randomosity

French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has unveiled a quite fascinating theory of pyramid construction. Apparently based on a decade of investigation, he is able to proposed a series of concepts proposing that internal construction ramps allowed for the efficient and remarkable construction of the Pyramid of Cheops. Additionally he demonstrates the most efficient means by which the pyramidium was raised along with the pyramid itself and the construction of the King’s chamber at the heart of the pyramid.

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This is an absolutely stunning piece on engineering! The Grand Canyon Skywalk is situated 3,800 feet above the canyon floor and is constructed of steel and 4 inch thick glass. It can support 800 people, but will be limited to 120. The floor is glass (that’s why I won’t be there - no chance - no how - but sure wish that I could). The structure protrudes 70 feet from the cliff side and is just cantilevered right out there. They seem to call it a bridge, but that seems rather much more metaphorical than what it in reality it is.
The structure was built, promoted and conceived by a Las Vegas promoter, but was given to the Hualapai nation in exchange for a profit sharing position. This will undoubtedly become one of the must see sightseers destinations, on height alone. It dwarfs the vista from any currently constructed man-made observation platform and I can only imagine the view and the surrounding natural wonder.
The structure opens to the public next week and also comprises an interpretation centre and shops. It will be very cool to start to see some real images of the views and the structure showing up online. The official site doesn’t seem to do much of a job of convincing one of how spectacular this structure really is.

Russos at LiveJournal posted an absolutely exquisite set of photographs (many HDR) of the deep underground in Moscow. Many relate to subway construction, repair and abandonment. Others seem to have deep subterranean natural caverns. Absolutely amazing views of things we never see. Thanks for EnglishRussia for catching these and doing some translation so English readers can appreciate what it is we are seeing. By the way, unless you read Russian (I will admit to not) use the English Russia link as it gives the full set as well. I am sure that they are available on the Russos site, but I cannot navigate the Cyrillic. There’s another set of photos at Russos which I don’t have translation for and sense it might even be an abandoned station. Interesting contrast to the abandoned TTC one that is expected to draw crowds.

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Have had a little dry spell in posting to the blog. Ironically this has been partially caused by excessive moisture. I was working away at home on Thursday evening when I heard this whooshing sound coming from my washroom. Thinking it was just the toilet doing its cycling, I actually jiggled the armature before realizing this was a lot louder sound than I had heard before. At this point I happened to glance out my front window to that there was a rather impressive river of water running down my front driveway. I wandered outside and my carport with car in it ressembled a car wash. The ere was water pouring from the ceiling, running down all the walls and streaming from the seams between drywall panels. I will admit to a bit of panic at this point.

I went back inside and manged to find the main water shut off control which I had never used before. This dealt with the strange whooshing sound, but the water sure contnued to pour. I decided to move the car out of the carport before anything else happened to it. This was complicated by a) getting to the car under the still cascading streams of water and b) the fact that it was about -26 and the water had really focussed on the windshield and frozen very quickly. Once I got the car to the street, things became a little more systematic. The water did start to abate some and I amanged to get a plumber eventually who ripped down chuncks of the ceiling and worked quickly in freezing temperatures to replace the burst pipe.

Unfortunately after repairing the pipe, all we had to seal the gapping recess in my ceiling, now exposed to the elements directly, was extra think plastic, whcih we fastened to at least keep the wind off of it. In the process however, the outside faucet probably got jarred and that line burst in the wall as well. Didn’t catch that one immediately though.

The next morning when I woke up there was this peculair banging. Didn’t think much of it until I came home later in the afternoon to find the backyard under water and a similar whooshing inside the house near where the faucet is located outside. That is when I finally found the independeent shut off control for water to the faucet. I had left the water running in the one bathroom all night to keep the exposed pipes from freezing.

So it’s a wet, wet time on in Hamilton right now.

Update: In case you are curious, managed to keep the new piped warm and a replacement ceiling on my carport was installed on Saturday. IT’ll do for now and had made the piped much more cozy. Backyard is now dry, except for a significant blanket of particled solid water (snow). I have a sense that the springtime will reveal more as to the other water break. For now, Shawn has hot water a warmer floor and things are flowing fine.

I finally got around to watching a documentary I had pvr’d a week or so ago. The Socialist, the Architect and the Twisted Tower documents (lyrically I might add) the design and construction of the Turning Tower in Malmo, Sweden. I am fascinated by the inspiration behind the design by Santiago Calatrava who sought to instill this kinetic human form to a 56 storey condominium office tower. The documentary itself (in a mixture of Spanish, Italian, English and Swedish) is a behind the scenes sort of production, but it captures Calatrava musing about such things as the passing of the seasons and the importance of customer service. The participants deal with attempts to change the design mid-construction to cut costs. The clients muse over the fact that the Architect is so sensitive to any criticism, and yet I was struck by how strangely accommodating he seems over what are huge alterations to the concept. Calatrava is pragmatic, hands-on and remarkably open - good line: ‘the blood will arrive into the sea’. The engineer-architect is an interesting mix. This is a fine production. The project in question is an intriguing one, and on which I have grown in appreciation for (the subtleties of the details) with this documentary. I am more familiar with his bridges and the Milwaukee Art Museum project although I have very often walked through his magnificent atrium in Toronto at BCE Place. Cost overruns led to the firing of Johnny Orback, the general manager part way through the project. Calatrava is frank and blatantly states his belief that Swedes are simply too used to only doing the comfortable thing and not being willing to risk or do visionary things as the GM did. Interesting reflection son Swedish culture.

I browsed around a bit to follow up on the project and came across this wonderful model of the tower itself that you can download in PDF form and assemble for yourself. Have fun! By the by, do check out the official site. Its a fascinating piece of interface design in itself.

This guy’s place puts me to shame. Even in my pre-move glory days, my collection was nowhere in the vicinity of this one. For those of you that don’t know I reduced my space when I made the move to Hamilton and at least half my collection of hardware went to the dump along with all the old issues of Macworld/MacUser/Publish! etc. as well as all the software boxes. I recall the first cull that I did of software that had collected in my basement. I had filled the basement entirely, with just a walkway down the middle and the boxes tended to collapse everynow and then. So one day, with my neighbours assistance I moved most of it out. We filled the garage to a depth of six feet or so and then started collapsing boxes and filling bigger boxes. Back in those days, garbage collection was also not limited to fixed amount and they thankfully took it all letting me use my driveway again…but I digress.

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As Google officially released new versions of SketchUp! and SketchUP! Pro, bringing them to a 6.0 release, it reminds me to recommend these to those intrigued by spatial visualisation. I have been using SketchUp for the last few years and when Google acquired @Last Software, there was the usual concern over how the product would develop. Presumably Google needed useful 3D mass modeling software for the work they were doing with another acquisition, KeyHole, that they were using for their new Map initiativeand eventually as the re badged GoogleEarth.

Since that point we have seen the wonderful integration of user contributed models to the Google Earth community and the possibilities of wonderful ‘minds forever voyaging’ in wonderful virtual 3D. The model warehouses implemented were quite cool and have prospered in the last year. With the 6.0 release there are a variety of useful steps forward, most primarily concerned with closer integration between products and the ability to create some useful offline print-based presentation materials as well.

***Special Note: With this release, Google has sponsored an education-focused contest Build Your Campus in 3D! Prize is an all expense trip to the Googleplex and lessons from the SketchUp! masters.***

The entry level product with most of the functionality is absolutely free and is possibly one of the most amazingly simple pieces of software to use. You can actually work in three dimensions in an incredibly freehand way. One of the most amazing things about the product (of a huge number) is the inclusion of jitter to the drawing tools. Instead of having lines end at perfect squares, and thus look machine rendered, lines appear freehand drawn, with user-defined amounts of jitter in the lines themselves. The effect must be seen to be appreciated. I found an immediate use for this capability is drawing charts for presentation, and using this freehand feature. What I believe these charts gain is a certain sense of familiarity/informality that is combined with a still perceived sense of precision. I would posit that this actually lends additional credibility to the presentation of data.

In conclusion I also wanted to mention that the user tutorials available at SketchUP! are some of the finest I know and they can have you up and creating amazing three dimensional buildings and other objects right away.

English Russia has posted some great footage of a Stalinist video showing the wonderful architectural rewards that the populace was about to reap. I was particularly impressed by what must have been a rather impressive technique for the time of putting the modeled or rendered structures into live video of the actual construction sites. I am not sure that I’m too won over by the nature of the designs themselves, suffice it to say they are certainly ‘grand’, in scale and scope scope. I’m not an expert on Soviet architectural achievement, but i don’t think I recognized any of the projects as ones that were actually constructed.

William Pye makes magic with water. Check out the wonderfully designed website which chronicles his life’s work. He is a sculptor who uses water as his medium. I was particularly struck by Sibirica Minor and Tavola, both of which use his spouts concept. I quite like the systematic way in which he traces various themes and concepts through a wonderfully eclectic collection of works. His vocabulary of water builds on this systemizing approach. Brilliant!

Just like those 3D laser printers that have been used to prototype product design, comes projects currently underway in England and the US, with houses being constructed by robots. Essentially, a meatl frame supports the robots in three dimensions, and they build the houses using liquid gypsum and concrete to form the walls, floors and roof. A house takes 24 hours to construct and is driven entirely from a console. basically, the robots function as three dimensional inkjets allowing for quite pheneomenal scope and creativity as well as efficiency. Moreover, the system gets past some of the human foibles of house construction. “If you ask a bricklayer to lay bricks in anything other than a straight line, you’ll run into problems,” said Soar. “But if you ask the robot to make a squiggly line it really doesn’t care.” There is an interview with Dr. Khosnevis one of the researchers behind the American efforts available.