For my undergraduate design thesis at PNCA I’m working on explaining particle acceleration through design and interactivity. Using the International Linear Collider as a model, I created diagrams for each step in a collision experiment. They’re intended to help define a visual language for the project and will soon be animated and used as the basis for an interaction prototype. Read on to see them up close. (more…)
I’ve just launched the new version of this site and it comes with many exciting changes, both in design and under the hood. The front page now acts as more of a portal, aggregating content from the blog, portfolio, flickr and twitter. The portfolio has been completely rebuilt using Django and is much easier for me to update. I’ll be putting together a more complete introduction to the new site once DNS settles down a bit. Stay tuned.
I’ve been using Plazes for a while now to track my location as I wander around with my laptop. The concept is really cool. They have a desktop client that figures out your location based on a database of network ids and such. If it doesn’t know about the place where you are, it asks you, and the information is added for anyone else who visits that place.Earlier today, the client asked to be upgraded and I obliged. Moments later, the new interface appeared. The first thing that I noticed was that the window was slightly transparent. There’s no real reason for transparency here, so it struck me as another casualty of Apple making certain UI effects at bit too easy. (more…)
This post is only on the new server. If you see it, the DNS is being friendly.
The fifteen branches of the Jackson County Library System closed today due to a lack of funding. I’ve spent countless hours both in the Ashland library and using its vast resources. I’ve known librarians for years who are now without jobs. This closure troubles me greatly.
The AC adapter on my Powerbook started shorting out last week but I could usually fiddle with it and get it to work. Yesterday, in the middle of such fiddling, there was a little spark and it started to burn through the casing (and my finger). Having nothing much to lose, and not wanting to shell out $80 for a new adapter, I cracked open the case, cut out the offending section of cable, and spliced it back together.
Everything worked out and now I have a fully functional power cord once again. The electrical tape give it a kind of evil chic look. If anyone else has a similar problem with their power adapter, or if they just want to see how I did it, I put together an instructable of the process.
You’ve got 15 seconds to take a screenshot and resize it for use in a post, a Mac with a clean OS install, and a paper clip. You double click the file on the desktop and up pops your image in Preview. That’s no good, Preview can’t resize images… or can it?
Even though Preview doesn’t seem to allow you to resize an image, it can be done. Just zoom out a few steps or resize the window (Preview will fit the image to the window by default) and fire off a quick command-shift-4. That’s right: take a screenshot of the screenshot. Then, just open the new screenshot (the metascreenshot, if you will), save it in your preferred format, and upload away!
p.s. If you’re a little more patient and want a lot more power, there’s always the incredibly awesome Picnik.
I’ve been using sIFR for a while to get pretty typography for my headers on this site. As part of my latest design refresh, I upgraded to the beta of sIFR 3 and discovered something cool in the process. It’s possible to embed an image within the flash movie used by sIFR and use the dynamic text to mask the image, creating some nifty effects. The gradienty text in the header (which displays my current Twitter status) is done using this technique and I’m exploring how it can be used for other fun things. The drawbacks to this is that you have to create a separate flash file for every image you want to mask and that file is also separate from any other sIFR stuff that you happen to be doing. The same effect could be acheived by using server-side tech to generate images (which would be a bit smaller than the flash file), but the ease-of-use and ability to modify the text at runtime makes sIFR masking interesting. If you’re curious as to how to pull it off (even if you’ve never touched flash before), read on.
I installed WordPress 2.1 today, eager to make use of some of the new plugin features only to find that there isn’t really any documentation on them. I’d like to echo the sentiment mentioned here and say that WordPress really does need stronger developer documentation. I want to be able to look to the documentation not to decrypt the innter workings of some new feature, but to get an idea of what is possible.
Driving past the streetcar yards the other day, I spotted a brand new train being loaded on to the tracks. It’s bright green and had a more rounded, bubblelike, nose than the current model. Presumably this is one of the trains that they built the new siding for last year while I was here.
