Day: January 19, 2006

I’ve had this idea stuck in my head for a while now and finally put it together over lunch. I thought that it would be cool to have something that was not just pocket sized, but also sort of shaped like something you might put in your pocket. I also wanted something that opened up like a blossoming flower (awh).

As you can see, it has the same size screen as the current DS, but when closed it’s around 30% the size, and when open it’s around 75% the size. I like the arrangement of the screens (more centered) better than the current DS, but it may be problematic for games that design their input system with the bottom screen position (relative to the buttons) in mind.

Ideally the outside case would be made of aluminium and the hinge mechanism may have to be made of a stronger metal (it would have to be fairly strong). I designed the edges to be covered with flexible rubber/plastic so that it looks alright. Then again, maybe it’s possible to create mostly in plastic; there are quite a few mobile phones with elaborate twist and flip mechanisms and I don’t think that they use much metal.

Technical issues aside, I think this one is possibly my favourite thus far!

In my suburb every house is issued with two “wheely” bins. One is for general garbage and is a uniform green colour. The other is for recyclables and has a yellow lid. Garbage is collected every week and recycables are collected every fortnight.

It was clearly “garbage night” last night as half the street had their green bins out on the verge when I came home at around 10:30pm. I wasn’t sure if it was a recycling week or not. Nobody had their yellow-topped bins out so it seemed fairly unlikely, but I decided that it was probably worth putting it out just in case.

In the end, it wasn’t recycling week and I just brought the bin back in (still full of paper and cans). That’s when I noticed this:

If that’s not quite clear enough, let me highlight a few things using the magic of the GIMP:

I wanted to walk down to see if this continued down the block, but I didn’t really have the time (or drive to be honest).