Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Yet another Futurist Project

Personally I'd love to see a high speed train network in Australia. It dosn't look likely at the moment but if It does happen I bet that the trains will not look like this.

This really has to be one Ugly, and wowfully inpractical designs I have ever seen for an inter city train. First of all why all the curved window frames, it doesn't look that good, all it will do is increast the cost of manufacture and wastage beause all the windows have to be custom cut into funny shapes.

But my biggest gripe is there proposed seating where 1/4 of the seats have no backrest and more then half of them don't face the direction of travel. And really on A trip of several hours I expect to be able to sit facing forwards. (Due to a propensity to motion sickness the alternative is not an option). But then again suppose that in the real world economic factors will nix that idea quite effectively. Seriously what operator is going to put that crap in when they could put twice as many regular seats in the same space?

In any case building the train is not the economic hurdle. Building the track is the economic and engineering challenge. Find a way to do that faster and cheaper then conventional steel track and then you'll have something noteworthy. And the real challenge in a country where the hottest summer days every year are sufficient to cause track buckling. Really solve the hard challange first and leave the interior design for later.

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Yet again when I want to comment on the Sydney Morning Herald, comments are disabled. Newsflash, childrens stories are repleat with sterotypes we don't like. In this case the article is talking about smurfs.

But really this is par the course. What about Thomas the Tank Engine. His world is World is every inch the communist dictatorship. In this case with the Engines doing the bidding of The Fat Controler. A character who cannot be questioned and is always like, how very big brother of him.

Then again what about the messages in Kunfu Panda. A movie which in clasic Greek tr tradition rewards thouse who follow the dictates of Fate and punishes thouse who chalanges. Really look at it from the point of view of the supposid Villan of the piece. Here we have an orphan pushed ruthlessly by a bad guardian towards one particular goal. Is it a wonder then that he becomes enraged when the one thing he has been taught all his life to strive for is denied him. And then to add insult to injury after years of discipline and training he is beaten by a fat panda, who really earned nothing.

When it comes down to it I liked smurfs when I was a kid, I didn't mind my Kids reading Thomas stories, and I enjoyed watching the Fat Panda bungle his way to success. All of them have undercurrents and messages I don't agree with, but then again I really didn't bother to analyse them to this level at the time.

I may be guilty of this in the case of Avatar, but that's completely different, that movie was completely over hyped and hence deserved to be over analysed.