Continue reading »]]> Ladles and Jellyspoons,

We now have 23 people on the list of those involved with a few more probably on the way. For the sake of management and it being Early Days, I hereby declare the Brain Storm closed in an official sense to new entrants, as there is so much to do with those of you who have already joined. I can confirm now that the most productive ‘recruitment’ points were FurMorphed and Real Life.

This was not really intended to be a permanent-involvement volunteer/occasional-pay-possible recruitment process, but the Brain Storm was intended to be an intensive mash of ideas, and two of the earliest things brought up by it were that there is money available to donate into the cause already (to be sorted yet) and that the information about what we are doing must be secure, necessitating a password-protected system for those interested in contributing. Therefore, involvement necessarily became a more official thing. It doesn’t mean you have to take it too seriously, it’s still a spare-time project. You just get the username and password for when you do want to see what’s going on or want to contribute. (Which, I needn’t remind you, means I can remove or change a user’s details if they misuse their privilage and then re-plan the section they worked on so as not to be affectable by exposure of prior info – before anyone gets any negative-to-us-all ideas)

Those who have already ‘signed up’ have been sent induction emails and passwords, which means we now need to move on to the ‘getting organised’ phase and so that is where the most of my efforts will be focussed. If, however, you feel that you have worthwhile contributions to make, please get in touch. A PM or a post on here should eventually get my attention – but unlike during the Brain Storm, it might take me up to a week or possibly longer if very busy, to respond.

To those of you who have already joined, welcome. You have your links, so download them and see what you think so far.
Remember, the content on those links will be updated quite regularly, and may eventually be format-shifted if this is deemed necessary, possible without reducing security and cost-effective in order to make it easier to use for collaboration.

Together we will ensure Freedom Of Form.

Danfox Davies
Vulpine Designs Unlimited
Freedom Of Form: From a community closely knit.

Continue reading »]]> I believe:
All creative content is data.
Data shared does not have to be remade, so time is saved.
Data sharing equals progress.
Everything is made of smaller pieces that fit together in ways not unlike LEGO(R) bricks.
Freedom of speech and freedom of form.
Why the heck not?

A video somebody already did about this sort of thing
And another.

So, I was pondering this morning what the direction of this business should be and how it would get there. I have come to the realisation that in order to both satisfy my own rhetoric and to make any real progress from my current financial and social position, I must harness the power of the open source model. This means power to you folks. I’ll still be in charge and decide what gets in and what stays out, like Linus Torvalds with the Linux Kernel. But the openness will mean you can all be a part of something big, something new and amazing.

So, waffle aside, here’s what we’re going to do:
A brain storm, the likes of which have not been seen in a good long while, spread across many-a-website in which this business has its fingers dipped.
From this brain storm, will come the ideas necessary for Vulpine Designs Unlimited to put together the finance and resources necessary to be a major 3D design-orientated Freedom Of Form research and development firm, from which all manner of useful things can then be achieved. I’m talking about using stuff like Crowd Sourcing, Cloud Computing, 3D Printing, Open Source Software, Hardware, Wetware and Networks, in the most environmentally friendly ways possible with Renewables and Recycled materials, to achieve Freedom Of Form in everything from the genetics of a living being to the planning of future infrastructure projects, melding the geeky worlds of computing and biology with the creativity of the art communities and throwing the results in a direction that can benefit us all.

As a couple of non-exclusive examples:

Imagine: being able to decide exactly (within the limits of what Genetics and so forth can do) what form you will take, what your special abilities will be and who you present yourself as in image and ability to the outside world. Imagine being able to control your own genetic make-up to achieve this, through a reasonably affordable gadget that anyone can construct. You could download some pre-made starter combinations based on what already exists and pick-and-mix. Want to run faster? Apply this genetic patch to yourself. You’ll wake up the next day with legs adjusted for faster running. Want to have a tail? Install this package, eat plenty and watch it grow and turn fluffy, just how you want.

Imagine: changing the shape of everything you own as easily as you can in virtual worlds at the moment. Not by living in a virtual world, but by living in a real world that acts like the virtual world. Want your house redecorated? Apply a new ‘skin’ to it. Want your car to have more luggage space? Extend its length and it’ll take in the matter from appropriate sources in its environment including rubbish and abundant materials like sand and dust, then arrange that matter like a replicator in Star Trek, in a matter of hours. Nanotechnology already suggests the possibility of this. It’ll tell you before you begin how such a change will affect its efficiency and ride qualities. You could upgrade its batteries and motors too in a similar way. In other words, replicator technology on the nanoscale and everywhere, borne out of the current trends of 3D printing and nanoscale manufacture.

Ambitious? Ludicrously. But we all gotta start from somewhere and there will need to be many intermediate steps. I’ve started with why: Freedom Of Form. I want to see the freedom of choice people so often espouse taken to whole new levels and I want to be a part of it. I’ve now shown you some of the how and what. But the how and what need fleshing out, and I can’t do that on my own. Yes I have some ideas and a vision for where we want to be, but this thing is bigger than that.

This is the official expansion of Thine Designs to be the guiding principle of how Vulpine Designs is run.
Thou could suggest.
Thou could comment.
Thou shalt, in doing so, take part in Thine Designs. It’s that easy.

I really want to see those ideas, people. With or without them, I’m on a quest. But with them, it can do so much more. If you’re interested in just a little bit of this, or have your own thoughts for other directions this could be taken based on what I’ve said, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Daniel Davies

Continue reading »]]> Green technologies should never have to live apart in ghettos and isolated monocultures. Vulpine Sea Power is a division of Vulpine Designs Unlimited and will see to it that your renewables can be combined in the most creative and productive ways possible, utilising the philosophy of Freedom Of Form to make functionality elegant.

The following are initial concept images and descriptions created in a limited palette of digital LEGO(R) bricks (before I discovered LEGO Universe mode, hence the weird colour scheme) of the first Vulpine Sea Power innovation which needs to be taken to the next level: presenting the Mean Green Marine Electricity Machine, MeGMEM.

Quote source: me, 15th May 2010 on the DeviantArt pages:

Vulpine Sea Power brings to you this cross between invention, engineering and art, the Mean Green Marine Electricity Machines; a combination wind, tidal, wave and solar power station all built into an offshore platform tower complete with its own substation and auxiliary capacity to add conventional offshore wind farms and/or couple together with more of its kind. Scalable, robust, reliable and with power generated no matter what the weather, these MeGMEMs will solve your country’s green electricity needs at the flick of a switch!

This model was created based on an original idea to combine the renewables that can be used at sea and is not based on any real construction or place. It is intended to be an idea to take to renewable energy companies, and handily shows off Vulpine Designs Unlimited’s abilities in offshore platforms, tidal, wave, solar and wind projects (e.g. Lego models to be used as planning aids, NIMBY elimination etc.).

Inspired by:
British Sea Power
current offshore wind farm projects
art by various people depicting wind turbines in clusters and ‘trees’.
My own idea had a good few months ago for a combined renewable energy power station

Please abide by the Creative Commons license on this one to the letter.

The lower part of a MeGMEM – everything below the tidal booms would be submerged, and the towers could be built to heights to suit sea depth.

Methinks the real thing might have safety rails around this substation, it being elevated so high above the waves to reduce corrosion on the transformers and switching gear… ah well.

With further thoughts, it might as well have a proper roof and walls of some kind over the substation if that’s practicable at the voltages we’re dealing with. The wind turbine columns would help hold the building in place and it’d keep seagulls off the substation. And it could be a solar panel roof. And walls. And solar PV coated columns. This idea is stuffed with renewable energy opportunities.

The landing platforms just above high tide + swell level overlook the hollow interior of the tower, which fills with sea water as the tide comes in and empties as it goes out, turning the tidal turbines below. The mighty columns support the substation and turbines above, and contain the cables for them.

The wave power generators and the solar panels are attached to booms which are fastened to floats that slide up and down with the swell and the tide in slots on the corner of the tower. The solar panels are held high enough above the wave generators to float over any wave crests, whilst being boat-accessible for repair.

Where used in rougher seas, the solar panels could be mounted higher or just on the tower itself and its columns.

The tidal generators are built into the walls just below low tide level, and again lower in the tower base (extra useful in areas with strong currents)

Looking up from underneath, you can see the tidal turbines inside the tower…
Enough to give you vertigo.
Or the Bends.

Wave and solar power booms, with beacon lights to warn vessels (though an area of these things would be surrounded with buoys anyway).

Our little copse of wind turbines, elevated into the wind and just far enough apart not to clash with each other. The columns holding them up are a cantilever balance design. Build this in Lego for real and it’ll be 5½ to 6 feet tall. In Real Life? Erm, huge.

The turbines don’t have to be that high above the sea, really. This was just to see if I could set them high enough to get clearer air when it’s really windy and there’s a hefty swell flinging spray around. The design’s a concept and highly adjustable.

As viewed from the sea.
WIND POWER!!!!1!!one!exclamationmark!!!1

Quite. The cross-shaped thing is to tie them together and gives a possible spot for a helipad in a future iteration of the design.

My favourite picture. *Wants a print*

Thinking about it, you’d probably need a helicopter for this view. I hope it can be an electric helicopter.

Normal offshore wind turbines can be attached to this system too, using a MeGMEM for a substation. Showing the ballast counterweight roots of the turbines here, normally the sea would be up to the chain/rope clamps. Also, gotta love LDD’s backgrounds here, they’ve really come into their own.

Having seen the success of the Strangford Lough tidal current power generator, I posit that similar generators could be fastened to the bases of auxiliary marine wind turbines at the ends of the wave power booms. Indeed, why the heck doesn’t the Strangford Lough tidal turbine have a wind turbine on top of it?

The last picture in the series for the time being: a solitary offshore wind turbine. These and their landlubber brothers are available in real Lego(R) form for purchase from us, pre-built or as parts with instructions, as is almost everything posted here.

MeGMEMs near the shore could also be coupled up with EcoTricity SeaRaser style generators too, and those away from the shore could do something similar, but using large water tanks on the tower just below the substation, which could double up as freshwater towers for water supplies for seafarers or to be piped to the mainland, through rainwater harvesting and small scale desalination.
The towers themselves could be purpose-built, or converted from military platforms like the micronation of Sealand.
The more I think about this, the more ideas I have to couple onto it.

Enquiries regarding collaboration, business partnerships, expansion of the idea and its eventual implementation are openly encouraged. Please see the Contact Us page for an email form.

Continue reading »]]> Vulpine Designs Unlimited at first glance may appear to have a narrow range. Nothing could be further from the truth: LEGO(R) was just a convenient starting place.
The new slogan/tagline/motto thingy, indeed the whole WHY for Vulpine Designs Unlimited is ‘Freedom Of Form’, which accurately reflects what the long term aims of the business are about.

I believe in Freedom Of Form with a seriously strong passion. It is what my working life will be dedicated to in the long term, and Vulpine Designs Unlimited explores ways to achieve this and to help others to achieve it too, in every context possible and currently impossible alike. Unlimited we are and ever more Unlimited will we become.

Freedom Of Form. Our world needs it.

Sort of like this
with a bit of this
in the style of this
…

Continue reading »]]> I hereby declare that Vulpine Designs Unlimited is now srs bsns.

Why is the world’s approach to design about to change over the coming decades?
Where can you find the fusion between that which we grow up learning how to construct representations of life around us with and the actual application back into the real world of ideas produced in that medium?
Who has the designs on a green future, and who sees their potential for what it truly is; Unlimited?
How can a plastic shape correspond to anything from a piece of a machine to an atom or even a quark?
What do you say to a future that uses our childhoods for inspiration that will make the world better for our children?

There are many answers to these questions, but only one answer to them all: Vulpine Designs Unlimited.

Unite your green energy with Vulpine Sea Power.
Point the way with Vulpinde Signs Unlimited.
Build the efficient computing power you need with Vulpine Computing.
Show us your own ideas to get in on the action with Thine Designs.
Plan and model, work together and combine the previously assumed to be separate for the benefit of us all with Vulpine Designs Unlimited.

Continue reading »]]> Why do toilets use so much water? Let’s save some money and water by converting existing WCs to be dual-flush.
www.aqualogic-wc.com have this marvellous contraption one can install on the siphon to reduce water consumption, called the ecoBETA.

WDS recently requested I (as their employee) find ‘Eco-Tech’ to present to local businesses. They never stipulated I couldn’t also use it for Vulpine Designs Unlimited purposes as far as I recall. Vulpine Designs Unlimited is simply one of the businesses this Eco-Tech is being ‘presented to’.

So, presenting both first and second hand simultaneously, as an employee of WDS and as the Chief Executive of Vulpine Designs Unlimited respectively, instructions for how to fit the ecoBETA based on my experiences.

http://www.vulpinedesigns.co.uk/downloads/ecoBETAmanual.odt

Continue reading »]]> The following is an email conversation between myself and a journalist from the Wall Street Journal. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

Hello,

I’m a reporter with the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, and I’m intrigued by the world of digital modeling of lego models. One thing that particularly interests me is hacking of LDD, which I’ve seen discussed on some blogs.

Would you be able to offer some perspective on whether LDD hacking to get extra pieces/colors is an issue in LDD modeling communities? It seems it was an issues several years ago, but debate seems to have died down.

I’m curious because stealing Lego pieces from a store would clearly be immoral/illegal, but I’m not clear whether fiddling with computer code is considered similar.

Any thoughts or perspetive on this would be most welcome.

Many thanks.
Dan Michaels

The Wall Street Journal
Brussels, Belgium

Reply:

Hello,

First off, it is probably clear from the images on my site that I use Lego parts from Lego Digital Designer that are not available for purchase in real life. The lack of certain colours for certain parts used to be a very contentious bugbear of practically every user of the LDD software. This left the Lego Group with a real quandary: they wanted to allow people’s creativity to run free without giving the false impression that their factories had the capacity to make every brick in every colour all of the time.

For a few years, Lego Digital Designer presented a limited palette of bricks and colours to match with what could be made available through the online ‘Lego Factory’ (later renamed ‘DesignByMe’) service. People could design models in LDD using any colour so long as it could be bought. The limitations were quickly made apparent to anyone trying to make an accurate representation of anything in real life using this software. It was and still to some degree is, after all, the most intuitive Lego CAD software out there, LDraw and its derivatives proving to be unreliable and out of date for quite a while.

With this frustrating situation in mind, adult fans of Lego (AFOLs) such as myself were left to seek a workaround. One was indeed found, and all it involved was editing one configuration settings file in the installation. A hack, but an oddly simple one. As it turned out, the very viability of this ‘hack’ proved that Lego had up their sleeves what everyone had been asking for; and with version 4 of LDD, Lego Universe integrated with Lego Digital Designer, allowing anyone using LDD to legitimately create models with any brick in any colour digitally, although the separate palette for DesignByMe remains limited for the simple reason that we can’t buy bricks that haven’t ever been manufactured.

Meanwhile, the LDraw community have been busily getting their act together and recently have created new front-end programs such as SR3D and Konstruktor, which now introduce some much needed ease of use into the original open-source Lego CAD scene that later inspired Lego to fund LDD. The future looks bright for the Lego CAD world, with quality improving in all quarters and no fiddling with LDD’s actual code has ever really happened as far as I am aware beyond a simple config file edit that is now included officially by default.

For more information on LDraw, please see [link] and for more information on Lego Digital Designer, please see [link] . If you want to run LDD on Linux, please use Wine, from [link]

—
My own role in this is as a user who occasionally generates feedback and sometimes makes money from my art created using this software – but if you’d like to advertise Vulpine Designs Unlimited at [link] in your paper, as long as the article does not lose context, content or meaning I’ll be happy.

Please keep me up to date on whether this makes it to publication.

Daniel Davies
CEF
Vulpine Designs Unlimited
Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Reply to my reply:

Hi Daniel,

Belated thanks for your comprehensive and informative email.

I am continuing to poke around on this to see if there’s a story to be done, and will keep you posted if I pursue it.

Best regards,

Dan

Dan Michaels

The Wall Street Journal

(Address details deleted by Vulpine Designs Unlimited for spam/junk mail avoidance) Brussels

Belgium

Continue reading »]]> Here’s the latest from the LEGO(R) designs, a Batman-themed thank you plaque for a local teacher at the end of a great school year for my half-sister-not-yet-in-law. A wonderfully simple-yet-effective gift and a marvellous way to say thank you from a Lego lover to a Batman fan!

EDIT 22.7.11 I have now been informed that this gift went down very well with the teacher, who says he has ‘never seen the like’. Another happy customer

Please remember that Batman and the Batman logo are copyright of DC Comics.

Continue reading »]]> At Vulpine Designs Unlimited we have no room to park any motor vehicles, hence the business is based on orders delivered to your door. To get around this slight inconvenience, I decided to create something both environmentally friendly and practical whilst at the same time being small enough to fit through our hallway and alley. Based on the design at Re-Cycle.org, this bike trailer is a great way to shift larger objects or quantities of items without adding to our carbon footprint and is itself made from a recycled bicycle, a recycled recycling box, a ladder and a pipe bender!

Click the picture above to see the work-in-progress gallery.
Starting with a Townsend Impulse bike, I dismantled it, removing the wheels, the seat, the reflectors, the chain, the brakes, the derailleurs, the front fork and the handlebars.
Then I cut the frame on the top bar behind the handlebar column, a few inches above and also a little below the top bar on the seat column, and below the rear wheel hooks to release the upper rear forks, using a hacksaw with a new blade.

The top tube/bar slotted together perfectly with the front fork. The handlebar inner column, meanwhile, fitted nicely into the lower seat column, which is attached to the other end of the top tube/bar.
I lined up the desired angle of inclination for the towing arm (top tube) on the front fork, then drilled a hole through both and bolted them together with a 50mm roof bolt.
I drilled large holes in the sides of a small stepladder to take the wheelnuts and attach them to it near the curved top. Where the forks taper around the wheels, a pair of brake bosses could be found on each. At first I thought these could be fastened through the ladder frame directly, however this left the trailer wheels non-parallel. Using old computer case steel, my drill, a pair of phone books and tin-snips, I fashioned a pair of spacer brackets to hold the brake bosses and so the forks the right distance from the ladder frame to make the wheels parallel enough and held on with 50mm roof bolts.
I also used the bottom bar from the bike frame, including some of the handlebar outer column, to act as a rigidity bar across both forks’ brake & reflector bracket holes with more 50mm roof bolts.
The coupling on the towing arm is made from half a 22mm diameter pipe bender, brake cable and the handlebars.
First, cut the handlebars to one side of where the central bracket holds them to the column. Remove any remaining brake or gear handles and the rubber handle from this piece, and use a hammer and anvil (or failing that, concrete surface) to flatten one end. Do not try to use a small metalwork vice like mine, this only ruins the vice. If you have a large enough vice, however, use it. Drill three holes in this piece: one large and one small in the flat end of the tube, and one large in the semi-flattened taper of the tube to thread the brake cable through. The rubber handle can be re-used on the seat column left sticking out of the upper rear fork as a towing handle.
Cut the remainder of the handlebar in two and cut a notch in the end of the piece with the middle bracket usually around it.
Cut the pipe-bender roughly in half (aim to have 3.25 inches or so exposed between the handlebar pieces) using a hacksaw and pliers with serious caution due to the springy nature of pipe-bender. Don’t try to rush this.
Whichever half you think is the right one, it’ll probably be the other that you need. Pick the one that fits the handlebars best so that there isn’t too long or short an exposed length when both ends are fitted over it. Thread the brake cable through its large hole and an eye-bolt in the small hole. Leave semi-loose until the other end has been tied off around the notch, having been threaded up the inside of the pipe bender. Then tighten as tight as it can go without deforming the pipe bender. Ensure the spare cable is aimed away from the other large hole to avoid getting in the way.
The towing bar can then be attached to your bike’s rear wheel hub through the large hole. I also recommend the use of an elastic bungee cord stretched down from your bike’s carrier to prevent the coupling from loosening and dropping to the ground.
A box for the trailer was found in the form of an old recycling tub obtained years ago from a defunct-at-the-time-but-now-re-invigorated Kerbside recycling firm. With holes drilled at carefully selected points in the bottom, to match with where holes can be drilled in the ladder’s steps, I threaded bolts through those steps and then lowered the box onto them, using large washers to spread the pressure of the tightened nuts on the plastic. All that then remains is paint: I suggest a red oxide primer (particularly on the cut and drilled parts) and metal paint either by Hammerite or, for a colour not in their range, Halford’s mix-while-you-wait paint service (NB: strong fumes, use outdoors only). For decorating the box, Humbrol Enamel. Take care to avoid drips and spills.
This done, you’ll have a bike trailer that can lug a fair weight (limits yet to be tested – but I have stood on the ladder frame prior to the box being attached with no ill effects).
Originally, it had been intended for the ladder to still be able to fold out and be used if the trailer was tipped on end. This ended up not being the case here, but I’d like to see if someone else can make one that does this. Bike trailer transformer…

(Updates will be made to this post)