Hi. This is the personal home page for Will Ackel - computer programmer, geometry
fanatic, amateur architect, and closet extrovert. I live with my wife Leslie
in Lodi, California. In my spare time I manage industrial property (Ackel Properties), and Norma's Vineyard.
Doings
- November 17, 2007: Leslie organized a Civil War Ball for the American Civil War Association.
- September 14, 2007: After having been in touch with him by phone and email for many years, I finally got a chance to meet Marc Pelletier in person in Boulder, Colorado. Marc is the cofounder of Zometool, Inc. along with Paul Hildebrandt, and is one of the most brilliant and accomplished geometers of our time. We had a very pleasant chat about his work with spidrons, space-frames, and meta-structures (space-frames in which each element is itself a space-frame).
- September 13, 2007: Paul Hildebrandt and his family very graciously hosted me during my visit to Denver. Paul, the president of Zometool, Inc., was kind enough to show me the top-secret facility where the Zometool connecters are born – the most complicated plastic part ever made.
- September 11-12, 2007: I am fond of trains, and for years I have heard that one of Amtrak's most spectacular routes is The California Zephyr. So when I decided to attend a meeting of the Advanced Transit Association at the offices of Taxi 2000 in Fridley, Minnesota (near Minneapolis), it seemed like to ideal opportunity for a cross-country train trip. Leslie accompanied me on the first part of the trip from Sacramento to Winter Park, Colorado. Here is a video of that part of the trip.
- June 16, 2007: I have just looked at the web sites of the top seven luxury homebuilders in the United States. Why luxury homebuilders? Because this should be the most innovative, performance-driven segment of the market. Together they built 45,743 homes in 2006, but there is a remarkable sameness, not only in their web sites, but the homes they build. They all brag about how long they've been in business. They all have mortgage calculators, and a way to search for available homes. They all show floor plans and list options, such as floor coverings, appliances, counter tops, and plumbing & lighting fixtures. But none of them discuss performance, such as energy efficiency, reduced water usage, lower maintenance, ability to survive fire, flood, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. The photos and videos feature the interior decoration, and show very little of the home itself. One of them even had photos of model homes with the area in front of the garage doors landscaped, apparently in the hopes that buyers won’t realize that almost the entire front yard will have to be paved over in order to make use of the garage. All in all, I didn't find anything on any of the sits that I could use.
- June 15, 2007: I set up two Limited Liability Companies for the two properties we are developing in Bonsall, California– Sabsung Bonsall, LLC, and Shanta Bonsall, LLC. “Sabsung” is a Tai word that means to slake an emotional or spiritual thirst, and thereby to be revitalized. “Shanta” is a Sanskrit word for tranquility. The first house to be built will be Sabsung Bonsall.
- June 1, 2007: I met with Chris Kling of Aurodyn, Inc. in Oakland, CA.
Aurodyn is pioneering a new node-and-strut construction system that is similar to the 7-axis cuboctahedral system made by Novum Structures, LLC, but it is based on the 31-axis rhombicosidodecahedral system that is the basis of Zometool (see below). They are currently exploring ways to skin these structures with Structural Insulated Panels (SIP's). SIP's are normally composed of two sheets of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) structurally laminated and pressure-cured to a rigid core of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) foam insulation. Because structural integrity would be provided by the Aurodyn framework, the opportunity exists to use SIP’s that are skinned with alternate materials such as metal or cementitious planks. These panels are not rated for structural applications, but they have the advantage of being inherently nonflammable. This appeals to me since I prefer not to rely on chemical coatings or additive to achieve fire resistance.
They would also be more resistant to rot and infestation.
- February 7-10, 2007: I attended the International Builders’ Show in Orlando,
Florida. The homebuilding industry is very conservative, so I didn't expect
to see much there that I would be willing to use. In fact, many of the booths were much more creative than the buildings the exhibitors build. As you may know, there are companies that specialize in building trade show booths, and one of their selling points is their booths are eye-catching and original. However, I did find a few
interesting products:
- Inspired by a system at EPCOT Center, the Heat
& Glo Cyclone is a glass tube inside of which a fan creates a vortex
that elongates and confines a gas flame. In ancient times it was thought
that there were four basic elements: earth, air, water, and fire. While
the chemists of today have gone far beyond that notion, from an aesthetic
standpoint, these are still the basic elements. I have always seen fireplaces
as an anachronism – expensive, dirty, labor-intensive, and inefficient.
So for me, the Cyclone represents an opportunity to introduce the drama
of fire into a modern environment.
- Gaggenau was showing a prototype of their Lift Oven. Rather than having
a door on he front, this oven is mounted over a countertop, and the bottom
of the oven is lowered down to counter level by an electric lift, bringing
the food with it. Advantage? Since heat rises, when you open a conventional
oven door, most of the heat escapes. Also, with the lift in the lowered
position, you can easily see three sides of your dinner, without having
to further slide out an oven rack. The Lift Oven is also no doubt easier
to load and unload, since the pan only needs to be moved sideways a small
distance. All in all it sounds like a promising concept.
- Those of us who look for ways to minimize energy use have always been
attracted to the good ol’ fashioned cloths line. But if you’ve
ever had cloths soiled by a bird perched on the line, or if your cloths
have ended up on the ground after a sudden gust of wind, or soaked in
an unexpected rain, you know that the old ways are not always best. So
I was intrigued by the BreezeDry from Grimm Brothers Plastics. (Apparently
the Brothers Grimm have diversified.) The BreezeDry is just a big plastic
closet with some wire shelves and a fan that pulls air in from outdoors
through a filter, and exhausts it out the top. It solves all the problems
of outdoor drying while using a fraction of the electricity that is consumed
by a conventional cloths dryer. Unfortunately at $2,500, I doubt they
will sell many, but you can build one yourself for a fraction of the cost.
- March 2, 2007: We acquired a second property, near to the first.
- December 14, 2006: In fulfillment of a lifelong ambition, we now have the opportunity to build a custom home in northern San Diego County. This will not be the ordinary stick-framed box. I will be updating this page from time to time with our latest thinking on this project.
- May 2006: I bought a Segway. I love it. NEW – added 5/4/2007.
- I am a member of the Advanced Transit Association. It’s purpose is to promote advanced new forms of urban transportation such as Personal Automated Transport, or PAT (also known as Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT). PAT has the potential to prevent 20,000 traffic fatalities every year in the U.S. alone, and cut our oil imports, greenhouse gases, and urban commute times in half. All this can be done with technology that is available today. You can learn all about it at Jerry Schneider’s excellent portal site Innovative Transportation Technologies.
- I produced illustrations for Zome Geometry, a new textbook by George Hart and published by Key Curriculum
Press.
George’s Pavilion of Polyhedreality is the best geometry site I know of. Why should anyone care? Well, among other reasons, because geometry is (or should be) the vocabulary of architecture. Eons ago architects got hung up on the cuboid, and have rarely ventured beyond it. It’s as if all paintings were done in shades of green, and painters refused to use any other colors. Geometry is one of the keys to opening up a new and exciting world of architectural creativity.
- Naturally as a computer graphics enthusiast I was in New Orleans for SIGGRAPH
2000. There was an excellent paper on "Piecewise Smooth Subdivision Surfaces
with Normal Control", which described what seems to be a totally superior
way to subdivide meshes. I also got some good ideas from the course in "Migrating
to an Object-Oriented Graphics API". In the interactive art installations
I was most impressed with "Wooden Mirror", an array of hundreds of wooden
squares mounted on a wall. Each square was mounted on a solenoid so that it
could be tilted a couple of degrees to be in shadow or to reflect a light
shining down from above. A video camera hidden in the wall above the "mirror"
would take a picture of the observer and reproduce it as a pattern of light
and dark squares. Unlike most SIGGRAPH exhibits, this one required no explanation.
The solenoids also made a charming clicking sound as people moved in front
of the camera. Highlights of previous SIGGRAPH's.
Other Stuff I've Done
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If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
This site last updated January 9, 2008
with questions or comments.
Copyright © 1998-2008 William A Ackel, All rights reserved.