ChrisLeeWoo

385 Final Portfolio

2018-12-08T14:50:00.001-08:00

Chris Wootton
385 Final Portfolio Project

Introduction

This project is to explore and create a piece of software focused on fun. This video game is made in the Unity Game Development engine in order to rapidly iterate new ideas for testing. The game, titled "Be The Ball" centers around directly controlling a bouncy ball into target areas. I was directly inspired by arcade skeeball, the popular video game "Marble Madness", and direct feedback from my own children on what physical toys they like to play with most.

First Iteration Video Demo:

It was a bit of a challenge learning unity from scratch, but over time I would learn more and more techniques for getting the game to behave the way I intended.

Physical Prototype

Revisions and additions (the orange pad is extra bouncy!) were made.

Contextual Inquiry

A big part of my design was fine-tuning the physics elements of gravity, bounciness, and top speed of the ball. It was quickly apparent that it was not enough to make it mimick the way my real ball moved. According to the book Game Feel, "realism is not necessarily a worthwhile goal...the perception that the impact is powerful is what we’re after." With that in mind, I tested iterations with various falling speeds, jump height, and ball weight/drag. For what I found, the sweet spot was a bit slower than real life to increase the feeling of control for the player but also allowing a bit of unexpected randomness to keep it fresh and exciting. My research for this project was mainly centered on the ideas from this great book, which is directed toward as general an audience as possible and includes in-depth analysis of some of the most successful video games produced.

Sources:
SWINK, STEVE. GAME FEEL: a Game Designers Guide to Virtual Sensation. CRC PRESS, 2017.

Evaluation Plan

The method I chose to test my game was an empirical evaluation. My goal was always to make something my own son would not get bored with too quickly, so I would conduct my focus groups with the total number of participants consisting of 100 children aged 5-10. This may seem like a lot of participants, but the questions will be short and yes/no style so as not overreach the attention span of this age group. I would have different iterations of the game being tested, to compare which combination of physics settings lead to the most satisfying experience. The evaluation will consist of a few pre-questionnaires and post-questionairres to determine if the game was fun, as well as an observation list to measure which iteration the participants were most successful at gaining progress within the game. For me, ease is not enough, because it needs to be fun too!

Dark Patterns Version 2

2018-11-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

Smart Lock Security Company, Dark Pattern in Action

Introduction

The premise of this assignment is to use a dark pattern, a purposeful design that inherently coerce the user to do something they normally wouldn’t do. A good quick example is how after downloading an application, the installation wizard has an “opt out” checkbox to NOT receive emails. The dark pattern here causes the user to do extra work in order not receive emails, and therefore more people will be subscribed than if there was a checkbox to receive emails. We decided to create a faux-security company named Smart Lock to demonstrate a close-to real world example of a dark pattern.

Smart Lock is a security company that primarily produces locks for doors, devices and other entrances linked up with secure “key cards” that allow users to be sure. Smart Lock’s main goal is to keep its customers safe. Secondary goals include, convenience for proprietors (vendors of Smart Lock) and a “backdoor authentication” for police services. Starting out, apartment managers or people that want to have their doors linked up with new smart locks can have install these new locks and provide the sign up forums needed to issue out the smart key cards. Apartment managers will be able to provide renters that their building is more secure and safe because of our new smart locks, also providing that the renter can ask for more of their devices can be protected by the smart key card by going to our web page for more information. The dark pattern is in the form given to the person applying to rent and will be crucial for them filling out the information so that they can use the doors of the apartment.

Design Process

Though we did collaborate and discuss other forms of dark patterns, ultimately from the start our team was set on creating a security related dark pattern. We found that a security concept would mold perfectly into a deceptive dark pattern that the general population could fall for. Early iterations of our security company comprised of a strictly web-based system, where the security we would provide was primarily software security. We then began to discuss who would be our main target or most vulnerable to our pattern. With our target audience in mind, we did not want to limit ourselves to only web based users. We knew that if we could somehow have a physical device that the number of users would grow substantially. The idea then arose to incorporate RFID chip scanners. We realized that we could utilize this simple tech with our security company, expanding our web-based company to property security based company. With the main idea now concepted, it was time to put the hardware together. Luckily one of the members of our team was vastly equipped with the required hardware to test the use of our product. With the hardware tested and ready, the darkest part of our journey came next. As you have read about our product, it is not necessarily the physical product that holds that dark pattern but rather the registration form for our product that holds the pattern. Our goal with the registration form was to make it appear as normal as possible, allowing a naive user to enter information that they would not normally enter. We discussed the exact information we wanted to extract from our users and the various ways of asking for it. We looked at every possible way to ask for the information we wanted, even testing it on each other to see if a team member would fall for it. The creativity of the dark pattern began to emerge as the registration form grew in length and trickery. The strengths of our final iteration lie in the professionalism of the form. There are no obvious giveaways that our simple registration form hides a dark pattern within it.

Some initial notes during our first iteration of designing our dark pattern idea

Rough Draft of Smart Lock sign-up form we wanted.

Implementation phase code using an Arduino RFID module for card access

Link to the web sign-up form:

http://cs.sonoma.edu/~idavidson/cs385HCI/form.html

Worst-case Scenario for a User

The scenario starts with a student that has been on vacation all summer and as summer ends, they come home to find that they got evicted from their apartment and need to find a new place to live fast with only a week left till school starts back up. The student looks online to see a low cost, secure, safe building is available using the new “Smart Lock” home security. The student applies for the apartment and is given a bunch of online forms they must fill out. In the stressful situation the student starts to fill out each form with haste. Once the Smart Lock form is pulled up, it appears like any other signing form and agreement to get the apartment. With haste each field in the forum is filled out, not knowing that some of the fields can be left blank and some checkboxes given are there to trick the user. With all the fields filled in Smart Lock now has their SSN, email, address of their past place and new place, and subscribed to our email list to receive advertisements for our smart locks. This is a lot of information that is given, and we had many ideas on how this information could be used to keep them part of the Smart Lock system, or mess with their lives. Being signed up for Smart Lock means that in order to get into the places protected by Smart Lock. Furthermore, they must keep up with the monthly subscription costs and also keep their physical smart key card with them at all times. If the student added more devices to be protected by Smart Lock then after installation of the locks the only way to get out is to remove the locks and cancel each subscription, which is time consuming for a student that has a full load of classes.

What kinds of people/users are exploited

In general, Smart Lock is used generally in the context of leasing or renting properties as it is a home security feature. The specific population that would be using Smart Lock regularly, are the groups that primarily rent housing, being the elderly or college students. Our dark pattern works very well in the case where users are in a rush or are naive in the sense they don't think they will be exploited (from the information they give out). Often the elderly and young adults are the most exploited because of naïveness and taken advantage of in similar scams and dark patterns in a web context.

Who will Smart Lock benefit

The Smart Lock security company benefits property owners which are utilizing Smart Lock with their leases. Logistically, implementing Smart Lock would be more realistic in a context of an apartment complex or housing community. While we wouldn’t expect as many homeowners to use Smart Lock. Smart Lock will also benefit Police by giving them ease of access to doors or devices that are backed by Smart Lock. And the last one to benefit from our dark patterns is data collectors that want to know where the user’s devices are going or how often they come home, little personal information that can give companies better ways to target the user for advertisements, etc.

How can your reader protect themselves against the dark pattern you proposed?

When looking at how a potential user can avoid being exploited by Smart Lock there is the only one solid solution. Do not sign leases with rental properties which use Smart Lock. A more practical solution goes with the ideology of critically thinking, what information a user must provide for a service. If there happens to be more information required then logically needed or other risky characteristics of the service, the best advice is to entirely avoid that service. Be observant and read every checkbox with the intent that it may be a dark pattern. Be sure, as a user to take your time as well, personal information is valuable and there are many techniques able to maliciously steal data.

An alternative, roundabout way for users to protect themselves from our dark pattern would is to influence local politicians to ensure no local business or property renting company uses Smart Lock. Though this is not a very fast or short-term solution of protecting individuals. Again, the best way to avoid being exploited by the dark pattern Smart Lock uses is, to be an observant user who doesn’t willing give out unneeded information.

Conclusion

When looking at our final prototype, we have our dark pattern setup within the sign-up form that we shared. We also began the stages of designing a hardware component which the Smart Lock would physically use to open a client’s door. A strength of our sign-up form is the realisticness of content that exists and may be overlooked, like asking for the an old address, or a confusing backwards opt-out check box. An issue we had with our physical prototype, was not being able to demonstrate our RFID hardware component, while still having to spend a good amount of time working to develop that idea. While technical difficulties were unfortunate, the hardware component plays a key role to Smart Lock. If we had more time the first thing prioritized would be creating a more polished hardware component. Also, extra time would be put towards adding the process as to how interaction between Smart Lock and a user hypothetically goes; This would be expressed in the form of a storyboard.

Design Sprint: Fun

2018-10-31T21:38:00.000-07:00

Group 5
Chris Wootton
Alexander Elkins
Spencer Perry
Ian Davidson

For this design sprint, we created a game in Unity in which the player controls a skeeball and guides it towards some floating targets. The difficulty stems from the need for momentum, control of speed and direction prove crucial to getting through the target rings.

VIDEO DEMO:

As computer science students we are primarily taught skills in and around programming. Throughout classes we have been introduced and expected to do some design work before going ahead and implementing code. With that being said, the process we go through for each design sprint allows us to spend more time discussing how exactly we want our project to go. This means we had time to learn the Unity game engine, and listening to lectures on the characteristics of a simple interactive game before starting to work on our project.

If the game we created had been made without the context of this class, where we went straight to programming, the finished product would definitely be different. First off, the shared idea of the game, or how our group thinks about the game, would most definitely be simplified. This of course is due to the sheer lack of time spent developing and thinking through the concept of the game. Additionally, the “primer” consisting of readings and lectures, helped point out some of the subtletees and characteristics of fun simple games.

The task is to take the user of the game to a different experience that is convenient and not able to do in real life. Fun games give experiences that go beyond what is possible in the world. Designing for fun can be difficult, because fun is a term that has many meaning but as long as the game follows one of the definitions, the game should be fun for an audience. If we were to take a programing only approach, the game would have a feel of just mechanics and not much fun involved in the game. We found while coding the game and using fun properties that we learned, the game started to form around a more fun idea.

In this image below, it shows our design sprint in the Maker’s Space at Sonoma State. We were tasked to create a game with what we had around us. Goal of the sprint was to create a game that had fun experiences.

One approach that we took was to start with an example project or template. Using that, try to understand the different elements, what settings or scripts dictate their behavior, and how the separate pieces interact with each other to create a whole experience. This way, you can quickly pick up and start to tinker with the elements much faster than trying to learn each component from scratch.

The evaluation done in class let us see how other people would approach and understand our game with a fresh perspective. Some people tried different paths and strategies for getting the ball to the goal. We really appreciated the suggestions for enhancements, such as different ball types and more obstacles along the ramp.

Design Sprint: Crowdsourcing

2018-10-08T20:52:00.002-07:00

Where We Started

We had a crowd-sourcing idea about how to give users the ability to have an impact on an AI portion of a video game. The part of the game we wanted to focus on was computer assistants or other non-player controlled characters to have growth with feedback from users and data mining. Ideas about having a BuddyBot AI while playing online multiplayer Battle Royal games (like PUBG) to help the users fill extra slots on their teams with a teammate that wasn’t just a worthless meat shield. With observing play styles and having user feedback in the form of surveys, updates to the BuddyBot system will advance the program to a threshold that users will accept that the BuddyBot is just like inviting your friend to play.

Future Ideas

Taking BuddyBot from the multiplayer experience and into single player games that have companions while adventuring will also improve user experience. With many people playing the games and crowd-sourcing information to nit pick the features, BuddyBot on games like Skyrim or Fallout will not have to worry about the companion making the game more struggling, but feel like adventuring with a Buddy.

An example of the problem with companion bots was found in the game Fallout 4 by Bethesda, demonstrating that a computer controlling a dog could be useful but ends up doing the wrong thing. Here is the link to the video of the example. (The dog does not die)

Evaluation:

What did you ask your audience?

A very important topic of crowd-sourcing is how a campaign applies the feedback and contribution from the crowd. After playing a match of PUBG Mobile with BuddyBot, we prompt the user for a short survey. After a couple of iterations of BuddyBot, we reached out to our contributors to get further feedback. We asked our audience a couple important topics. One of those is if they feel their feedback is adequately being applied to how BuddyBot. Other topics included, our after-match survey(too long, or could have more questions), efficiency of survey, and specifically what was good and bad about our campaign.

What were some of the results?
Keep this geared for future improvements and evolution of the prototype.

Implications for Design:

What kinds of problems are well-suited to crowd-sourcing?

The Problems that are well suited for crowd-sourcing are problems that can be divided up into small work that does not need intense learning or past knowledge to contribute to the solution. This can be avoided in some cases by masking the problem with a game and trick the user into doing really hard work but can be strategy based. More difficult tasks that just need more computing power, like solving algorithms or tests on the cure to cancer don’t need crowd-sourcing but might need more computers on the cloud contributing to solve the dense problems. The best well-suited problems is the busy work that may go into a bigger problem, sorting through images or organizing pages.

Give advice to colleagues who are interested in crowd-sourcing.

The biggest hurdle when looking into crowd-sourcing is getting your problem divided up in the way that people joining in can give the correct answers. Once this hurdle is jumped over, the solution is just a bunch of people helping away. Our advice in finding the fractions of your problems to be solved is to find what basic components make up the problem and have those be the start.

Include one example of a task that you surmise would not be a great crowd-sourcing task.

A task that would be poor for crowd-sourcing would be public medical diagnosing of illnesses. At this time this task should only be done by medical professionals and not by people on the internet making a bit of money. The risk of misdiagnosing the patients are too high and could result in some very dangerous situations. Leave it to the trained professionals!

Our Prototype

We did a video prototype of how BuddyBot would give users the ability to crowd-source the AI with surveys filled out after each match and gameplay that is data-mined for improving BuddyBot’s AI. The survey questions are designed to be quick but also collect crucial information about BuddyBot’s performance.

This is a mockup of what the survey would look like after a match, this is also demonstrated in the Prototype video.

This is the video demonstration of BuddyBot:

Crowdsourcing Primer

2018-09-25T10:59:00.002-07:00

After reading a bit about crowdsourcing, I expect any task I find will be something that is difficult or imprecise if left to an algorithm or program, but is doable for people. It could be some subjective analysis as well, such as opinions on what looks or sounds good. One thing that may be difficult is to game-ify the task to keep it interesting and attract more participants, because effective incentives are always tricky to master.

For this exercise, I partook in the Galaxy Zoo Project on zooinverse. In this task, I was given a photo of a galaxy and given several very specific questions regarding the shape and features of the galaxy. This was not difficult at all, and I am certain my 7 year old son could recognize and complete this task just as easily. I initially thought it might be more difficult, but it seems this is a task that people are good at but for computers it is difficult to discern the subtleties in images. This task was for research in cataloging galaxies and did not pay me anything for my time. I will admit, the easiness of the task did make it monotonous after awhile, but I actually enjoyed the greater purpose of the task, which is to expand our understanding of the universe. If anybody has even a slight interest in astronomy, this is a great way to contribute and see some raw images of the furthest reaches of our universe.

Design sprint: dark patterns

2018-09-18T16:51:00.002-07:00

Design Sprint: Dark Patterns
Group 7

Link to the web sign-up form:

http://cs.sonoma.edu/~idavidson/cs385HCI/form.html

The Smart Lock is a company that has locks for doors, devices and other entrances linked up with secure Key cards that allow users to be sure that whatever is behind the smart lock is secure and safe. Starting out, apartment managers or people that want to have their doors linked up with new smart locks can have install these new locks and provide the sign up forums needed to issue out the smart key cards. Apartment managers will be able to provide renters that their building is more secure and safe because of our new smart locks, also providing that the renter can ask for more of their devices can be protected by the smart key card by going to our web page for more information. The dark pattern is in the forum given to the person applying to rent, and will be crucial for them filling out the information so that they can use the doors of the apartment.

1. Describe the worst-case scenario damage this dark pattern can do to users.

The scenario starts with a student that has been on vacation all summer and as summer ends they come home to find that they got evicted from their apartment and need to find a new place to live fast with only a week left till school starts back up. The student looks online to see a low cost, secure, safe building is available using the new smart locks. The student applies for the apartment and is given a bunch of online forums they must fill out. In the stressful situation the student starts to fill out each forum with haste. Once the smart lock forum is pulled up, it appears like any other signing forum and agreement to get the apartment. With haste each field in the forum is filled out, not knowing that some of the fields can be left blank and some checkboxes given are there to trick the user. With all the fields filled in Smart Lock now has their SSN, email, address of their past place and new place, and subscribed to our email list to receive advertisements for our smart locks. This is a lot of information that is given and we had many ideas on how this information could be used to keep them part of the Smart Lock system, or mess with their lives. With being signed up for the smart locks this means that in order to get into the places protected by the smart locks they must keep up with the subscription and also keep their smart key card. If the student added more devices to be protected by Smart Lock then after installation of the locks the only way to get out is to remove the locks and cancel each subscription, witch is time consuming for a student that has a full load of classes.

2. What kinds of people/users are being exploited here? In other words, who is disadvantaged?

We are exploiting young students and older people that are in a rush to fill out information, or are not tech savvy to understand what they are signing up for.

3. What kinds people does this dark pattern benefit?

This dark pattern will benefit the apartment owners by giving them security to customers. This will benefit Police by letting them work with us to give police ease of access to doors or devices that are backed by our system. And the last one to benefit from our dark patterns is data collectors that want to know where the user’s devices are going or how often they come home, little personal information that can give companies better ways to target the user.

4. How can your reader protect themselves against the dark pattern you proposed?

Opt out with traditional key systems, plead for legislation to prevent this kind of user exploitation. Another way to protect yourself is to always make sure what you are signing up for. If a forum is asking for information that is very personal ask why they might need that information. If a reason can not be explained then choose not fill out the information and see if it was needed at all. Be observant and read every checkbox with the intent that it may be a dark pattern.

Good Design (CS 355 Design Thinking Applied)

2018-08-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

The example of good design that I saw on campus is the workbench in the SSU Makerspace.

I love the Makerspace. I went in almost every day last semester to design and iterate models to 3D print, solder some boards, or sew my backpack straps back on. The workbench is a thing of beauty, a tinkerer's shrine. Not only do they have a wonderful assortment of tools not normally accessible to college students, but everything has it's own rightful place upon the wall. There is no lurking anxiety that you may be doing something wrong. There is no countless hours searching for that one thingamabob or "like this but smaller".Very rarely are we able to feel that all is right with the world, but at least we can rejoice in the knowledge that while we are working at the bench, our immediate surroundings are perfectly in sync.

BAD Design (CS 355 Design Thinking Applied)

2018-08-22T16:26:00.001-07:00

Here is an example of bad design that gets worse the more you look at it. First off, I applaud the school for attempting to separate the recycling from the garbage destined for the landfill. That said, we are trained to visually associate a blue or green bin with recycling and a black bin with garbage. These bins are all gray with small blue font. People on campus with something to throw away usually glance at the bins several milliseconds before deciding which one to use, and looking into these bins you can see the evidence that most people chose incorrectly. If you look at the lids, you will also see that the long, flat lid on the bin for cans and bottles cannot possibly accommodate a bottle or can of any size and the bin for mixed paper contains the most cans and bottles of the three.

For me, the very worst part of this setup is that I noticed the problem two years ago, I brought it to the attention of the school's environmental council last year, and somebody is out there emptying these bins every single day and continues to put the lids on incorrectly like the worst Captain Planet villain in history.

For my example of good design on campus, click here.

My First Game Jam Creation

2018-07-26T15:33:00.001-07:00

My First Game Jam Creation: Aweo Island

https://chrisleewoo.itch.io/aweo-island

Check it out!

Some Perler Work

2018-07-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

I was asked to show off some of my perler pixel artwork, so here it is!

One Month of Flute: Progress So Far

2018-06-24T20:30:00.001-07:00

After playing and practicing an hour a day for one month, I decided now would be a good time to give some initial thoughts and suggestions for anybody else considering taking up the instrument. First of all, I need to address the importance of posture.After playing for an hour a day for just the first two days, I got a really bad pain in my left shoulder, back, and side of my neck. I did not immediately connect the pain with my flute playing but eventually realized how holding up the flute used muscles I was not engaging regularly.The pain was from the expansion of muscles that pressed on a nerve. I experimented with some sitting posture with my flute and found that there is a huge difference if I use correct posture, more specifically putting my legs towards the right instead of straight in front of me. Although the flute is not really heavy, holding it up for long periods of time may cause some pain. I thought this was important enough to share in case anybody decided to practice 4 hours a day when just starting out. Additionally, it really is best to ease into it and integrate it into your daily routine rather than sacrifice a large chunk of your day at once.

The other major takeaway I have so far is that I found a couple of books that help with organizing your own lesson plan and practice routines. First off is "Flute For Dummies" which is great for learning the very basics and beginning practice. I am now moving on towards the Trevor Wye practice books, which came highly recommended by several youtube flute channels and provides a clear progression of skill building.

I hope my experience is helpful for anyone out there wanting to learn the flute. I would appreciate any questions to help inspire more content from me!

FlutePunk: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boehm

2018-05-29T23:13:00.001-07:00

When I was a teenager, I bought a 5 hole ocarina from Songbird Ocarina. I was a big fan of Ocarina of Time, of course, and I had a budding interest in playing music. I did not have the opportunity to participate in school band, because my tiny school did not have a music program after the band director quit. I wanted to play the flute but was a bit intimidated by the key system in concert flutes, plus there was the issue of who would teach me, how would I afford it, and the classical band scene seemed too pretentious anyway, right? So instead of begging my parents to invest hundreds of dollars they did not have available, I bought the $20 ocarina with a range of one octave (12 notes were more than enough to challenge me).

My original ocarina. It was repaired with sugru after a nasty fall.

I had a lot of fun with that ocarina. I played Zelda songs, obviously, as well as Christmas songs, anime theme songs, and popular melodies to anyone who wanted to hear them. After a few months, I seemed to squeeze all I could out of that instrument, when I discovered the sound of the Native American flute. I bought one from a local maker at a pow-wow. This was so meditative, deep, and mellow. It had a limited range, but I loved how it felt to play and the sound was so soothing.

I was not done. Over the course of over a decade, I bought and taught myself to play more flutes from around the world. I bought a Peruvian quena which required me to learn how to make embouchure with my lips. I bought a Chinese xun and a set of shakuhachis that were of similar complexity. I got a Clarke tin whistle that I used to learn harmonics and more breath control. I even tried my hand at making my own instruments, from pvc overtone flutes to 3D printing some Viking-style panpipes.

Some panflutes I designed and printed. I painted the right side one.

I recently came across the some youtube channels that discuss Concert Flutes, also known as Boehm style. AKA, those complex ones in orchestra and band. After watching some introductory flute playing videos by JustAnotherFlutist, I decided I was ready to give it a chance, because I was already familiar with many of the concepts and techniques. The keys aren't there for pretentious over-complexity. Instead, they allow a great range of notes in four octaves. In other words, you don't need separate flutes for different keys like in my other instruments. I wanted the range and flexibility. I wanted the deep resonant sound of a big metal pipe. I bought another instrument. You'd be surprised at the low price if you know how much these fancy tubes can cost, plus the reviews made me confident I'd have fun with this!

Glory brand flute in all it's...glory.

So far I've only had the flute for about a week, but I make time to play as much as I can and hope to use it to help with the music theory class I'm taking next fall. For me, music is not a competition or a career choice. It's all about self expression as well as a form of dynamic meditation. Also, I want to write some flutorial content here from what I learn (I've got a tab system in development right now to make a fingering chart for myself).

2017-12-27T20:50:00.001-08:00

Here is a sketch for an arduino program I made that allows mouse control with a joystick and rotary encoder (for the scroll wheel).

The arduino mousecontrol operates on how many pixels it moves, so the mouse moves a lot slower on my big screen mac than it does on my dinky laptop.

Synth design project links

2017-06-04T11:32:00.001-07:00

http://sig.sapp.org/doc/examples/soundfile/printbits/printbits.cpp

http://math.ucr.edu/~res/math153/history14f.pdf

http://physics.info/music/

https://hubpages.com/education/Science-and-Music

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pasp/pasp.html

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Check out this game!

2015-05-19T00:41:00.001-07:00

Here's a space based RTS game that uses vector graphics and some interesting choices. It's made by a friend of mine and will launch on kickstarter soon.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/xo

The DSN12 Tutorial Blog

2014-11-15T14:16:00.002-08:00

To anyone seeing this, I started a new blog about how to use a cool little synth app for the 3DS.

Check it out here: http://dsn12tutorial.blogspot.com/p/index.html

Constructed language based on music

2014-07-14T14:43:00.001-07:00

Anyone who is close to me knows about my favorite on-going thought experiment to construct a language based on a simple musical pattern. I originally thought a pentatonic scale would be fitting, due to the easily distinguishable tones and limit of only 5 notes. My idea, when I first toyed around with it, was that this was a language made by a tribe of forest dwelling beings who lacked vocal cords but were of the same intelligence as humans. Therefore, I would prefer my language to have a scale that is more natural than the 12 note chromatic.

I have recently discovered a constructed language called Solresol, and a modern revamping of it named Sarus, that uses a 7 note scale.

Solresol note range

My issue with these languages, though, is that they were not explicitly designed with the intention of being completely musical, one such example is that techniques such as trilling were not incorporated. Additionally, the dictionary for these languages is HUGE and follows grammar rules similar to English and French, which I thought was too similar and a bit unweildy for a small tribe with little outside contact. For my basis, I think that Toki Pona is a much more suitable model. Now all I have to do is come up with the notes!

I also decided it was important to have an instrument central to the group. A wind instrument seemed to make the most sense. I own quite a few simple wind instruments such as the ocarina, shakuhachi, tinwhistle, native american flute, and quena. I wanted something unique, possibly playable one-handed. I found some unusual instruments such as the Picco pipe, the koudi, and the tabor pipe. I even considered sawing a recorder in half to see what that sounds like (I might still do that because it would be a cheap experiment). After digging through many Wikipedia pages, I came across the mysterious sounding willow flute. Hear a demo of what it can sound like:

Beautiful, unusual scale. No finger holes. Closeley tied with nature. Potentially playable one handed. Now this is what I've been looking for.

Morning Links

2011-09-29T19:08:00.003-07:00

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Morning Links

via The Daily What by Cheezburger Network on 9/27/11

Morning Links:

Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich is "liveblogging" his next Pixar film project.

Invisible cat activities made visible. (via.)

Morning Distraction: Running Men. (via.)

Morning Wood: Adriana Rossi.

Morning List: 5 Common Crime Fighting Tactics (Statistics Say Don't Work).

[photo: reddit.]

Tagged: Morning Links, Philosoraptor

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FACEBOOK & YOU

2011-09-29T19:08:00.001-07:00

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FACEBOOK & YOU

via Very Demotivational - The Demotivational Posters Blog by Cheezburger Network on 9/28/11

FACEBOOK & YOU
if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. You're the product being sold.

Submitted by:

thedarkhalf

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Check out what the internet has shown me

2011-09-29T19:07:00.001-07:00

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/wootie58

dulokbrains:HARRISON FORD’S ANGRY FINGER POINT APPRECIATION

2011-09-29T19:06:00.001-07:00

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dulokbrains: HARRISON FORD’S ANGRY FINGER POINT APPRECIATION

via How Are You I'm Fine Thanks on 9/29/11

dulokbrains:

HARRISON FORD'S ANGRY FINGER POINT APPRECIATION

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Now Pay Attention, Sparkles

2011-09-29T19:05:00.003-07:00

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Now Pay Attention, Sparkles

via Comixed - 4 panel comic strip (yonkoma or 4koma) by Cheezburger Network on 9/29/11

Comic by:

PrincessWordplay

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SEEEMS LEGIT

2011-09-29T19:05:00.001-07:00

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SEEEMS LEGIT

via Very Demotivational - The Demotivational Posters Blog by Cheezburger Network on 9/29/11

SEEEMS LEGIT

Submitted by: Unknown

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Wikipedia Unveils Probably the Coolest QR Thingy Ever Made

2011-09-29T19:02:00.001-07:00

Wikipedia Unveils Probably the Coolest QR Thingy Ever Made:

Wikipedia today introduced a program called QRPedia, a QR code creation service that lets users snap a picture of a QR code and be automatically directed to a linked mobile Wikipedia entry in whatever written language their phone uses. If there's no article in their language for the designated topic, the program directs them to the most relevant related article that is available in that language. If you don't have a QR reader on your phone, I use the Google iPhone app, myself.

I dare you to find a cooler example of QR codes in action than QRPedia. Originally built at England's Derby Museum and Gallery (by the museum's Wikipedian in Residence!) the service is now available to anyone online. Multiple museums around the world have already put it to use, posting QR codes on the wall next to items on display. That's what the Internet is for, people, for taking the reality we're standing in front of and exploding it with a world of additional information available on demand.

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This is sci-fi stuff. In the movies there would be a button on real world objects that you could click, and then a projected 3D Princess Leia or whatever would offer you a lecture about everything humanity knows about the object you're in front of, and everything that's related. In whatever language you speak. Instead, it's here now and it's on our phones. And it's Wikipedia.

I sure hope this catches on all over the place. Its adoption may be limited by the bravery required to point people to the collective consciousness, publicly editable discussion online about yourself or your organization.

Do people use QR codes? Outside the US they do and have for years. Inside the US, I believe it's becoming increasingly common. Last week for example, I was in New York City and saw a real estate company with a big poster of its listings in its front window, with QR codes for each home you could buy. Passers by could snap that code and save the particular listing on their phones, to learn more and follow up. Imagine if that same display included a QRpedia code for the neighborhood each home was in. There are lots of possibilities.

QRPedia codes can be generated now at QRPedia.org. Maybe you should go print up a thousand of them about the neighborhood you live in on stickers and stick them around on the street. Imagine visiting from another country and finding those. If I ever get to visit another planet with life on it, I hope I find something like this there.

Discuss

With How Things Have Been Changing Lately…

2011-09-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

With How Things Have Been Changing Lately…:

Comic by:

PrincessWordplay