Asides
Archived Posts from this Category
- ¶ Aaron is running a workshop at AVI 2008 on “designing multi-touch interaction techniques for coupled public and private displays”. If you have a novel idea for an interactive system involving mobile devices, fixed displays and surfaces; or if you just need an excuse to put an iPhone on your research budget, head over to the PPD ‘08 website. (0)
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- ¶ Rube Goldberg machines are fun, as anyone who has seen The Goonies will tell you. Physical machines, such as the meticulous, elegant design built for the award-winning Honda ad “Cog” (which required 606 takes to get right), cost millions of dollars and take months of work to film. A recent trend on the web is the building of virtual Rube Goldberg machines, using existing video game engines to supply the components and physics, and essentially developing their own emergent gameplay. Half Life 2, with its included Havok physics, has an entire community working on building various exceedingly complicated contraptions that do very little, by tying together various blocks, pulleys and the ubiquitous exploding barrel. For my money, the finest examples of the art have come from the venerable Super Mario World. (1)
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- ¶ The Big Lebowski Phenomenon:
The peculiar experience of seeing/hearing/reading/experiencing something for the first time, and being relatively unimpressed by said thing. Then, when said thing is revisited on multiple successive occasions, it increasingly grows in one’s estimation.
It only took about four viewings for The Big Lebowski to become my favourite film. (Thanks Conor.) (0)
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Reading for Thursday, 31st of May 2007 :
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A terrific idea — utilising the now ubiquitous CAPTCHA systems employed on many websites to digitise old books, one word at a time.
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Comprehensive listing of common distortions that affect our perceptions of reality. Fascinating reading.
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- ¶ Jack Rebney, Winnebago salesman and all-American hero, having perhaps the worst day of his life. Brilliant. I’ve watched this video almost as many times as I’ve seen Tremors. (0)
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- ¶ Following on from the article on channeling group intelligence I linked to yesterday, we have desire lines:
Desire lines are the paths people make when they cut across a grassy area instead of following the prescribed walkway. Rather than discourage people from making their own way, landscape architects can opt to design walkways to accommodate the natural patterns formed after a period of use.
Check out the illustrated examples of different parts of the Berkeley campus following and ignoring these suggestions. (0)
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Reading for Sunday, 25th of March 2007 :
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A rundown of various sites harnessing the wisdom of crowds — using the users of the site to shape its content. Based on the premise that if you ask 100 people to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar, and then take an average of their responses, you will end up with an answer that is closer to correct than the vast majority of their individual responses. (See also a counterpoint.)
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Reading for Friday, 2nd of March 2007 :
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A captivating, beautiful music visualisation.
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Reading for Tuesday, 27th of February 2007 :
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ABCs for geeks. Hit “Learn” to see how you do.
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Of all the lists I’ve created and checked off since starting to use Getting Things Done, this one has been one of the most rewarding. Still a way to go!
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Like everything else Bruce Shneier writes, this is excellent. This describes the mental tradeoffs we all make automatically, balancing security with everything else. See also the Economics of Information Security.
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Reading for Sunday, 18th of February 2007 :
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Documenting known patterns and trends that lead to successful wikis.
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Reading for Thursday, 15th of February 2007 :
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A discussion on “mirror neurons”, the parts of your mind that make you instinctively act like those around you, for better or worse.
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Reading for Wednesday, 14th of February 2007 :
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“Limits on time, money, people, resources can channel your creative energy, drive innovation and focus.”
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A paean to the URL, and a furtherance of the concept of URL as UI.
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Reading for Wednesday, 7th of February 2007 :
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I’ve recently heard of guys who are able to do this (and who are ridiculously productive as a result). Still need a bit more convincing, but it sounds great.
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Steve Jobs raises a few eyebrows by asking music companies to let him sell music with no DRM frippery in the way.
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Reading for Tuesday, 6th of February 2007 :
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Programmers don’t like coding, they like problem solving.
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Clay Shirky on the idea of the LazyWeb: If you wait long enough, someone will write/build/design what you were thinking about.
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Thoughtful piece by Tim O’Reilly on digital distribution of commodity items like songs and books.
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Reading for Sunday, 4th of February 2007 :
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Why profiling cannot work, and could actually decrease security.
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Contrast with What I learned from the Month of Apple bugs.
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Matt’s resolutions echo my own quite closely.
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Terrific instructions on building all the programs you need to have a Ruby on Rails-ready development machine.
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