Hello everyone!
To start off, I think the web address of this blog deserves a bit of explaining. It is based on a quote by Douglas Adams in his book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:
"...Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity, and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissive shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." He took a penny out of his pocket and tossed it casually onto the pebbles that ran alongside the paved pathway.
"You see?" He said. "The even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice it sooner or later. But the catflap... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention."
"I would have thought it quite obvious. Anyone could have thought of it."
"Ah," said Dirk, "it is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto nonexistent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
Take that science! Engineering is the bomb!
I'm an engineer (you may have guessed). No, I don't hate science. I do find that engineering is more directly useful. And there is a sense of accomplishment in having designed and built something that simply can't be taken from research. I actually do take an avid interest in science, but I don't like spending my time observing cells divide in a lab. I like getting my hands dirty... the machine shop is my playground. I take pleasure in being challenged by some problem and obsessing over all the possible ways of solving that problem. I love exercising my ingenuity.
Engineering is very much a puzzle. There is a problem which you must solve. Then many more problems arise from your solution, which you also have to solve. By the end, you will likely have backtracked several times and redesigned many bits and pieces. The thing with engineering is that there are often many solutions to one problem. The true challenge is finding the best solution. And normally the best solutions arise when you think outside of that good ol' proverbial box.
And (going back to the quote) it is true that the most blindingly obvious inventions are often the best, and the hardest to think up. Take for example, the key-keyring (I don't know exactly what it's called). It's a key that's got a keyring for its head. You can hang your other keys off this key! How awesome is that? How blindingly obvious is this invention? And yet, would you have thought of it?
Anyway, A friend of mine recently introduced me to the idea of a design blog, and I quickly decided that I needed one. I wanted to put my ideas out into the world.
I've had several projects in the past year... one for my toy design class (possibly one of the greatest classes I've ever taken), where I designed a toy called the "Splatter Blaster", a cross between a nerf gun and a paintball gun. It's currently on display at the MIT Museum. The next emerged from a leftover idea from the toy design class, and was developed over the summer and fall, called Cardigo. The design has been finalized and myself and my partner are in the process of obtaining a provisional patent. Not going to be able to tell you a whole lot about that one until we get that patent. My current big project is a robot for my Design and Manufacturing class.
I'll be giving a detail of each of these projects soon. Enjoy!
