Stewart Design Doodles » Great Finds

Unraveling Bolero: Woman with degenerative brain disease paints music

Amy — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:50:00 +0000

I am fascinated by anything related to neurological disorders, creativity and art, and especially how the two relate to each other. Creativity is such a deep, fickle and mysterious thing… it’s no surprise that it changes significantly when your brain does.

NewScientist has posted a fascinating story about a woman who suffered from a neurodegenerative condition called primary progressive aphasia that took her speech and eventually her life. Unaware at first that she was suffering from this disease, former chemistry professor Anne Adams found her creativity suddenly flourishing. Check out this visual painting she did of Bolero:

Visual representation of each note in Ravel's Bolero

In Unravelling Boléro, each of the vertical figures represents a bar of music, with its height corresponding to volume, and the colour representing the pitch of Adams’ favourite note within the bar. Like the music, the theme repeats and builds until a change of colour to orange and pink, representing the key change that precedes Boléro’s dramatic conclusion. (excerpt)

Some patients with progressive aphasia develop a passion for art, a creative blurring of boundaries between the senses, and a fixation with repeating patterns. Adams became intrigued by her own disease, and after she lost her ability to speak, she found and presented to her neurologists a scientific article indicating that Ravel may have suffered from the very same disease!

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bbp bag Giveaway: Leave a comment to win this ergonomic hybrid laptop bag

Amy — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:09:42 +0000

Win the Lime Medium Tango Flow bag above! Leave a comment at the bottom of this review.

It dawned on me recently that I almost never go anywhere without my laptop and all its associated gear. I’m like a jockey (a very large jockey): I basically have to weigh in with my 15-pound saddle. I take it to the bookstore, the coffee shop, to our favorite local pub that has free wifi, on trips, and anywhere I know I’ll be able to do some work. And boy, does my back pay the price.

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Water-filled self-adjustable glasses: one inventor’s vision for the world’s poor

Amy — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:32:18 +0000

A Zulu man wearing adaptive glasses. Photograph: Michael Lewis

As a very nearsighted designer who depends on vision for my livelihood (I have 20/500 vision – if I were any more nearsighted, I’d be crosseyed) this article from the Guardian really made an impact on me. Josh Silver, professor of physics at Oxford University, has come up with a brilliantly simple solution to bring affordable vision to the more than 50% of the world’s population in need of corrected vision.

The premise is based on the fact that the thicker the lens, the stronger the magnification. Inside the tough outer lens is a water-filled sac which can be filled by the wearer to the optimal magnification level. There is no need for an optician; the wearer can adjust the fluid level, then seal it off by twisting a small screw.

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The iPod Touch: a great gift for technophobes, elderly and disabled

Amy — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:10:21 +0000

Last week we, bought an 8gb iPod Touch ($229 from Fry’s) for my Irish father-in-law’s upcoming 80th birthday. We loaded it with a bunch of his favorite old music, family photos and videos from the trips we’ve been on together. And we’re bringing it to our son’s wedding next month to add wedding photos, and a special video of everyone singing happy birthday and giving him birthday wishes.

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Conglomerfont: fun collaborative font project, free for download

Amy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:07:46 +0000

Download this free font from Bittbox, which I contributed the lower-case “a” to! It was a collaborative font project where designers from around the world were encouraged to hand-draw a letter, which Bittbox then assembled into a quirky, mish-mash font. Check out the list of contributors.

I’m not sure if or how I’d ever used this font in an actual job, but it does make for a pretty cool little hand-drawn alphabet to print out and put on a wall.

If you’re interested in submitting a letter for the next Conglomerfont project, check out www.bittbox.com.

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A novel and humanitarian use for text messaging

Amy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:53:24 +0000

Now this is a really interesting idea. A company called txteagle has developed a business that pays users in third world countries small amounts of money to do quick, small tasks via their cell phone—things like translating a phrase from their native language into English, recording words in their own language for the purposes of speech recognition software, or completing a short survey (1 or 2 questions) about their living habits for the purposes of heathcare research. For marketing research, companies can text users to respond about how they feel about the wording of a product or brand, in order to gauge public sentiment.

On the txteagle home page, they sum up their business model this way:

There are over 1.5 billion illiterate, mobile phone subscribers in developing In the developing world, many living on less than $3 a day. Corporations pay people to accomplish millions of simple text-based tasks. Txteagle enables these tasks to be completed via text message by ordinary people around the globe.

I’m baffled by a couple of things, though:

If they’re illiterate, how do they read the text message?
How do these poor folks, most of whom live on less than $5 a day and can hardly afford to buy food, afford a phone and phone service?

Txteagle seems to have good intentions, though. They have found a way for users to turn their idle minutes into profit. They also offer a way for users to transfer money earned to bank accounts, encouraging them to save. Or, they can take their earnings in the form of more minutes on their mobile phones.

Amazon has launched a program called Mechanical Turk that allows computer users in third world countries to do the same thing, but there are far fewer people with computers. Txteagle’s model of using text messages, making use of the larger infrastructure already there, sounds like a better idea.

What do you think? Is this a business model that will fly?

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Moo.com: Very cool, affordable way to get cards with your own custom designs!

Amy — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:31:07 +0000

I just found out about moo.com from Twitter, and boy, I am excited! Check this out: you can get your own custom set of 2-sided business cards, mini-cards (smaller than business cards), or a set of greeting cards, stickers, postcards or notecards… each one with a different piece of your own custom full-color art, for CHEAP!

The process for ordering is very slick. You can print your photos straight from your online photos at Flickr, Facebook, or several other places, or else you can upload them from your desktop. Your photos go on one side, with six lines of customizable text and a logo on the other. All you have to do is log on to Moo, enter your Flickr or Facebook information, and pick the photos you want to be printed. Nice.

They also offer a 100% recycled paper option.

I can think of a million ways to use these products. Like you see in this photo, real estate agents can print all their properties for sale. Companies can print cards with different featured products or services. Artists, photographers or agencies can use it to highlight different samples of their work. Check out moo.com and see what you think! I’ll post samples of the next project I do with Moo (I’ve already got something in mind…).

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Hilarious observations from a recovering diabetic

Amy — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 06:28:30 +0000

Ever wonder what it would be like to see Jack Handy in a Leave-it-to-Beaver episode directed by David Lynch?

A month ago when I started this blog, I encouraged my dad, who is retired and has too much time on his hands, to start writing one too. Dad loves to read and write (he has a Ph.D. in English literature) but most of all, he loves to tell funny stories, and to force other people to parrot back things he finds funny, ad nauseam. I have often retold my Dad’s humorisms to other people, and thought it would be a really cool idea to get him to write everything down in his own words. So I set him up a free wordpress.com account, showed him how to use Windows Live Writer, and let him go. Bigdaddytype2 is the remarkable result.

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Foie Grasm

Amy — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:33:37 +0000

Last week, my parents treated me to an amazing birthday dinner at Suze restaurant. For those of you (like me) who didn’t know about this gem of a restaurant, it’s a tiny New American bistro tucked in a shopping center off Northwest Highway and Midway in Dallas. It’s owned by chef Gilbert Garza and Lisa Garza, (Lisa, friends told me yesterday, is now in the final 3 on The Next Food Network Star). Also, we found out their excellent meats are supplied by one of our clients, Winn Meat Company.

Everything we ordered (lamb chops, parpadelle with veal, tenderloin and venison) was over-the-top outstanding: simply prepared dishes that were perfectly cooked and let the excellent ingredients take center stage. Check out this Guidelive review.

But the thing that really took our breath away was the lightly seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras with a cassis glaze (I think it had cherries in it too), caramelized and slightly crispy on the outside, and melt-in-your-mouth on the inside. I’m not going to say anything else for fear of this turning into a piece about food porn. But all I can say is, it’s by far the best foie gras any of us ever had, and we’ve been talking about it ever since.

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The most chic paella this side of Barcelona (and with really cool art, too)

Amy — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:18:08 +0000

Chic from Barcelona is now serving paella! I adore Spanish food, but for some reason, this wonderful little restaurant tucked in a shopping center at Forest and Preston always slips my mind. In fact, if it weren’t for the email I just got from them with the announcement of their new menu additions, it would’ve completely slipped from my radar. (Note to restaurateurs: send out regular emails to customers or you’re easily forgotten, especially in a restaurant-saturated city like Dallas!)

Barcelona Chic is best known for their secret rotisserie chicken recipe, served with wedges of apples. They have wonderful roasted asparagus and tapas, and they serve their gazpacho in tiny cups rather than bowls, which is a great idea for giving you a mouthful of fresh tomato goodness between courses. Check out this Dallas Observer review for more on the food.

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