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Creating a device that suggests a suitable amount of time for one to spend in the sun has a number of physical health implications, therefore I'd like to declare a disclaimer.

The unit is in no way intended for the use of prevention of skin cancers or as a benchmark for advised Vitamin D intake.

However, as the timing system will go some way towards these issues, I would like to follow out a little research in just how long it would take for someone to achieve their RDA of Vitamin D through natural sunlight.

There have been a huge number of studies into the correlation of UVA and UVB radiation and skin cancers; however, it is also evident that a short amount of time in the sun each day can be beneficial to reaching our daily intake of Vitamin D and also for general well being.

This post is a fairly rough run down of how the device might operate, presented as series of steps.

I'm now at a point with the new device where I need to start thinking about how it is going to work.

In terms of how the user will interpret the behaviors, how appropriate they are to their purpose, the practicalities and so forth.

The next few posts will centre on these issues whilst I make start on some more in depth research.

Lack of Vitamin D which can be obtained through the suns rays can cause Rickets. How fitting.

This idea is by and large a development of the Commuters device; both play around the idea of making the frustrations of your day job a little more bearable, improving your physical health and state of mind.

A work in progress - first prototype

I am working on a new project and aim to finish the first prototype by next Wednesday. The idea is as follows:

As you leave your house in the morning to begin your journey to work, you attach your device in preparation, just as you would put on your gloves/hat etc. 

As you travel - the more time you spend outside, under UV light, the more 'charged' your unit becomes. Walking, running and cycling to work would be more beneficial to you (health-wise) than driving or riding a train.

This also harks back to a time where industry was centralized and your place of work was within walking distance.

Having access to parts of the country and the world within such a short space of time has meant that everything has spread out and we spend significantly more time travelling.

So the electronic not only encourages outdoor travel as a form of exercise but also celebrates a localized industry structure of the workforce.

As you arrive at work with your charged or uncharged device, your peers and colleagues can see just how much time you have spent outdoors before coming to work.

The colours on the threads will be brightly coloured if you have fully charged the unit, or dull and white if not.

Then, upon pressing a button, any energy that the unit has stored up from the UV rays is expelled by a loud buzzer, as a kind of boastful call to your work mates. Each wearer can activate their device at the same time, enabling us to observe our co-workers travelling habits.

The gender reverse project is now complete and in fully functioning order.
To visit the site,  click below:

The project is coming along fairly well, to the point where web pages can be displayed and gender terms switched to a high enough accuracy. All of the images are stripped and replaced with coloured boxes and all links and javascript is disabled.

This means that only the switched text is visible to the reader.

I may try to develop this into a plugin/extension for Google Chrome. This would give a much more seamless interface to the project - the visitor simply enables or disables the plugin to either view the page in its original  or reversed state.

I'm sure that there are ways of realising most ideas, but it takes a deal or prior knowledge to understand how projects may come together.

Grayscale bulb
This, as far as my understanding allows, defies science and is therefore impossible.

A bulb that emits a grey/black light, in essence, a lack of colour - subsequently a lack of light, as colour is light.

I'd like to walk into a room and everything, even my own coloured clothes and skin to appear in grayscale.

Weather cubes
A series of large, water tight glass cubes on plinths containing the weather from different countries.

Cloud cover in one cube, simulated as water vapour.

Rainfall in another; a gradually rising or falling level relative to the volume of the cube and area of rainfall.

Sun strength displayed using a super bright light.

Temperature - warm or cold air being blown into the cavity of the cube, heating the glass to touch.

Each weather cube is from a different location on a different continent; data is streamed live and the viewers can pick and choose which area they would like to experience. The cubes then reset and react within minutes to simulate the weather patterns from the newly selected location.

Weather stations containing the sensory equipment could be located at landmark positions, or the data could be sourced from existing stations that publish feeds for public use.

Containing the weather in such small and controlled amounts provides a kind of 'snippet' of that weather system. This changes how we perceive the weather - it becomes a much more removed experience as opposed to the immersive and inescapable that we season each day.

I vividly remember watching a 'Carry On...' film, at the age of about 12, and it leaving me with a very strong sense of frustration. Not at how bad the film was, but at how the female characters, ran about, bosoms bouncing for the leering male characters. Something as slapstick was never intended as a serious comment on preferred gender stereotypes but none the less, it told me that this was OK to poke fun at.

It often surprises me, at how unaware and accepting society is of casual sexism, ranging from the aforementioned slapstick to borderline misogyny.

If we could notice these inequalities as blatant, embarrassing and unacceptable acts of prejudice then that may be one small step in the right direction.

If male and female terms were exchanged (for example 'She looked beautiful' to 'He looked beautiful') in everything from film synopsis to news stories, we may begin to notice these differences and how they condition us to make certain choices.

Incidentally, it may draw attention to how the sexes are defined and described in the mass media; if words describing aesthetic values are used in association more with men or women and so forth. Seeing words that we more commonly associate with one gender over another should create a kind of jarring effect as you read. These are the kinds of subtleties which I hope to highlight.

Using PHP I am working on a website which should automatically convert this text for the viewer, eventually resulting in a collection of RSS feeds within one page. This will present a range of sources and hopefully provide an overview of how men and women are described or do feature.

A kind of ideal format for this idea would be perhaps a pair of glasses, or atleast a viewing frame from which to hold up to real, live content such as signage, posters, digital screens etc, which would again, reverse the male and female images and words.

Something like the augmented reality apps available now would be the closest thing existing today, however this would require the permanance of posters and signs so the app can respond to the environment using GPS.

This would not work; posters are taken down/moved so quickly - the device would need to react live to the information, perhaps using optical character and facial recognition software.

An alternative, is if print were completely obselete and all marketing was digital. This would allow maybe a bluetooth signal to be sent out from each poster to phones and devices passing by. Within the signal would be a number of uniform 'tags' describing the content of the poster. So if there was a poster advertising womens underwear then the tags may be 'woman' '20-30 years old' 'lingerie' 'sexy'.

The app (or whatever form it may take) could then exchange those words with 'man' '20-30 years old' 'pants' 'sexy' and so forth.

If there was a public reaction and interest in how genders are represented then things may begin to change.

UPDATE: Augmented reality / phone app gender reversal may be more possible than considered.

These images illustrate how the USB flash stick could appear if it were to ever be manufactured.

Capacity : empty

Capacity: half full

Capacity: full

After doing a little research into existing technologies thats aims are to monitor vital signs, a few projects came to my attention; one of which is almost exactly the same as my original idea.

 The 'Surgery Pod' is a unit installed in GP waiting rooms to take vital signs and transfer data to permanent health records. The only difference between my original proposal and this is the interface. This requires a very active input from the user, whereas the chair would take the data much more passively.

Surgery Pod

Having the patients fill out a questionnaire or hold a small unit as opposed to just casually sitting on a chair, makes the process much more visible. This would increase patient trust of the technologies efficiency and accuracy as well as most probably saving costs.
The only possible drawback would be the social effects of patient self evaluation. Again, I am not convinced of where the responsibility would lie if the readings were incorrect for some reason. Perhaps the act of patient participation in their own exam would leave onus on the individual.

The results from the site seem promising although the financial savings are hard to quantify as the main benefits are an increase of productivity on the GP's part.

Another more mobile and personal application is that of a kind of 'smart clothing'. Sensors integrated into clothes and items attached to the bodies of users give a more individual and relevant result - the conditions in a waiting room are different to that of other more everyday environments.

It's somewhat a validation of the original concept to find it already exists.

Visiting my doctors surgery this week, resulted in a 30 minute wait to be seen, despite having a pre-booked appointment. Others also seemed to be waiting longer than 5-10 minutes for appointments which they presumably turned up on time for.

The time spent waiting to be seen could be put to better use, for both us as patients wanting the best care possible and for the doctors, knowing that they are not compromising their practice values because of limited time allocation for appointments.

One possible solution for putting this redundant time period to use is to begin a patients examination before they've seen the doctor using the passive surgery waiting room furniture as  sensors for ones vital signs.

As the patient enters the surgery, the receptionist checks them in and allocates them to a specific chair. As they sit, reading a book or chatting, the chair takes a number of different statistical values based on their weight, height, blood pressure, pulse rate, temperature, and respiratory rate.

Each sensor would be subtly integrated into the chairs form, and the readings taken without invasive or noticeable collection.

As patient detailed and summary care records are being transferred to a computer system over the next 5 years, each individuals records can be added to as these readings are taken. Therefore, the longer you are waiting or the more you frequent the surgery, the more accurate a picture of your vital signs is built up.

Additionally, as each chair is assigned to a patient, your statistics already in your files, for example a heart condition, are taken into account when the chair is processing the data.

The collected information is then sent directly to the appropriate GP, so by the time you see your doctor she/he already has these statistics, at which point can be further acted upon if necessary.

'Doctors spend on average eight-10 minutes with each patient'; if some of the basic examinations have been carried out before the appointment the time spent with the doctor can be used more effectively.

Relying on a piece of standalone technology may be problematic;  from a user point of view particularly, trusting the equipment to deliver accurate responses.
And if there is a glitch or anomaly, who is to be held responsible?

The lack of accountability, with something as important as personal health is something to be considered.

Having read some of Hertzian Tales by Professor Anthony Dunne; my attention was drawn to the way in which we (as users) regard information and data. Especially in the case of data storage devices such as the iPod, Compact Disk, USB flash drives, internal/external hard drives.

Data that is used and relied upon everyday has become so far removed from the physical, that being able to store 'x' amount of information is simply a nebulous number. We are not able to think of this information in the same way that we do a stack of paper, or a cabinet full of files.
We therefore do not regard it in the same way, investing in the idea of portability, convenience and self-containment of data storage.

To explore the ways in which digital information can become tangible and force users to handle the data differently, existing storage devices are transformed from static, physical objects into variable and dynamic forms.

These articles materially expand and contract depending on their relative storage capacity volumes. For example if a USB flash drive was empty (apart from its default operational files), then the device would remain at its originally manufactured size. However, when the drive begins to fill or when it has reached its limit, then the outer 'skin' or casing of the object will have expanded relatively to its former size.

This renders the very nature of the equipments primary function as data storage to an extent useless. Each piece of technology would still store and transfer data in the same way, however it now has no claims for convenience or compactness.

This would require the user to think about the information in a different way, having to compensate for size and/or weight of a full MP3 player for example.

Would the person become a potential target by petty thief's if it were visibly apparent how much data they had on them?

Does all data have a certain value?