We veteran road warriors know the drill: go thru security, then hunt for a power outlet to recharge our computer at as we wait for our flight. This often involves scouting the terminal halls hoping to find the occasional wall socket intended for the janitor’s vacuum cleaner, hoping there would be a vacant chair near it. Of course, these are scarce, and as likely as not to be taken by a fellow traveler.

But on my recent trip to Boston I saw a much different approach to our problem. At Logan International airport, there are rows of seats at each gate with power outlets built right into them – lots of outlets, enough for all of us business travelers – and for those serene kids with iPods and ear buds…

Note the variety of sockets – 110VAC, 5VDC via USB… These guys have thought of everything! Add the hassle-free WiFi they have, and you have the most notebook-friendly airport terminal I’ve ever seen.

Wayda go, Logan!

I was trying to find a parking spot in the parking garage under the Ramat Aviv shopping mall in Tel Aviv; this is a difficult task much of the time. But it was made very much easier because I discovered they have a truly wonderful system.

What you see here is that over each space they have a rod coming out from the ceiling with a lamp at its tip. A red light means the space is occupied; vacant spaces have a green light. So, as you drive around the claustrophobic maze you can see from far away where there is a free spot (and rush to get to it first!).  Simple and ingenious!

As you see in the photo above, all spaces in sight are taken… so did I find a spot? indeed I have… as you can see in the next photo (at mid-left), the occasional green light does materialize!

And now, a tip of the hat to a nifty solution to the oldest design problem of them all: how do you spread your genes?

I was taking a shortcut through an overgrown field and ended up with a load of seeds stuck to my socks and shoelaces. When I sat down to pluck them out, I found there were two models: the smaller (some 5 mm long) “fuzzy” seeds (right in the photo) actually had many tiny thorns that did the job; but the larger seeds (up to 9 mm in length) were really impressive, each sporting long, needle-sharp spines all over. I wish I had a good stereo microscope to give you better detail, but you can get the idea from the photos below.

So what? So nothing, I guess, except that being an engineer I had to stop and admire the effectiveness of these designs.

And here is another look:

Makes you feel kinda special, to think that these plants would go to all this trouble to evolve seeds that stick like leeches to your socks!

We all know the usual “Private Parking” no-parking signs: stark red and white, with wording in fat letters forming threats of the sorry fate – towing, usually – awaiting violators. They’re designed to jar and scare the thoughtless driver. Nothing pretty about these signs, and usually that’s exactly the intent of their owners.

But  here you see a sign I saw in Jerusalem on the wall of a house, next to its private parking area. It too says “Private parking – unauthorized vehicles will be towed”. But it does it in a much more friendly way… because of the little rose engraved between the lines. No idea who had this strange idea. Perhaps the owner likes flowers, as attested to by the bed of geraniums right under the sign? I can’t recall ever seeing  a sign forbidding anything that left me in a cheerful mood, but this one  certainly did.

Here is a brass Hanukkiah, a 9-candle Hanukkah lamp, that we got in the seventies. It was made by Maskit, the pioneering maker of folklore-inspired clothing and art items in Israel’s early years.

It can accept candles or oil, and is as lovely as it is functional. However, what gets it a place in my design blog is the seemingly abstract pattern on its back plane. We’ve had it in our living room for some years before it suddenly hit me that this was not just an abstract shape. Do you see what it is?

What gave it away, for me, was the butts of the two lions, sticking up in the air. Suddenly I realized that I was seeing a traditional decorative pattern familiar in Judaica art, especially on Hanukkah lamps and on decorations on the Torah Ark in a synagogue: the two lions guarding the tablets of the law. You can see them in the two examples below:

Image source

Image source

The overlay below will help you see it, and then it’s obvious; but what I really admire in this piece is how the artist managed to capture so exquisitely well, in just a few lines, the anatomy of the two lions. Good job!

The 65 km trip from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv used to take two days on a donkey from biblical days to the 20th century. Then it went down to 3 hours by car in the fifties, then 2 hours, and finally below 60 minutes on the Highway 1 six-lane freeway. Then people bought more cars, and we’re back to 2 hours in the rush hour…

Enter the Fast Lane, which opened last week. This is an added lane on the last 13 km before Tel Aviv. It is open for free to car pools and public transport, and has a Park-and-Ride facility to boot. And all this is funded by tolls collected from the rest of us if we choose to use it.

But what happens in the rush hour, when everyone might want to use the new lane, bringing it to a standstill?

This is where the ingenuity shows. The toll is variable: it is posted on a large electronic sign ahead of the on ramp. When demand is low, it’s a reasonable 7 Shekels (about $2).  When the lane fills up, it grows gradually up to a whopping 75 Shekels – more than enough to deter most drivers. The parameter defining the price is the speed of traffic flow in the fast lane itself, which is measured automatically at  any moment; by using this to set the cost, a minimum speed of 70 kph is guaranteed by the company running the lane.

Here is the sign – in addition to a 7 Shekel price, it informs that traffic ahead  is flowing (hence the low toll).

To an engineer, this is an obvious application of negative feedback to control a system; but it is rare to see such an elegant application of this concept where something as unpredictable as traffic congestion is controlled by a feedback loop incorporating automatic sensors and the trade-off between the factors of human impatience and human parsimony…

I was in an appliance store and noticed a stack of boxes containing Kenwood mixers. All other appliances were in ugly white or brown cardboard boxes with some text printed on them; but these mixers were housed in sleek boxes like this:

This immediately rang a bell: I’ve seen this sort of super-trendy, designer-look packaging before. Of course I have: Apple Computer has been selling their cool products in them for some time! Looks like Apple’s influence on product design, which I’ve remarked on before, is extending to the packaging world too; and if you have any doubt, look at the name of the mixer near the top of the box. Used to be that mixers were called names like Kitchen Chef or Model M-2398A; but this one is called a kMix, no less! Small wonder that the box has the hallmarks of the packaging of an iPod, or an iPhone, as seen below!

Photo courtesy astroot, shared on flickr under CC license.

I spent a weekend with family in Neot Semadar (Shizafon), a Kibbutz in the Negev desert in the south of Israel. And I mean desert: he place is searing hot in the day, cold at night, and all around is sand, rock and the majestic desolation typical of deserts anywhere.

In Israel we’re used to transforming the desert, using irrigation to grow crops; but Neot Semadar went one step further. They built the Kibbutz pretty much with their own hands and to their own designs, and they applied an eco-friendly philosophy throughout. At the same time they gave free rein to imaginative artistic expression, with amazing results.

Most impressive is the arts and crafts center, lovingly constructed over more than a decade. Housing multiple art workshops, it combines an exuberant style reminiscent of Gaudi’s Barcelona works with a passive cooling system in the central tower (now nearing completion). Water will be sprayed at the top of this huge hollow chimney, and its evaporation will cool the air; the cold air sinks rapidly, and is spread throughout the building through underground conduits.

The arts and crafts center is finished with loving detail; everything is decorated with animal and abstract shapes, like here:

The same passive cooling concept is used throughout the Kibbutz; here is a typical family home, built of thick adobe (mud) bricks that keep the inside cool in the day and warm at night. The small tower above feeds the desert cooler system. This works quite well, I can attest.  The entire place is cooled with similar systems; not an energy-guzzling air conditioner is to be seen.

The Kibbutzniks here have managed to make the desert yield organic crops that let them produce and sell excellent dates and other fruits, as well as wine, cheese, and olive oil. Of course they use irrigation, and the main water reservoir for this is an artificial lake, complete with fish and lush green vegetation. The lake is fed with residual water from a nearby desalination plant, thereby recycling otherwise useless water to grow salinity-tolerant crops.

With so much sunshine, it was inevitable that solar energy be used – here is a tractor shed with photovoltaic cells covering its roof.

Lastly, a general view of the center of Neot Semadar. You see the arts and crafts center and a few of the residential homes, all with their funny cooling towers; and you see how improbably green it all is, against the background of the barren desert mountains.

For more and larger images, see my flickr photo set.

Information about Neot Semadar is on the Kibbutz’s web site.

People who design signs ought to be careful, because thoughtless signage can so easily lead to confusion…

Public restroom signs are a case in point, because people who see them make assumptions. For instance, as someone once pointed out, if one sees a WC sign of the opposite gender and the one for one’s own use is not next to it, one can go seek it at the opposite end of the same floor, or in the same position on the floor above or below… there is rarely a sign to tell you which is the case.

And here is another example in this domain: I saw the sign on the left near the door to a single restroom in a large building lobby. The immediate assumption of the user is that this is a handicapped-only room, and they go looking for the Gents’ or Ladies’ room. Which is not there, because this is the only restroom in the place. The intent of the sign, no doubt, was to indicate “here is the restroom, and it is wheelchair-enabled”.

The sign on the right is far better – it is again a single facility, but there is no mistaking the fact. Though it is interesting that the fellow on the left seems to be levitating…

I parked at an Intel plant in Israel, and was delighted to note some conveniently located parking spaces marked “Expecting mother”.

I just love this idea: employees carrying a next-generation employee inside certainly deserve this convenience. Besides, just because we provide parking for the handicapped (and very rightly so) doesn’t mean there aren’t other people in need of special consideration.

Well done, Intel!