Jonathan Biddle – Made in Taiwan

Month: March 2011

DIY Sous Vide

Our friend Dave, who is an engineer at Microsoft in Seattle, paid us a visit last week. Reports had been circulating that he had assembled his own Sous Vide; a device that enables highly-accurate temperature control for cooking, in the manner of Heston Blumenthal.

By first vacuuming the food into sealed bags, then immersing it a water bath, it is possible to cook meats and other food stuffs in a way that prevents over-cooking, and because you can cook over more sustained periods of time, it can extract better results from cheaper cuts of meat.

Buying ready-made, commercial Sous-Vides is still very expensive, so Dave lead the way in bringing a temperature controller and the major components over from the USA. All that was left was to fashion an enclosure, and assemble it all together. After heading to the tool district, we found a cornucopia of electronics component shops, and had immense fun selecting the most clicky, over-the-top switches and widgets for the control box.

Results? Melt-in-mouth good, but without disintegrating. I wonder, in fact, if some of the more famous steak houses cook their steaks in this way; we had a relatively good value cut, but it would be interesting to see the results with even better meat.

Next project are eggs; apparently it’s possible to cook poached eggs in the shell that, once opened, are more like custard.

The control box.

Bringing the water up to temperature.

Dropping the vacuum-packed meat into the water.

Bubbling away …

Plonk

Cutting open the packs of meat, and suddenly filling the kitchen with rather a nice smell!

You still need to finish it off in a pan to attain the colour, and to add a touch of caramelised burnt flavour to the meat. The Lodge cast-iron pan that I idiotically hand-carried back from the USA (6kg!) does the job perfectly; better than non-stick.

Served with pureed cauliflower and jus of bell pepper. Yum!

2011/03/30
Designing a Notebook
The penny dropped when my own Father announced that his company was ordering them for their employees; the heat was really on!

Rewind; the Vostro brand, specifically established to provide Small Business owners with IT solutions. Until this point, the products were good value and worthy, but the brand had a pretty low profile. We needed a hit.

The insight; a large segment of the small-business market are highly customer-facing, and they need products that shout ‘confidence’. We needed a thin, light, ‘cool’ notebook that could survive life on the road, had the power to punch through work, and that would make no excuses in the business-class lounge.

Process

Designing a notebook computer is about more than a nice sketch. The two most important things that the Dell design team needs to drive are the architecture, and the specification of the product. Drive poorly, and you end up with a product that is optimised for the factory instead of the user, and crammed full with every possible feature, port and widget. With notebooks especially, it’s what you choose to leave out that makes the product.

Working with layout teams at our key suppliers and employing new ‘Hyperbaric’ cooling technologies from Intel, we followed precedents set by the Dell Adamo notebook by kicking out the area behind the hinge; the reality is that business owners need traditional network and VGA cables. We also knew that if we could get all the ports away from the sides, we would be left with a blade-like profile, really allowing the thinning effort to shine. However, we also wanted an ‘honest’ front section, eschewing chamfering and other cheats to make things appear thinner than they really are; the ‘dipped’ front portion also houses the antennas and provides a degree of drop protection.

Breaking traditions of delivering ‘black boxes’ we wrapped the device in a jacket of anodised aluminium. The procurement team really delivered the bacon here; no one expected we could get a completely aluminium chassis in this price bracket.

Opening it up, we wanted a clean, uncluttered environment for getting work done. Getting brutally simple, we hid the hinges away from view; this took engagement with secondary and tertiary suppliers in the USA and China, shaving 0.05mm at time from the zinc alloy and designing one of the smallest hinge profiles ever seen in a notebook. This eventually became an iconic design feature of the product.

But it’s also about getting work done, right? Perceived quality of keyboards is closely related to the stiffness of the chassis. Magnesium is the hero here; it provides by far the best stiffness-to-weight ratio, and allowed us to go even further with the thinning. The aforementioned ‘hidden hinges’ help keep it sober and professional.

Camping out at the supplier in Taiwan, and with frequent trips to China to work with suppliers, we finally delivered a product that landed Vostro on the map, scooping multiple awards and praise from the press.

But nothing quite beats seeing my Dad using one.

Media
- Dell Vostro V13 Hands On: Bruce Wayne’s Laptop – Gizmodo
- The Vostro #v130 gets @guykawasaki’s seal of approval – Flickr
- Workbeautifully.com – Featuring an interview with yours truly
Awards
2011/03/27
Lipstick on a Pig – Taipei Floral Expo 2011

I had deep reservations with the Taipei Flora Expo, even before getting the tickets.

China gets the Olympics; Taiwan gets the Deaflympics and World Games. Shanghai gets the World Expo; Taipei makes a ‘Flora Expo’ for itself. I don’t see anything more than a cynical distraction from real issues, and a vote-grabbing exercise; ‘lipstick on a pig’. Rather than actually fixing the environmental, architectural and pollution problems of Taipei, just put on a 400 million US$ flower show. And then tell the people in Taiwan it’s an ‘international’ event.

Despite the claims of corruption and environmental destruction, vast queues have regularly formed both inside and outside the event for the last few months. So, instead of just sitting in my apartment all cynical, I popped along with Yuyin to check it out.

Welcome, one and all!

The exterior of the Future Pavilion

… the outside, formed from recycled plastics, is likely to stick around after the event.

Yuyin, and the best colour of leather ever.

The Taiwan Pavilion (joking, joking!) … although wouldn’t it be cool if it was; I think the government takes itself too seriously for that to ever happen.

Roof detail of the Taiwan pavilion. Made from basket-like materials, for some reason.

Some level of coherence in the public building structures …

… reflected in the details of the drainage. Rather nice, I thought.

Different varieties of plants on display.

I think I actually want to make a clock, after seeing these fake clocks made from security mirrors

I think it’s great that Taiwan is making an effort to become progressive, innovative and ‘green’, but I think there are more authentic, effective ways than this. Let’s hope there is at least some legacy.

2011/03/26
Wulai Weekender

First cla ssic Lars situation: Three taxis, three couples, three kids, looking for a restaurant in a car repair area.

BAM. Gone as soon as you realise it started, weekends with the old Taipei crew are always a riot of food, laughter, cheap beer, good whisky and trips to the sweaty parts of the island. This time was no different. Well, except for the new addition of children to the mix.

Ostensibly here for the bike show, Anke was meeting with her Taiwanese employer here in Taiwan; an electric bike technology organisation. Lars popped over with her, providing baby sitting services for Linnéa, and new addition Luc. With the addition of Edgar, we suddenly had a trio of little critters running around and demanding the attention of our weary digital cameras.

Mere minutes in, I was already in a taxi, picking up Yuyin and racing across the city in search of a Gongbao Chicken recommendation from Mattieu. Dispite noisy disapproval from the cab driver, as he claimed there was ‘nothing there’, the flotilla of taxis made their way across Taipei. Circling around the area once, I took control of the situation, and pointed us back in the opposite direction to the reliable (but still delicious) ‘rechao’ on Leli Rd. Sorry to be a party pooper!

Reminds me of a photo I took of Linéa a couple of years ago.

Cute as a button.

I admire Lars’ new camera.

Luc is kind of a chilled out hippie baby.

Green with pride

Looking to the stars with Lars.

Real focus of the weekend was returning to Wulai, of course. Beloved for it’s completely crazy and lovely public hot springs, fabulous landscape, and easy access to Taipei, I make it up there with some regularity. Through what can only be described as mistakes of planning, I managed to find ourselves a pretty awesome hotel, with a huge mega room (naturally complete with KTV) for the two families and myself to crash. While I feared for the worst regarding sleep, Michael took care of it with a bottle of two of good whisky. Out like a light.

Garnished with smoked chicken, and washed down with a dip in the hot springs, it was one of those classic weekends that can’t really be summed up. Awesome.

Edgar is like a mini version of Michael, but with a better sense of humour.

Our excellent hotel, Melody Villa – prepare for crazy flash and music onslaught. Are they all from one web designer?

Peepo

Colours of Wulai

In the rush to leave the restaurant, we almost forgot Linéa.

Absolutely no bungee jumping allowed.

The hot springs were no different from usual; lovely organised chaos. The only mistake we made this time was bringing food in (‘hey we know what we are doing!’) which inevitably resulted in coffee filling one of the pools, and bits of waffle floating around for everyone to enjoy.

Yeahhhh.

I have about a thousand of these shots, as I was playing with my new waterproof (and ugly) camera.

Sugar and spice and all things nice.

If the kids were superstars already in Taipei, nothing prepared us for Wulai. Never alone, without comments about their skin or eyelids, you knew they were around due to loud screams of ‘hao ke’ai o!‘ (how cute!) echoing around the valleys. Luc and Edgar, while a mere five days apart, are built rather differently; Edgar like a little German Budda, and Luc like a tiny hippie cherub.

Chilled out Luc.

Never anything less than fascinated and smiling Edgar.

Checking out the waterproof camera.

Man time.

No trip to Taiwan would be complete without a visit to a nightmarket. While not really quite a nightmarket, Wulai’s old street sufficed, and provided us with some tasty treats for later on the evening.

Wulai old street.

Racing car start.

Luc doing some window shopping

Views up one of the side streets to buckets filled with eggs.

Convenience store.

See you next year I hope!

2011/03/20
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