Image via Wikipedia Although most people associate the word forensics with legal issues, usually criminal proceedings, the word actually has a broader meaning. In my opinion, the role of forensics in the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industry is to apply scholarly and/or scientific methodology and norms to understanding the underlying facts regarding the built environment. (See AECForensics: About.) During on-site inspections, we are looking at multiple conditions in exacting detail, collecting and analyzing tremendous amounts of data, and trying to distill the observations into something meaningful. Typically this means taking a lot of pictures and writing down lots of notes, filling in checklists, drawing on and annotating plans, details, etc. I personally have around 10 pieces of paper I’m working off of at a a single unit during visual inspections. Constant flipping back and forth through several pages, reviewing documents, making notes – it is easy to become distracted [Continue Reading...]

Image by oddsock via Flickr After a lot of wrangling of PHP, HTML, a tiny bit of JAVA, a little CSS, and redirecting some RSS, BLHill.net is now on a new server running the latest version of WordPress. WordPress 3.0 is a massive upgrade from the previous version. For me the most important part was merging of WPMU, or WordPress Multi-User, into the code base. This allowed me to set up one installation of WordPress to host all of my websites. I am only running a few sites right now, but plan to add more. Some people are running thousands of sites using a single WordPress installation including WordPress.com, which hosts over 100,000 blogs. Now let’s talk about whom this release is named after – Thelonious Monk. Thelonious Sphere Monk was a jazz pianist. But saying Monk was just a jazz pianist is like saying Steve Wozniak is just a [Continue Reading...]

Found this via @builders_pal… This is such a great idea! IDSA LiftPod Gold AwardCategory: Commercial & IndustrialDesign: Geoff Campbell and Jason Watson of JLG Industries (Australia); Hugh Stark, Frank Fornasari, Sandy McNeil, Mark Armstrong, and Oliver Kratzer The LiftPod is a personal, portable aerial work platform designed as an alternative to ladders. Powered by any standard 18-volt cordless drill or an optional power pack, the LiftPod gives users a 360-degree range of motion at a working height of up to 14 feet. It can be assembled by one person in less than 30 seconds, and because of its light weight, it can be moved around a job site by a single person. via images.businessweek.com

Wow. I wonder if there will ever be an iDefibrillator app… Brace yourselves for another Apple patent. It’s a weird and wacky one. It’s about using a “seamless” biometric heart rate monitor to identify iPhone users. Seriously. Your boom-tiddy-boom could unlock your iPhony-phone. Apple’s patent couldn’t be simpler: Part of the metal shell of an iPhone (can you say iPhone 2010, anyone?) is replaced by electronic sensors that detect the pulse of the user’s heart as it reaches the hand holding the phone. Peculiarities in each user’s heart patterns at the cardiac level, transmitted through their blood vessel network, result in a signature that the iPhone can then detect and use to identify particular persons. Thus logging in to your iPhone could become as easy as just picking the damn thing up and waiting a second or two (typically about the same time it would take to press unlock and [Continue Reading...]

Pat Metheny is a great guitarist, although stylistically he sometimes gets mired too much in that adult contemporary/smooth jazz ilk for my taste. I heard about the Orchestrion Project about a year ago and was very excited to see this: Youth Radio’s Charlie Foster says, “I saw an amazing concert Saturday night in Berkeley, where Pat Metheny jammed out with an orchestra of robots – playing pianos, vibraphones, a bass, a weird bouncing guitar machine and every kind of percussion instrument – all controlled by his guitar through solenoid triggers. It was insane steampunk and beautiful jazz.” via boingboing.net

CSS is a language that is used to provide styling to webpages. It is quite useful in that it separates the presentation or display of content from the content itself. Beyond that description it would be difficult for me to succinctly describe how CSS works. I got into learning about CSS after being exposed to the work of Eric Meyers. Eric was pushing the boundaries of CSS more than a decade ago by creating some very beautiful and intriguing designs all through HTML/XHTML and CSS. But what Mr. DeSandro has done is beyond comprehension – he has created a typeface using CSS. Practical? No. Amazing? Yes. This is like a Rube Goldberg approach to web design. Curtis is the name I’ve given for a family of geometric sans-serif fonts currently in development. Other incarnations exist as Fontstructions: Curtis Heavy and Curtis Pixel 14. This version takes form in CSS. All [Continue Reading...]

Many people lament about how unproductive the traditional “business meeting” is. One or more participants feel the need to assert their opinion at great length, or simply regurgitate the same information multiple times. Most of us sit passively through these time-wasting meetings because … well … I don’t know! But now you can have the facts on your side when you want to remind people that any particular meeting is wasting time. Just Bring TIM, the “Time is Money” meeting cost calculator and clock! Simply saunter (or swagger, if you prefer) into your next business meeting with TIM in your hand. Plop TIM down on the table, and press the plus or minus button to set the average hourly rate of all of the meeting’s attendees. Press the other plus or minus buttons to set the number of people attending the meeting. As soon as the meeting is called to [Continue Reading...]

Have you always wanted a plane but didn’t want the hassle of the whole hangar thing? Well, the folks at Icon are showing off their Icon A5, which has wings that fold up for convenient storage right next to the Bowflex you never use. The travel-writin’ peeps at Jaunted.com snapped some pics of the A5, which is currently on display at the JetBlue terminal at JFK International Airport in New York. This puppy will set you back $135,000, but you won’t have to worry about carry-on fees… mostly because you can’t bring more than 60 lbs of baggage on board. Go over to Jaunted to check out their gallery of the A5. Via: Consumerist I know it sounds silly, but $135,000 for a brand new airplane with this kind of innovation is actually a hell of a bargain. There are going to be a lot more of these as the [Continue Reading...]

Ernie Svenson is a pioneer in law with regards to the paperless office and e-Discovery. He practices and lives in New Orleans, where I believe it is required by law for all citizens to play an instrument. So he is also a guitar player. Here he describes how the magical iPad has helped with learning tunes. I’ve played guitar since I was about 15. These days I play an acoustic steel-string guitar—a Taylor 310-CE if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Mostly, I figure out songs that I like and then sing as I play. If I really like a song then I’ll spend the extra time memorizing the lyrics.  But that takes a lot of time so I don’t do that much anymore. Before I had the iPad my routine would be to Google the song name and add the word ‘lyrics’ or ‘chords’ (the latter if I was too [Continue Reading...]

This is great, but I wonder if the intended market is just for consumers or if it would fit in the workflow of a design professional as well? It would be really cool if it integrated with a BIM application for iPhone/iPad. Have you ever found yourself fumbling for words while trying to describe your vision for what you want your living room to look like? Are you the type who might tear a photo out of a magazine and hold it up to the wall to see how that look might work in your home? The “Window Shopping” iPhone app from Marvin Windows and Doors is for you. Via: Marketwire