Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Wordle Doodle

Generating word clouds... Reminds me of the song 'Castle on a Cloud'.

It's a really interesting site where you can insert a whole bunch of vocabularies (or tags in my case) and the program will just mix and mingle the words up like juice! I didn't play around much with the colours but basically that's my turn out!

Wordle http://www.wordle.net/

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My first second of fame!

I am on the faculty blog!
http://fbeunsw.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/melody-shiue-bachelor-of-industrial-design/

Big thanks to those who visited and or left a comment :D


Also my appearance model was selected to be displayed in the lab windows... This is a milestone in my design pre-career journey as I was never confident about my model-making skills.

There are definitely space for improvement in this design; considering manufacturing possibilities, form & function coherences, and one major point that was brought up during the presentation: the fact that the herbs are shaded from direct vertical sunlight. Although the hydroponic planters can be drawn out for photosynthesis exposure, but that would hamper movement in the environment?

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Ecotopia - The Next Step for Your Environmental Health

After a whole month and a half's social quarantine (including 2 sleepless nights at uni and 3 sacrificial declines to party invites) I have finally accomplished this sustainability project.

Here's my appearance model which took me 2.5 consecutive days - literally - to construct. Thank god I was given some credit for it when our lecturer requested to display it outside our lab.

Basically this vertical herb garden is an integrated development of a worm farm and hydroponic system to competently reduce convenience barriers and simultaneously improve environmental and personal well-being.


1) Worm Farm
Ÿ Reduce kitchen scraps
Ÿ Worm tea produced is an indefinite natural source of fertilizer providing adequate nutrients including nitrogen which is usually an external requirement
Ÿ Eliminates the need for extra composting (which produces undesirable odour)
Ÿ Natural repellent for aphids, spider mites, scale and white flies
Ÿ Help fight common diseases and fungal infections and other common pathogens without the use of toxic chemicals

2) Hydroponic Herb Garden
Ÿ No meddling with soil and dirt
Ÿ Grows faster and healthier than normal soil-based planters
Ÿ Avoids weeds and pests

3) Rainwater Reservoir
Ÿ Utilizes natural resource
Ÿ No need to check pH level or distill other sources of water
Ÿ Reduce leakage through pipe system

DESIGN OUTCOME:
Ÿ Consumes no electrical energy
Ÿ Provides fresh homemade culinary herbs for kitchen use
Ÿ Low maintenance
Ÿ Eliminates the risk of over-drowning the herbs
Ÿ Readily available nutrients
Ÿ The single vertical unit can act as one miniature herb garden or more can be added as a modular system on a bigger scale

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