I'd definitely be interested in talking further, tweet me @chriscbourke - I've been toying with a few ideas for a curated marketplace for international orders, i'll run them by you if you're interested!
85 karma · joined September 15, 2013
Lingerer.
I use chrome with auto tranlation turned on, i first translate my keywords in google translate and then paste these into the taobao to search.
I'd buy more things if i could find a reliable third party onseller to deal with - the last one was an incredible ripoff when it came to posting ground freight.
If anyone has a reliable onseller, im open to suggestions!
I really was hoping to be earning a meagre passive income by now, but i'm searching for a second job.
Lesson learned!
As a designer working under an architect and having just completed an open office building for a 150+ employee financial firm[1] - i feel i have a pretty good handle on this subject. There a a couple key anecdotal design criteria that i'd like to address in relation to open offices that the report does not address.
Natural Light - Access to natural light
Artificial light - using the correct lighting for the task with the right output measured in lumens for the particular task.
Ventilation - Natural and sufficient HVAC Acoustics - Are proper acoustic absorbent materials being used.
Planning - has the space been thought out in a thorough way - is there a meaningful program to which the open office functions in both arrangement, flow and activities.
Psychology - Has there been effort to educate the staff about the new space and general systems in place to govern how it functions.
All of these points above can be easily planned for by hiring and adhering to the advice of design professionals like architects, electrical engineers, hydraulic engineers, acoustic consultants etc. Does this happen? In my experience - the answer is generally - no. Building offices and fitting thee out is an expensive exercise and time and time again i see clients willing to cut corners and forgo professional advice at the sake of saving a few thousand dollars. It may be that the ROI in terms of employee productivity could be significantly diminished due to a insignificant saving during the build phase.
I would agree in some respects that there are limitation to open office layouts - but that its due more to the ill-conceived notion that achieving an open office work environment is as easy throwing some workstation and humans into a cavernous space and expecting it to just work.
Moreover that is why indeed planners are moving away from open office and employing the newer philosophy of ABW (activity based working)[2].
[1]http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-street-...
[2]http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-activ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Burley_Griffin
These turn of the century architects lived at the birth of the affordable motor vehicle. To them the motor car was no doubt a symbol of the future and of marvelous connection with the world around them not unlike how I feel about the way I have seen the internet grow in my lifetime.
Canberra today - whilst still a beautiful city is too big for itself even with only a 0.5mil populous. The city is now too large in area and choked with congestion relying on buses as the only form of public transport. There is no longer anyway the city could feasibly afford to install any supplementary public transport like light rail.
The idea of a a dispersed city is idealistic, but a dense city is functional.
I fill it once every 2 weeks and get about 200km for $20AUD. I could probably get more but i can't help but strap it everywhere. It also takes less than a minute to fill the tank, and about the same to pay the cashier.
I can kind of see where they were going with the design - its harping back to classic designs of the 1950's - but its no Morgan http://www.morgan3wheeler.co.uk/desktopindex.html
I'm looking forward to disruption here!
There was also this one called "Peachy" on hackaday last year http://hackaday.com/2013/09/22/a-100-stereolithography-3d-pr...
edit: also here's the link to the HN discussion of this printer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6424132
"The laboratory sits among 15 acres of asbestos laden...."
I'm unsure what the regs are for asbestos removal in the US but here in Australia this is a far from trivial exercise and expensive. As in insanely expensive.
Refurbishment of old buildings is often more expensive than building a new one especially when the fabric and history of the building is so important. Architects will often carefully contemplate how to integrate new works within these building as period restoration can destroy the heritage of a building look tawdry and downright kitsch.
It also seems like a huge site at least from the survey depicted in the article. My view is that the 8 million would be lucky to pay for the landscaping and asbestos removal, and the fees or the planning consultants required.
This still leaves the building of a new museum, refurbishment and alterations to existing buildings not to mention the actual exhibits that are going to draw the customers in to customers in - who is going to pay to keep the museum open?
My modest approximation is somewhere closer to 30 million minimum.
I like the Kaleidoscope example as it breaks the mold on the typical screen shots showing with a MacBook wrapper type image.
I understand where you are coming from now. Can you suggest a good article for reading up on "gridless" responsive design?
I've just been looking at http://thatcoolguy.github.io/gridless-boilerplate/
It would be good to learn more about this philosophy.
"Discipline is a set of self imposed rules, parameters within which we operate. It is a bag of tools that allows us to design in a consistent manner from beginning to end. Discipline is also an attitude that provides us with the capacity of controlling our creative work so that it has continuity of intent throughout rather than fragmentation. Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibility."
Massimo Vignelli http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf
I think if we continue to use the term "Web Designer" then the use of grids is more than acceptable.
In postscript I will however admit that I am a complete html novice so perhaps your point is quite valid.
Interestingly in answer to your question i'm building an application in the non-developer space as a non developer. I work in the architecture industry & my app is aimed at providing architects, engineers, building contractors and other related fields with an easy way to send and receive drawings and files, and also keep track of revisions to those files. Effectively its a repo for architectural & engineering drawings. I came up with the idea by employing 37 Signals style "scratch your own itch" method. While searching for a solution to replace the tedium of sending through email and local filing that seems commonplace in the industry i found platforms that are similar available for very large scale construction (read 100m, 1b etc) works but didn't scale well enough to be a viable option (price-wise) for small scale to include projects in the order of 500k - 5m etc.
I think that we hear and talk about "scaling" in the start-up community but we often overlook the possibility of building apps that "scale down" features from a much larger successful software. These smaller apps could theoretically have an untapped access to consumers/businesses that are out-priced by larger software systems.
*Edited for clarity
This might also pique you interest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dQJBBklpQQ