Archive
After updating to the latest nVidia drivers some of my fonts stopped working. When I try to access them from the windows fonts folder I get a “the requested file ___.otf was not a valid font file” error, and the affected fonts are not loading in other apps like flash. Continue reading ‘Fonts not working after nVidia update’
Cut the Fat Challenge is now LIVE. Play the game at http://apps.facebook.com/cutthefat.
Its a casual game, but competitive players can aim for the win and claim a free 1 year membership at Fitness First, an international fitness and training center.
LOL learnt a new acronym today:
TIMTOWTDI is There is more than one way to do it
Also a motto of Perl =p
Online 3d has always been mired by long loading times or unresponsive interface. The thing that caught me was how the author of this site, Masayuki Kido, has taken that apparent limitation and used it to his advantage by combining low poly models with a beautiful cut out style. The illustrations, character designs and witty dialog are are wonderful too, leaving me wanting for more after exploring all the sections. Of course, expect nothing less from the winner of the FWA Site of the year 2008.
Check it out at http://ecodazoo.com/
The site is in japanese but that shouldn’t harm your experience a bit. Click through the 10 questions and have your robot generated, then watch it move around and fight with other robots. The algorithm that moves them and animate the legs is intriguing, and the interface looks clean and polished, typical japanese design.
http://www.verbatim.jp/senshuken/
Created by IMG SRC/Non-Grid, Kaibutsu, and Masayuki Kido
There is a story about a student of information theory on his first day at college. He had entered a strange, bizarre world. The only sounds were the occasional calling out of a number by one of the professors, followed by laughter. One professor would say ‘52′, there would be a short pause then peals of laughter. Someone else says ‘713′, same thing, everyone falls down laughing.
“What’s going on here?” he asked his tutor.
“We’re telling jokes,” said his tutor.
“Telling jokes?”
“Yes, you see, we’ve all worked here so long we know each other’s jokes. There are a thousand of them. So, being information theorists we applied data compression. We just assigned them all numbers, 0 through 999. It saves a lot of time and effort. Would you like to try? Just say any number 0 to 999…”
He wasn’t fully convinced. But he tried. Very quietly he whispered “477″.
Hardly a murmur.
He looked at his tutor. “What’s wrong?” he said. “Try again,” says the tutor.
So he does. “318″ – same again, not a thing, hardly a murmur.
“Something’s wrong,” he says.
“Well,” says the tutor, “it’s like this – it’s not so much the joke as the way you tell it!”
There is a curious sequel to this story. This student eventually succeeded by accident in the most dramatic and unexpected way. He called out a number outside the range 0 to 999. “Minus 105,” he said.
At first there was stunned amazement, then first one professor laughed, then another then another, till they were all rolling about holding their sides.
None of them had heard that one before.
Taken from: The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech
given at the Zurich Seminar, April 1984, by John Gordon
Reading the iPhone Human Interface guidelines for inspiration on interface architecture design.
Alain de Botton gives us a refreshing perspective on success and failure on his witty presentation at TED
Watch the recording + comments at TED