Last Straw » Design

My one criticism of Inception: the architecture

Christiaan — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:38:33 +0000

You're a talented architect, one of the best. You're in a deep dream ("Limbo") where your mind can make drastic alterations of any kind. The only limitation is your imagination. You're effectively a god. And you choose to create a stark 20th century inspired skyscraper world to live in?

Apple’s attention to detail

Christiaan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:13:51 +0000

People often falsely assume I advocate and use Apple products because I think they're trendy or because I'm some kind of gadget freak.

The truth is our world is awash with badly designed, badly crafted things. Apple is one of the few havens in a sea of people and organisations that don't give a fuck about the details. Attention to detail is why I use Apple products:

In July 2002, Apple filed a patent for a “Breathing Status LED Indicator” …They described it as a “blinking effect of the sleep-mode indicator in accordance with the present invention mimics the rhythm of breathing which is psychologically appealing.”

The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell laptop had a similar feature but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise—not very indicative of something in sleep-mode.

It’s interesting how a lot of companies try to copy Apple but never seem to get it right. This is yet another example of Apple’s obsessive attention to detail.

A better UK power plug

Christiaan — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:45:00 +0000

Student design for a folding UK power plug. Clever.

Time lapse of building going up

Christiaan — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:21:20 +0000

This is a time lapse I put together of a residential project I worked on in London. The photos were taken over a period of two and half years with various cameras by a friend from his canal boat moored in the adjacent basin. I cropped and straightened each photo manually before stitching them together to form the video.

Continue reading for the video.

Last Straw’s new design and a note to email subscribers

Christiaan — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:33:36 +0000

As some of you may have noticed I've been having a bit of a tidy up around here recently. Last Straw now has a classy new grid-based design called Basic Maths by Khoi Vinh. I've also blown a few cobwebs out of the backend involving categories and whatnot. All of which should make browsing my rants endless pearls of wisdom infinitely more pleasurable. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a new photo/video gallery too.

As email subscribers will have already noticed I've also overhauled the mailing list system, switching to MailChimp. Note that this will now come as a weekly digest instead of individual emails.

While switching I was reminded of how many friends and family I've surreptitiously subscribed over the years. Not the most polite thing to do. Honestly, unless you really want to receive these emails, please unsubscribe. There are other more modern ways to follow a blog these days anyway.

In the mean time you might like to check out another website overhaul I've been working on recently.

Why so many things are badly designed

Christiaan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:43:29 +0000

Jason Snell of Macworld on why Apple excels at product design: Apple excels at creating products that the general public likes because the company is driven by design, not by engineering. Most tech products—heck, most products in general—aren’t as good as they can be because they’re put together by the people with the technical knowledge…