The Strake

If you’ve got several hours with nothing else to do, try...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:38:21 -0400

If you’ve got several hours with nothing else to do, try working you way through the 1200+ entries in the Summer ‘09 Mozilla Labs Design Challenge. The contest is for coming up with a better browser tab design/concept. Sounds cool, but I think I’ll wait for the winner or a finalist list.

Steven Frank’s awesome iPhone unboxing parody.

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:36:39 -0400

Steven Frank’s awesome iPhone unboxing parody.

The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:04:10 -0400

The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics: Nice Wired piece on the Nike+ revolution - there’s even a quote from Panic’s Cabel Sasser. A few years ago, I was pretty serious about cycling and I think it’s safe to say that most cyclists are tech/gear geeks. I’ve been running lately instead and I’m definitely in the minority in terms of loving charts, graphs, tracking average heart rates, mileage, etc. I need that constant feedback showing my improvements. I just bought a Garmin Forerunner today so I can amp up my exercise geekery by an order of magnitude - look out!

Deploying ExpressionEngine from GitHub with Capistrano

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:32:19 -0400

Deploying ExpressionEngine from GitHub with Capistrano: Dan Benjamin writes another top-notch tutorial, this time helping to plug a gaping hole in a serious EE workflow. Speaking of EE, it looks like 2.0 will finally be seeing the light of day on June 30th.

A nice, lightweight (5.8Kb !) jQuery library that...

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:04:54 -0400

A nice, lightweight (5.8Kb !) jQuery library that implements tabs, tooltips, overlays, a carousel effect and more.

Interesting interview with the team at OOOii about how they use...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:11:00 -0400

Interesting interview with the team at OOOii about how they use Flash and After Effects on movies like Star Trek, Minority Report, The Island, etc.

RoamBi - a slick looking data viz app for the iPhone.

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:05:26 -0400

RoamBi - a slick looking data viz app for the iPhone.

Google I/O Videos

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:47:50 -0400

Google I/O Videos: Catch the sessions from last week’s conference.

Slashfilm has a great collection of easter eggs in Pixar’s...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:02:23 -0400

Slashfilm has a great collection of easter eggs in Pixar’s Up. I thought the movie was awesome as well, but that’s no surprise - I’ve never met a Pixar flick I didn’t like.

The site for Infinite Summer is now live. If you haven’t...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:05:00 -0400

The site for Infinite Summer is now live. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s a sort of book club for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The reading starts on June 21st and the idea is to read ~~7 pages per day~~ 75 pages per week and to complete the tome on September 22nd.

I’ve read all of DFW’s non-fiction and I got through about 350 pages of IJ several years back. I think I’m going to give this a try and see if I can get through the entire thing.

Michael Surtees’ talk on Agile Design. More info.

Tue, 26 May 2009 09:24:59 -0400

Michael Surtees’ talk on Agile Design. More info.

Going through one of my bi-annual self-rebranding phases and...

Thu, 07 May 2009 21:13:00 -0400

Going through one of my bi-annual self-rebranding phases and came up with this as a contender. Looking for feedback before fleshing it out further.

Last.fm adds Visual Radio for in-browser playing. Also,...

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:20:00 -0400

Last.fm adds Visual Radio for in-browser playing. Also, multi-tag and multi-artist stations. Via blog.last.fm.

Can a new logo help the pathetic Detroit Lions? Doubtful.

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:17:48 -0400

Can a new logo help the pathetic Detroit Lions? Doubtful.

An interesting real-time visualization of what people are buying...

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:26:49 -0400

An interesting real-time visualization of what people are buying on Zappos.

Cufón Font Replacement - The Good and The Bad

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:39:52 -0400

Cufón Font Replacement - The Good and The Bad: I’ve got Cufón mentally bookmarked to try out next time I need a sIFR-ish type font solution. I haven’t had a chance to try it out, but the crew at Viget has. Check out their initial impressions.

Internet Explorer Collection

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:38:49 -0400

Internet Explorer Collection: A very simple way to install multiple versions of IE (from 1.5 to 8.0) on a single Windows instance.

Alex McDowell at Wexner Center

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:43:58 -0400

Alex McDowell at Wexner Center: Attn: Columbus geeks. Alex McDowell, the amazing production designer for Watchmen, Fight Club (top 5 fav for me), The Crow (also way up there), Minority Report, and many other visually-amazing movies, is giving a free lecture at The Wexner Center April 7th. Anyone game?

Instapaper (analogue edition) - if someone comes up with service...

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:28:22 -0400

Instapaper (analogue edition) - if someone comes up with service or other automated solution to do this, I’ll buy you an adult beverage of your choice. Or 6.

Computer Vision and Massive Modeling

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:07:07 -0400

Two great pieces from the Technology Quarterly in this week’s Economist:

Model Behavior - A look at how fire safety engineers are customizing Massive (the crowd simulation software created for and popularized by The Lord of the Rings trilogy) to analyze how people react in a crisis. Studying evacuation scenarios in this way has led to much more realistic results than previous fluid-based models.

Machines That Can See - Computerized photo and video analysis has improved by leaps and bounds the past couple of years. Systems are being developed that allow employers to make sure employees are smiling enough and burger flippers aren’t slacking off too much. If that’s not creepy enough, things get all Minority Reporty with billboards that can display customized ads depending on the observer’s age/sex/facial hair/etc. Oh, and tobacco vending machines that are better at judging your age than most nightclub bouncers.