Cuckoo

So here is a nice little thing I found. A real Cuckoo Clock

That blog is pretty interesting at times too.

Lastly, anyone in the world not using Google Reader MUST START NOW and the same applies for Compendium.

Gmail Video Thinger

So it looks like we were a bit slow off the mark to get into the Gmail movie thing. Here is the final compilation.

P2P in Video

So some nice person put that good lecture that I went to recently on line. This is the lecture that was on Peer to Peer technologies. If you did not get to the talk watching this video is really worth it.



By the way, this guy is really interesting and has more on his site the P2P Foundation

Portfolio Stagnancy

So I am still working on my portfolio website and I have come across some issues and I am not sure where to go from here. I have three options:

1. Work out a way to fix the problem
2. Change what I want to do
3. Change how I do what I want

The issue I am having is that I seem not to be able to do as much juggling of data as I think I need to. I would like to find out I don't need to do it this much or find a way to do things so it is not required at all. I need someone who really knows how to use the Google Mashups Editor because the help provided is not good enough.

Also I am starting to think that some external options seem good. I have been looking at a few other CMS's and a lot of them are quite nice. Of course I would have to turn in that AJAX web feel but it there may be some serious advantages. One in particular is Google search friendliness which my current data model is not great on.

I have also been looking at using Google Base as my back end storage system because it is so ingrained into Google's results. We will see if that works how I expect it may not.

Compendium User Forum Developments

Recently I talked to Dianne from RMIT about having some kind of Compendium User Forum which would involve her and as many other users in the area and have them talk about their methods as well as tool advantages that could be used to enhance the use model of Compendium. She was really excited about this and said she knows a few people, very involved in the field, who would be interested in contribution. We will see about that but so far so good.

If you are interested in taking part please leave a comment.

Dynamic URL for PNG Corners

So a while back I heard about this cool little tool which is a Google URL to a image of a round corner which has some parameters that can be adjusted for ones needs. The adjustments let one change width, height, foreground and background colour and position. The image is in the form of a PNG and if no background colour is defined it comes out with a alpha mask.

The image above was created using this tool and the following code.

RSS is So Good But Slow

Over the weekend I have been working on my portfolio site quite a lot and it has been going very well. I have started working up a visual styling and I have come to understand the layout tools in Google mashups editor (GME) much better. My next task is to deal with some of the information model issues and then I might start putting together the final code. Then of course I have to make my content.

As my content is all RSS from blogs I have been looking at various tools. One that I have been familiar with for some time however never used in a serious way is Yahoo Pipes. It is a great little tool which is a lot like Shake (node based editing) however it differers in one way that I think is quite bad. Shake lets you "fileOut" many things in one render however Yahoo Pipes is limited to only one output feed at a time. For instance I could make many versions of a file in Shake, different sizes, different keys, different anything and then export them all at the same time and have it create a clip of image files where each fileOut node points. In Yahoo Pipes on the other hand I have to either nest a pipe in many other pipes to get similar functionality or remake it in each case. All this said I think there may be one possible solution which is using a dynamic url for the RSS address. I have only recently been introduced to this technique and not yet tested it, which brings me to Dapper.

Dapper is a cool little too that I found while looking at other peoples GME sites. It seems to be a little like Yahoo Pipes crossed with OSX 10.5's implementation of dashboard widgets (as in widgets as clips). Essentially what Dapper lets you do is extract an RSS feed from a normal website and build it around your preferences. It also lets you use dynamic URLs to include things like searches into your Dapper feed. For instance you could, as they show in this example, extract a feed which is dependent on a search on a site. You reference that search by including the search term into the URL of the feed that you are rendering. This is really great I think and I hope to be able to use it soon. For the time being I do not have a use in mind but I think I may need a feature like this for one of the things I wanted to put in my portfolio site. We will see.

Does anyone have any good ideas?

The Stuff that is not the Actual Stuff

So recently I have felt that things are not as good as they should be in some way or other. Actually I have always felt this but recently I have noticed in more in a particular way. Even more recently, as in, last night during a dream and for the past day or two, I have come to begin to realize something about this issue. I am starting to see that a thing, like an activity or an object is more valuable and more interesting to experiance when it is surrounded by something else. I think an example of this would be the event of going to a movie with a friend. One option is to simply go to the movie and the other is to enrich the experiance by adding little things to it. For instance going with a few friends and buying candy or some other value adding experiance option. Now this is quite strange because I am not at all opposed to doing things the simple and easy way, for instance I go to movies by my self about once every two months. Which is about one time out of twelve. However I think that this noise adding value notion can really make or break an experience. In the example of a class discussion or a lecture. The package is so much more valuable than the words that are being said or any other indevidual aspect of the experience.

At the moment I think this sounds a bit like somone who has never had friends meeting someone for the first time, but it is not. I think in reality this could be an interesting observation but I have not had a chance to understand it yet. I think in essence I am starting to believe that the value in any experience is the extra stuff that is not usually discussed, the rigmarole and the noise.

I would really love comments if anyone actually knows what I am struggling to understand.

A Few of My Favorite Things

A few weeks ago I put up a post about Damien Hurst's recent project of a platinum skull with lots of diamonds.

Today, I found a blog post that details his process in constructing this interesting project.

Now I want one more than ever.

Also, some person made a fake one in an using Swarovski crystals.

I really love this stuff. Perhaps I should make one out of silver and pearls; a few of my favorite things.

China, the Real People

Today I found a cool post, from a few weeks ago, about Chinese manufacturers and some aspects of their lives.

Here is the Boing Boing summary but please go into the indevidual pages if you have time.

Compendium and Issue Mapping

Today I became aware that one of my lecturers, Soumitri, and a few of my classmates, all use Compendium quite a lot which makes me really happy. I think it is a great tool but more over it offers a good alternative to thoughtless mind mapping. It it a tool that has been designed around a more structured work flow for more complex problems. Issue mapping is one example

Issue mapping, in short, is the process of engaging and understanding something in a whole sense and to the degree that a solution evolves naturally from the options that have been made visible during the process. The reason this is so important is because when a problem becomes too complicated to look at from any one point of view this tool steps in to help hold the points of view and contending actins in place and allow their interaction via the structure created by the user define their use.

The details, however, are not something I am too familiar with. How a discourse turns into a map to solve complex problems and how that is then broken down into useful chunks for reporting and delegating I am not sure. This is something that I would like to learn and may well do so at a seminar with this aim at some point in my life. In the mean time I will read some stuff to work it all out.

Talking and Not Talking

Today I went to the same talk as yesterday except for it being held at RMIT. It was quite interesting yet again but more so was a talk I had with the guy beforehand. I think it is likely we will stay in contact which is quite nice.

Also, my Design 2.0 community is really not moving fast which is a little sad. I think I might try to change a few things for the second project.