The Right Hand Rules

When visiting the comfortable Bowery Hotel in New York recently, upon entering the lobby, I reflected on the situation of the handles on the double doors that opened to let me in. Both doors opened freely, yet one of the doors was clearly used more often; guess which one. I wondered about the other situations of regular use that reveal how we human beings erode our synthetic surrounds when we interact. Things close to us made of leather, like a wallet or a purse, are good examples of how objects soften, adapt, and engage us through a relationship. Forgiving wooden objects bear the scratches and stains incurred through our many foibles and slips. Yet computers rarely weather our interactions in a meaningful way.

Sure, there are the files upon files of hidden settings that fill up the system folder. And sure, we leave a messy desktop. But if need be, everything can be made entirely pristine with a simple hardware reset. It's why nowadays I often think about permanence and the computer's lack thereof.

Edited iPlug

Over the summer I vacationed in a house rental on Cape Cod with my family. I noticed this Apple iPod power brick left by a previous vacationer and marveled at the effectiveness of the DIY edit to correct the converter's fatal design flaw. The brick was designed so that the metal prongs could be easily popped out and replaced with the types of prongs used in other countries. The problem is, the prongs pop out too easily. If you really don't go anywhere else in the world, the tragedy of having the pluggy part slip off accidentally or remain stuck on the wall can be iDisastrous to your music-listening capability. Tape is certainly the champion material for any quick fix and probably deserves more variations than are available on the market today. In the same way that there is that wonderfully advanced rope from Squid Labs, it would be nice to have a similar advancement in the form of tape. I'm sure that many TR readers out there know of quite a few. Tape, anyone?

The Paperless Bathroom

I had seen the announcements for the Dyson Airblade and was looking forward to encountering one on a trip somewhere. For a British Design Museum exhibit last year, I selected a Dyson vacuum cleaner, so I am something of a fan of their work. They are sort of the Harley-Davidson of the cleaning industry in my mind.

Maybe five or six years ago, I saw similar high-velocity drying machines from Mitsubishi in Tokyo bathrooms, so I was curious if the Dyson was better. My verdict? Well, I dipped my hands in and pulled them out, expecting them to emerge completely dry. But I read the fine print, and it said I had to slowly remove my hands over a 12-second period. Twelve seconds? Gosh, that seemed long to me as my eyes spied over to the paper-towel dispenser that sat right next to the unit; as to why both systems were available a la Mac-guy/PC-guy TV commercial, it wasn't totally clear to me. I redipped my hands and cheated a bit by using only 10 seconds, but the experience was definitely a positive one.

In conclusion, I left the bathroom feeling more hip and sanitary than I usually do after an airport-lavatory visit. I think I will have to ask to put these up in the Media Lab most definitely.

Bionic Cracker

At a chic hotel in Minneapolis recently, I was perusing the hotel's impressive collection of contemporary artwork by Damien Hirst when my eyes rested upon these wonderful pewter crackers for sale. These crackers are of course inedible, although they come in clever easy-to-open packaging, which made the distance from package to stomach seem eerily close. Hirst's cracker is exactly the same physical scale as a regular cracker, and it has a wonderful heft in terms of its weight: each single silver cracker is about as heavy as an entire box of conventional crackers. The artwork has a hidden digital nature--a tracking-number scheme so that the owner's relationship with the object can be forever preserved on the Web. If you're looking for a good gift for a slightly off-kilter friend, I can't recommend a better item as food for thought about the nature of art in the digital and physical worlds.

Dots Dot

While visiting retail giant Target's headquarters in Minneapolis, I saw enough red concentric circles to last a lifetime. On chairs, carpets, walls, I saw red everywhere. This was my favorite--a wall with over a thousand individually cut red dots hand-glued to it.

Circle, Triangle, Square in the Summer

During my recent summer vacation on the Cape, I was confronted with the need to do something with my mind. In essence, I cheated the entire purpose of my beach-relaxation exercise to engage in a quest for the primary equation of visual space: circle, triangle, square. "Circle, triangle, square." I repeated this to myself while sifting through the sand for stones that fit into this geometric order.

• The circle never rests. It is free to go anywhere it pleases. Its continuous smoothness makes it a gentle form.
• The triangle is entirely awkward. It sits firmly on its base, but instills fear with its sharp points.
• The square is the king of bland. Nothing can disturb its purity of shape. It can cause no harm.

Circle, triangle, square. I found 100 triplets on the beach (and left them there, of course). How many can you find on your next vacation?