ctrlsave.com

I made some research online about gps receiver modules and found some really good tutorials and resources about the parallax gps module , to top it up , it has got compass capabilities which i can use for my audio feedbacks.

The arduino tutorial can be found here, http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Tutorials/GPS . There is also a very good section about this component in tom igoe’s “making things talk” where it is used in a few small mini projects.

I ended up buying it from a local company with a “nice” price tag and true enough, it is fairly easy to wire and to make it work on a basic level.

I came across this group online and it is extremely interesting and relevant for me and all the data that i can use in this project is amazing. I contacted Reuben, the project leader to ask him if we could have a talk about using his datas for my project.

http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/geowyc/course/GE3216/students/sea_level_rise/intro.htm

Toran’s work inspired me a lot in its futuraction approach, raising questions of senses, emotions  and genetic ethics that leaves one to wonder in many ways how loneliness can break us down. The products, while simplistic in design, illustrates the various aspects of senses well. The formulistic approach that he has taken has also helped me a lot in formulating my own project.

An exerpt of his statement :

Accessories for Lonely Men consists of a collection of eight fictional products designed to alleviate loneliness after the departure or loss of a woman. The project is an attempt to understand what initiates loneliness; do we miss the individual or the generic traces they leave behind?
http://www.noamtoran.com/

Weathersongs is a project to create music from the ever-changing patterns of the weather as recorded by an electronic weather station.

( I would expect very dramatic music to be created over the next decade )

http://www.materialecology.com/   - Neri Oxman

http://www.theverymany.net/     - Marc Fornes

I was very intrigued by the very beautiful forms of their work, which struck me as I was trying to decide how my products should look like. There are a few reasons why I think that these might be the look of the future, as opposed to the conventional view of the future being the edgy metallic looking city.

One of the reason being that various design and engineering fields are looking for inspirations from the nature, from which the science of the biomimicry was born. In Neri Oxman’s work, She was looking at how structures can be external, instead of an internal bone structure. Marc Fornes uses algorithms in his work to generate structures that works kind of like the DNA or a seed and both works in my opinion looks very organic. The future that I foresee would be very much constructed on a nano level, a technology that has minimal damage on the environment.

http://www.ipcc.ch/

A very comprehensive report on various impacts of the climate change compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Lots of information and images.

CLIMATE WARMING IN THE ANTARCTIC; 5-Degree Rise Over the Last Half Century Is Recorded at Little America ICE IS FOUND THICKER Director of U. S. Program Says Sheet Drops 10,000 Feet in Many Areas
By WALTER SULLIVAN
May 31, 1958, Saturday
I got curious about how early did scientists and politicians first knew about possible climate changes caused by industrialisation and it was quite shocking to find out that they knew about it as early as 1958. This New York Times article reported about the rise in temperature at antarctic of up to 5 degrees. They knew about it but why has there been nothing done until the Ozone hole appeared in 1985?

Ecopolis A floating city that’s designed for 50,000 refuges affected by the rise in ocean level. If nothing is done to slow or stop this process, we can definitely expect a world of floating cities in the future, much like waterworld. The very first step we can take is to stop using plastic bags in major shopping centers, it’s all for the good for our earth. My five cents worth.