Foodscapes

Fantastic little miniatures in a food context made by the photographers Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle. You can also see more of them in their original context in this sadly over flashed site.

filed in: Culture, Fun - tags: miniatures, food - via Building Blog - 18 Feb 2006 16:06 - #

Try Ruby Programming

Apart from the occasional JavaScript tinkering I have basically not touched programing since the ancient days of Lingo and Hypertalk. I have wanted to play around a little with Ruby on Rails but have been put off by not knowing Ruby, but I have a strong feeling this little online Ruby tutorial might change my mind. This is web based training at its best, a really simple integration of a terminal in a web page with interactive instructions, smart, clean and effective!

filed in: Internet, Usability - tags: cbt, wbt, ruby - via WebWord - 17 Feb 2006 16:45 - #

Multi gesture user interface

At first I was a little skeptical about this multi touch interface demo but when they start to pan rotate and zoom maps with one two handed move I was sold. Make sure you watch the video the impressive stuff starts around half way in. And the fact that Apple has a patent on some related technology makes me all giddy that we may see some practical application of this in the not impossibly distant future.

filed in: Mac, Usability - tags: interface, gestures, touch - 16 Feb 2006 12:15 - #

Yahoo Design Pattern Library

filed in: Usability - tags: design, patterns - 15 Feb 2006 11:09 - #

Pursue your passion!

Dave Pollard talks about models to find the intersection of your genius, your passion and your purpose. I really like intersection diagram he has made and quite a lot of the models are new to me and will need exploring.

filed in: Culture, Friends - 09 Feb 2006 11:58 - #

Power-laws solutions to social ills

Malcom Gladwell has an intriguing take on homelessness, bad cops and car pollution.

Power-law solutions have little appeal to the right, because they involve special treatment for people who do not deserve special treatment; and they have little appeal to the left, because their emphasis on efficiency over fairness suggests the cold number-crunching of Chicago-school cost-benefit analysis.

By taking examples from homelessness, bad cops and car pollution, the article explains that we have tended to look at these issues as endemic problems but when you look at them more carefully you see that that in each case very few represent the biggest challenge and we need to gear our solutions to solving them in realistic ways.

filed in: Politics - tags: Power-law, Homeless, Car pollution - 08 Feb 2006 11:43 - #