Beautiful interactive ShockWave flight
Version 0.4 of the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client is out – an update to the Luna Blue theme is coming soon
Christmas tip: use egg nog in your coffee instead of cream
Photos of Peter Rukavina’s house from 1904 and 2003
Acts of Volition Radio: Session One
I’ve had the idea of doing a weekly radio show on the web floating around in my head since the Acts of Volition website started over three years ago. I like the idea of assembling a bit of music, talking about who it is and why I like it, and making it available for download. An hour show could be posted for download and those interested could listen at their convenience (much like we enjoy the Strong Bad emails at HomeStarRunner.com or a new edition of The Onion each week).
I finally got around to trying it out tonight. I’m unclear on the licensing issues, but if I have to, I will pay the appropriate licensing fees if and when I can figure out what they are.
So, here you have the first ever edition of Acts of Volition Radio:
Six fine songs and me talking about them. Recorded Friday, November 28, 2003 by Steven Garrity. Run time: 34min 30sec.
Session One Playlist:
- The Postal Service – Nothing Better
- The Weakerthans – (manifest)
- Brad Sucks – Making Me Nervous
- Pedro the Lion – Magazine
- Apollo Sunshine – I Was On The Moon
- The Darkness – I Believe in a Thing Called Love
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Notes from New England
Having recently returned from a quick road trip to New Hampshire and Boston with a few co-workers, I have a few observations:
- Trip highlight #1: Early into the trip, Isaac looks up from his Globe & Mail crossword puzzle and asks, thoughtfully, “How do you spell thar, as in ‘Thar she blows’?”
- Trip highlight #2: After walking for quite a while in Boston, we asked a couple on the street for directions. “Can you tell me how to get to the New England Aquarium?” The couple looked a little confused and replied in a thick Eastern European accent, “The Aquarium is in Boston.” Apparently we were now in Cambridge.
- Daniel worked on his weblog down the entire I-95.
- If you have a criminal record, as did the unfortunate soul in front of us in line at U.S. Customs & Immigration, you will be questioned about it in detail in front of others in the waiting room. Even if it’s a marijuana possession charge from 1981.
- There are enormous and unflatteringly close-cropped portraits of George Bush in the U.S. Customs offices.
- There are a lot of Howard Dean for President signs in New Hampshire.
- The otherwise fine Lakeview Inn has a misleading moniker.
- Boston folk are friendly: A girl who looked a lot like Kelly Osbourne had no qualms about reading over my shoulder in a coffee shop and critiquing the salutation I chose to open an email I was writing to my girlfriend.
- The Boston skyline at night is something to behold (here’s a photo of Isaac beholdin’ it).
- It is indeed possible to take in both an IMAX 3D show and an OmniMax show in the same day (use of the subway may be required).
- The Old Country Buffet is to be avoided.
DeltaTangoBravo.com? Roger that.
Though I’m usually glad to take most of the credit, much of my professional and personal design work is often the better for having been subject to collaboration and criticism from my co-workers.
After much teasing/coaxing/punching, my professional better half at silverorange, Daniel Burka, has finally joined the world of weblogs. His site, DeltaTangoBravo.com just went up this morning and already busting with coolness. Fans of the silverorange design aesthetic (if there is such a thing) will recognize Daniel’s signature style.
So far, he has pointed to an amazing set of Tufte-esque illustrations (beautiful) and regaled us with the sad tale of putting his new digital camera through the washer (and dryer).
Welcome to Daniel, and to those who enjoy all things smart and good, get over there and syndicate that thing.
Armchair Engineering: Apple should go High-Res
I have some unsolicited advice from an armchair engineer to Apple.
Microsoft is planning for the eventual advent of much higher-resolution LCD panels that we currently have. Their next major operating system release will be entirely vector-based, not tied to the pixel or any specific resolution. However, Microsoft’s next release isn’t scheduled until 2006.
Apple already has a vector-based resolution independent user interface that has been maturing for several years. Apple also has control over the hardware (something Microsoft is starting to get right with their Athens PC specs).
Clearly, price is the hurdle in delivery higher resolutions LCD panels – but Apple sells a high-end product to a market that is willing to pay a premium. I think I might be persuaded to buy an Apple if it came with a 17” or 18” display with a 3200 by 1800 pixel resolution (or higher). At that point, text starts to become as readable on screen as it is on the printed page.
One issue that they would have to deal with if they did jump to a resolution like that is those elements that are inevitably pixel-based. While the primary user interface controls are scalable, some applications would surely have some pixel-based elements implemented.
The most important pixel-based element would be the web. While good CSS and web fonts would thrive in a high-res environment, our trusty GIFs, PNGs, JPEGs, and any pixel-specified fonts or CSS elements would be minuscule. On a 200dpi screen 12-pixel Times New Roman would be less than 1/16th-inch tall.
Perhaps a high-resolution aware web browser could scale the page elements up to a reasonable size. Of course, quality would suffer but if your resolution takes a large enough jump, you could double the size of web graphics and things would look at least as good as they do on our 2003 screens.
I could hack together my own setup right now. IBM is selling a 22” LCD with a native resolution of 3840×2400 ($7,500USD as of this writing). A graphics card (or several graphics cards) to power that kind of resolution would also cost a premium. Even then, I’d be stuck running operating systems that might let me scale the font size up, but a typical website (800 pixels wide) would only be about 4½” wide. I’d also have to get a much better digital camera.
Apple is in a position to pull together the hardware (LCD and graphics card) and software (OS X with Quartz + website magnification in their own Safari browser). If they could pull it off for an anywhere reasonable price (maybe $6,000 for a computer and screen), they would take a giant leap ahead of any other platform.
Those Sheep Sound like Sheep on TV!
Editorial Note: However cliché it may be, I have to point out that this post was first written on two sides of a (thankfully unused) barf-bag on a plane.
On a recent flight from one boring city to another, I had a minor revelation. As we took off and gained altitude, I had a clear view of the airport runway layout below. Rather than fascination and intrigue, I though instead of a familiar landscape I had seen out the cockpit of a Cesna years before. That scene, though, had been rendered by the 20MHz 486sx in my parent’s old Packard Bell (more specs). I had a short stint where I played (if you could call it ‘playing’) Microsoft Flight Simulator (something I’ve been thinking of getting into again).
What struck me about this association was that a real-world situation reminded me of something I had first [Editorial Update: flip over barf-bag] encountered digitally (I refuse to use the word “virutally”). The similarity didn’t lead me to think of how well Microsoft’s digital representation reflected the actual scene. Rather, I was struck by how much the real thing looked like the digital version. The difference is subtle, but significant. I had encountered the digital version first — the digital version was my original.
This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. A few years ago, I accompanied a friend to a December church service at a small country church. In a brilliant display of showmanship, they brought in real live sheep for part of the dramatization of the Christmas story. The sheep let out the quintessential sheep ‘bleat’. I turned to my neighbour and exclaimed with genuine surprise and wonder that “Those sheep sound like sheep on TV!”.
I suspect this will only happen more and more frequently. What have you encountered in the real world that felt secondary to the digital?
Dan James documents a quarter-life crisis in the mountains
My friend and co-worker Dan James is writing a day-by-day account of his 21-day adventure in the mountains of British Columbia. He’s on day 3 of 21 so far and it is a compelling (and often hilarious) read.
A nerdly side-note: a little known feature of our weblog platform provides RSS feeds for each weblog category. As Dan has setup a category for his Outward Bound hiking posts, you can keep up on his adventures with his Outward Bound RSS feed.