Skinning Begins

Last Thursday the girls & I got started on skinning the hull of their Sea Flea. Below, they cut 18 ounce PVC fabric to the correct width to cover the kayak hull (bottom).
With her sister at school, my younger daughter checks out the fabric draped over the hull.
The hull has been stapled into place. As more staples were added, it was pulled ever tighter. I would pull out the original staples as I went along, replacing them with ones that pulled the fabric more tightly.
Most of these wrinkles worked themselves out.
However, I did have wrinkles at the stern keel that I could not work out. The waves along the side are not my main concern but the ridges right over top of the keel I think is not great. I tried every which way to minimize them, including warming up the PVC in hopes of getting some stretch to get rid of the wrinkles but they remained.
I could have probably left them, but I opted to slice the fabric along the keel about 18" allowing the fabric to spread follow the hull without the wrinkles. I then placed a patch over this area to rejoin and seal the hull.
I'll add pictures of the completed hull including the stern stem patch later this week, probably as a new post. I'll add a couple pictures of the bow and stern float bags I made to keep the kayak afloat when swamped.

Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID): News in 2008

Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)

A brief report for Academic Year 2007 to 2008

1. Bamboo & Cane Development Institute:

Governing Council meets at Agartala in June 2007 and March 2008. Prof. M P Ranjan attended the Governing Council meet of the BCDI at Agartala in June 2007. The Institute that was set on a new curriculum and infrastructure plan is now being managed by the Office of the DC (Handicrafts) Government of India. :more about the design intentions:

Download BCDI Reports listed below:
1. Achievement Report 2004: NID-BCDI – pdf file 21 kb
2: BCDI Feasibility Report December 2001 – pdf file 371 kb
3. BCDI Curriculum 2002 - 2004 – pdf file 3.9 mb
4. BCDI Curriculum Review 2004 – pdf file 3.0 mb

2 Bamboo Products Exhibition in Germany:

The Ifa-Gallerie in Stuttgart, Germany hosted an exhibition of selected Interior Designers from India as part of their “In Site –Indian” exhibition where five bamboo prototypes representing five collections of designs developed by the NID teams were on display for two months. The exhibit moved to the Ifa-Gallerie in Berlin before being returned to India in October 2007. :more about the Exhibit:

3 Tripura Bamboo Mission:

Prof M P Ranjan continued as advisor to the Tripura Bamboo Mission (TBM) through the year and visited Tripura in June and December to attend the meetings of the Tripura Bamboo Mission that is being managed by the State Government with the aim of reaching bamboo based development strategies to remote districts of Tripura. :more about TBM:

See the Katlamara Chalo website links here and download "Katlamara Chalo Documantation: Rural Development Strategy Report" as three part file below:
1. Katlamara Chalo: Background and Macro-Micro Design Strategy – 12.3 mb pdf file
2. Katlamara Chalo: Product and Technology Strategy – 15.6 mb pdf file
3. Katlamara Chalo: People and Application Strategy – 18.8 mb pdf file

4 IL&FS collaboration under the Tripura Bamboo Mission

In December 2007 CFBI-NID signed a “Statement of Intent” to assist the IL&FS and the Tripura Bamboo Mission by providing design supports and expertise in a collaborative mode. This SOU was signed in the presence of the Chief Minister of Tripura and follow-up meetings have taken place in New Delhi and Ahmedabad based on which NID Outreach Department has submitted a detailed proposal for a training cum entrepreneurship development project that is based on the CFBI-NID collection of designs as well as new student diploma projects that would be taken up in the current academic year. The project will commence in May 2008.:more about IL&FS projects:

5 CBTC, Guwahati MOU operation:

Due to lack of funds the MOU with the CBTC, Guwahati is lying dormant during the academic year 2007 – 2008. In the previous year CFBI-NID had participated in a National Exhibition at the Pragati Maidan as well as contributed to the Bamtech Conference and Festival organized by the CBTC in Agartala in December 2006 as part of this ongoing MOU. Discussions have been initiated with the National Bamboo Mission to obtain funds to set up a design centre in Guwahati in partnership with the CBTC and wit the support of the NEC, Shillong.:more about the CBTC, Guwahati:

6 Collaborative projects with IPIRTI, Bangalore:

Prof M P Ranjan had meetings with scientists and the Director of IPIRTI, Bangalore to explore collaborative projects in areas of mutual interest in the bamboo sector. The IPIRTI is located next to the NID Bangalore Centre and the Bangalore Centre faculty too has shown interest in exploring the application of bamboo mat boards and laminates in the Retail Sector as an eco-friendly substitute to wood and wood based materials. Further the area of low-cost housing is another area of focus where the collaboration could provide synergy between NID design expertise and IPIRTI technology expertise. IPIRTI has excellent facilities for prototype making which would be an asset that NID students and faculty can use as part of the collaboration that is proposed. Project proposals have been discussed and are in the process of being finalized.:more about NID IPRITI initiatives:

7 Training programmes and resources for crafts entrepreneurs:

A number of training programmes for various groups of crafts entrepreneurs has been organized by the Outreach programmes at NID under the ICIC activity centre using the design collections that have been developed by the CFBI-NID activities. These can be given an impetus to reach further through publications and web based sharing, which is being explored during the current academic year.:more about NID Bamboo Intiatives:

8 Bamboo based co-creation initiatives in South Gujarat:

The State Government of Gujarat has shown interest in using expertise in a number of development projects in South Gujarat. Prof M P Ranjan attended a number of meetings of the Gujarat Bamboo Mission as well as held discussions with the State Tribal Development Department and an NGO called Eklavya Foundation to leverage NID design and bamboo expertise for development initiatives in South Gujarat. Proposals are being developed with the Outreach activity to get student involvement in these proposed projects. State Government is interested in setting up new Institute for rural development in South Gujarat, which would be part of the ongoing discussions with the partner agencies to initiate sustained development.:more about bamboo and rural development:

Download UNDP Vision Report 1999 from link below:
From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a Sustainable Human Development Resource – pdf file 1.5 mb

9 Collaboration with other States and with other agencies and future projects:

The CFBI-NID continued to receive requests for information and expert supports for a variety of initiatives being carried out by other States as well as Institutions at various times. We have shared digital resources and publications to seed the continued research activity across various regions of India and this collaboration although it does not bring in immediate financial gains it has generated a lot of goodwill and opened up opportunities for future collaboration. In this effort we are in touch with the activities in Uttaranchal (Uttarakhand), Karnataka, Kerala and Orissa. Several schools of architecture have shown interest in sending their students for field training and research which will further the larger goal of bamboo based development in India.:more about bamboo initiatives at NID:

10 Publications: Books, CD and Web based resources for development of bamboo sector in India:

The CFBI-NID has plans to create and produce a number of print as well as digital resources that will help disseminate the vast design resources that have been generated by the various teams of faculty and students as part of the broader development agenda of the bamboo sector which is a very critical rural development as well as employment potential activity for rural and urban crafts communities. The research effort that started in 1978-79 that resulted in the publication of the comprehensive book titled "Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India" has been followed up with numerous reports and design catalogues that were made available as CD-ROMs and digital files online. Download the book in pdf 34.7 mb here. These proposed publications will help fast track the flow of critical knowledge resources for the development of the bamboo sector as well as act as an example of how the use of design can facilitate sustained development in other sectors by example. We will be exploring the sourcing of funds to support this activity in the current academic year.:download bamboo and design papers from this site...more to come:

Nice Day For a Swim!

I went up to PA with a group of three friends today to run the Garden River, a small runoff river which flows into the North Saskatchewan River. Here in Saskatoon it snowed overnight last night, but we decided to head North anyway. Along the highway there was up to 8 inches of wet snow, but beyond Duck Lake the snow tapered off and by the time we reached Prince Albert there was none. We had arranged to meet a local kayaker, Doug, at the put-in and he joined us for the day's paddle. Our crew consisted of me & Steve in a tandem canoe, Mark paddling a solo canoe, with Jimmy and Doug in whitewater kayaks.

It was cloudy when we started but shortly afterwards the clouds started to break up and by the time we finished, it was full sun.
There was a lot of good whitewater on this short stretch of river. There were a few small surf waves to play with as well as some big waves to ensure I got periodically doused as we ran through. The river is small and winding with many trees overhanging the river and quite a few sweepers, though none were particularly dangerous. Our only mishap of the day happened about half way down when Steve & I, focused on avoiding a tree overhanging the river, slipped across a sharp eddy line. The resulting change in water direction under the canoe gave the boat a sharp twist which we were ill-prepared for and we were very quickly dumped. The water was shallow and our self-rescue basically involved us just standing up and stepping to shore. That water was COLD! A couple degrees above freezing at most and it left me breathless. That is the first time I've experienced the effects of a sudden dumping in very cold water and I was surprised (but not at all panicked) by my inability to take anything other than a shallow breath. Unfortunately, I was not wearing a wet suit (or even better a dry suit like Jimmy was wearing), even though I bought one this week for just such a purpose. It seems I left it at home. I had multiple layers of clothes with me so I threw back on a couple of the layers I had stripped off earlier and paddled out the rest of the afternoon like that. The thick wool socks I wore inside my paddling booties were not entirely effective in keeping my feet warm and they were pretty thoroughly chilled by the time we were done. Also, after my dumping I took off the "Atlas" rubberized gloves I had been wearing and replaced them with some neoprene gloves from Cdn Tire. I must remember that these latter gloves suck when wet; I was much better off with my original gloves (interesting - a quick google search found the same gloves sold as "sailing gloves", I get mine at Peavey Mart for a couple bucks/pair and I'm pretty sure they don't sell a lot of sailing stuff).

I just realised Mark beat me to posting on his blog so I suggest you check out his posting for pictures and his account of this beautiful and fun little river. Mark's unusual title for this post is a reference to my complaint to him that many of his posts receive the same title preventing me from readily distinguishing them when using the rss feed to check for updates.

One thing Mark doesn't mention is the unusual and interesting effects of the ice clinging to the overhanging branches about a foot off the water. They were created when the water was running a foot or two above where it currently is and ice collects on the branches. With the dropped water level, many of these bell shaped ice sculptures are suspended over the water. We were just passing a particularly spectacular display when the aforementioned mishap occurred.

2008 CAD Software Market Still Hot, Innovation Continues

15% seems to be the magic number for the CAD software industry this year. Jon Peddie Reseach, a US based research group, predicts 15% growth in the CAD software market for 2008. This is due partially to changing technologies and a continued shift toward mid-range systems.

Cambashi engineering and enterprise IT applications market research and analysis consultants in the UK confirm the 15% for 2008 but predict a slowdown thereafter.

The job market for the same sector is not so strong, but this is nothing new. Concerns about finding emloyement as a draftsman or design engineer recycle themselves every seven years or so. But new International and Asian service competition adds to the uncertainty. Engineering students are thus being encouraged to fortify their skillset with related qualifications in manufacturing and applied sciences.

See http://www.jonpeddie.com/about/press/2008/CAD-industry-to-maintain-growth.shtml
See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BLL/is_8_21/ai_n9484078

progeCAD 8.0.18 Free IntelliCAD Upgrade for Current progeCAD 2008 Customers

progeCAD 2008 8.0.18 IntelliCAD has been released. This is a free upgrade for all current progeCAD 2008 customers. progeCAD Professional users can upgrade online simply by clicking "Help -> Check Update" from the progeCAD menu bar. progeCAD Standard and progeCAD Smart! will also be upgraded soon.

New features and fixes in 8.0.18
General features and fixes
TEXT: Dwgcodepage will be automatically set to syscodepage in new drawings in order to handle different charsets (cyrillic, greek, chinese, etc)
TEXT: "Open this dialog when the drawing and system code differs" option has been fixed in the CODEPAGE dialog
TEXT: Fixed text alignement in right to left languages
TEXT: Fixed MTEXT dialog issue with very small text size
DIMENSION: Fixed prefix/suffix direct change in dimensions
DIMENSION: Fixed text direction after a dimension mirroring
DIMENSION: Fixed crash on angular dimension mirroring command
DRAW: Fixed Proxy AEC support in drawings
DRAW: Fixed opening problem with some files having anonymous blocks in them
DRAW: No more progeCAD crashes with close zoom in viewports inside the paper space with hidden lines
DRAW: Fixed opening by double clicking dwg files (problem related to just a few systems)
DRAW: Fixed NONE temporary snap issue
DRAW: Rotate now works even with ANGBASE and ANGDIR different from default
COMMANDS: Added -block command from command line
COMMANDS: Fixed crash with some "Multiple copy" command options
COMMANDS: Fixed ATTDEF command options
IMAGES: Incremented the available memory for images insertion, avoiding so some progeCAD 2008 crash
IMAGES: Added the georeference automatic management for ECW images
DISPLAY: Fixed real time Zoom and Pan commands in paper space
DISPLAY: Fixed viewport diplay problem with hidden lines and ucs that differs from the global one
DISPLAY: Fixed a display problem with some drawings having viewports in paper space
PERFORMANCES: Improved saving performances of dwg files
PERFORMANCES: Improvement in selection/deselection in blocks with attributes
PERFORMANCES: Fixed the Esnap selection problem in drawings having Xref or Blocks with a lot of entities (the mouse slowed down)
PERFORMANCES: Memory improvement in saving operations
PERFORMANCES: Little SNAP steps cause no more problems
PERFORMANCES: Fixed opening issue in a few situations with files having Proxy entities
PERFORMANCES: Speeded up work on drawings with not available inserted images. No more persisent error messages at command line.
MENU: Fixed Draw->Surfaces->3D Face menu item
MENU: The maximum number of menu items now is 8000 (before it was 3000)
ALE : "Back to ALE after insert" option now works correctly
INSTALLATION: No more error message while installing with the NOPDF option if the user privileges are low
REGISTRATION: Fixed USB key registration

A complete trial verion for progeCAD can be downloaded from CADDIT or purchased online.

TransMagic SP2 Reads SolidWorks 2007 Files

Some may have had problems to read SolidWorks 2007 files within TransMagic. I am happy to say that this problem seems apparently fixed in the upcoming TransMagic SP2 release available at CADDIT soon.

We have been working with the beta and SolidWorks 3D solid body topology seems to read in fine now. We did notice that TransMagic does not support reading the underlying parametric sketches, even when importing empty bodies and wireframe. Still, this is an important improvement for some.

Spring?

Yet another beautiful Saskatchewan day. The above picture was taken about 8:15 am. The snow abated then started up again by the time I was off to work by bike 45 minutes later. The snow in the face and ice on the roads & paths weren't as bad as the 50km/hr gusts of headwind combined with the -9C temperatures.

Design inside Education: Let us start early, for our schools in India

Image: School children visiting NID seen at the Gautam-Gira Square holding hands around the Big Tree at my suggestion.

Design inside Education: Let us start early, in all our schools in India
Yesterday we had a group of very young visitors, all from one school in Ahmedabad, The St Mary’s School, one of the better known schools of Ahmedabad. I saw all the students walking in single file, hands tucked firmly at the back lest they got into some kind of trouble, and being proper young school kids, while taking a tour of the National Institute of Design at our Paldi campus. I met them near my office and was struck by the strict discipline and wondered about the state of education in India. What would it be like to put design inside this education?

I recalled a lecture that I had delivered a few years ago at the conference titled Indian Crafts: The Future in a Globalising World, held at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India on 25th and 26th November 2005. The paper was based on the one I had penned for publication in the much delayed Volume Two of the Handmade in India. Volume One is printed and lying in a godown at the Office of the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts for the past 8 months, but that is another story. My paper was titled “Craftsmanship in Education: Towards a Creative India in the Knowledge Economy“ (161 kb word file) the full text version can be downloaded from this link here.

The issues that I had raised are captured in the three tables that I had presented at the conference and these represent my analysis of the education situation in India and we see that the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Education are bending over backwards to spread this kind of education to all our rural areas which have so far been spared the deleterious effects of such a formal education in our country. However the long arms of the planned education system are reaching out and they promise to snuff out the traditional systems of learning that has existed in our countryside for many centuries of active involvement of children and adolescents in the crafts and agricultural trades, now called child labour, and therefore looked down upon.

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

The NCERT ( The National Centre for Education Research and Training, New Delhi) has recently set up a National level committee to look at the introduction of Crafts as a subject of study in the school curriculum and the work has been progressing towards the implementation of their suggestions in the coming years in schools across India. When will design attract such attention and be brought into the school curriculum? We have the National Design Policy in place since the beginning of 2007 but there is no mention of school education in that agenda and that situation needs to change quickly. I wonder, when and how.

Image: Slide from the IDSA lecture on education the Design Way.

In my lecture at the IDSA 2006 in Austin, Texas I had stressed on the need to review education in the light of new findings about human motor skills and their association with learning as captured by the Homunculus as offered to us by Dr Wilder Penfield in the image above. We do need to find the Design Way and bring it into school education, sooner the better. The text summary paper (42 kb word file) and visual presentation (pdf 812 kb) titled “Giving Design back to the People: Towards a Post-mining Economy,”can be downloaded from here.

Image: Models created by a student group looking at the theme of Design inside Education in the DCC course.

While keeping these needs in mind, last year I had assigned the theme of “Putting Design Inside Education” as part of our Design Concepts and Concerns course for the Foundation students and for the Post Graduate students we had the theme of “Creative Industries of the Future”, both of which impinged upon sustained changes in the school level curriculum to include design learning and action at the very core of the educational processes in our schools across India. We need to make that happen, sooner than later, if we are to create leadership in a globalised economy and I do hope we are able to move towards a more design and innovation informed educational system across India, particularly for our rural children who I believe will be hugely disadvantaged by the current form of education if it is taken to the villages without some thought and revisions.

Yellow!

I painted the frame of the kayak yesterday and today with Tremclad paint. I used the stuff because it stands up well to moisture and didn't require any priming, plus it's glossy. However, it really stinks! It's an oil-based paint in a strong-smelling Varsol-type solvent. My timing on this was really poor as we've just been hit with snow storms and a cold spell (my bike ride to work this morning was miserable!). Not only do I need to run my heater more now to keep the garage a decent temperature, but I can't even open up the doors to air things out properly. If I had realised how much this paint stinks, I probably would have just given the frame a coat of varnish using the good stuff (high solids, less solvent) left over from the guillemot and only painted the coaming. However, once I started, I was pretty much committed to going with the yellow paint.

Below is one of the floor boards from the cockpit, supported by 4 finishing nails through a scrap of wood. This allows me to get a coat of paint onto each side of the piece and the nails leave only small marks in the paint (and they'll be underneath anyway).

Tomorrow night I think I'll give the frame a final coat of paint in the areas that are visible, or could use the additional protection (the plywood edges). Then maybe, just maybe, I'll be ready to start skinning on Wednesday.

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed

Image: A page from the booklet "Design for Services" launched by SEE Design Network of Design Wales, Cardiff. Full pdf files can be downloaded from the links below.

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed

Service Design is an emerging discipline that lies between the various fields of Design and Management. It is the cusp of both these major disciplines, which in India have rarely met or exchanged expertise in an educational setting. Design schools do not teach management in depth nor do management schools teach about design, leave alone design management. We have thousands of management schools in India when the pressing need is for the creation of experts who can innovate great services across a huge number of sectors of our economy. In my view design is needed critically in as many as 230 sectors of our economy and I have written about these in the past.

Across the world many management schools have started embracing design and innovation as a core offering to their students and in this the charge is led by the Rotmans School of Management Toronto and a less known school in Scandinavia called the KaosPilot, both of which have been covered in previous posts on this blog. In the 80’s the London School of Business had produced a book on Design Management and at both the Stanford University, USA and the University of Industrial Arts, Helsinki, there have been concerted efforts to bring together Design, Technology and Management through a planned series of projects that bring together faculty and students from all these disciplines in a transdisciplinary format. The Design Council, London had spearheaded an initiative called RED where a series of innovative design and management exchanges had led to the development of some very interesting new services, all designed by keeping users in mind. The Design Wales too has been working with SME’s and local businesses to assist them to refine their service offerings and their booklet on service design is a very refined offering that can be downloaded as a pdf file.

Several unusual experiments have been taking place in this space and the work done at the Mayo Clinic, USA is one that stands out in using the IDEO methodology to improve the service offerings of the medical establishment and their hospital chain, which has been covered in an earlier post on this blog. This year the KaosPilot school from Sweden has deputed 35 of their students to spend their “Outpost” session of three months in the field at Mumbai, and they are in the city till the end of May 2008 to explore the creation of new and compelling services that can build local entrepreneurship in a number of areas of service offerings from transportation to health systems. The Welllingker School of Management in Mumbai has started a masters programme in Design Management and NID Ahmedabad has a programme on offer called Strategic Design Management, but these are very little for a huge country like India and many of the other management schools should consider offering such programmes if we are to make headway in improving our services with the use of design and innovation, all managed by expert hands that are trained to do the job.

There are many online resources that provide insights into service design and its emerging boundaries and some of these are listed below for immediate access:

1. Design Council, UK: Service Design
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/About-Design/Design-Disciplines/Service-design-by-Bill-Hollins/

2. Rotmans School of Management, Toronto: Integrative Thinking
http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/mba/courses.htm

3. KaosPilot, Denmark: Design of New Businesses
http://www.kaospilot.dk/

4. Service Design: Wikipedia: Definition and links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_design

5. Service Design Research: Rich Collection of Papers
http://www.howardesign.com/exp/service/

6. ServiceDesign.org: Resources hosted by live/work UK
http://www.servicedesign.org/

7. Design Wales, Cardiff: SEE Design Journals
http://www.designwales.org.uk/designwalessf/DWDesignSectorsEng_DWProgrammesEng.aspx

8. SEE Design, Design Wales, Cardiff: Service Design booklet pdf
http://www.seedesign.org/seedesign/
Download: http://www.seedesign.org/seedesign/news.aspx?id=35

Part 1: http://www.seedesign.org/seedesign/uploaded_files/design%20for%20service%20-%20part%201%20of%202.pdf

Part 2: http://www.seedesign.org/seedesign/uploaded_files/design%20for%20service%20-%20part%202%20of%202.pdf

9. Design Management Institute
http://www.dmi.org/dmi/html/index.htm

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed

Image: A page from the booklet "Design for Services" launched by SEE Design Network of Design Wales, Cardiff. Full pdf files can be downloaded from the links below.

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed

Service Design is an emerging discipline that lies between the various fields of Design and Management. It is the cusp of both these major disciplines, which in India have rarely met or exchanged expertise in an educational setting. Design schools do not teach management in depth nor do management schools teach about design, leave alone design management. We have thousands of management schools in India when the pressing need is for the creation of experts who can innovate great services across a huge number of sectors of our economy. In my view design is needed critically in as many as 230 sectors of our economy and I have written about these in the past.

Across the world many management schools have started embracing design and innovation as a core offering to their students and in this the charge is led by the Rotmans School of Management, Toronto and a less known school in Scandinavia called the KaosPilot, both of which have been covered in previous posts on this blog. In the 80’s the London School of Business had produced a book on Design Management and at both the Stanford University, USA and the University of Industrial Arts, Helsinki, there have been concerted efforts to bring together Design, Technology and Management through a planned series of projects that bring together faculty and students from all these disciplines in a transdisciplinary format. The Design Council, London had spearheaded an initiative called RED where a series of innovative design and management exchanges had led to the development of some very interesting new services, all designed by keeping users in mind. The Design Wales too has been working with SME’s and local businesses to assist them to refine their service offerings and their booklet on service design is a very refined offering that can be downloaded as a pdf file. (see link below)

Several unusual experiments have been taking place in this space and the work done at the Mayo Clinic, USA is one that stands out in using the IDEO methodology to improve the service offerings of the medical establishment and their hospital chain, which has been covered in an earlier post on this blog. This year the KaosPilot school from Sweden has deputed 35 of their students to spend their “Outpost” session of three months in the field at Mumbai, and they are in the city till the end of May 2008 to explore the creation of new and compelling services that can build local entrepreneurship in a number of areas of service offerings from transportation to health systems. The Welllingker School of Management in Mumbai has started a masters programme in Design Management and NID Ahmedabad has a programme on offer called Strategic Design Management, but these are very little for a huge country like India and many of the other management schools should consider offering such programmes if we are to make headway in improving our services with the use of design and innovation, all managed by expert hands that are trained to do the job. The National Design Policy must take this into account when we try and take design forward in India.

There are many online resources that provide insights into service design and its emerging boundaries and some of these are listed below for immediate access:

1. Design Council, UK: Service Design

2. Rotmans School of Management, Toronto: Integrative Thinking

3. KaosPilot, Denmark: Design of New Businesses

4. Service Design: Wikipedia: Definition and links

5. Service Design Research: Rich Collection of Papers

6. ServiceDesign.org: Resources hosted by live/work UK

7. Design Wales, Cardiff: SEE Design Journals

8. SEE Design, Design Wales, Cardiff: Service Design booklet Download pdf files links: Part 1: Part 2:

9. Design Management Institute

10. Domus Academy - Business Design Department

23 Degrees and Gorgeous

What a beautiful day! Today was our warmest of '08 by far and a little wind (gusts to 37 km/h) couldn't spoil it. My older daughter got a new bike yesterday thanks to a trade with Jordan & Sean so this morning we were out at the park where she could practice on wide expanses of grass, her first time without training wheels. After a snack picnic on the grass she was on the bike and with a little help just to get started was motoring rapidly way from us. She progressed very rapidly and it was exciting to see her having so much fun on her new used bike. This afternoon there was another short practice session on the sidewalk which ended in some road rash on the hands. This evening we were back at the park, with cycling gloves on, to further advance those skills.

Strong Back with the forms

I put the forms on the strong back and matched them to my center line. The top of the board was true so I aligned the waterline for the top of the boards.

You can see how the fit on the center line.
I milled some pine as an accent peace for the sheer line. One side of the strip is squared to match with the decking and the other side is beaded for the cedar strips.
I am using wooden clamps to hold the strips to avoid staple marks. However, I had to use staples to fasten the strip to the bow.

Test Fit of a Sea Flea Skeleton

With the frame now fully epoxied, the girls tried the Sea Flea on for size.

My older daughter (still in pajamas) gets first crack, hence the long face on the younger daughter.
Now she's happy! With imaginary paddle in hand.


It seems like a nice day today to try it out on the water for the first time.

Looks like I'm going to have to build a couple of kid-sized paddles to go with the kayak.

Today I was home from work so the floor was constructed of 1/2" sanded pine plywood (about 7/16" actual thickness) and some angle aluminum and is ready to install. I also need to build a coaming and apply a finish to at least the cockpit area (do I need to apply a finish to the entire frame since I coated the whole thing in epoxy?) before I move to skinning.

Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Country

Robin and Arlene Karpan's new book, Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Country, is due out in just a few weeks. Quoted from the press release:

Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Country, a new book by writers and photographers Robin and Arlene Karpan, takes you on a visual journey along the north’s most spectacular rivers and lakes. The hardcover coffee-table book features 230 stunning images of the northern wilderness, complemented by stories on the rich history, the tremendous diversity of landscapes, and the Karpans’ personal experiences in canoeing and travelling the north.

I'm looking forward to seeing this one, and not just because my wife & I are in some of the photos! Robin and Arlene are friends of ours that we first came to know through serving on the executive of the Saskatoon Canoe Club. In addition to paddling some day trips, my wife and I did a fly-in canoe trip a few years ago with Robin and Arlene, Dave and John Bober, Ralph Zaffran, and Lloyd Beazely. We flew in to Hickson Lake then made our way to the Paull River and on down to the Churchill River and finished at Missinipe. A map of the whole route can be seen here at this link and a partial write-up can be seen here at my other site for the time being (eventually, I will move that stuff either here to pawistik.blogspot.com, or over to pawistik.net). I gather that this trip was the source of some of the material used for the book chapter "Rock Art to Rock Trout: Hickson Lake & Paull River."

The Karpan's own Parkland Publishing and have published numerous books of local interest, often featuring their remarkable photography. A book launch is currently being planned for May, possibly in conjunction with a Saskatoon Canoe Club event (once details have been established, and announcement will likely be made on the SCC web site).

Frame Nearly Complete

Last week I prepared the frame for permanent assembly, checked final fit and sanded things smooth. I held it all together with zip-ties.



The view through the forms, looking from the stern towards the bow.
The bow stem:

The stern stem was trimmed back some more from what is shown in the photo below. I took another 1.5" or so off of the stem.
Once I was satisfied with the fit of everything, I used thickened epoxy (West System 105 resin, 207 hardener, 406 colloidal silica thickener) to glue the whole lot together. I did this last week. Tonight I moved to the next step and sealed the frame in epoxy. The plywood edges will receive a second coat after the frame is removed from the supports that hold it onto the strongback. At that time I'll flip it over and coat the undersides of the stringers and those areas I could not reach easily as long as it was attached to the strongback supports. There will be rough edges that I'll need to sand down later as a rough wood edge coated in epoxy will cut like a serrated knife.

The photos below are from this evening. Note the new hairstyle. Between the bald head and the coveralls, my wife says I look like an inmate in the photos. (She should know.)

Designs

As I get closer to being ready to skin my daughter's kayak, I've been thinking about how the kayak should be decorated. The PVC fabric used to skin the kayak is available in several bright colours, and she picked red for her kayak. When purchasing the fabric, I also purchased some extra yellow PVC and Denham Awning Makers threw in some blue scraps for me to use.

My daughter saw, and loved, the sun that Anton Olsen used on the Yost-designed Sea Pup kayak he built. So of course, a bright yellow sun on her kayak is exactly what she wants. As good as Anton's kayak looks, I'm inclined to try something else rather than to copy his.

I was thinking perhaps an orca would be a good pick, and I'm pretty sure my daughter would agree. I found the following graphic via a google image search and it seems to be a pretty close fit to what I was looking for.
Plus, according to the info in the readme file at the index for the graphic, it's free and available to use. I used Microsoft Paint to change the colours to match what I want to use and came up with the following colourful version.

The tail looks a little odd to me, so I'll maybe fix that a bit and reduce the angular look of the whale overall before using it. To actually use this, I would cut the whole whale shape out of blue, then cut out the yellow patches and glue that over top of the blue, all of which will be glued onto the red fabric on the kayak deck. I will either use a black marker or a bit of black scrap from Mark for the eye.