Replicating Rapid Prototyping Machine
The promise of advanced fabrication technology that can copy itself is a truly remarkable concept with far reaching implications.
The promise of advanced fabrication technology that can copy itself is a truly remarkable concept with far reaching implications.
It’s that time of year when the trees turn golden, the sun stays close to the horizon and the early morning mist rolls down off the hills. That’s right folks, autumn is here again (fall for our American friends). The days are getting shorter and the nights longer and you’re likely to spend more time indoors than out.
In short, it’s the perfect time to “reboot” your weblog with a new design or feature set. Why not take inspiration from nature’s glorious autumnal colours and refresh your website. To help you along the way, I’ve put together this little list of website design “thingies” that you might want to integrate into an autumn reboot.
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I’ve made some (more) tweaks to the design of this website over the past few days. They’re mostly little things and, unless you visit the site often, you probably wouldn’t notice them unless I were to point them out. In fact, in comparing the design today with the template I relaunched with on the 28th June, 2008, it’s amazing to see just how much the design has changed — while still sharing a common overall aesthetic. But then this is how web-design should be isn’t it? A website evolves with small, subtle, incremental changes, yet retains its “brand” by remaining true to its original design.
While I was applying the revisions I started thinking about web-design. I considered the current state of the art, how far we’ve come (I started building websites right back in the beginning when IBrowse on the Commodore Amiga really was cutting edge), standards compliance and the W3C, etc.
The catalyst for these thoughts was my adoption of a simple little CSS3 property known as border-radius, which is used to produce the RoundRects that, depending on which browser you’re using, may or may not be visible to you when you visit this website. If you’re using a Gecko or WebKit based browser, then you’ll see this website exactly as I intended - complete with RoundRects. With other browsers you’ll only see an approximation of the design I intended.
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Apple is one of the coolest brand names in technology, so no wonder their site should adhere to modern web design standards. Divs, classes, no tables, media types, ajax libraries, separated stylesheets, extensive code organization, interesting varying layouts, it’s all there for you to learn from.
I want to remodel my rather drab and cold computer workspace1 but I’m not quite sure what I want to do with the small amount of space my Macintosh lives in. And so I’ve spent a few hours browsing through workspace photos on Flickr for inspiration and, adopting ideas from a variety of home and office photographs, I think I’ll be able to create the perfect workspace for myself.
What follows is a gallery of those workspaces I found most appealing, with a concise commentary on what qualities appealed to me.
1. I love the simplicity and warmth of this workspace. The lighting here looks absolutely perfect for long hours in front of the computer. I think the desk lamps are gorgeous2 and the lack of visible cabling is very appealing.
Good user interfaces are crucial for good user experience. Ten recent developments in the field of user experience design are presented here. Most techniques may seem very futuristic, but some of them are already reality and in fact, they are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they can become ubiquitous in the next years.
Lenova has announced the ThinkPad W700, a laptop featuring a trio of snazzy features that are sure to impress designers, graphic artists, photographers and CAD artists. The W700 has an integral Wacom tablet, a professional grade, WUXGA display with 400 nit brightness and an auto colour-calibration sensor that allows for on-the-fly adjustments. If that’s not enough to make you salivate then notice the separate numerical keypad and the fingerprint scanner - sweet!
The machine also boasts some fairly impressive specifications including:
But what a butt-ugly machine it is. I mean seriously, can’t Jonathan Ive be cloned and installed in every hardware designers shop? I’d hate to have to type on that thing - the keyboard looks to be awkwardly placed relative to the front edge of the case.
Probably the most expensive museum of modern art in the world, at least if you look at the production costs. And like many other architectural masterpieces this one is going to be located in Dubai.
Photoshop Tutorial - Learn how to create a stunning sunburst and silhouette wallpaper.