Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Design Tree Blog Holds $10,000 Haiku Contest

Newly-launched blog The Design Tree celebrates its coming-into-being with a Haiku Contest. Readers are invited to capture a quiet moment of inspiration in their best Haiku; the public then votes for their favorites. There are over $10,000 in prizes to be won, including Greentea Design’s exquisite hand-crafted furniture including a dining table, TV stand and coffee table. The Design Tree will also be giving away 12 $200 Greentea Design gift certificates to the Top 12 finalists as well as rewards for the contest’s voters. Contest closes Friday December 3, 2010.

The Design Tree is a newly launched blog that focuses on the exciting and unexpected intersection of design, travel, food, and lifestyle from an east-meets-west perspective. An evolution of Greentea Design, a Toronto-based furniture boutique’s brick and mortar, The Design Tree’s talented contributors stationed across the globe strive to inspire readers with thoughtful commentary and visual sustenance, while also encouraging readers to make this blog their own.

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Banaue Rice Terraces, Tops National Geographic Blog Survey As Favorite World Heritage Site

Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras

Netizens pick Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras as one of the top World Heritage sites. Voting was done via Twitter, Facebook and the blog.

The details and other top heritage sites here.

For 2,000 years the mountains of Ifugao province in the Philippines have been carefully cultivated with a seemingly endless series of terraced fields that climb thousands of feet.

The Ifugao Rice Terraces, which follow the natural contours of the mountains, only enhance the region’s rugged natural beauty. They also epitomize a harmonic, sustainable relationship between humans and their environment. These fields, and the knowledge to farm and sustain them, have been passed down from generation to generation for centuries.

The structures’ original builders used stone and mud walls to carefully carve and construct terraces that could hold flooded pond fields for the cultivation of rice. They also established a system to water these plots by harvesting water from mountaintop forests. These incredible engineering feats were done by hand as was (and is) the farming itself.

The rice terraces have long been central to the survival of the Ifugao peoples but they also occupy a central importance within their culture. Entire communities cooperate on cyclical, seasonal systems of planting, pest control, and harvest, which are tied to lunar cycles and sometimes accompanied with religious rituals.

But the world is changing and this region is not immune. Increasing numbers of young people are migrating toward urban areas in search of a far different future. With few left to work the fields according to the old ways their future is uncertain. Some 25 to 30 percent of the terraces are abandoned and beginning to deteriorate, along with irrigation systems.

Due to these threats the site was placed on the list of World Heritage in Danger in 2001 and it remains there today. Sustainable tourism may offer hope for conservation. In fact, the region’s value to the nation as a tourist destination likely exceeds that of its rice production. via

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For Pacquiao, How To Speen A Billion Pesos?

  • Donate money to his constituents equal to that of his pork barrel, build roads and bridges over there at Sarangani. That’s a lasting legacy.
  • How about buy a stake in Vista Land. His friend Manny Villar might give him low share.
  • Build boxing academies in Luzon Visayas & Mindanao. His boxing grads then automatically, will have live contracts with MP Promotions.
  • Build his own sports arena here in Metro Manila and host boxing tournaments and prize fights, basketball games, concerts, billiards and cockfighting. Host and watch all the things he loves. You know.
  • Produce a home & lifestyle show a la Daphne’s shows. Make Jinkee Pacquiao as the host. Since they got lots of houses and Jinkee has a truckloads of Louis Vuitton, they will not run out of home & LV bags to feature for one full season. If there are no channel takers for this Jinkee show, heck, he can always just buy a TV primetime block from different stations.
  • Buy a controlling stake at FPIC then order his men to clean up the oily mess in the area so people can have their normal lives (Barangay Bangkal residents and West Tower unit owners) and normal business operations back.
  • Build is his own hotel (but not build it in 15days). Let the hotel be Manny Pacquiao themed. With special suites like “Hatton Flat”, “Dela Hoya Special”, “Clottey Shell”, “Margarita Suite”,  “Mayweather Hideout”, “Mexican Retreat”, etc.
  • Build a Pacman boxing museum showcasing his belts and other memorabilias. As bonus, museum visitors can watch his box-office hit movie “ANAK NG KUMANDER” for free. This movie will be screened at the lobby 24/7 – nonstop! But wait, there’s more…  museum visitors get to take home free blu-ray copy of another epic movie, “Lisensyadong Kamao”. How about that?
  • And oh yes, build a privately owned hospital.

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Tiger - Stone, Brick Laying Machine

tiger stone machine

Feeding of the bricks and stones into the machine is still manual but the laying is done by the machine via gravity. Humans will still do the sorting and pattern. Forklifts supply the machines with bricks. A task that’s done painstakingly slow can be done in an instant using the Tiger-Stone brick machine paver. No more back-breaking job of putting the bricks on to the ground. Thus, quick road, quick pavement are done.  The website here. See the machine in action here.

via

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Book: DEsigners On Designers By Susan Gray

Designers on Designers : The Inspiration Behind Great Interiors

From the Back Cover

Great design doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and Designers on Designers proves that behind every bright idea is a startling inspiration. Susan Gray lets the world’s top designers tell their own stories about who and what influenced their work. The result is funny and poignant, wry and informed. And truly inspired. — Mitchell Owens, ELLE Décor

The personal inspiration we gain from others in our field makes for fascinating and thought-provoking reading. I love seeing what my colleagues have learned from others; my own experience has been expanded by their insights. — Michael Graves, Architect and Product Designer

In these pages, you will discover how Orlando Diaz-Azcuy’s admiration for the work of John Dickinson led to his firm’s perennial quest for design perfection. Married designers Ashley and Allegra Hicks disclose an intimate view of Ashley’s father, David Hicks, Britain’s most celebrated interior designer — who was so obsessed with design that he checked himself out of the hospital while dying because of the overabundance of plastic and the nurses’ unappealing apparal. For contrast, Cuban-born, multi-talented Manhattan designer Vincente Wolf offers a different and distinctive view of David Hicks’s great appeal. You will share Bunny Williams’s appreciation of Sister Parish and that designer’s comfortable, timeless, and witty sense of style. New York society decorator Thomas Jayne gives you new insight into the Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman classic The Decoration of Houses, still used as a textbook a century after its original publication. Open this book and meet masters of design — Billy Baldwin, Donald Deskey, Dorothy Draper, Elsie de Wolfe, Philippe Starck, Michael Taylor, Rose Cumming — and their admirers Thomas Britt, William Sofield, Carleton Varney, Suzanne Rheinstein, John Stefanidis, and more than a dozen other great names of interior design. With color, wit, and passion, Designers on Designers sensuously captures the essence, soul, and inspiration of the mastery of interior design. On designers and by designers, it is a sumptuous work that architects, amateur decorators, and designers themselves will be powerless to resist.

THE GREAT on THE GREAT:

  • Pamela Banker on Sir John Soane
  • Mattia Bonetti on Jean Royère
  • Thomas Britt on Billy Baldwin
  • Robert Couturier on Germain Boffrand, Eileen Gray, and Emilio Terry
  • Elissa Cullman on Henry Francis du Pont
  • Orlando Diaz-Azcuy on John Dickinson
  • Jamie Drake on Stéphane Boudin
  • Arthur Dunnam on Jed Johnson
  • Ronald A. Grimaldi on Rose Cumming
  • Ashley and Allegra Hicks on David Hicks
  • Thomas Jayne on Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman’s The Decoration of Houses
  • Pauline Metcalf on Frances Elkins
  • Juan Pablo Molyneux on Jacques-Ange Gabriel
  • Juan Montoya on Jean-Michel Frank
  • Roberto Peregalli on Renzo Mongiardino
  • Suzanne Rheinstein on Elsie de Wolfe
  • Betty Sherrill on Eleanor Brown
  • Marjorie Shushan on Kalef Alaton
  • William Sofield on Donald Deskey
  • John Stefanidis on Philippe Starck
  • Carleton Varney on Dorothy Draper
  • Bunny Williams on Sister Parish
  • Ron Wilson on Michael Taylor

Click here to buy… Designers on Designers : The Inspiration Behind Great Interiors

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CNC Files, CNC Files Types, And DXF File

CNC File information can now be found on Ivan’s website that is all about Computer Numerical Control. The new CNC File website is set up for users to know and understand everything there is to know about Computer Numerical Control Files. The website on CNC Files can be viewed for free by users at the following webpage: http://www.cncinformation.com/cnc-files-dxf-file-dwg-file/

Ivan spends some time explaining the various types of Computer Numerical Control Files. Here is an excerpt from Ivan’s discussion on Computer Numerical Control File Types:

“ai – Adobe Illustrator Artwork (AI) is a proprietary file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing single-page vector-based drawings in either the EPS or PDF formats. The .ai filename extension is used by Adobe Illustrator.

.eps – Encapsulated PostScript, or EPS, is a DSC-conforming PostScript document with additional restrictions intended to make EPS files usable as a graphics file format.

.hpgl – HPGL, sometimes hyphenated as HP-GL, is the primary printer control language used by Hewlett-Packard plotters. The name is a set of initials for Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language. It later became a standard for almost all plotters.

.dxf – AutoCAD DXF (Drawing Interchange Format, or Drawing Exchange Format) is a CAD data file format, developed by Autodesk as their solution for enabling data between AutoCAD and other programs.” See more at: http://www.cncinformation.com/cnc-files-dxf-file-dwg-file/

Ivan has plenty more information and articles surrounding the topic of Computer Numerical Control files. Its important for a CNC user to understand the various files as you begin to get into Computer Numerical Control. See more at the following website: http://www.cncinformation.com/cnc-files-dxf-file-dwg-file/,

About CNC Information: CNC Information is a community CNC website that brings user into a deeper understanding of CNC.

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Manny Pacquiao's Home

LA Mansion…

Boracay vacation house… [ citations needed :-) ]

He got one in Laguna too, of course in Gen San too.

Off to watch pay per view now and eat something there. Go for the 8th record Manny!

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