{"id":881,"date":"2009-10-11T13:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-11T13:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.keenertech.com\/?p=881"},"modified":"2009-10-11T13:31:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-11T13:31:00","slug":"a-little-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/?p=881","title":{"rendered":"A Little Inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m always designing things, mostly software programs in one of a couple different languages. When you spend a lot of time doing the same things, it’s easy to slip into a rut without realizing it. Something that I find useful to combat this is to look at interesting designs in other totally unrelated fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ocean<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is an architectural concept drawing for an “ocean house” that I found on the web (I have no idea where now, because I saved this image a long time ago). I like the image because it challenges the traditional ideas of what a house on the water should look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, there are no wooden stilts in sight. Second, the house isn’t modeled after a sea shanty, a New England fisherman’s cottage, a native hut or anything else. It’s a large, square, two-story modern building rising out of the water, attached to shore by a wooden dock (probably the only traditional element in the image).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even there, though, the house isn’t perfectly square. The frame is square, but the living quarters are offset diagonally from the frame, creating some interesting angles and shapes, including a triangular wooden deck. The overall effect creates an interesting and thought-provoking architectural design because it challenges the general concept of what a house on the water should look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, carry that idea of challenging traditional concepts over to the software realm. What concepts are embodied in a project? Can those concepts be bent or twisted in new ways to create something totally different? Can they be combined with something else to make something entirely new?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, when blogging became prevalent, the folks at Twitter came up with the novel idea of “micro-blogging” as a way to make blogging more accessible to people who didn’t have the time or inclination to maintain a full-scale blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s why I like looking at designs in other realms unrelated to software. It’s a way to inspire myself to come at problems from a different angle, to combine things in different ways or sometimes just to play the “what if” game when trying to conceptualize a new project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m always designing things, mostly software programs in one of a couple different languages. When you spend a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","tag-architecture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.keenertech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}