04.03.05
Giant Steps
Have a look at this very cool animation/jazz piece that’s a great visual representation of a saxophone performance. It was really interesting and engaging to watch. Very satisfying ending as well.
03.31.05
An actual Mac Tablet Prototype with Photos
WOW! Authentic proof that Apple has been looking in this direction for a long time. It’s basically a closed PowerBook Duo (see the label on the battery?) with the screen facing outward and molded into one piece (no clamshell). How fricken’ cool is this?!?!
I’d pay big money (if I had it) to get a hold of this puppy. Hell, I’d pay just to play with it for a couple of hours and the chance to download its contents. The guy says that there’s even some specialized software inside. I wonder how portable that might be… It would be OS 8 era, for certain, but it would still be great to play with!
03.29.05
Nero disc images on Mac OS X
Today I needed to proof a disc image and it was created by Nero, the Windows-only disc burning software. Fortunately it turn out that the easiest possible solution was available to me:
Nero images; how to burn or convert on X
“NGR images are essentially ISO images. You should be able to rename them and use them as ISO. […] You can most certainly rename the files. If they are indeed ISOs, then Disk Utility should have no problem with them.”
Basically, once I renamed the “promo-disc.ngr” to “promo-disc.iso” I had a standard disc image that I could double click. That launched it and mounted it as a new ‘volume’ or virtual disc on my Desktop.
Thanks to the Nero people and the Apple people for making that possible.
03.27.05
Method a la Español
And then there was this:
Someone translated my Design method article into Spanish. Nice to know that it’s still considered a worthwhile piece of writing. 🙂
03.23.05
Loveline with Genevieve
So Amy caught a segment of Loveline the other night and I got it clipped down to the part she wanted to make sure I heard. The guest was from Trading Spaces: Genevieve Gorder a designer on the show. Here’s her exchange with Adam and Dr. Drew about an hour into the show…
Adam: Do you enjoy the design in aircraft and automobiles and bridges and everything?
Genevieve: Yes, yes, everything. Everything I see.
Adam: Alright, favorite car. Do you have a favorite car?
Genevieve: Karmann-Ghia.
Dr. Drew: Oh really?
Adam: Mmm, mm hm. That’s nice… the Volkwagen. Yeah, alright.
Genevieve: If I were a car, that’s what I would be.
Dr. Drew: But you like the form, not the functional aspect of it…
Genevieve: Well form and function make…married together beautifully make good design. Great form and terrible function is still bad design. It has to work.
(Audio MP3 file, 182k for download)
I particularly like how she had that answer down pat. There was no question, not the slightest hesitation in her voice.
03.18.05
The Asdf Bookmarklet
Check out the The Asdf Bookmarklet:
Anyone who ends up writing web forms gets tired of going through every field typing “asdf” in each of the blanks during testing. Also, any users of said forms end up getting tired of filling in “asdf” in each of the fields, until the form is satisfied enough for them to move on.
Very handy bookmarklet.
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03.09.05
A card from Iraq
This was taken from a list that I’m on, written by Jack Zaientz:
IRAQ CULTURE “SMART” (Quick Reference) CARD
U.S. military personnel in Iraq are presented with a laminated card that summarizes the rudiments of Iraqi culture, as refracted through the understanding of the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity.
“The 16-panel, folded card includes information on religion, religious holidays, clothes and gestures, ethnic groups, cultural groups, customs and history, social structure and Arabic names. Also included are ‘Do This’ and ‘Don’t Do This’, commands, numbers, questions, and helpful words and phrases.”
A copy of the Iraq Culture Smart Card, newly updated in November 2004, is available here (in a very large 6.5 MB PDF file):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usmc/iraqsmart-1104.pdf
An earlier edition from February 2004 may be found here (in a lower resolution 1.0 MB PDF file):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usmc/iraqsmart-0204.pdf
The blog “Baghdad Dweller” last month reflected on the contents of a similar smart card that might be used to introduce American culture to a foreign visitor. See:
03.07.05
Form and Field Validation
Here’s a thought:
The only time a field in a web form needs to be perfectly formatted is when it’s going to be parsed by a computer system. If the field will likely never actually be used by a computer and the sub-parts will never have to be parsed, then let the user go hog wild with the formating.
Case in point: If a user is asked to enter their phone number, your server doesn’t care if it knows the which part is the area code, the local exchange or the last four digits. Let the user format those numbers anyway they want, as long as you get at least 10 digits (US) or 11 digits (US + International) or whatever the local number of digits needed are.
03.03.05
Curl Sed and Grep
Below are a couple of commands that I’m using with Geektool to display the Weather forecast and the UV index for the Portland area on my desktop:
echo -n "Next Rain: "; curl -s -m 4 PUTTHEURLHERE
| sed 's/showers/rain/g' | grep 'rain' | sed 's/<br /><br />/|/g;'
| tr "|" "\n" | grep 'rain' | sed q
| sed s'/< \/b>: /|/g' | tr "|" "\n" | sed s'/\< \b\>//g' | sed q
Where it says “PUTTHEURLHERE” you would use the proper URL for your region’s forecast. In my case, for Portland Oregon it is this one and be sure to put ” backslashes in front of each of the ‘&’ ampersands.
Here’s the one for the UV Index:
echo -n "PDX UV: "; curl -s
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/uv_index/bulletin.txt
| grep -E '(PORTLAND OR)' | awk '{print $6}'
Each of the two commands should be entered on one line, without any line breaks. These can be easily modified to focus on any other NOAA region.
**Question:** Why would Ross subject himself to the horrors of sed and awk and grep in this way?
**Answer:** The UV index is good to know because of the patch of skin cancer that I got last year. I like to know if it’s going to be okay to drive with Viva’s convertible top off, or if I should keep covered up. The Weather forecast is for Viva as well. Knowing when it’s likely to rain let’s me know when I need to put her tarp over her. Oh… have you met Viva yet?
03.01.05
The Ongoing Adventures of HST
Great post by Darrel on Hunter S. Thompson and “Uncle Duke”:
As the liner notes, the introduction, the photos, and the text of Hunter remind us, Thompson was and has been the inspiration since 1974 for the character Uncle Duke in G.B. Trudeau’s Pulitzer-winning comic strip “Doonesbury.” Duke’s adventures in that strip have been collected into an anthology that covers his adventures as ambassador in Pago Pago and China, college-circuit speaker, Washington Redskins manager, secret agent in Iran, drug smuggler, zombie, proconsul in Panama, and bartender in Kuwait.