One of Veto's more unusual cases is the LT-XL Portable Office. It used to be that knowledge workers earned their living sitting in front of computers, and blue-collar guys earned theirs turning wrenches or steering wheels. But now that the line is blurring, with engineers and technicians visiting job sites with both manual tools and a laptop, the LT-XL fills the product gap. The schizophrenic bag features a "business side" that safely stores a laptop and delicate electronics, and a "tool side" to hold the manual stuff.

Check out the rest of Veto's line-up here.

We last wrote about inventor extraordinaire Matthias Wandel back in May, when his homemade rolling table saw stand caught our eye; Wandel has since updated his website with a list of all of the "insane contraptions" he's built over the years, and even better, has committed to posting weekly updates of new inventions.

To refresh your memory, Wandel's a guy who buys machinery and shop tools at flea markets and tag sales, and later converts them into practical, sometimes incredibly specific purposes; some of his devices are sure to drop the jaw of many a woodworker. If you like woodshop stuff click here to check out his joinery jigs, but be warned that you may get sucked in for the next hour.

Speaking of getting sucked in, for the layperson or non-shop-geek, one of his easier-to-understand contraptions is his simple Wasp-Sucking Machine. After finding a wasp's nest on his property, Wandel converted a blower he picked up a a surplus store into a pest-capturing device:

The box has a glass lid so you can see the status of the catch, and only bug screen for a 'filter' so there isn't much to resist the flow of air. A piece of metal or cardboard can be slid in a gap where the hose connects to seal off the box, and the box just sits on top of the intake spout for the blower, so it can easily be removed from the machine for purposes of showing off one's catch.

The catch above is from leaving the machine running for 9 hours straight while I went to work. The machine doesn't suck the wasps out of the nest, it just catches most of the wasps that come back from the field. Coming out of the nest, most of them are smart enough to crawl away from the suction before getting airborne, but coming back, they get sucked in on the landing approach.

Nelly Ben Hayoun, creator of the theatrical Soyuz Chair, brings us another hybrid between design, performance, science and amateurism, the Super K Sonic Booooum. The show, taking place at Shunt in London, is described as "a fantastic voyage on a dingy that floats on 50000 tons of extremely pure water where neutrinos interact with electrons in a massive Sonic Boom." In other words, a simulated tour of the Super K Neutrino Observatory in Japan.

Visitors, who will don wellies and white suits, will board a small dinghy with scientists from the real Super K, who will give a short lecture on particle physics as the boat makes its way through the installation by means of pullies. Throughout the tour, the space will periodically resonate with a "Sonic Boom," a powerful sound and light show by Hayoun and sound artist Tim Olden.

Sounds pretty spectacular, and if you're in London, you still have two more days to catch it. More info here.

all photographs by Nick Ballon

Material Short Stories is a new project from Core contributor Aart Van Bezooyen (author of the Material Stories Newsletter ) and designer Tim Oelker. Manufacturers, design agencies or individual designers can subscribe to this service in order "to advance their product with innovative materials."

This consultancy takes the form of a publication, offered at a fixed subscription fee. Instead of receiving a magazine, however, each client receives a pamphlet produced especially in response to a submitted concept.

After receiving a concept from a client by email, Bezooyen and Oelker will select five innovative materials, sketch out how they might be applied, and send back a booklet of material information, sketches and specs, complete with USB card for digital materials.

Read more (or subscribe) here.

Once upon a time telephones were split into two pieces, one for the ear, one for the mouth. I talk, I listen.

It's a sign of the times that Fujitsu's new F-04B cell phone splits into two pieces, one for the fingers and one for the eyes. I type, I watch.

The detachable screen communicates with the keyboard via Bluetooth, and the keyboard side has both a QWERTY and a number pad. Oh yeah, and they threw in a pico projector, too:

First thing I thought when I saw this was, if I had one, I'd surely lose one half and not the other. Luckily the engineers thought of this too: Press a button on one, and the missing unit flashes a light and beeps from its location under the couch cushions or in your kleptomaniac friend's pockets.

via dvice

Weekly finds from the 3D world.

SolidWorks
The often misunderstood Geometry Pattern tool.
Annual Luxology + PhotoView 350 Holiday Rendering Contest (last year's winner pictured above).

Alibre
Alibre challenges the rest of the CAD guys to come up with a $99 piece of software.

Alias
What's the best hardware for running Alias?

Sustainable Minds
Kenneth Wong takes "the TurboTax of lifecycle assessment" software for a spin.

Inventor
"What's the difference between Inventor and SketchUp Pro?"

3DVia
D'Assault Systemes releases a....Photoshop plugin?

Rhino
Tutorial: Modeling a diving knife.
Armadillo plug-in lets you array items along a curve.

Furniture Designer
Richards and Philips
Petersfield, UK

We are looking for a furniture designer to join our growing bespoke furniture design studio. We predominantly work with interior designers and architects to work up, detail, design and furnish their schemes. There is a strong collaborative element to our work. We also work with private clients. We work on prestigious projects predominantly in London but also overseas (at present we have projects in 7 other countries).

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

A very cool material is Hylite, which is comprised of sheets of aluminum bonded to a polypropylene core. Why bond metal to plastic? Because once you mill off a thin strip of aluminum from either side, boom, you've got a metal sheet with a living hinge.

Hylite is being used to excellent effect by California-based computer accessories maker AviiQ, whose folding Portable Laptop Stand has been named a CES Innovations 2010 Design and Engineering Award honoree. Check out how it works, simple and sweet:

I used to have a car that spent a fair amount of time in the shop. During servicing I'd routinely ignore the NO CUSTOMERS BEYOND THIS POINT sign and walk into the garage to talk to the mechanic. Not because I cared about the car--I just liked looking at the garage's tool carts, which seemed to hold and organize an insane amount of tools and attachments.

I finally found the site of the company that makes those things: Montezuma Manufacturing. They make portable toolboxes, rolling cabinets and the chests that go on top, in both steel and aluminum. Their capacity and price--the large black cabinet pictured above rings in at $2,300, which is worth more than my car was--put these out of reach of the casual DIY-er, but it's interesting to see how the pros store their stuff.

In association with Judd Foundation, design gallery Sebastian + Barquet is presenting Donald Judd: Furniture, an exhibition of Donald Judd's resolved furniture designs. Shown alongside Judd's original drawings, this exhibition will include important early examples of his furniture in a variety of woods, colored-plywood, enameled aluminum and copper.

Donald Judd: Furniture
Sebastian and Barquet, New York City
November 12-December 25th, 2009
Opening: Thursday, November 12th. 6-9 pm

Renault has developed a website to promote sustainable development and educate the public on its various facets, reports Dexigner.

The site looks at new concepts such as car-sharing, multi-modality, new behaviours, and "soft" mobility.

The aim of Sustainable Mobility is to offer a complete panorama of the studies and initiatives undertaken worldwide on the mobility of the future.

>> Read article

The Xtend & Climb ladder seems to be a neat alternative, as it stretches from 2 1/2 feet in storage to 12 1/2 feet in height.

It's made from aircraft aluminum with steel connectors and it needn't be unfurled all the way to be used; just "pop" up as many steps as you need into their locking positions. I'm thinking about picking one up, and if I do, an in-depth review will follow.

Israeli designer Alex Padwa has his students at Shenkar's College of Engineering and Design not only sketch, but learn to juggle--literally, with three balls--in "freeing the mind" exercises prior to beginning design projects. Padwa's class' latest was to design a tea kettle that breaks away from the conventions. Hit the jump to see some of our faves, large.

Brief: The redesign of the AFH Chicago Logo is a competition for 'branding' the Chicago Chapter with a new logo that will be used on all items issued by AFH Chicago. This is an open call for a logo that will represent the broader Architecture for Humanity Organization but a logo that also represents that this is a local chapter that is recognizable as a distinct chapter focused on local issues as well as the larger goals of the national organization.

Logo Competition Submission Requirements + Timeline
I. The entry should be submitted in e-mail format as a high resolution PDF file, JPG or TIF, not to exceed 8.5x11, no later than Monday, November 16th by 5:00 p.m. to logocomp [at] afh-chicago [dot] org.

II. The entries can be hand sketches, line drawings; full color imagery...anything that gets the idea across the design does not have to be the finish product as long as the idea for the logo is conveyed.

III. All entries received will be voted on at the November AFH Chicago monthly meeting and the top five (5) vote receiving logos will be forwarded to the national chapter with the winning design selected by the staff at the national headquarters.

IV. The author(s) of the winning design will be asked to work with the 'board' to apply the logo to the website, stationary, business cards, etc.

V. With your e-mail please state the name(s) of all entrants, your contact information and the best means and time to be contacted.

Email logocomp [at] afh-chicago [dot] org for more information.

Deadline: November 16th, 5:00pm CST

We're excited to announce the brand new, just-launched web magazine Sight Unseen, which "takes readers inside the worlds of design, art, fashion, food, photography and other creative disciplines." Compiled by editors Monica Khemsurov and Jill Singer, the interviews, studio visits, book excerpts, factory tours, sketchbook highlights, and design flashbacks reveal all the thinking, hard work and discoveries behind a vibrant, pluralistic and international creative scene.

For example, Khemsurov's piece "Sissel Tolaas, Scent Expert," visits Tolaas in her Berlin studio, where she develops complex scents for museums, big brands, and her own artwork. An excerpt:

Though on any given day she might be busy developing an ambient odor for a Margiela exhibition or identifying a prototypical Swedish smell for Ikea, the larger aim of her career, she says, is remediating "the lack of understanding smell has in our society." The first step is getting people to pay attention, even if it means using unseemly tactics like mixing up a kind of "filth soup" cologne and wearing it to a film festival, or simulating the body odors extracted from men having panic attacks and exhibiting them on scratch-and-sniff walls at MIT. "I have what scientists don't have--the guts to go out there and try my ideas out in reality," the 49-year-old says.

Read more here.