USA Road Trip Days 10 and 11

We have spent two days driving around the endless, endless cornfields of Iowa.  That's pretty much all there is here. This is a typical view:

There are also a lot of graveyards scattered amongst the cornfields. No causes of death are noted on the headstones but you'd have to imagine boredom would have rated high up on the list. 

Our TomTom directed us down this road somewhere in rural Iowa. We declined and took the County highway two blocks away. Seemed the most sensible choice. 

We visited the John Wayne's birthplace of Winterset, Iowa. Here's the house he was born in. My office is bigger than their whole house.

Here's a statue behind his house which his family put up to commemorate what would have been his 100th birthday. It is a great likeness, unlike a lot of the other paintings, statues and busts I have seen. 

It's been so hot here this last 10 days that every one has been flocking to the pools for a swim, even these cows: 

In one part of Iowa all barns and out buildings are painted white, they stand out from miles away. But in many parts of Iowa all the buildings seem to have remained completely unpainted. One exception was this old barn where someone on an acid trip created this on one side:

Josh, we know how much you love tractors so every time we see one we think of you.  

USA Road Trip Day 9

We saw these bikes for hire at Duluth on Lake Superior. Probably the coolest bikes ever. 

We have seen hundreds of rusty cars dumped in fields along the backroads in our travels. Sometimes whole fields of them. I guess they just stop running and when you are hundreds of miles from a scrap metal dealer you just leave them where you can. At least these people found a use for theirs. 

We came across this interesting “Antique” shop out of Spooner, Wisconsin, today. What an amazing collection of things. 

We particularly took a liking to this barn full of chairs.  Some of them look like they have been hanging there since before I was born.

USA road trip day 8

We headed out to Deadwood, South Dakota, today and passed this small community in the Black Hills called Boondocks. They are proudly stuck in the 1950s but unfortunately their petrol prices aren't. 

Here's me outside Deadwood. An interesting little town sitting against the mountain slopes. Wild Bill Hickok was killed there and is buried in their cemetery. The town was full of Harley riders doing the Sturgis Rally.

Jack, Nanny Vyv was telling you all about the Jackalopes last year... here's a photo of her riding one. We didn't know they grew this big. 

USA road trip day 6

We drove to Mt. Rushmore today, a long drive through a lot of empty country. We settled on staying the night in Custer, South Dakota in the Black Hills, after checking out this motel at Four Mile Spring. While we are happy to stay in pretty much any motel, the one pictured below just wasn't up to scratch. No wifi... 

USA Road Trip day 5

We spent a few hours at the Yellowstone Bear World. It's a bit like a safari park, where you drive around and the animals are loose around you. Everyone is warned not to open their windows. Of course as tough Kiwis we ignore these instructions to get better photos. Just as well the bears had been fed before we got there. 

Notice how these two birds have similar plumages?

I've always known that I was short, but this comparison gives me an inferiority complex... 

The power of stupid questions

​Interesting comments from Don Norman, 19 March 2013...

One of my concerns has been design education, where the focus has been centered too much upon craft skills and too little on gaining a deeper understanding of design principles, of human psychology, technology and society. As a result, designers often attempt to solve problems about which they know nothing. I have also come to believe that in such ignorance lies great power: The ability to ask stupid questions.

What is a stupid question? It is one which questions the obvious. "Duh," thinks the audience, "this person is clueless." Well, guess what, the obvious is often not so obvious. Usually it refers to some common belief or practice that has been around for so long that it has not been questioned. Once questioned, people stammer to explain: sometimes they fail. It is by questioning the obvious that we make great progress. This is where breakthroughs come from. We need to question the obvious, to reformulate our beliefs, and to redefine existing solutions, approaches, and beliefs. That is design thinking.

Ask the stupid question. People who know a lot about a field seldom think to question the fundamentals of their knowledge. People from outside the discipline do question it. Many times their questions simply reveal a lack of knowledge, but that is OK, that is how to acquire the knowledge. And every so often, the question sparks a basic and important reconsideration.

thisiswhyimbroke.com

My son recently sent me a link to this site and it has to be seen to be believed. It contains the greatest collection of stuff that you can't believe that you can actually buy. From a $100,000 Water Jet Pack to a $9 Toilet Bowl Coffee Mug, and everything in between.

A whole new meaning to pencil art...

Jennifer Maestre  is a Massachusetts-based artist, internationally known for her unique pencil sculptures. Jennifer has to sharpen each individual pencil to create these designs. She then drills a hole through each one of the 1,000 pencils it takes to create her pieces, before she sets about sharpening each and every one of them to craft the spectacular models. 

Once this is done, each section is then sewn together using a technique called a peyote stitch, which helps to give the structure its shape.

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Retro Heineken adverts

This year to celebrate Heineken’s 140th anniversary, the beer brand has thrown open its archives as part of the Remix our Future campaign. People are challenged to take one of the beer’s old adverts and create a new version ripe for the 21st Century, and while some of the efforts so far are pretty impressive, the real joy from a design point of view comes from the old visuals themselves. From weird illustrations to slightly sexist 1960s affairs, muted arty efforts to brash ads for the 1980s US market, it’s a tremendous collection of images and an interesting study in how a brand’s visual languages evolves over time.

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