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October 15, 2005
Rain
It's been raining here for eight or nine straight days. Just dismal. Umbrella guys on every corner selling crappy umbrellas that break as soon as you walk away. Umbrella carcasses everywhere. Thomas in spacial today did a Rodchenko project by stripping away the cloth from an umbrella and showing the underlying structure. Broken umbrellas lying all over the city are one of my favorite things, a bittersweet expression of what it's like to be on this planet.
Conversely, an umbrella opening without the cloth is very menacing, a metallic spider with syringes for legs. Today I got off at Union St and tried to get the cloth off a discard umbrella. It's harder than it looks. I just stood on the cloth and pulled the metal handle but that's not the best method. If I am serious I should just take them home and do it with scissors.
Retractable spiky things are probably not the best things to keep around the house.
Dork Conference
Today I went to a new technology conference, something I hadn't done since I was in high school when free XXL tshirts and slinkys with seagate logos were things I coveted. I didn't get much loot, I just don't care enough to go through the rigamarole of sitting through sales presentations and getting my ticket punched for a change to spin a big wheel and win a zen nano (or more likely an XXL t-shirt). Some of the new tech stuff I saw had a brand new context now that I am ITP. First here is a robotic monkey head:
I guess this is what you would call a proof of concept. If we can make robotic monkey heads, pretty soon we will be able to make robotic helper monkeys. As for the ITP context, there all these motion sensing games out now and generally a push towards more robust interfaces, newer input methods. With my brain in ITP mode, I could think about them in terms of how they work and think critically about what they mean. Is this something new or is it a fancy variation on something we already have? Is this breaking new ground?
The Borg
Lili Cheng spoke in Red's class on Tuesday. She does usability @ Microsoft and previously was head of the Social Computing Research Group. She didn't really blow me away but that may be my inherent Microsoft bias. I'm not that wedded to my powerbook just yet but Microsoft still makes me angry. She showed us Vista screenshots and they were just shitty. Or maybe I just won't give Microsoft a chance? Either way, Lili has a pretty impressive job. She gets to decide what Vista looks like and that's hundreds of millions (billions?) of eyeballs. She also mention Wallop, which I never heard of but she said was big in China. Might be worth checking out.
Projects
The Floor 4 lobby "help you help me" project hasn't moved much since last week but the floor 4 collaborative website has made a lot of progress thanks to the exceptional work of Dan Phiffer. I'm excited to work with him, he knows his stuff. I set up a
Finally, the physical computing breath project is moving along. We got some great feedback in Tom's class on wednesday and are planning on using piezo microphones to record breath. We feel like they will be the least intrusive. We're also leaning towards maybe making a breathable chair, furniture thay breathes with you and helps you breath.
Min sent out a link to Temple Grandin who I had heard on the radio before. She's autistic and designs humane killing machines for farm animals. She has also developed a 'squeeze machine' for herself to relieve her anxiety. Very bizarre and beautiful. I feel like it could be incorporated somehow in our project.
Posted by mb2811 at October 15, 2005 06:44 AM