Ceaseless Student

I saw a sweet, sweet, specialty browser today. The kind of thing that makes you want to actually need it just so you could use it. It’s a browser named strata by a company called Kirix. I’ve never heard of either of those two names before, but it seems awesome.

Strata is a database browser. If you mess with large tables of numbers that you have to parse through (often by retyping them all). Strata can use tables on the web as the basis for a table that can be fully manipulated. I’m much impressed. I can’t really write it nearly as well as their video shows it. And it can also make tables out of rss feeds. That was the neatest part of the screencast.

Hot. If someone ends up using this, give me a heads up so I can hear if its actually worthwhile. Thanks!

Just in case there are any normal/reasonable/sane people reading, I’ll give a little bit of background.

There are now many games online that involve spending huge amounts of time acquiring experience (which makes your character better) or items (which also make your character better, but are fungible in game). Lately, an interesting practice of selling accounts has begun to take place. It really makes a lot of sense when you think about it - people are buying something of value that they can’t get any other way that doesn’t take an absurd amount of time. But here’s where it gets gross.

A couple of weeks ago a curious incident took place. A leading player of Gunbound was kidnapped and had his life threatened in an attempt to obtain his account’s password. Incredible. Evidently, one of the four kidnappers’ girlfriends met up with this gamer online (on Google’s social networking website Orkut). They set up a date at a mall, but when the dude showed up, he got a guy with a gun instead of a hot girl.

That sucks right? It gets better/worse. He refused to give them his account’s password despite the fact that they held a gun to his head for five hours. Yes. Five hours. Insane. They eventually just gave up and were caught later. This dude is such a dumb ass. But I guess he won or something…

Unbelievable you say? I agree. So I checked the source and it seems to be all good. That’s so gross.

True.

Or at least substantially true. Boxes and arrows, a design blog, recently posted about design games. My favorite game is easily “Design the Box.” The idea is that the team, well, designs the box.

In this game, individuals or teams create a box, as if the project is going to be sold at retail. Small groups work together to answer key packaging questions: What’s the tone? The name, the tagline, the short hook on the front to entice a consumer to pick it up? What are the features and functions, the details that connect this product to some real need? Those go on the back of the box. What about system requirements?
…
Even though it’s a playful output, it’s highly practical; one client kept a box on his shelf for six months, and would toss it over anytime someone asked what his team was doing with the new intranet. People understood the core of the product immediately, and enjoyed the break from reading yet another document describing an initiative.

Our UOCD (User Oriented Collaborative Design) teachers would be happy to see this sort of thing out there. This sort of thing allows you to get a better grasp on your project than mere specifications ever would. Now they need to start talking to the end users in parallel to playing these creative, big picture games - design will owe a lot to any movement of this kind.

I was a bit saddened by one of the comments:

…Of course, as Jess said in the article, just don’t call it a “game”! That’s the kiss of death for any game technique.

It’s quite sad that people doing design today can’t handle the concept of furthering knowledge through gameplay instead of work. Arbitrary labels have so much meaning.

Interestingly, the dude who’s trying to get s’more publicity seems to have it right - or at least more UOCDish.

I’d also like to stress that there is a fairly substantial difference between the “Design the Box” exercise you describe (and it’s variants) and the Innovation Game® Product Box. In Product Box, the focus is external, on your customer. What do they want? How do they design the box? What images do they use?. In “Design the Box”, the focus is internal, on the internal product team. What does the internal team want? How does the internal team design the box? What images do the internal team choose?

I don’t really see “Design the Box” as confining you to ignoring the end user, but I’m still happy to see it explicitly mentioned.

These babies are sweet. They can hold your spot on a specific line instead of just a page. These aren’t bookmark replacements; they’re more like quote markers. It lets you mark notable parts in books in an externally visible way. Evidently librarians love them because they play nice with the books; no damage = happy librarians.

Evidently the librarian-pleasing people who run the company know how to please their customers and expand their fan-base. I ordered a tin of 50 - they sent me my tin with 50 then (this is from memory so it could be a bit off) an envelope with 3 more, a card with three more, a pamphlet with three more and maybe one more thing with some bookdarts stuck on it. Clearly the goal was to get people to be like: “hey check this out!” And then you could give them an envelope with a booklet inside that explains bookdarts and sings their praises. And, of course, you’d include a few of the extra bookdarts they sent you. Good plan. Nice thing to do. I have bonus bookdarts. I’m not going to be handing anyone an envelope, but if you want to check them out, find me and I’ll give you some.

I hope I’ll be reading enough good books to make a dent in that tin’s worth of book darts. I wish I’d had these when I started reading “The History of Western Philosophy.” That book would be littered with these things. While I’m at it, if you are at all interested in philosophy, I highly suggest this book. It’s by Bertrand Russel and it gives you textbook content in a less dry form. Not that it’s riveting or anything, but considering the amount of info that’s in there, his book is shockingly readable.

Bookdarts make me feel like such a bibliophile…

So. This story starts with me watching anime.

There was this one episode of Yakitate Japan where Azuma shows you how to make bread (namely Japan #2). The neat part of the bread is that it’s baked in a rice cooker. In the show they describe the bread as “fluffy, fluffy, fluffy” and “so easy that even the producers can make it.” Judging by this: I suck…

So I started by making the dough. Here’s the recipe translated to American units (roughly).

———————- ———————-

• 3 Cups Bread Flour
• 4 tsp Butter
• 5 tsp Sugar
• 7 tsp Milk
• 3/4 Cup Water
• 2 tsp Dry Yeast
• 1 tsp Salt

1. Add to rice cooker: flour, sugar, salt, yeast dissolved in water, water, milk. Knead
2. Add butter. Knead
3. After you’ve kneaded it enough that it sops being sticky, let it sit somewhere warm for 1 hr (first fermentation).
4. Drop the dough from about 2 feet to get rid of the gas. Thn, let it sit somewhere warm for 1 hr (second fermentation).
5. Bake it for 1 hr in the rice cooker.
6. Flip it, and bake it for 1 hr.
7. Flip it and bake it for 1 hr.
8. Eat.

———————- ———————-
Ao things were going well for a while.

I made the dough…
I let it sit…
It fermented…And then things went downhill from there. I started baking it and took my evening nap. Then I woke up to see that the rice cooker was all steamed up and the bread was smelling breadish. “Good,” I thought. I was wrong, but that is a story for another post. Or probably more than just one more - this is a long story.

In case anyone from LH ended up here, this is the vertical tab how-to I was talking about.

If you didn’t get here from lifehacker, check out my Firefox!!

As a really big Lifehacker fanboy, I don’t really recall the last time I’ve been so excited while on the internet!

Woohoo!

Woohoo!

My site is in the top 1 million Technorati ranked sites! OK. So it’s not that impressive. On the other hand, it means that I’ve passed up like 4 megan00bs. I use mega here in the SI sense. That is all.

I just retired a Moleskine and got a new one that I have to set up - I figured I’d take you guys along for the ride.

Numbering:
This is the first thing I do is number the pages in my notebook. This allows you to reference previous entries (eg Jane seems to be saying similar things to what John said when I talked to him [p.34]). You should do this as soon as you get it; it takes like 5 minutes. I know it’s tedious, but just do it. NB - you only need to number the odd pages or the even pages. I do the odd ones and then just flip through pages on the right side to find what I’m looking for.


TOC:
Leave some pages open for a table of contents and metadata information. The table of contents can be used in a variety of ways. One can put every entry into it, just the entries that are particularly meritorious or even no entries until the notebook is retired. How much space you should leave at the beginning depends on what you want it to do; if you’re not sure, leave 10ish pages and there should be no problem at all. I like putting in only things that I might look up again and doing it as I go. My TOC has the page, tag, title and date of entries.

Metadata:
This is a great tip I found somewhere I can’t remember right now. The idea is to tag every entry with both a date and a topic in an easily visible place (B is for blog). I like to have a key for my tags at the beginning. I also use tags in my TOC. See TOC pic.

Tabs:
These are awesome for me. My notebook has three threads going most of the time. One is just whatever I’ve been writing and the other two are time and expense tracking. In order to do all these simultaneously, I use three markers. The stringy bookmark thing is used for whatever I’ve been up to in there recently and the other two get tabs. These are little Post-it plastic sticky things that are awesome. As I use up pages, I move the tabs so that they’re always where they should be for me to open my notebook to the right page.


The tabs are also useful for bunches of other things from being bookmarks in other things to leaving small notes to holding sheets of paper up on a wall. That’s why I always have some extra handy

So. That’s my set-up. If you want a pen that can go along for the ride, I suggest a Fisher bullet. These are space pens that are used as normal size pens, but store small enough to fit on the top side of a Moleskine (you can hold it there with the elastic). Since I always carry a normal pen with me at all times, I don’t carry my Fisher anymore. I’m a fan of the thin (.05) G2 gel pens - sooo smooth.

If you have any cool tips, leave a comment. Experiment and enjoy!

So I read about this neat site called Semapedia. The general idea is that Semapedia wants to make it possible to create physical links to wikimedia foundation pages (eg wikipedia).

The gig is that you can put in a wikimedia foundation page’s address on their site and they will give you a pdf to print out. This pdf has labels that can be read using a program for cell phones that they link you to. End result? You scan a hyperlink irl (’in real life’ for those who live more of their lives irl) and it points your browser at the appropriate page.

Honestly, their learn more page is pretty and easy to understand so you should hit that up if your interested. Anyhow, Check out this sample label:

Pretty cool huh?

So here’s where I ask you for a favor. If you have a data or web plan, could you check if your phone has an install available for it? Just go to http://reader.kaywa.com on your phone and they’ll let you know if it’s supported or not. Thanks a bunch!

If you do get something going, leave a comment. And if I’m anywhere near you, give me a call - this makes me all excited… can you imagine if these were ubiquitous? I wonder how that camera’s rated? *ping* I wonder what the political atmosphere was like at the time that this sculpture was made? *ping* Shiny, shiny, shiny!

So I was looking at this article and it occurred to me that my first name has no online presence. Honestly. I don’t show up in the top 500 results if you Google “boris”. This is unacceptable.

I’m doing all of the things this suggests (LinkedIn, Ziki and Naymz), but I’m wondering if I should edit all of my profiles so that my first name is included in their description or something… that would be a lot of work. The list of places I’d have to change has just exceeded the boundaries of my brain.

I think I’ll just deal. But we’ll at least be able to see what happens with these sites going at it no?

Sweet.