Author: Nathan Zeldes

http://www.nzeldes.com

The future is here! Sort of…

December 9, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 3 Comments

I was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey again. Such a contrast to today’s special-effect-based space operas… an incredible movie by two giants, and not a bit of CGI in it, either (Sigh…)

Anyway, in the beginning Dr. Heywood arrives at the space station, and is subjected to a “Voice Print Identification” process as he enters a secure area. And it was in this very week that my bank had me record my voice for voice print ID, a new regulatory requirement for phone based transactions in this country.

Space Station

So, it is 2010, and the futuristic technology that Clarke and Kubrick envisioned in 1968 for use in 2001 is here. Unfortunately, that’s the least interesting prediction of this imaginative movie: we don’t have ubiquitous video telephony (Skype excluded), we don’t have a moon base, we don’t travel to Jupiter, and we don’t have an elegant space station that provides artificial gravity by rotating on its axis.

We do have a space station, true, but it looks like a pile of accreted floating junk… 🙁

Tomatoes and the laws of Thermodynamics

December 7, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 1 Comment

When we spent a while in the US in the eighties I was amazed and amused by the silly warning “serving suggestion” found on food packaging. I mean, what were they afraid of… a flood of lawsuits by people that opened the soup powder sachet and failed to extract a steaming soup tureen?…

Like many a silly idea this practice hit Israel a few years later, and I stopped noticing it – until this caught my eye:

Yakhin crushed tomatoes

This has the ubiquitous “Serving Suggestion” in fine print; what makes it unusual is two incongruities:

Slicing one tomato in half hardly counts as a serious serving suggestion.
These tomatoes would require a Magician to be served in this way. You see, the caption on the green stripe says “Crushed Tomatoes”!

I don’t expect the marketroids at Yakhin food products to be fluent in the laws of thermodynamics and entropy, but even they must know that you can serve a whole tomato by crushing it, but you can’t make a crushed tomato whole again.

Bon Appetit!

Apple world domination 2: Cool packaging!

November 18, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

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:

Kenwood mixer packaging

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.

Convergent evolution of nonsense monsters

November 9, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 1 Comment

The idea of a time traveler messing up the present by changing the past is a Sci-Fi staple, and is used to good advantage in Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story, “A sound of thunder”. Bradbury’s subtlety is sadly lost in the 2005 movie of the same name; here, silly looking monsters run amok in the perturbed present of the movie. If you haven’t watched it, you may wish to save your time for something better.

However, there is one monster that caught my attention. This is a 50-foot eel-like monster that happily chases the humans in the flooded subway tunnels. here are two shots of its head:

Eel monster from "A sound of thunder"

These photos don’t do the eel justice -this is one creature you don’t want to be close to – but what struck my associative imagination at once was the certainty that I’ve seen this face before!

The Jabberwock's head, detail from John Tenniel's illustration You can see where I’d met it in the image at right. This is a detail from John Tenniel’s illustration of the Jabberwock, the monster in Lewis Carroll’s immortal nonsense poem from the second Alice book, “Through the looking glass”. Here is the very same bulbous head on a long neck, with the four tentacles and the bulging eyes. Only the dentition is different.

So how did the Jabberwock and the Eel come to be so similar? I see two possibilities. Perhaps the movie’s effects people had seen the Tenniel classic and copied it, consciously or otherwise. But if they haven’t, we may have here a strange case of convergent evolution, where two unrelated creatures evolve in parallel under similar constraints and attain the same outcome. What parallel constraints, you ask? Well, in both cases the artists were striving to objectify nonsense. Carroll’s Jabberwock is part of a wonderful nonsense poem; whereas the movie, though far from wonderful, is itself a sorry piece of cinematic nonsense!

Creative eco-design at Kibbutz Neot Semadar

October 18, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

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 at Kibbutz Neot Semadar

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

The arts and crafts center at Kibbutz Neot Semadar - details

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.

House in Kibbutz Neot Semadar

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.

Artificial lake at Kibbutz Neot Semadar

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.

General view - Kibbutz Neot Semadar

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

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

Signage and confusion

October 4, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

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”.

Restroom Signs

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… 🙂

What positronic brains are really made of

September 22, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 2 Comments

There is a progression in the components of electronic computers. In the forties and fifties they were made of vacuum tubes; in the sixties, of transistors; in the seventies and later of increasingly dense silicon chips. And in the future, according to the vision of SciFi master Isaac Asimov, there will be positronic brains, small enough to fit in a robot’s skull, and they will be based on the interplay of positronic potentials in a platinum-iridium matrix. But wait… according to Hollywood, there will be something else.

Enter the 2004 movie “I, Robot”. This has its drawbacks, from the blatant product placement to the inevitable hyperactive hollywoodization of Asimov’s lovely book. Still, the CG robots are neat, and I enjoyed watching it – and something caught my eye about 66 minutes into the film. At that point, the robotic protagonist Sonny sketches its dream for the benefit of Will Smith, and it shuffles some loose notepaper on the lab workbench. The paper has the US Robotics letterhead, and is filled with scientific-looking schematics and stuff. But as one sheet of paper was uncovered for a second, I instinctively recognized a familiar symbol.

Triode tubes in a US Robotics schematic - as seen in the I, Robot movie

Here is the capture of that frame, and what I glimpsed are the three circles. They’re fuzzy enough, but to a techie of my generation they’re unmistakable: these are the symbols of triode vacuum tubes. In fact, the parts list above the schematic names some of them as “805 or equivalent”; the 805 was a hefty power amplifier triode, as specified here.

So – in 2035 they will have positronic brains of incredible miniaturization, and they will also make use of the clunky glass tubes that were in use during World War II. Right.

Whoever prepared the props for this scene must’ve grabbed the schematics and text from some old technical manual… and it can’t even be a matter of product placement, since these tubes are no longer in serious use. Just sloppiness…

Apple World Domination: the iPhone Refrigerator

September 20, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 1 Comment

Amcor A7BC refrigerator Apple Computer’s incredibly talented design team has had a major influence on the design of contemporary mobile electronics: just visit a cellular phone store and you’ll see how all the companies are scrambling to copy the iPhone’s sleek look and feel, both the hardware and the software.

Well, apparently this influence goes beyond mobile devices. Today I was at a home appliance store, and to my amazement I saw the apparition in this photo. It is, clearly, a refrigerator; but its front looks exactly like an iPhone, from the black glass of the doors to the brushed metal band around them.

Apple is certainly not stopping at dominating the cellphone and computer markets. One must wonder what will come next? iPhone-like cars? Or maybe iPad-like Buildings? 🙂

One key to great customer support

September 1, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

This morning my notebook’s battery died an ignominious death, and I had to hurriedly procure a new one. Not a good start for the day.

I called the vendor’s customer support center, and plodded through the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu, fully expecting a harrowing experience. Instead, I was routed to a service rep who gave me the information I needed (well, it was not rocket science after all) but did it in a manner that completely undid the bad mood I was in. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but she was cheerful, confident, friendly, and really conveyed the feeling that she was proud to be able to solve my problem, and solve it fast. Basically this woman was transmitting good service vibes, and the positive mood was contagious.

I suppose it goes to this particular rep’s character and style, but the difference from service reps I usually talk to anywhere was impressive. The others were polite (or not) and doing a job; this one was enjoying it. What a difference this can make in the user experience!

Preferred Parking for TNG!

August 29, 2010 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

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!