take a trip, down mystery lane

Large version

Or Diagon Alley at any rate. It certainly feels a bit like magic to use Street view at normal locations. But then they go and get something like this. From Warner Bros studios, so obviously they love the exposure. The details are amazing, guess you can really zoom in on the HD copy of the movies and read the book covers and more.

Too good to fail?

Kicking off the week, and starting the autumn season with some thoughts on this piece by Seth on competence as a barrier to possibility. Basically considering that when we get good at something, we know how it is done and what the result should look like.

And just maybe because of that, it is easy to loose sight of the possibility of "creative mutation" or "successful failure"

Just like automation takes out the "handmade" feel in products?

Jaime Oliver used to say that he intentionally cut pieces at odd angles and assorted widths, just to retain that feeling of a personal touch. Smashing up the onions and the mushrooms a bit, so it looked like "real" pieces, rather than machine processed goods.

How easy is it to use an error as something to build on, rather than just something to be pruned out with out further consideration?

Chances are, if something is a bit off, it might trigger ideas that then lead to further changes and explorations.

But they could also just lead you on a tangent. So setting aside some time, rather than doing it every time is a good idea

Robots and calculators all around

Mitch is asking marketers to let their ego go;

What if everything you have been bringing to the table could be debunked with a simple multivariate testing regiment?

Fragment my convergence

Mobile and digital is making everything possible, and breaking down boundaries between products, services and utility. And it is happening at speed.

This is not about media convergence. It's about something bigger. Things change. Things change so fast that sometimes, it's hard to see it. We tend to think about our businesses and our lives in terms of keeping up with change.

The New Convergence by Mitch Joel, ends on the question: what do you think?

I think it will go to pieces for a while

In that the world we've had for a few years now, with Google and Facebook dominating the web, and Apple driving mobile and apps forward is changing into a plethora of markets, devices, ideas and changes.

Kickstarter is one force driving that forward. Products like the Pebble e-paper watch sold for $10 million unseen, untested and with out reviews. It could have sucked. But it still got made and changed how a watch and a remote and a sensor display is viewed.

Sure it has a lot of potential for improvement, but compare the Newton to the iPad and add in innovation at a digital pace - and five or ten years down the road you might be able to "drag" any app from your main device onto one or more support devices, to show the data you need right now just right.

Platforms like Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are making the "somewhat smart" gadget even more affordable and providing a huge step up to total diy. We put up a Pi showing 3 twitter feeds on a dedicated screen, at a fraction of the cost of a whole laptop, and also a lot cheaper than trying to get a  better gpu. Because it was disposable, we might as well give it a shot.

Mobile is back in the trenches, Android gaining ground as the smart phones move into mass market and lower income brackets, and as the top of the line models outstrip the 5 for power, style and innovation. Microsoft still pushing, with some Nokia steam. Blackberry not so much in Europe, but die hards in the US pushing pushing. And Samsung? Making everything from TV to fridge, and a lot in between. Will they make a substantial move, or continue to play the horses?

And startups? With Amazon, Google, Microsoft and more pushing the cloud solutions onwards, upwards and all over every day, the barriers to entry are mostly about attention.

So, change is here.

It will be here for a long time.
It might not get faster - at least not on the same scale as the last two decades,
but it will certainly be stranger.

Factual dreams - a true oxymoron

Sometimes it is easy to forget how "magical" current tech would seem to a visitor from the pas, or even ourselves enough years ago. 

Sitting here typing on a laptop with glowing keys so the light can be down and the sky outside can set the mood (scheduling pub time, summer dusk at present) 

With music coming down from the cloud, landing on my small slab of a mobile (or smart glass, or mini computer) and out via the connected speaker.

 Eva & The Heartmaker: Live fra Rockefeller http://wimp.no/album/20517767

And then glancing down at my e-paper watch to see the track title, and maybe skip or pause. 

In another ten or five years, the keyboard might be connected to the phone-slab as well, with the screen being multipurpose, rather than welded onto a battery and cd combo. Or the phone will be gone, replaced with a small biometric knob - able to connect to assets at home, at work and in the coffee shop.

Or not. It will change, but how it will transition is still thankfully unclear. We can dream, play, test and explore our way forward. Ipad,Air or MS Surface - will they become one or will all three have their niche? 

Why am I writing this on the big MBP, and not the iPad - or even over at the workhorse stationary pc? Full size keyboards on both, but the immediacy of the mid sized screen up close, as opposed to the vastness of the 24'' might be part of it. Or possibly the avoidance of distractions - games are lined up over there, a backlog of golden rpg games, bought digitally to fill in the gaps in the collection. Same goes for the iPad, the lack of full on keyboard (despite the nifty Touchfire needing some love) and an abundance of consummation apps makes other uses better than blogging. 

And still I lust for a brand new Air. Not because I need more gear. Nor because it is time to replace the latop. But because it is new. And shiny. And better than the one I lusted over last year. 

Solved it then by having a friend buy one with myself as advisor during the test and purchase. Not to mention rebooting the iPad2 for a forth gen. A cheap perk for my employer, considering the hours spent reading and staying up to date, on my own time. For now blaming the lack of instant OS update might be enough. Hassle free being a key decider in anything that will be just for fun and on my own time.

On that note it seems right to get around to the quote that started the tangent off:

This is the challenge of the Kickstarter artist, the growth stock CEO and the well-published author. Dreams are irresistible, but they will never match reality when it finally appears.

[seth G, my link added]

And that is why Kickstarter is the ultimate "weird" shopping experience - you get to play along with the process, so by the time you get the product you are vested, and using it feels a lot more natural than something you "just" bought in a store.

For some products the experience up to the product might be enough in and off itself. The feeling of being a patron of the (creative) arts making a transaction justified even if you don't really need the product that much.

Might also be why I had more or less shifted into digital only projects. Until a weak moment saw a dual dose of robots getting some support. So by xmas there should be a Sparky trotting along with some sort of BrickPI creation. Provided they both make it past customs and survive shipping.

Data viz - it is taking shape

A summary of the post "A Conversation with Data Visualization Experts" - simply the subheadings, as a jumping off point (and not intended a full repost as IFTTT did - the risks of automation!)

• Which came first, the question or the data set?
• Visualization as tool vs. visualization as art
• Data visualization is an iterative process; seek feedback
• The right tools for the job
• Good questions, iteration, and feedback

Bostock confirmed that his team at the Times does this as well, using a git repository to track all of the iterations the visualization has been through…sometimes as many as 250 changes to a single piece. 

[Source]

Love the idea of using git to track iterations during testing and ideation - that way you also have a backlog to play around with next time a similar dataset or question comes up. Been using svn and saving major iterations (ie when something works...) but taking it a step further makes sense. Just need to automate and simplify the flow a bit more than "right click, type, enter, close"

Then onto the ideas or discussion points themselves;

It seems that some of the better works come from the question "how can we do this differently" - taking a trope to the next level, like the 512 paths interactive. That piece is a functional artwork (ht A. Cairo) - it is great to look at even before you dig into the options and understand the underlying data. But it is most of all a storytelling tool - because all the paths were not created equal, and that (in my mind) was the main point of the story. You could dream up all possible iterations, but only a very limited set lead to something other than the actual outcome.

The time to iterate, and getting the culture in place for it seems like one of the most challenging parts of getting data viz going. At least in a smaller organization where there isn't room for a dedicated team, you need to get people comfortable doing a crit on something they don't really understand how came together. In that sense D3 is a great tool, because it is relatively easy to "live change" a sample; 

• Could it be green to pink? Swap the colors, reload and discuss. 
• How about bar vs column? Swap X and Y and you'll have an idea at least. 

And now with tools like Vega and the playground you can do a bit of up-front mocking in minutes. Personally I still love doing ideas on a whiteboard, but it does take a bit of 'translation' to get new people up to speed - that's where a digital first makes more sense.

Inspiration makes the future something worth waiting for

"...and you’re off to the manufactured normalcy races, where nobody wins because everyone goes to fucking sleep."

  W. Ellis 

Quote from a keynote he did in September 2012. So we are already in the future, looking back and forward again. Would have loved to seen it as a video, but well worth reading in full.

The main takeaway (for me) is about how we need ideas to push us to make reality. Slapping a Hello Kitty case on a phone isn't innovation. But making a phone so slimmed down it almost NEEDS a case to protect it is.

It is the wild ideas and visions from art, books, movies that push us to try to make a different tomorrow.

Kevin Kelly touched upon a similar vibe in the 20 years celebration issue of Wired, it is about spreading ideas and opportunity out globally, at scale. Change the world one byte at a time. And if you can envision a better tomorrow, then somebody else is probably impatient enough to try to make it next week rather than next year.

The same idea was a foundation for the Ridley Scott show "Prophets of Science Ficiton" on Science, covering greats like Jules Verne, Asimov, Heinlein, Clark. How reading their books prompted a lot of people to not only study science, but try to make it a reality. And preferably before someone else did it. Not enough to get to the Moon, it has to be first, fastest, longest.


Because, if we settle for JUST pushing the button 3px to the left, we risk loosing that drive, the competition and the dream of a new tomorrow.

Lego - gotta love it?

Awesome history mixed with branding and ad. Animated almost on par with a Pixar short...?

Been ramping it up for junior during the late summer - at 3.5 he mostly has Duplo, but we've built one Technic crane (8+) and now two small Cars cars (5+) that he gets to play with and put back together as they break a bit.


- ...and the sun shines for a sort of indian summer - guess that makes for blogging weather as well...

Maybe? Not an option

Do or do not. ..............


Did you fill out the rest of the quote?
Did it just jump into your head?

Why is it so memorable? Because it juxtaposes the normal way of saying it. Sure, but also because the point goes deeper. It makes sense on a base level.

Posted a long time ago about saying hell yeah based off a podcast by CC. Now he just had a post on saying NO. Which iterates some of the same points. Don't do anything just to do it. Don't do it halfway or partially. If you can't commit - don't bother. And if the other party can't? Same.


And by that little round a bout we get to the inspiration for the detours, namely

CREATIVITY IS YOUR BIRTHRIGHT

the title font just looks so right, guess we'll have to keep it...! The post is not new. I mailed it to myself end of May in 2011. No comments, no notes, just the link. No idea anymore where I picked it up unfortunately. And no idea what I might have planned on writing.

But that is the great thing about being in this wonderful month of June - flow all the way. 

Flow is a wonderful, and sometimes necessary, state. It is great when coding (rather than debugging or just tweaking). And when writing it is the fuel for the fire. Writing begets writing. One post sparks off ideas for more.

So why is that post from last year worth your time? Because of the attitude - birthright puts a spin on the rest of the post. This isn't just something you should pick up for fun or profit. It is something you are entitled to. Something you need to have, to use, to develop. Nurture it.

....chair-dancing to "lets go crazy" - vintage Prince & The Revolution...

When is a kilo perfect?

Two teams of scientists are struggling to create the perfect kilogram. I'm reading about it on the WIRED app: http://wrdm.ag/ff_kilogram 

(full direct no-redirect link)

Been reading a bit about systems and measurement in general in the pre-modern world lately, and I remember this Wired piece vividly. The incredible richness of detail in the work. Eight digits of precision and then some. Fixed things aren't really fixed until they can be consistently defined, replicated and remade independently of the base item.

And to think how we take it for granted, every time we pick up something from the store, or order a beer. We just assume that we are in fact getting a pint or half a litre. And that the weights in one store matches those in another, not to mention across the five different lanes in each. Technology makes the magic mundane.


Aside;
the wired app is fun to play with, and it helped quite a bit when they added sharing options within the app. Even so, as a print subscriber I mostly download the special content - such as the new digital re-release of the first issue, and the special on Steve Jobs they got out quickly last year.

Flow like that!

Finally got around to testing out the Adobe CSS Regions Prototype today. And boy was that fun fun fun! As a proof of concept it is really stunning to see how well it handles text-flows between containers especially, but also around regions or objects - in multiple layers or stacks just like InDesign.

The download can be found in the Adobe Labs - it is basically a tweaked version of Webkit along with some sample html pages and the documentation that mirrors the intro article from early in May.

For setting up a flow all you need are a couple of target DIV's and two lines of CSS!

One for setting up the content source;
-webkit-flow: "main-thread"

And another for assigning it to the blocks; content:from(main-thread)

From looking at the FT.com webapp javascript code, and thinking about how I would attack it in terms of parsing the text, duplicating tags etc - this is scary simple.

One caveat is that, at least for now, you loose the ability to "target" the text in each container separately. You can adjust anything relating to the block element itself (margin, padding, background) - but CSS related to the actual flowing content has no effect. That means only one style for font-size, color etc. Which I'm sure makes sense from a performance standpoint on window resize, but is a bummer in terms of recreating a "true" magazine feels like a Wired page.

Hopefully that is something that could be added - but would require a bit more integration into the CSS rendering and parsing engine. Right now it looks like the content blocks are added as new containers (no inspector included in the custom build)

And it is important to note that it is actually CONTENT blocks - not just text level elements, but also images inline in the flow are slotted into the 'right' container.


On a sidenote; I'd love to see how aside works in the browser not just on the iPad, but that means bypassing their eight-step browser-sniffing script (reproduced at jsbin) in some meaningful yet simple way... guess I could try firebug breakpoint and just replacing the values?


- ....and the sun shines brightly outside despite the watch showing nine in the evening, summertime is really here again...

How to build Falling Water? With bricks.

Another dual header - but this one is from all the back in WIRED issues 17.11 and 17.12 (there were several other links, but they've mainly been surfed and tweeted, whilst these two need a bit more of a writeup)

I'm sure I'll be docked some geek points for admitting it, but I have yet to actually see Avatar, but it is on my list of likely short term BluRay purchases. The Wired piece mentioned that in order to boost the world of Pandora into the geekdom status it needs, James Cameron and the crew was putting out a lot of background information into the "pandorapedia". It has a bit to go in terms of matching Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki in terms of user involvement, or the official Lucasfilm Vault in terms of depth of content - but as a brand new property wanting to be taken seriously, I find it refreshing and inspirational.


The other tidbit for now (as the self  imposed deadline flies even further away, at least the post will be out by EOD US time?!) relates to the Lego Architecture series. So far they have put out three sets in the "architecture" branch, and seven in the "landmark" branch (with a new set for July "unveiling")

Frank Gehry is the man behind two of the three sets - both his Bilbao Guggenheim, and Falling Water (image on right/above from Lego.com) - it is only available online for $99 inside the US (the much smaller and simpler landmark sets go for $19 each). I must admit that it is almost tempting enough to go for something like JetCarrier to ship it over here, or trying out some friendly connections across the pond... if you've seen Twilight (movie) you've seen something like it with Hoke House

Flashing design

Yes, another minor design tweak for the blog (shouldn't affect the RSS feed to much ;D)
Figured it was time to try out some webfont use, and to push up the font size a bit - ease of reading being a major point with me after using the iPad (and now the iPad2) for 3/4 of a year
Still using one of the predefined templates as a base - content is king here, I'll do my coding and CSS tweaking at work instead

Kindled bookshelf

Seriously impressed with the latest update for the kindle.amazon page - now it offers not only a full collection of amazon books you have bought (pr added to the cart or wishlist), but also flashcards for reviewing books or quotes on a regular and decreasing schedule

This is the 1220th most highlighted book on Kindle - links to lists for comparison, taking interaction a few steps beyond just buying and rating - can just imagime the next few iterations of the reccomendation engine, "people who highlighted this also bought this, and they especially likes the third chapter on....

Now to block off some time to go over the 511 books suddenly in my collection!

FreakAngels -still ongoing

Episode 0043: was amazing in it's weird way. With page 3 clearly a moment to remember. A bit more is revealed about the 'angels and their powers, and also some of the 'blast from the past'.

Somehow the series pulls me in for huge burst, then spits me out and hides in plain sight for a month or so. Then it is back in for an hour or more of solid amazement. Creativity first. Commerce second. Story above all.

Makes me believe that this online thing has something going for it. Bringing back the direct relationship and the storyteller / minstrel tradition, spinning the tale a bit at a time - stretching the canvas so to speak.

"FREAKANGELS is a free, weekly, ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield."

- 44 episodes of 6 pages, some interludes and a holiday greeting.


FreakAngels is TM and ©2009 Warren Ellis, and is recommended for mature audiences.

...and the sun shone brightly between the snowflakes...

wORD - open

Via NRKBeta; a short post from Make - links on to the interesting thing - the base .fla file used for making the video. Have to download it again tomorrow and have a quick peak at work, see if we can't get something up and make a plug out of it. [like this...]

(and the Guild s2e2 is out - 'buff me' :D)

Hidden in plain sight

A pretty good article in Wired this issue on "ARG" or alternate reality games, focusing mainly on the NIN and Trent Reznor game around Year Zero. The article itself included several pretty obvious clues and mini-games, but it is the online edition that really shines - including links to special video and a bit more background. Among them a clip that ends with a link to the Open Source Resistance.

One minor gripe, having the same question online makes sense - but that makes the magazine redundant, so perhaps there should have been a more direct pointer to the 'hidden' link and the content (or perhaps there was? In a hex transformation of the text, or as the first letter of each word of the hidden message? The possibilities are almost endless, considering the complexity of some of the the other "hints")

...and the sun shone brightly on the new snow...

What do YOU want?

Article over at Poynter - "Customized Print Papers: Possible Today" - on the advances in printing technology making the old dream of getting "your own" newspaper delivered, with relevant ads, without the sports and with an extra helping of reviews. Just like Google reader - only in print...

"SRDP presses are now economical to purchase and operate only for daily newspapers of less than about 10,000 circulation" - so in other words they would be perfect for small, nimble ultra local start-ups, serving a high-paying niche. Or perhaps for company news in large factories or cube-farms. And that makes the leap into resorts and leisure only a small step away. Consider having one in Jamaica, delivering up localized versions adjusted for each cruise line as the ships come in every day during the season.


on a sidenote, it looks like the xbox live is expanding in (parts of) Europe as well this coming week - as reported by Last 100 in a remark, whilst really covering the update allowing for divX playback

...and the sun will soon turn around, from our point of view - xmas is around the corner...

Look at the time

Another nice new discovery - the SIMILE Timeline - looks like a really good tool for making a timeline, be it for a real-life historical event, for a planned conference or for a more "virtual" use. It is licensed under BSD license, and the code is available - so read the tutorial and get playing!

...and the sun only shines for a few hours during the workday this time of year - no need to pull the drapes ...

Tinted new

And now this blog has also joined the "brave new world" of layouts, page elements and advanced design gui to support the template coding. For now it remains mostly based on the blogger offering, but I'll try to get a more suitable image in the header and do some minor tweaks.

On a side note the new archive function does a running tally - so last year really was a bit slow, about half the number of posts compare to the two years previous. With eight months all but gone, it looks like 07 will top in around 60 some posts, but the number might be enough to get stuff up one bit at a time and even on a more regular basis.