Tag Archives: new zealand

Mar 10 2016

Kiwi Invents Ultimate Tiny House

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Playa-ready? The Skysphere can withstand Category 3 winds on its 50 ton movable base, and it delivers beers on command. Imagine a few of these techno treehouses together, joined up with rope bridges and ziplines, maybe a slide or two…

Palmerston North, where the first Skysphere was erected by farmer/inventor Jono Williams, is very close to official Burning Man regional Kiwiburn. Kia kaha cuz!

From collective-evolution

You have to see this to believe it. Situated amongst the hills of Palmerston North in New Zealand, The Skysphere is the brain child of Jono Williams, whose passion for mechanical engineering and design led him to construct the steel structure. When Jono began working on the project he didn’t even know how to weld, but along the way he learned all the skills needed to build his dream. Overall, he estimates that over 3000 hours were spent on its construction.

Being a typical Kiwi bloke, Jono has installed an automated beer dispenser. Yes that’s right, an automated beer dispenser! Whether you think this is over-the-top or not, you have to give it to Jono — he is definitely creative and has the ability to engineer a high spec treehouse that runs on solar power. He had a vision and simply decided make it a reality: he just modelled it on a computer, did some Googling, and built it. It was that simple.

Built to withstand an 8.5 earthquake and 200 kilometre an hour winds, Jono’s Skysphere even has a ‘Zombie Mode’ built into it, just in case things really hit the fan. And absolutely everything is automated, from the lights and doors to the fingerprint reader. Unfortunately, if you are Jono’s 251st friend you won’t get inside, as his fingerprint reader can only account for 250 people! Jono controls everything, from working out how much power he has generated from the solar panels mounted on the roof, to the level of lighting, to his entertainment system, all run by an app. To top it off, this fully transportable high tech treehouse has a star view platform which gives Jono and his 250 friends access to the universe and a spectacular night time vista

[Source: collective evolution]

This is the sort of thing we have to do in New Zealand, to keep the orcs out.

Image: My Photo journeys / Flickr CC BY 2.0

Image: My Photo journeys / Flickr CC BY 2.0

Dec 12 2014
Video

See The Music

The best thing about science is that to the uninitiated, it can look like magic

Nigel Stanford from my home town of Wellington, New Zealand, presents Cymatics. It’s spectacular.

thank you 🙂 it was a lot of work, I’m glad that people like it

His double album is called Solar Echoes.

From Nigel’s blog:

Nigel Stanford

Nigel Stanford

The most unusual part of making Cymatics was the fact that the music was written after the video was filmed.

In 1999 I watched a documentary on ‘Synesthesia‘ – a disorder that effects the audio and visual functions of the brain. People with the disorder hear a sound when they see bright colors, or see a color when they hear various sounds. I don’t have it (I don’t think), but I have always felt that bass frequencies are red, and treble frequencies are white.

This got me thinking that it would be cool to make a music video where every time a sound plays, you see a corresponding visual element. Many years later, I saw some videos about Cymatics – the science of visualizing audio frequencies, and the idea for the video was born.

In 2013, I approached my friend Shahir Daud, a talented film director working in New York, and asked him if he was interested in collaborating on the video with me. I don’t think he really knew what I was talking about, but happily he said yes, and in July 2013 we started researching the experiments and buying bits and pieces online.

Read more here.

Cinematographer Timur Civan also discusses filming the video here.