None of the Above: design Archives

[ animals consume design mammalog projects ] 2002-07-21

In other news... First item: Buster is doing better! Yea, Buster! He had been feeling under the weather and we were really worried about him, but he's back to his impish playful self again. We are much relieved.

Second item: Had a good visit with Elena, though she's getting really *really* good at fraying my nerves. She does the whole immediate-tantrum-if-she-doesn't-get-precisely-what-she-wants thing, and I do everything I can to demonstrate to her that I'm being reasonable. I try not to get all pissed off (I really hate being pissed off), but sometimes it happens anyway. Sometimes I let her stomp off into her room to pout. Sigh.

We're reading together more and more, and she's getting really amazingly good at remembering her Mother Goose rhymes word-for-word. Since she's already on her way to becoming a great actress (and a drama queen, at that), I figure this memorization skill will definitely be an asset to her.

We went to a nifty playground in Leander today that I've been meaning to take her to for awhile. I took some pictures that I will post at some point. While I pushed Elena on the swings, she managed to slip off (I think she may have let go, even) and went "thunk" onto the ground. Damn, I hate it when she hurts herself. I feel so terribly guilty. Anyway, she was okay after a couple minutes, but she did get a significant head bonk. It's a good thing that kids are pretty durable creaturess.

Third item: Junior (our black & white kitty) has been letting loose some horribly stinky farts with great regularity lately. I dunno what the deal is, but it's really really nasty. David is worried, because apparently this was a symptom of the intestinal disease that slowly but surely killed off several of his previous cats. Hmm, doesn't bode well.

Fourth item: We have opened the bedroom door most of the time, and the kittens are coming out to play in the living room more. It's very cute.

Fifth item: The cats keep bringing in crickets and grasshoppers and slowly killing them, occasionally eating them as well. Ew. I'm sick of stepping on the dead ones, and I try to take the live ones outside as often as I can, though usually they're missing a back leg. Cats are so damn cruel. I suppose it's better than lizards and frogs, which we had earlier in the season. Some of these were wise enough to play dead so that the kitties lost interest in them, and we sent them back out into the wild with our good wishes.

Sixth item: Strange forces are at work. At Hobby Lobby the other day, I saw so many beautiful little patches and things, especially with a five-petaled flower motif, that I'm wondering whether Fate and Destiny and Things That Are Just Meant To Be are having a little fun with me. :) That is, a five-petaled flower is exactly what's involved with the logo for my nascent company, Plumeria Media, which will be the media empire tine of my Fork O World Domination. Anyway, the patches were so irresistable that I had to buy them. I will scan them in later...

Seventh item: My jaw doesn't hurt anymore! Thank goodness. It was making me quite miserable, on top of all my other stresses. I guess now I'll have to be wary of the TMJ issues coming back again. I guess it's part of getting old - your list of recurrent medical issues just keeps getting longer and longer. Speaking of which, I'll be thirty in just under two weeks. Holy cow!

[ design random thoughts ] 2002-07-03

Lots of interesting views on software licenses: Well, there's a lot more to it, but that's the most reasonable title I could come up with in a few seconds.

In the discussion following an article at Oreillynet, there are some really interesting ideas bandied about regarding free vs. not-really-free vs. proprietary software.

I found the thread very eye-opening. Lots of food for thought.

I mean, I have talked to Stallman, and he seemed a really nice, friendly guy, and I believe at least somewhat in his stated goals (what I know of them). But I am starting to get the sense that those who worry about the GPL's effects have some good arguments, too.

I think the point is: what is the goal? What kind of software culture do we want? I think we need, and should aim for, a very rich and varied software ecosystem, with many multifarious levels between Totally Secret and Totally Free. That way, the users and programmers can find solutions that best meet their needs.

A monoculture of one or the other is not going to give us the best chance at the future we dreamed of as kids...

Y'know, the one with flying cars and cool stuff like that. :)

[ design family ] 2002-06-22

Help me find something! I'm looking for a (hopefully cheap) watch which has something known as a sweep second hand. What this means is that the hand on the watch that indicates what second it is moves smoothly around the circle.

That is, it doesn't jerk forward, pause, jerk forward, pause, etc. It just flows smoothly around.

The reason for this is that it's much easier to take a person's pulse with such a watch than with the other kind. So I need one, since pulse-taking will surely be part of my job.

I remember my grandmother, Loujean, telling me about how a watch with a sweep second hand was a requirement for the nursing students in the training she underwent as a young woman. I also remember that I didn't get what she meant at the time. Now I do.

Heh, ain't that always the way? Anyway, thanks, Grandma, for having told me that. I finally understand what you mean. :)

I've looked for such watches in a few places, such as Walmart, but apparently no one makes them that way anymore (too expensive? I hope not...). Maybe I'll have to keep my eyes open at Ebay to get ahold of one.

Any clues that any of my readers could give me would be much appreciated. Feel free to email me, leave a comment, or send an anonymous clue via the box o doom.

Thanks in advance...

[ design music ] 2002-06-11

Vacuum tube motherboard: Whoa, wicked cool. Read the article, it explains. I'm adding this to the "when I'm a gozillionaire I'll buy this" list. [via David Chess]

[ design good ] 2002-04-26

Materials science is *cool*: From metafilter, I came across this bit about a substance called aerogel. It's made by NASA, and is 99.8% air. The photos of it look freaky, as though they were photoshopped. The stuff looks truly ethereal.

Anyway, they're using it to catch comet particles. Way, way cool.

[ design my site ] 2002-04-24

Daniel is spiffy: He made this thing called slug so that I can post entries to my weblog from its own application. An interesting thing, I believe...

[ animals design my site ] 2002-04-24

New kittens! Yes, that's right, we've got four new freshly-minted kittens!

One's calico, one's black (or tabbyish) and white, and two are white. No idea on the genders, we're trying to leave them and their mom alone.

Except for the infrared spy-cam we've got trained on her and her latest litter, that is.

Anyone want one?

[ beauty design ] 2002-04-14

My crayons arrived! I won the eBay auction for the Crayola Color Mix-Up crayons that I mentioned before in my log. They arrived a couple days ago.

I made a sample sheet of all the colors, and created a crayon page on my website that shows what they look like.

My crayon collection is slowly growing...

And you can be sure that I carefully keep mine separate from Elena's!

[ design ] 2002-04-12

Flash! Aaaaah! Behold and beware, for I have discovered FLASH! Yes, that's right, tonight I created my first monstrosity using flash.

The Elena Sound Generator will cause many seconds of mirth for those who enjoy listening to 2-year-old speech (well, she's *almost* three).

The sound snippets are from a little "interview" I did with Elena a couple weeks back. Enjoy!

[ design ] 2002-04-11

I never knew: that cd's came in so many funky shapes. Wow.

[ design ] 2002-04-11

All kinds of writing systems: are on display at Omniglot. Daniel sent me this link, and it's very cool!

I learned a new word there already: an "abjad" is a consonant-only alphabet.

They have some really neat samples of various alphabets. I particularly like Tai Lue, perhaps because it's so fluidly curvy.

Whoa, they even have the Standard Galactic Alphabet!

There's lots more, go check it out! :)

[ design ] 2002-03-26

Here's the tiling pattern, finally: I had to do some geometry last night to figure out the proportions of the pentagons to use for my tiling pattern. Note: do not attempt geometry when you are very tired and it's been at least a decade since you saw the inside of a math classroom.

I made some mistakes at the beginning, but soon got off on the right track, thanks to good old Pythagoras. It turns out that my pentagon has two right angles in it (which are not adjacent), and that four of the sides are the same length. Let's call that length x. So I had to figure out how long the other side was - I call it y. It just so happens that:

Which comes out to 1.30656296x, more or less.

I was pleased that, tired as I was, I got the right answer last night. Yippee! My geometry gland may be old and rusty, but at least it still seems to work.

So today I got around to drawing the thing up in Paint Shop Pro, so you can see what I'm talking about. Essentially, four of the pentagons together make up a hexagon, such that the hexagonal lattice thus created can be rotated ninety degrees to lay exactly over itself.

I know, you're not impressed. But I thought it was cool when I saw it years ago. It hit all my happy symmetry-detection buttons. And now, at last, my quest is complete.

Behold:

(click for a bigger version)

And if you would like to color your own, try this plain vanilla one. I myself am looking forward to playing around with different color schemes.

Perhaps I may actually have the wherewithal to make some molds and create some concrete pavers in this shape. Wouldn't that be nifty. :)

[ design ] 2002-03-24

Flo Control: Some clever person has set up a cat door which only opens if the cat has nothing in its mouth. They use image recognition to check the cat's profile and stuff. It's very, very cool. Via Daniel via Slashdot.

[ design ] 2002-03-24

Almost got the elusive tessellation of doom: Goodness gracious me, I have been wandering all over the darn place looking for the tessellation I was after, and I still haven't found it. I spent hours and hours poring through various geometrical websites and such, and I *finally* found this site which has a picture at the bottom that set off all sorts of "aha!" buttons in my head.

I quickly pulled out a piece of paper and sketched out what I remembered of the tiling pattern I was seeking, and I think I've got it! So now I just have to draw it up carefully and show you what the heck I'm talking about.

This has certainly been an interesting exercise. It was fascinating feeling the connections in my brain brighten as I'd occasionally see glimpses of tiling patterns that were sorta-kinda close to the one I'm seeking, at least in one or two respects. Over time, this helped me hone my recollections to the point where I was able to recreate what I had in mind.

It's rather extraordinary, when you think about it - that something I saw only briefly a couple years ago would be non-recollectable by itself, but able to be kindled back into existence by near misses.

Well, okay, *you* may not find it that fascinating, but to me, as someone who obsesses over thought and cognition and consciousness and how our minds work on a daily basis, I thought it was pretty cool. And hey, I recognize that this is probably losing a lot in the telling - it's interesting to *experience* it, but probably hard for other people to imagine what it felt like to me as I got closer and closer to the goal.

Anyway, here's a list of some of the cool sites I found as I wandered:

Tilings and Geometric Ornament - Escherization, Islamic star patterns, parquet deformations, symmetrohedra, and voronoi diagrams. I'm going to have to dig deeper here later - there's some really cool stuff!

Gecko Stone - molds for creating gecko-shaped pavers. These are extraordinary! There are other shapes, too, of which this one is my favorite. If I were rich, I'd be creating a driveway out of these. Add these to my Dream House list. The architect who created these has some other really cool designs on that site, along with an interview that includes this lovely tidbit:
Q. After you've revolutionized architecture, what will you do next?
A. Write books, play music, and make movies.
Pretty ambitious, eh! :)

Chaotile - a set of two pentagons that covers the plane in fascinating ways. I don't agree that simple *polygons* should be patentable, but that's a rant for another time.

A beautifully tiled bathroom - using pentagons similar to one of those used in Chaotiles.

The Geometry Junkyard page on Tiling - lots of really cool resources here, too many to list.

Wrinkle - a reaction-diffusion Java applet that I am going to play with right after I post this entry :)

Totally Tessellated: Mosaics/Tilings - great examples and links here. This page on pentagonal tilings was one of the ones that hit my "aha!" button pretty hard, too.

The Wonder of Symmetry - a bit on the philosophy of symmetry, as it were, specifically mentioning Islamic contributions thereto. Other pages here I want to look at as well. I like this author's My Mission My Dreams page...

Escher Dyson Sphere - a ringworld-related idea based on a drawing of Escher's that I hadn't previous seen (or remembered, I suppose).

Delta Blocks - cool design for 3-d buildng blocks based on octahedra and tetrahedra. I'd buy these if I could - I wonder if the author is ever going to find a manufacturer? I suppose I could email him and ask...

Investigating Patters: Symmetry and Tessellations - tons of great links and activities (for kids & others).

Mandala - a beautiful ray-traced rendering of a stained-glass window with a 5-way symmetry.

Damn, I could get lost for *years* in all the links to cool pages I ran across. It's kind of cool that there's so *much* good material out there on these topics. I only scratched the surface...

[ beauty design ] 2002-03-23

I may never leave the house again: Oh my. While trying to find a particular tessellation I remember seeing on the web a couple years ago (still looking, btw), I stumbled across the java-powered Kali tool, which lets you explore various plane symmetries. It's amazing - you just click a few times and create beguiling symmetrical patterns.

And of course, the site it's on, the JAVA Gallery of Interactive On-Line Geometry, has lots of other fun tools to explore that I haven't even touched yet. Wow!

[ consume design ] 2002-03-23

Roll your own box o crayons: Whoa, cool! You can order a customized box of 64 crayons from Crayola.com's store. Okay, so it's $8.99, but it's a cool concept.

Imagine - you could have sixteen sky blues and blacks and never run out!

[Later]...

Dang, I see you can only put four different colors in the box. How bogus!

But I did also find this Top 50 Favorite Crayons Commemorative Edition Pack Thingie, which looks pretty cool, though it's pricey. Hmm.

I'm looking for those variegated color crayons I saw a year or two ago, but they don't seem to be there. Guess I'll have to dig deeper. If anyone knows what I'm talking about or where to find them, please let me know. (The variegated ones had tiny little specks of all sorts of colors blended into one crayon, and they made the neatest looking shades...)

[ design ] 2002-03-22

Great Leader Nielsen utters an abomination! To my horror, he has stated the following heresy here:

Truly, there is not much difference between Coke and Pepsi soft drinks

Of course, all dutiful followers of Great Leader Nielsen know, as I do, that while the Great Leader is certainly an expert on usability and interface design, he is considered as fallible as the rest of us on other matters. This does not diminish his expertise in his Areas of Cluefulness, mind you.

I still shudder, though, that the Great Leader was misguided enough to proclaim that the Elixir of Life itself was comparable to ... that *other* nasty beverage.

Note to self: put this "What Would Jakob Do?" mousepad on my birthday list.

[ design ] 2002-03-14

Flash-powered face editor: Like a police-sketch kind of thing. Try making your own face - it's harder than you might think! Via Metafilter.

[ design ] 2002-03-13

Tappity-tap: Inspired by Ian Whalley's recent tale of his painstaking cleaning of his Omnikey keyboard, I sent him a little blurb about how much I enjoy mine as well.

I also did a Google search and found this cool review of a more recent model of Omnikey.

I knew that this was a different kind of keyboard as soon as I opened the box. For one thing, the keyboard is heavy -- it weighs about five pounds. The top of the keyboard is made of extremely sturdy plastic, and the bottom is made of rigid metal. This is an industrial strength piece of hardware. The other thing that sets this keyboard apart is that it comes with a tool for removing the keys, something you don't see every day. With the software that comes with it, you can reprogram the functionality of any of the keys, and using the tool, you can rearrange the keycaps to reflect the new layout.

Whoa. Can you imagine, not being limited to Qwerty or Dvorak layouts? You could make your own! And you could also royally vex anyone who dared come to your machine and start typing away on it. Heh heh heh...

When I get some money, it might behoove me to chase down one of these, since my current Omnikey 101, given to me by my dad (Hi, Dad! And thanks again!) a couple years ago, might someday croak or something. Plus I just love the idea of having a five-pound keyboard.

[ design ] 2001-11-05

Appropriate use of technology: My friend John pointed out to me this article about how they're using computer simulations to try to figure out how best to battle terrorists. Here's a quote:

"Some of the very best games have very, very simple rules," said Will Wright, creator of "The Sims." "But amazingly elaborate strategies emerge that you can't predict."
...
Making the jump from a single battlefield to the global stage isn't a matter of simply stretching the physical terrain. The key is re-creating the range of ephemeral social, economic and political forces that are at the core of terrorist conflict.
The task, in essence, requires teaching a computer to understand the meaning of fear, hatred, bigotry and other emotions that fuel terrorism.

I think they are a ways away from that last statement, but it's an admirable goal. I don't think it's possible without some serious artificial intelligence, though.

Overall, the whole simulation thing is very, very cool. I am impressed. Neato! :)

[ design ] 2001-08-28

A Pringles can makes a good antenna: Well, that is if you follow all the proper assembly steps. I never would have imagined, but this is very, very cool.

[via Hack the Planet]

[ design ] 2001-07-13

What's with the wipes? Everything's a fricking wipe these days. It used to be there were two kinds of wipes: baby wipes, and general hand-cleaning wipes (like Wet Ones[tm]).

Now, there has recently been an explosion of wipes, a veritable cornucopia. Here's what I've seen recently:

Clorox disinfecting wipes
Wipes that fight stains on fabric
Armor All wipes
Old(e?) English dusting wipes
Makeup removal wipes
Wrinkle-prevention wipes
Give yourself a "shower" all over your body wipes

...and I'm sure there are many more that I've missed. It's just darn odd seeing all these things come out recently.

It's a spiffy idea, don't get me wrong, but it just makes me wonder: who comes up with this stuff? Will this change the way people use these products forever?

I'm wondering if paper towels will hardly be used at all someday because we'll have specialized wipes for every conceivable cleaning need.

Is it really more efficient to have the wipe impregnated with the cleaner? Personally, I sometimes like to do a dry final swipe with paper towel when I'm cleaning something, so I know my needs will not be met with wet wipes alone.

Hey, somebody's gotta worry about this stuff, it may as well be me.

[ design good ] 2001-03-05

Riding a trebuchet! Wow, this sounds like a total blast! I'll add it to my list of Cool Stuff For Beth's Ultimate Playground.

Oh, you didn't realize I'm designing an Ultimate Playground? Well, it's one of those things that's been in the back of my mind for quite awhile...

About a month ago, during a three-hour-long meeting at work that I had to dial into, I came up with FIVE (5) pages of designs for cool bits of the Ultimate Playground.

Uh, when I've got thirdhand capable of holding info like this, I'll put it all there... and ye shall learn the wonders of Wood Tag, and why and how it must be resurrected. :)

[ design good ] 2001-02-16

Mars has some good things to say: about design, so go read them. Just a coupla paragraphs, it won't hurt. I promise.

And someday, when he's a Guru even more lauded than Great Leader Nielsen, I'll be able to say that I knew him before he was famous... :)

[ design rants ] 2001-02-15

This is just plain stupid: A cell phone that purports to "predict your ovulation cycle". What a total crock - not only do such things vary tremendously from woman to woman, but also from time to time for the same woman (especially if she's lactating, under stress, or experiencing varied hormonal shifts for other reasons).

If you check your basal temperature and cervical mucous regularly you can get an idea of what's currently *happening* with your ovaries and related parts, but no stupid phone is going to predict it for you. Really.

Now, if you could enter your individual data into the phone and have it graph it for you or something, that would be cool, but I seriously doubt that's what they're getting at.

I'm assuming that they probably programmed into it that ALL women have exactly 28-day cycles and ovulate on day 14. Which is total bullshit. That assumption, and the assumption that every woman will have a 280-day pregnancy, are both totally wrong. Yet the doctors and other clueless folks trot out the charts or wheels and proclaim loudly that this is how a woman's body functions, and people thus believe it.

Sigh.

[ design ] 2001-02-15

Okay, I have to say: that at Disney's new California Adventure Theme Park, the big bear-in-the-mountain thing doesn't look like a bear at all.

It looks like a wolf. Really.

Look at this page, and it's clear to see that they've built a huge honking wolf, and they're trying to tell everyone it's a bear. The effect is much more pronounced on the tv ads.

Anyway, I'm not buying it. It's a wolf.

[ design good the net ] 2001-02-12

Google bought deja.com! Wow! I actually had hoped for this to happen back in October (when I heard the Usenet archive was up for sale), but I'm thrilled and stunned that it actually has!

Google has a press release about it, of course, and now deja.com points to groups.google.com.

I think some Very Cool Things are going to result, yes indeed.

Kulpreet told me that something big was coming on Monday, and that they had signed a deal on Friday. (When I called for Kathy this weekend, and she was out, we chatted a bit).

Gee, maybe I could get Google to hire me to do informational architecture for the Usenet archive. :)

[ design rants ] 2001-02-12

I broke my monitor: Yesterday, I committed the stupid naive sin of assuming that my computer monitor could withstand horrific treatment. Yes, that's right, I cruelly turned it off, then came back several hours later and turned it on.

In response to my obvious negligence, it promptely broke internally, such that the screen looks mostly white, totally warped, and it's completely destroyed.

Just like the first one I had.

You see, I did this months ago, with another specimen of the same monitor, which is a no-name brand that came with my CompUSA pc. Anyway, I had taken that one back after it fried (from the same cause), and gotten the new one. I also managed to aggravate an old back injury in the process, triggering weeks of pain, but that's beside the point.

So now I have to go digging (again) for the receipt, and take the damn thing back (again), and try to get them to give me a new one (again). AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

I just want my stinkin' monitor to work, is that too much to ask? I'm not on the bleeding edge of uncharted technology here. This should be simple stuff. Instead I end up with crap that's completely defective, for no good reason, and I harbor fantasies of drop-kicking the damn thing right through CompUSA's front window.

Combined with the problems I've had with my cd-writable drive, it's just about enough to put me over the edge.

Well, not really, I just like to vent about it, because it helps me calm down.

This is going to be a royal pain in the ass. Sigh.

[ cognition design humor ] 2001-02-05

I'm a woman: and the gender test at thespark.com figured it out correctly, too. Cool! Try it out, it's fun.

What's amusing is that on their little bar graph thingie, I'm right smack dab in the middle. Seriously. Not surprising, considering I've always been a tomboy, though...

But I'm not sure what it means, if anything. Probably nothing. Hmm.

[ design humor the net ] 2001-02-05

From the Department Of Absent Clues: I was trying to print a pdf file this morning, and it spewed forth bizarre symbols that didn't resemble English text, so I went on a search for a way to avoid the problem. I did eventually find a solution of sorts buried here - check the "Print as image" box in the print dialog box.

But the interesting part is that on the front page of Adobe's website I saw an irresistable teaser for a feature story:

Valerie Casey - Frog Design's digital media creative director explains why usability is dead.

Bwahhahaha! Usability is "dead"? Oh really? "Ha!", thinks I. Let's see what sort of justification this silly person offers for her stance...

At the beginning of the Web, if you could use a tool, you were a designer. Now, people are looking for skills in UI and design. Personally, as a creative director at Frog, I look for the credentials, and it's kind of ironic because I don't have them in that typical way myself.

Dearie, the word I believe you are looking for is hypocrisy. Must be fun, shutting out people because they lack the credentials you lack. Heh!

I teach students to provide context, rather than explicit instructions in their designs.
Current practice is overrationalized and focuses too deeply on task analysis, and not enough on empathy. I think that now, Web design has really crossed over to another point. I think that usability was a hot issue, and it's fading because people are getting used to computers. Now all of a sudden, the focus isn't "we aren't meeting our usability standards." Now it's "what kind of cool user experience can we make that has motion and user interactivity?"

All I can say is, I'm not convinced. Is this even a threadbare excuse for a justification? Sounds like a foolish opinion hyped up to be more than it is.

And for the record, I'm one of the kinds of users who speedily clicks the back button when I'm faced with someone else's idea of a "cool user experience" "that has motion and user interactivity".

Repeat after me: The Web is NOT TV. The Web is NOT TV. The Web is NOT TV...

Maybe I am thinking this because it's a Monday, but I can't help picturing this silly lady saying "Would you like fries with that?" repeatedly in her new career after this whole web thing finally shakes out and unusable and user-hostile sites are ignored into non-existence... and yes, the image brings me a deep feeling of satisfaction.

[ consume design rants ] 2001-01-29

Take my George Foreman grill, please!: I finally tried the thing out this weekend, and well, it sucked. (It looks like Sarah Bruner likes hers a lot, though).

For me, this was what was involved:

The raised metal ridges that produce the grill-lines cause the meat to be overcooked (burned) and dried out wherever they touch. Not good.
It doesn't actually drain much grease. I cooked about 1.25 lbs of 85% lean ground beef, and only about three drops of grease dripped out. There was plenty of grease left in the burgers, which got all over the plate I set them on afterwards.
The meat was undercooked in the middle. Really. With all the heat directed at the parts of the burger contacting the ridges, the middle loses out, much more so than when cooked on a traditional flat surface griddle. I'm sure if I knew more about heat transfer, I would be able to explain exactly why this happens.
It splattered grease all over the counter, via the open sides.

So... I'm going to look for a new home for the thing. Used once, and that was one time too many. Good thing I only spent twenty bucks on it.

And to replace it, I'm going to get a standard covered electric skillet. It can cook four burgers at once (instead of only two), has a lid so it won't splatter all over, and it will cook them more evenly (plus, you can make onion soup in it). And I'll do my usual maneuver of soaking up the grease with paper towels - this is far more effective than the George Foreman grill's techniques.

Feh! It's going out, out, out of my house!

[ design ] 2001-01-29

Apparently Athena sucks: so says Daniel, who pointed me to this slashdot thread about it. It appears to be some kind of buzzword-compliant monstrosity. Ah, well. I still like my 3-button computer idea - it could use any configurable GUI.

[ design ] 2001-01-26

This Athena thing looks pretty cool: Here are screenshots of a new OS called Athena. Hmmm. Says it's intended eventually to be for commercial distribution but that the developer kit will be freely available. Hmm.

Sounds like something useful for one of my pet projects that I'll never have enough time to do: develop a three-button OS. Y'know, for people who hate computers and only want to do a few simple things.

Button 1: takes them to their email system.

Button 2: takes them to their web browser.

Button 3: takes them to a file tree exploring thing, so they can see/manipulate/retrieve saved files.

Button 4: (hidden) for access to the OS and configuration guts, to be used only by their friendly local geek who knows about computers. This shouldn't be necessary except in rare circumstances - the geek should set the thing up initially and then they shouldn't have to worry about it. Or even better, have it set *itself* up automagically out of the box.

Optional additional buttons, still Keeping It Simple: one for a music player (such as WinAmp), one for a word processor, spreadsheet, office suite kind of thing, one for games.

Beyond that or thereabouts, you're talking about the type of person who would benefit from using a typical OS in its entirety.

I seriously think it would be cool to take cheap Linux boxes and make 3-Button Computers for the masses. Those whose needs will be essentially fully met with a browser, email, and simple document filing capabilities. That's a *lot* of people. Especially when you're talking about people who haven't had a modern technical education, including the elderly. It's a shame that people have to bang their heads against something like Windows when they don't really need to. This should be simple. Really.

Anyway, it's on my list. The list is long... I hope my life is, too.

[ consume design good ] 2001-01-26

I got an electronics kit yesterday: From Radio Shack, of course. I was out shopping while they did my safety inspection, and I got a little Y-audio cable (highway robbery at $5) so that I could use my headphones at work without having to unplug my speakers. Then I wandered around looking for the electronics kits...

My brother had one when we were little, which was fun but a little cheesy. "50 in 1 Electronic Project Thingie" or something like that.

So I look and I found this puppy. It's state of the art. It kicks serious butt! I can't wait to start playing with it. It's even got a *breadboard*. Really.

See, I started out in college at the Colorado School of Mines majoring in Electrical Engineering. But I fizzled out quickly as soon as I took an actual Electrical Engineering class and realized that I hated it.

So I transferred to CU-Boulder and majored in computer science. As a requirement I had to take a class where we did various complicated electronics lab stuff, involving HP computers and little chips on a breadboard. You can probably tell how much I learned. I think I got a D in that class. Undeserved - I should have failed it.

Over the years I have been meaning to learn about electronics, so I can build a simple little blinkenbox for Elena - something with LEDs and buttons she can press to make them light up. She *loves* that kind of thing.

Looking at the books for this kit, it's just *amazing*. It's got all the usual stuff, but it's incredibly detailed. There are two big books - one for basic circuits, and one for the digital logic projects (using ICs and all that fancy stuff). Wow. This is going to be *lots* of fun. And it shouldn't take me too long to be able to figure out how to make a blinkenbox. I might have to get a soldering gun at some point.

The only soldering I've ever done was while messing around with my then-boyfriend Keith's soldering gun at the School of Mines. I pretty much focused on soldering pennies together. It took awhile, but it was fun. Apparently.

And I also enjoyed the many trips we'd make to various little obscure electronics stores where he'd shop for parts for one or another of his assignments. I loved the little anodized aluminum heat sinks - they looked like little bugs or something, and were quite beautiful. And I loved the funky lights and switches and so on, some with obscure Cyrillic lettering on them (Russian surplus?), or nifty lights embedded in them, and that kind of thing. These are the type of thing I'll be looking for to make Elena's blinkenbox.

Keith was (and is) a Real Electrical Engineer - he works for Texas Instruments (at least he did when last we spoke, a couple years ago). He's always been clever with design and electronics, among other magnificent talents, such as welding.

Which brings me to one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Keith grew up in Holly, Colorado (where they used to make sugar from beets under the Holly Sugar brand), and his dad was/is a farmer. He learned how to weld at an early age. When he got a pickup truck, he bought it without a bumper. Because, you see, he and his dad were going to *make* their own bumper, and make it they did...

This bumper looked like a normal bumper, except it wasn't - it was hollow and featured an air valve with a pressure dial on it. They made it airtight and capable of holding air at high pressure for long periods of time. So Keith was always able to refill his tires wherever he went (or assist another person to refill theirs, because he's that kind of person - he'd help anybody).

I just thought this was cooler than sliced bread. I still do. Absolutely brilliant. And it thwarted a prank at the School of Mines...

I'm not sure what started it, but apparently Keith and his roomie Wayne and maybe a few other people had pissed off a friend of theirs named Nelson. Nelson took revenge by letting the air out of all four of Keith's tires. This was silly, since it took Keith about five minutes to fill them back up. :)

This reminds me, I should call Keith again. I hope he still lives in Dallas. When I last spoke to him, he was happily married to Helen (a woman who lived on the same floor in my dorm at Mines), and had a one-year old daughter named Elizabeth. What a lovely name! :) And of course, since then I've had a daughter named Elena, which is a form of the name Helen. Interesting (and no, not done on purpose). So I really must ring him up and visit sometime. He's such a great guy, I hope everything is going well with him & his family these days...

[ design humor ] 2001-01-26

Amusing Car Names: I was behind a Ford Taurus SES yesterday on the way to work, and as I glanced at the back of the car, I had to do a double-take. The word "Taurus" and the letters "SES" were separated by only a small gap, so at first it looked to me to be an extremely poorly formed plural: "Taurusses".

And then on the way back from getting my Texas safety inspection (two months late, and I didn't get a ticket, yay!) I found myself behind a vehicle which I first took to be an Elantra. I looked more closely and realized that it was an "Entra". Thinking to myself, "wtf?", I then saw the Nissan logo towards the middle, and realized it was merely a Sentra which had lost an "S". I thought it was an amusing name, certainly less ridiculous than the Previa, which is a real name in use.

The Previa makes me think instantly of Placenta Previa, which is a condition in which the placenta is fully or partially covering the cervix. It's not a pleasant thing to have, really, and can be quite dangerous and deadly.

Did they want consumers to think of the Previa vehicle as having a similar role? Blocking traffic much as a placenta previa blocks the birth canal, causing a dangerous outrush of blood?

So every time I see a Previa on the road, I can't help but think that sooner or later they will come out with an Accreta and Abruptio. (Placenta Accreta is when the placenta won't let go of the uterine wall, and Placenta Abruptio is when the placenta prematurely detaches from the uterine wall, usually resulting in a nasty hemorrhage of blood). What were they thinking when they named that thing?

Which reminds me of the latest crime against namespace - what crack was Anderson Consulting smoking when they decided on the new name Accenture? I mean, really.

[ design good my site ] 2001-01-24

Posted an update: To thirdhand, since the poor thing is in limbo right now. I am itching to get the thing finished - there's so much content I want to add to my site(s), but it would be largely pointless to do it before I have the thirdhand infrastructure to hold it.

And it really will be cool. Really. I think this could be something big and powerful and innovative enough that I might be able to make some kind of living off of licensing it someday. Maybe.

I could be wrong, though. And if I'm wrong, then I'll still have the coolest informational structure on the web. :)

[ design mammalog ] 2001-01-22

Sometimes, I can be a Really Cool Mom: Okay, so I'm bragging, but I'm really proud of this today. I completed my first project with my new sewing machine last night: I made a new seat for Elena's baby doll stroller. The old one wasn't sewn right, so part of the frame was sticking out from the cloth seat as soon as we got it. Plus, the fact that Elena kept sitting in it didn't help much (no, it's not made for children to sit in, just dolls - but *you* try telling that to her (and getting her to comply (without screaming))).

I kept thinking to myself "Hey, I can fix that. No wait, I'll just make her a new one." So I finally did... I went through all my fabric to sort it again, and found some strong, light black nylon. I also used this webbing I got from Denver Fabrics when I went at Xmas.

So, here's the result:

It kicks serious ass - I love the black and silver of the fabric and webbing offsetting the bright pink of the frame. Heh, heh! She hasn't sat in it yet, but I can tell you this: the frame will break long before the seat ever does!

I am amazed at what good workmanship I achieved - usually when I do such projects, they end up with several spots where I feel I really screwed up (usually because I got impatient and rushed it). Other people don't usually notice, but *I* always do, and it bugs me. But this, ahhh, I really achieved what I set out to do! It feels so good, like maybe I'm finally getting good at the craft of sewing, instead of possessing merely passable skill.

I even had to create my own pattern from the existing seat (at which Elena shrieked in indignity that I took it away from her - there was no convincing her that it was for the good). Not too shabby!

So, on days when I feel like the Meanest Mommy In The World, I need to remember this - I did something really neat for her, something not every mom would or could do.

I could have tried to keep her from sitting in the stroller (heh, fat chance with this kid!), but instead I just made it possible for her to do so. I like that. Since, after all, it's not hurting her to sit in the thing. Eventually, she'll break the frame, but I'm hoping that it lasts until she's too big to sit in it (and stops trying).

[ design ] 2001-01-20

Gettin' creative, watch out! With all these new PCs at work (not just mine & my pal JM's, but several dozen other people's), there were a ton of boxes hanging around, including packing material. I realized that the foamie things that protected the four corners of the CPU look like little doll chairs:

So I brought one home for Elena, planning to cover it with fabric at some later time. Well, she decided that SHE wanted to sit in it, even though it didn't quite fit - she had to wedge her little hips into it.

This got me thinking - with all those foam pieces, I could probably make her a chair, just her size. And it wasn't much of a leap from there for me to realize there was enough to make a chair for *me* as well!

So I have lugged home seven CPU boxes full of foam (you can see some of my hoard in the pic above), which contained the foam from 21 PCs. Now I have to figure out what kind of glue would work best to glue the pieces together. Any suggestions? I'm thinking that Elmer's glue, krazy glue, and wood glue would all be bad choices, but I'm not sure. I don't think epoxy would work well either. Well, I'll experiment, and I'll update my log with the results as Project Foamy Chairs goes forward...

[ design ] 2001-01-20

Aha! Singer has machine manuals online! But not for my machine, of course. Argh! I can send 'em ten bucks for a printed copy, though that doesn't seem fair since I never had one in the first place. Maybe I'll email 'em and see if I can get 'em to send me one for free. If they won't, I can just wait until they put it online at some point. Depends on which of my thresholds is higher: cheapness vs. impatience. Since I don't really strictly need the manual that much, at least for now, cheapness is winning out at the moment.

[ design ] 2001-01-20

Playing with my sewing machine... I find that the sample custom-designed stitches I created didn't work out well at all. :/ And they were simple, too.

Maybe I *do* need the manual, if there is one. Time to bug Singer, I suppose. Or maybe I just need to study the online interactive demo in greater detail.

[ beauty consume design ] 2001-01-15

I am a total geek: When I learned that Singer came out with a new sewing machine controlled with a Game Boy (via Girlhacker), I thought it was terrific, since I just so happened to be in the market for one. My old sewing machine is now ten years old, and having served me well, it nevertheless can't do spiffy things like letters and little duckies-inna-row, which are absolutely essential for making cute little outfits for Elena (and for her dollies).

So, me being me, can you guess how long I waited after finding out that the Singer Izek existed that I bought one?

Answer: the next day.

And it's *sweet*! Here's a little taste of what it can do:

That last line is me experimenting with a combination of two different stitches. I have only gotten to play with it for a little while, but already I have a bullet list to share with you:

You have to have the Game Boy connected to control anything about the stitch. Including the length of it, if you're just doing straight stitch. So it's very important not to lose your Game Boy (or lose track of it, say if someone borrows it to play a game). I can foresee many annoyed seamstresses if their spouses and/or children dare to borrow Mom's Game Boy and not return it to her sewing basket! Heh, what an image!
There's no manual. The videotape that came with it refers repeatedly to the manual, but there ain't one. There was, though, a very nice inspection slip in the box listing all four items that were included: the machine itself, the Game Boy, the Game Boy cartridge, and the videotape. All were neatly checked off on the list. I dunno why they didn't include a manual. Maybe I'll have to bug Singer about it, but I'm not sure whether there's really much point to it - I would like to have a manual, but I understand everything already even without one. As are most technically-savvy persons of my generation (and of some other generations), I am quite able to figure out new gadgets sans manual. But I still like to pore through them for unsuspected features and so on (and occasionally, I have found them essential, particularly for things with really sparse interfaces, namely my Canon ELPH APS camera).
When it seizes up and jams, it does so gently. :) I mis-replaced the bobbin-holding thingie, thus causing a thread monstrosity and much "ka-chunk"-ing to emit from the machine, after which point it gracefully decided that I was nuts, refused to keep attempting to run, and gave me a spiffy little error message on the Game Boy screen. That's cool! Graceful failure modes are fabulous...
In addition to the generous set of patterned stitches that it comes with, I can also do custom ones. I haven't really tried it yet - my first effort was a smiley face that came out all warped because I didn't bother to connect the line segments (well, it wouldn't have been much of a smiley face that way). Look for more intriguing stitches here in the future!
The speed control (for operation without the foot pedal) has a little turtle at the slow end and a bunny at the fast end. Hahahhaha, I love it! I like the pedal-less operation feature, it's nice to just press the "go" button and have it sew away. Of course, I wouldn't walk away from the machine after doing so, but in theory, you could. Oh, and the go/stop button has little LEDs in it, so it changes from green (when it's a "go" button) to red (when it's a "stop" button). Cool! Saves interface real estate, and it's intuitive signaling.
The feed dogs don't come up right away after I take off and replace the metal plate thingie. I think it's a machining-tolerance thing. That is, the gap between the feed dogs and their slots is so small, that they can sometimes catch the edge. They do come up after I mess with the lever a bit, though, so it's not a problem. By the way, feed dogs are the thingies that shove the fabric forward as you sew, if you didn't know.
I'm going to have to get an AC adapter for the Game Boy, or else I'm going to be spending a fortune on batteries. I wish they had included one... I mean, think about it: you've pretty much got to keep the Game Boy on when you're sewing, which can be hours and hours at a stretch. Wait, I could be wrong. You may be able to turn it off after you download your stitch parameters, I'll have to test it out.
You can save your favorite stitches, including four custom ones, and several strings in the lettering section. Spiffy!
Overall, the interface is clean, simple, and elegant. Very, very good design. The Game Boy interface is quite intuitive as well. It's about as complex as it needs to be, and no more. Perfect. Except for the fact that every time I have to turn it on, I have to select English - why can't it remember that?
Oh yeah, it was about $600. Not bad for what it can do. From what I could see, other machines that can do this range of stuff range from $800 to $1000 or more, so I think it's really quite a good buy. It's quite smart to use the Game Boy platform for a lot of the stitch configuration legwork - it allows them to use a tried and tested hardware & software platform rather than reinvent their own onboard the sewing machine (which they've already done, but still...)

I really, really like it. The people who came up with this are quite clever indeed. It makes sense, since they've been doing this for 150 years! There's a neat "Singer 150th Anniversary" logo on it on the front - 1851 - 2001. Wow.

And if you're wondering why I don't put this at epinions as a review, it's because I can't stand the idea of someone else owning my content. Those things just *bug* me for some reason. Same reason I won't do book reviews at Amazon, though I'll read them. I won't give away my writing so that someone else can sell it (for a lot of money) and pay me diddly-squat (pennies at best). If there were a good place for such things that wouldn't do that (or excise URLs pointing elsewhere from what you write), that was noncommercial, then I might consider it, but there isn't.

Anyway, I'll close this with a few more stitches:

And I'll also mention that I did a *HUGE* amount of clearing-away-of-Stuff so that I could justify getting to play with my sewing machine. I went through tons of boxes, put up shelves in the garage, and sorted like crazy, to get to a point where I can sort of manage my Stuff. I'm not done, but I have slogged through an entire room full of disorganized Stuff that is now filtered at least.

[ design rants ] 2000-12-24

This got me thinking: How, in a database system, do you handle someone who has been known by more than one name? In Amazon's system, Mr. Mellencamp is known as John Cougar Mellencamp. I don't know if they have "John Mellencamp" as an artist name at all.

But, interestingly, if you search for John Mellencamp, you'll easily find one of his albums, which is titled: "John Mellencamp". So it's handled neatly, in a way.

Heh. That's kind of elegant, actually... By the way, that album came out in 1998, and that's the one with the I'm Not Running Anymore song on it. And Amazon has it listed as being by: John Cougar Mellencamp. I think he'll be trapped in databases that way until and beyond his death.

This brings me to something else, namely, the Credit Hell Saga. I recently got one of my credit reports, even though the credit agencies protested that they couldn't believe I really lived where I say that I do.

To my surprise, I'm listed on there with my old, married name. First of all: Ewwwwww. I dislike that name. Strongly. Sigh. So that's the first thing I'm going to correct.

But that's not even the interesting part. The current address and two previous addresses aren't even mine. They must be my ex-husband's. Lovely. Not that I cared, but now I know where he lives. I guess if I wanted to send him a card or something, I could (I don't). But in a way, it's nice to know that he's living in a state that I have no plans on visiting, so I will hopefully not run into him. Yippee.

But since I'm talking about the credit report, I might as well say that there are three (3) separate items that I've paid off that show up on my credit report as still being debts. Grrrrr!!!

I hate this, I hate this, I HATE THIS!!!!

One is for $23. One is for $485. And the last one, the most infuriating one, is for $1971. This is the one that I settled with Discover, and have already had to fend of TWO (2) separate collection agencies RIGHT AFTER I paid the settlement with Discover. I had to hit them over the head with the settlement letter that says: "Beth, you paid us half, it's considered all taken care of now". I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. Those bastards, HOW DARE THEY. I can't believe that they not only get me to pay the settlement (with extreme financial duress when I paid it - it took all the money I had for two months), but that they then try to get me to pay the settled half AGAIN with TWO separate collection agencies, and then STILL keep it on my credit report.

I'm so mad I could throw bricks at them! But of course I won't. Instead, I'll just rant in my log, and make all my poor readers scroll down to get to the point where I actually say something (relatively) interesting, instead of just figuratively raising my impotent fist at the Financial Powers That Be Shafting Me.

Don't get me wrong - I do not object to having stuff on my credit rating that is TRUE. I'm not trying to weasel out of anything. I just really, really, really want to inflict some serious wedgies on the responsible parties who have continued to screw me over for the things I paid off. I want to make them feel at least one one-hundredth of the discomfort I am feeling.

Okay, I feel a little better getting that off my chest.

[ consume design xmas ] 2000-12-21

Drool. I want I want I want!!! I absolutely *must* have one of these laser cutters. It's only $14,000.00, plus $500 shipping. This is *perfect* for my needs! I guess I'll have to save my pennies for quite a while to be able to afford it. But once I do, then I can at least partially make a living off of the spiffy stuff I can make with it. Cool!

[ design later ] 2000-12-20

Filing for future reference: A slashdot comment about how other controllers can be used with an Atari 2600. I'll have to do this at some point, my joysticks are toast.

[ beauty design rants ] 2000-12-20

I hate it when cool people die: and there's been a lot of it going around, dammit! Today's newly-found-out death involves Dr. David Huffman, the guy who invented Huffman codes (a way to compress data, used in a wide variety of applications) when he was a grad student at MIT.

I was looking around hoping to find a web page of his, since I had recently looked back at the webzine Grafica Obscura, which has all sorts of nifty stuff, including a page featuring Dr. Huffman and some of the neat things he created by folding paper. I was looking for his web page, hoping to find instructions for making some of those nifty things, and I find that he died last year. Dagnabbit! I found a slashdot thread that includes comments from some of his former students, and more background on how he developed Huffman codes.

Anyway, also at Grafica Obscura they show how a laser cutting machine can be used to cut paper precisely. I wish I had a laser cutter so that I could make my cut paper cards (like the ones pictured here) more easily - it gets darn tedious with the xacto blade.

This particular laser cutter goes for only $353,550.00, so c'mon, don't be a cheapskate, buy me a nice xmas present!

[Yes, I'm trying to be a little whimsical to hide how bummed out I am that such a clever, brilliant guy is dead. From cancer, no less - too many people are getting cancer these days...]

[ design good quotes rants ] 2000-12-14

Mars rants eloquently: in this comment at metafilter. In part:

<<The more control designers have over the look of their application, the better!>>
NO NO NO! My computer exists for ME TO DO THINGS WITH, not as a canvas for designers to express their overweight egos on. If I want my windows to look different, I'll install a different GUI theme/window manager/skin/whatever, and thank you very much for respecting my decision. It's my computer, not yours, and the fact that I accidentally misstepped onto your misbegotten website does not give you permission to fuck my screen up any more than the fact that you gleaned my email address off some newsgroup gives you permission to mail me MAKE_MONEY_FAST advertisements.

And further on in another comment, he adds:

Even in the optimal case that your custom window widgets can do all of those things in as convenient a manner as the native GUI widgets did, you still experience a net loss, because the user has to learn your system. They can't apply their existing knowledge of How Windows Work to your window; they have to spend time learning your design, decoding your icons, shifting their expectations about where to click. Maybe it's a small amount of time, but you, the designer, still lose - unless you think your design is more important than the user's convenience, in which case you need to have your designer's license taken away.

Preach on, Brother Mars!

[ design my site ] 2000-12-06

Speaking of progress: I'm working on the design of my massive information-control system, which I have dubbed the Third Hand, or just thirdhand for short. (I got thirdhand.org right after I came up with the name last week or so).

The idea for the name is this: we've got two hands for manipulating stuff, and they're very spiffy with what they can do - extremely powerful, versatile, a big part of what makes us human. I am trying to create a third hand, a hand for the mind, to allow me to control and manipulate information as easily as turning over something in my hand.

Plus I kind of like the idea of thirdhand as opposed to secondhand. "Secondhand" to me means one step removed from the source. I consider thirdhand to be yet another step removed, yet a step which somehow is able to place the item into another, more proper, context. A context different from the source, of course.

I have pretty much set the basic underpinnings of how it will work, I just need to create the databases and start hacking. I am still waiting for my other (more advanced) php book to come from Amazon so I can learn more in-depth kickass stuff.

I am thrilled with how this is all coming together. It's odd, I have been working for so long on such a thing, trying to figure out how to make it work, and having figured it out... it's not... earth-shattering. I mean, it's not any huge major insight, just a different way of handling things. It's actually very simple.

Which makes sense, on a very deep level, to me. I mean, it should be elegant, not snarled in spaghetti strings of complication. But when I think about it, I am somewhat amazed that no one else has come up with the idea of doing things this way. Because it seems so... obvious that this is how it should be done.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The basic idea is that I want to be able to store anything and everything, in a way that allows each "tidbit" of information (as I have dubbed them) to be related to any other piece of information. Well, actually several other pieces of information.

I have been beating my head in frustration against the limitations of purely hierarchical categorization schemes for a long time. I *hate* them! Sooner or later you always end up having to compromise by putting something into a category which doesn't exactly fit, and you really lose something there, which starts small but begins to creep and expand, and soon your information structure is a total mess.

It's insidious. And I haven't even touched upon the notion of "category creep", where you end up with too many damn categories, and also don't forget the whole phenomenon of people misinterpreting the categories, or not realizing that some of them are there.

So I have my own proposal to fix this problem, at least for my own data. Part of the key to fixing this is something I've known for years - each tidbit should be able to be placed in as many categories that it needs to appear in.

There are other parameters to the solution which are just as key - for instance, not having a strict hierarchy. That is, no single top-down flattened way of organizing things. Each individual item does of course have its own orientation, things which are "bigger", things which are "smaller", and things which cover about the same size of ground. The trick is to let such a system end up with loops, if needed. That is, A is bigger than B, which is bigger than C, which is bigger than A. You can't do that with a flat hierarchy, but you can do it easily with my system. :)

And, I'll keep people from getting lost. There will be a breadcrumb trail of the last N followed links, and an easy way to get to "bigger" areas and "smaller" areas, as well as "similarly-sized" areas.

Yes, eventually I'll implement searching too, but I'm not there yet. I am also going to experiment with the use of color to convey information - perhap a gradient of hue to indicate how new or fresh information is, such as bright blue = new and black = a month or more old.

The really cool part is that I'll be able to have all of these things connected together exactly how they need to be:

weblog entries
weblog categories
bookmarks
quotes
photos
birth & breastfeeding info
long pieces that I write
discussion entries

and on and on... I am going to have a way for people to log in and get a user id, that way it can track their preferences better, and they can add content or participate in discussions if they wish.

And I promise, the urls will be really short. :) Oh yeah, and no steeenking java or javascript! The most complex thing I'll do is tables. And maybe just a wee bit of stylesheets, but I'm still not decided on that. My impression is that they are so inconsistently supported that you are just asking for trouble with varying browsers looking at your site. Ugh! Anything that's that fraught with peril, I try to steer clear of.

I'd like to eventually make a bookmarklet to add stuff to it while I'm surfing the web, so that counts as javascript, I guess, but it doesn't really count because it's not part of the interface. Heh!

So get ready, some interesting stuff is coming. I am hoping to have at least a working alpha version by December 15th, so I can enter it into the SXSW website competition. I entered my weblog into it yesterday, so we'll see if that gets me anywhere. The conference/shindig/whatever isn't until next March, so there's quite a while to wait. Sigh. Well, I've got a lot of work to do. Bye for now.

[ design manifesto my site ] 2000-11-22

New Design Coming... Sometime: I'm going to learn php, and totally redo my site in a much better way. But this will take awhile, since right now I know how to spell "php" but not much more about it. I've ordered a couple of books to chomp through, though.

The idea is that I want to make a big new fancy website with all kinds of interconnected stuff, and sort of model it on the way that I envision we store memetic structures in the brain. With my recent breakthroughs (that I wrote about in my manifesto), I have some exciting new directions to take this in.

That is, I've been working off and on for about a decade on coming up with a good, effective, elegant way to categorize information, and I've made various fits and starts on the road towards this goal, some more hideously lame than others.

If you're tempted to tell me "Oh, it's been done already, you should look into [blah]", I will wave my extended hand in your direction and ignore you. Really, I must explore this on my own, in my own way. I'm like that. That's just how it is. I won't be happy doing it anyone else's way. I have extremely specific ideas for how I want this to be, and I haven't even written the spec yet (and I'm sure the spec will undergo many layers of revision, and the finished product will only follow it to a degree).

So, I'm excited about this project. Ready to get started! It's going to kick butt! It's been a long time since I've done any real programming. Well... I haven't done all that much real programming, come to think of it. But still. I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into this one. Watch this space for updates.

[ body consume design ] 2000-11-22

My buckwheat-hull pillow is my new best friend: after only two nights with the thing, I'm utterly in love with it. It's *so* comfy. I can't believe I waited so long to get one. It's everything a pillow should be.

I just lay my head in it, wiggle back and forth once or twice, and I'm perfectly cradled, all forces evenly distributed.

If you've been considering one, I tell ya, don't wait! You deserve a pillow this good. Everyone does.

(your mileage may vary, however)

[ design ] 2000-10-20

More ideas: It's very late and my feet are cold, but I had to record these ideas, inspired by watching World's Most Intense Police Videos or whatever the hell it was called:

Have a device in your car that beeps/blinks lights at you/whatever when there is a high-speed chase nearby. This device would respond to signals sent from a central police person who would light up certain areas where chases were occurring (or heading that way), and turn off the ones where the chase had passed. This way, innocent bystanders could GET THE HELL OFF THE ROAD and hopefully not get killed/hurt (and make the cops' jobs easier to boot, well, mostly (since sometimes other cars on the road help box in a criminal's car)). Whatever technology powers that OnStar thingie could be used in this.
A trapdoor in the floor of a convenience store/gas station that the cashier can activate with a floor-level push-button, that drops them into a "safe room" (padded to absorb the fall, of course!) where they are out of danger of the criminal doing them harm. And they can have a nice chat on the phone with the cops from down there. With more than one employee, though, this is less feasible to make all of them safe (not to mention any unlucky shoppers in the store at the time, who could be used as hostages or something). Maybe the clerk should only use it if they were there alone. On the other hand, you could put the trap door in front of the cash register, and just drop the perp into the basement, into a bullet-proof room. This wouldn't work so well once potential criminals knew about it, though.

None of the Above

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