November 2011
35 posts
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A ghost bike iPhone app →
My buddy and classmate Dave had one of his projects written up in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Right on!
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Favorite Tool: Gimmebar →
Gimmebar has, in just a few short weeks, become one of my favorite internet tools—ever. With an account (which is free) and a little bookmarklet, you can save basically anything you see on the internet: pictures, videos, text… and then the killers: full screen grabs and recipes. As in, no more having to screenshot 5 different scroll states and then pasting them together, and saving out. As in,...
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XX for Xmas: A Holiday Guide
honestlynow:
Forget the mall. This Black Friday, get comfy on your couch and browse the best that women-led businesses have to offer.
It’s the XX for Xmas Holiday Guide!
Everything from gadgets to jewels, for everyone on your list — check in early and often, as we have hundreds more to load up.
Buying XX for Xmas: A Holiday Guide
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FizzBuzz, Fin.
OK, the final installment of FizzBuzz! I got it working last time, but I wanted to make my code as elegant as possible. The previous code was long and bulky, so instead of using so many if statements, I used a for loop, like JR, Lotte, and Steve did.
So, here’s my initial redo:
void draw () {
for (int x=1; x < 101; x++) {
if (x%3 == 0 || x%5 == 0) {
if (x%5 != 0) {println...
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FizzBuzz, Part II
I couldn’t get this little programming puzzle off my mind today, despite the Thanksgiving madness. I decided to come back and try to learn from the comments Lotte, JR, and Steve left for me.
Until all those guys mentioned it, I had never heard of the modulo operator. After looking at the example code everyone provided (and reading about it on the Processing site), it’s pretty clear...
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The FizzBuzz Test
In the article, Don’t Call Yourself a Programmer, Patrick McKenzie references interviewing developer candidates who can’t code their way out of the simple FizzBuzz problem. I had no idea what this was, so I followed the link over to Coding Horror and got the description:
Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print
“Fizz”...
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Don't Call Yourself a Programmer →
This article was given as optional homework reading by the fantastic Karen McGrane for our class, Design Management. She advised us to read it, and mentally replace any instance of “developer,” “programmer,” and “engineer” with “designer.” It’s a great article about value, how to communicate it, and a couple other things. Read it now!
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Why is Instagram addictive? →
See also: Why is Instagram cool?
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Edward Tufte, Hands, Flat Screens, and the Mark of...
Edward Tufte, a man whose work I admire deeply (his influence can be seen in all of my infographic work), wrote an article recently on his site, titled Touchscreens have no hand.
He offers some harsh criticism of touchscreens in general; his main objection is their lack of texture variation, their lack of tactility. (Also, he’s upset about the sharp edges of technology and how they leave...
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Pitch Statements, Audiences, and Solid Directions
In our Thesis II class yesterday, Chloe had us codify our ideas as elevator pitch statements. I had actually already done this for my presentation to Liz three weeks ago, so I generated a new one from the view point of one my audience members.
The old elevator pitch:
For bloggers, journalers, and artists who want to share their handwritten
work, [my thing] will be a digitized, shareable...
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How to use the semicolon →
Thanks to Dave.
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Is my thesis a service?
It could end up being one, even if it’s just (ha! just) an online service. If that happens, I would do well to keep these principles in mind, taken from our Design and the Service Experience class, taught by Phi-Hong Ha.
A good service…
Knows me and my habits
Is easy to use / transparent / orients me
Is adaptable / responsive
Anticipates / recommends
Is approachable / accessible /...
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Are the iPhone and iPad evolutionary steps... →
That’s the question that came to my mind as I did a brief reading of Bret Victor’s Rant of the Future of Interaction Design (thanks Sera!).
If the only thing we can reliably do on a touch screen is tap and slide, and we become used to that, are we going backwards? Bret’s point is that our hands can do many a wonderful thing. My point is that our hands are one of two...
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“Designers are now scriptwriters.”
– Paola Antonelli, curator of Talk to Me at MoMA.
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WatchHandwriting in the Digital Age (Seven Minutes in Thesis)
The movie above is an un-narrated version of a seven minute presentation I gave last week to Frank and Liz.
I would be lying if I said I was proud of my output at this point.
While the presentation is starting to get at what I’m trying to say and accomplish, it feels a bit aimless, a bit too ungrounded (like so much of my thesis...
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Scumbag Pocket
barsandpies:
via i.imgur.com
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Probably my favorite Against Me! song.