The Confusatory

Caveat Emptor

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:03:53 -0800

I’ve got some posts queued up for publishing over the next several days. Most are fragments and short thoughts that I’ve had lying around in some draft queue somewhere for far too long. Most of them are wrong in some fashion that I haven’t bothered to think about yet.

May the reader beware: contents may contain untruths.

"I needed teachers to force me to get out of my comfort zone, and partners to get me unstuck."

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:49:53 -0800

“I needed teachers to force me to get out of my comfort zone, and partners to get me unstuck.”

- my evolution as a programmer

The lost art of reading

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:12:00 -0800

The lost art of reading:

…what happened? It isn’t a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else’s world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine.

Eventually I get there, but some nights it takes 20 pages to settle down. What I’m struggling with is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention, when in fact it’s mostly just a series of disconnected riffs and fragments that add up to the anxiety of the age.

When settling in to read something deep (long-form articles from The New Yorker, Infinite Jest (which I’ve been working on for the past few months) ), I have to fight the urge to check something, anything: tweets, new posts, whatever I can get my hands on. I’m only able to really put my head down and concentrate if I’ve got everything else off. I have to put some ambient music on loop, close the laptop, lock the phone, and force myself to disconnect.

This quote is largely off-topic, but it’s too lovely to not call out:

Back then, if I’d had the language for it, I might have argued that the world within the pages was more compelling than the world without; I was reading both to escape and to be engaged.

This perfectly captures how I feel after an especially satisfying novel/novella/short story. “How wondrous would it be to exist in this world instead of mine?”

Complexity

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:52:23 -0800

Each and every pushable button, darkened pixel, and emanated chirp represent one more thing that has to be processed, understood, and either heeded or disregarded by a user. Measure design decisions carefully against total available cognitive load, lest you overwhelm and alienate those who attempt to interact with your work.

Simple inputs, with high fidelity (maintain accurate, fast, one-to-one translations of even minute...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:49:00 -0800

Simple inputs, with high fidelity (maintain accurate, fast, one-to-one translations of even minute movements into input) and low numbers of modes (ideally one), remove a large interaction frustration point for users. The questions they’re continually asking themselves is, “How do I express my current desire to the device?”

Let’s define success a bit differently for computing hardware: “how tightly does your solution fit the problem?” The original iPod’s input devices (and later click wheel) are very nearly perfect: they provide linear and accelerated scrolling, selection, and playback controls (play/pause, back/rewind, forward/fast-forward) with one wheel, a center button, and four pushable locations on the wheel.

There were no other inputs to provide to the device, and there was nothing on the device that demanded complex or convoluted actions to bend these simple inputs into useful conveyance of ideas.

More generally: how well-defined is your problem, and how tightly does your solution fill that potential space? Does it run over or under?

“What kind of jeans are those?” “Oh, they’re just jeans.” Just...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:25:14 -0800

“What kind of jeans are those?”

“Oh, they’re just jeans.”

Just Jeans.

Righteous.

Briefly: Network Topologies

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:33:34 -0800

Briefly: Network Topologies

Cat Power.

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:15:22 -0800

Cat Power.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop on Vimeo

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:20:14 -0800

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop on Vimeo:

Let’s accept this video as “the future”, for a moment.

People will be even stupider. As computers “teach” us even the most mundane and simplest of daily tasks, our ability to solve problems on any scale will grow weak and under-exercised, and the large majority of society will resemble something more like semi-robotic fleshpuppets, not free-thinking, fully-functional human beings.

But then again, I haven’t had my coffee yet.

"An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone..."

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:55:52 -0800

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”

- J.D Salinger (via theimpossiblecool)

"The big secret to the iPhone is that it was an easy to use phone in the shape of The Thing From The..."

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:34:45 -0800

“The big secret to the iPhone is that it was an easy to use phone in the shape of The Thing From The Future.”

- waffle → Displays Meant

InfoQ: A Crash Course in Modern Hardware

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:53:00 -0800

InfoQ: A Crash Course in Modern Hardware:

A video on what makes modern processors so hard to study and predict performance.

Favorite quotes:

Your program…is going to be blips between cache misses.

The real new goal of all these hardware tricks is to run until you can get to the next cache miss.

Modern system architectures, and the timing differences between subsystems (Registers, L[1-3] caches, main memory, SSDs, HDs, and network) is just mindblowing.

"And you offer me dead trees and papercut nostalgia."

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:57:00 -0800

“And you offer me dead trees and papercut nostalgia.”

- waffle → Columnist

John Carey’s Most Excellent Photoblog – Shawn Blanc

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:36:53 -0800

John Carey’s Most Excellent Photoblog – Shawn Blanc:

In addition to subscribing to fiftyfootshadows.net, I also recommend that you: (a) download all of John’s desktop wallpapers; (b) set them to rotate every hour; and (c) enjoy.

Seconded. These are gorgeous.

"Any sufficiently advanced damage control is indistinguishable from ethics."

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:16:31 -0800

“Any sufficiently advanced damage control is indistinguishable from ethics.”

- Hacker News

"I suppose that’s a major theme of this decade that has just been: the failure of companies to give..."

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:07:48 -0800

“I suppose that’s a major theme of this decade that has just been: the failure of companies to give the consumers what they want, which in turn has resulted in a culture where illegality, piracy and hacking is the norm.”

- ck/ck - The Sound Of My Head Banging Against The Wall

plots polynomial roots via trivium mathematics: incredible,...

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:58:56 -0800

plots polynomial roots via trivium

mathematics: incredible, complex beauty lies buried inside simple logic.

Justin Blanton | First-person video of a streetcar ride through Market Street in San Francisco, circa 1905

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:08:04 -0800

Justin Blanton | First-person video of a streetcar ride through Market Street in San Francisco, circa 1905:

Best accompanied by 1958 San Francisco

ISO50 - The Blog of Scott Hansen » Rebranding Playboy

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:29:45 -0800

ISO50 - The Blog of Scott Hansen » Rebranding Playboy:

An imaginative rebranding and revamping of Playboy, both its logo and its magazine content.

Burger Tastings

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0800

Burger Tastings:

sh:

“Do you rank a burger based on, ‘My friend came in from out of town, where should I take him?’ Versus, ‘If I had all 45 burgers in front of me sitting on a table, which one would I eat?’ That’s the healthy debate.”

— Turkey Burgers Don’t Count

I want to do this.