of a design, it's possible to predict and counter problems that might arise in heat gain, microclimates, acoustic issues, and a lot more. This is exactly what Ecotect addresses, and even makes assessable to rank-and-file designers.

However, it's always been a bit of pain to use Ecotect, for it required some redundant re-modeling of a project. You couldn't just dump out your BIM model from Revit, import it into Ecotect, and expect to get good results. While the latest beta of Ecotect supports gbXML, and it works, it's not a complete solution. Now with Autodesk buying Ecotect, we're hoping for a future where it will be trivial to take one's Revit project, and to test if our design really works the way we think it does.

I love twitter, it's like IM'ing with the whole world. Because we can

When you run a printing shop, you have a lot of paper.
And if you are Hello!Lucky, you also have beautifully amazing old printing presses that are probably heavier than a car!

We have recently had the wonderful opportunity of working with Hello!Lucky to make different paper storage elements for their new office in downtown San Francisco.
And of course, a print shop this cool cannot just have any old storage units to house their mass amounts of paper, cards and stationary..... they must have beautiful storage.
And thus we were put to the test.
^_^

We were invited to be on a panel at this year's Maker Faire concerning 'Maker couples' or in other words couples that work together creatively in their own businesses. We were joined by our wonderful friends over at Instructables, Eric and Christy, and the panel was held by Heather Gold of the Heather Gold Show. Luckily for us it was live-streamed and captured to the interwebs!

We get a lot of friends and folks asking us about how we got started. And we know a lot of folks through the Maker Faire that would love to turn Pro. I thought I'd jot down the six big things that I see as being key elements to getting started. I hope they help, and would love to hear more from other folks!

So this happened a little while ago, and we've just now gotten around to blogging about it due to the move and all, but one of our beloved clients just went Beta with their new game. Well, it's actually many games, and a platform for making more games, as well as a lot of other fun stuff. It's called Whirled, and it's from the creative folks at Three Rings!

We make stuff. And as such, we buy a lot of tools, and do a fair amount of tool research. It's one of the more fun bits of being a Design-Build Studio instead of just a regular old design firm! And while the robot does most of the work, and our trusty Apple laptops never leave our sides, there are a fair amount of smaller hand tools that we couldn't live without.

Fine German Enginnering doesn't just apply to cars.....

A bit over due- as this has been up for a while. But here you go anyway....
Because We Can on the Oddistry.com show for Maker Faire!

Once again, showing off what fun Maker Faire was this year.

You see us in the middle... so you'll have to watch the whole thing. ^_^