-ism

"When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible...."

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:12:34 +1000

“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.”

- Ernest Hemingway (via nornagon)

Photo

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:00:36 +1000

Quite possibly the best thing ever! :O

Tue, 08 May 2012 12:36:44 +1000

Quite possibly the best thing ever! :O

s-k-a: cuddle-whore: The Glaucus Atlanticus Sea Slug OH MY...

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:45:19 +1000

s-k-a:

cuddle-whore:

The Glaucus Atlanticus Sea Slug

OH MY GOD

WOAH!

impbox: fuuu! this is the best game ever! Want this game so...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 01:16:25 +1000

impbox:

fuuu! this is the best game ever!

Want this game so very very much o_o

itskevinlam: too cute not to reblog

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:35:08 +1000

itskevinlam:

too cute not to reblog

To Apple: The privacy implications of the iOS multitasking...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:17:00 +1000

To Apple:

The privacy implications of the iOS multitasking model are becoming problematic. Apps like Sparrow for iPhone provide real benefits and fill a useful space, but they cannot have notifications of new incoming mail under the current system without exposing user’s email content to third parties of questionable trustworthiness. While it’s easy enough to watch an iPhone’s traffic and see that it isn’t sending your private data to third parties, once you need to authorise third party servers to access and read your email accounts, IM accounts, that sort of thing, it is impossible to see what they’re doing with your data.

This is worrying me more and more. To effectively use my favourite Instant Messenger app Verbs, I need to pay them to run special servers which login to my IM accounts and relay messages over APNS. While it’s near certain this improves battery life, this arrangement means I cannot quickly see if verbs is connected and disconnect it, and I cannot be assured of my privacy at all. Not only do I expose my own privacy to these companies, but the privacy of anyone who communicates with me.

Here’s my request:

Expand the VOIP API to allow other kinds of apps to stay open in the background - instant messengers, email clients, this sort of thing. When an app uses the API badge it’s home screen icon with a little animated indicator to make it clear that program is churning and running and moving and alive inside. You could also expand the other multitasking APIs so a program which is uploading a photo or sending an email could show progress updates on it’s dock icon, which could have a progress bar or progress pie chart connected with it’s indicator of aliveness. If the aliveness indicator was a circular object it would look really nice if when the icon is held down and wigglemode engages, the aliveness indicator turned in to a button you could use to close the app in just a press and a tap.

This would bring feature parity with other mobile platforms and would also provide a great place to educate users. When an app first uses the long running APIs you could provide a little educational window similar to the one explaining how to rearrange icons - it could explain that apps which run in the background can use some battery life and internet data, and that they can be closed by activating the aliveness indicator button when the homescreen is in wigglemode.

You’d be killing two birds with one stone. My housemates and friends could stop compulsively removing every single app from the multitasking tray for fear of one running in the background and using battery life, by providing clear information as to which programs are running via badges. You’d improve privacy on the phones, make important apps like email and instant messenger clients much more responsive, and gain feature parity with competing platforms on an important issue.

Thanks for your consideration. I know you’re exploring possibilities like this already - I just hope to give a bit of a push in the right direction. Thanks for your time and attention!

I sent this to apple via their iPhone Feedback form - If you agree you should too!

thedailywhat: Pay Gap Acknowledgment of the Day: Hey girl, it’s...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:38:17 +1000

thedailywhat:

Pay Gap Acknowledgment of the Day: Hey girl, it’s been nearly 50 years since JFK signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and women STILL earn 77 cents for each dollar earned annually by men.

[ncpe]

axiixc: bluebie: Tonight I made a lightbulb - hollowed out and...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:22:07 +1000

axiixc:

bluebie:

Tonight I made a lightbulb - hollowed out and filled with white wax, a multicoloured LED light, and a tiny tilt sensor (too tiny! it was horrible connecting it!) and computer. All together about $12 materials. It’s a white light when vertical, and when on it’s side you can rotate it to change it’s hue. Resting on a table it’s whatever colour light you feel like, changable at a moments notice.

I like it so much. I might try and make a whole bunch more and sell a few on etsy. That sound like a good thing?

I’d be curious as to how fragile it is since its a real lightbulb rolling around on a table, but it looks pretty awesome. Is the controller inside the bulb as well, or external?

It’s fairly strong. The original has developed a fine crack from where I heated it with a blue-hot jet flame, but it has not broken. Lightbulbs are a good shape! Despite being thin glass, they have egg-like strength. The controller is inside the bulb - everything electric is inside the metal screw base. To get it all to fit through the little hole on the base I had to do my most intricate soldering yet! Check out this photo of the tilt sensor - which took me about an hour to get soldered correctly!

I wonder what a neural language might look like. One day it will be possible to dynamically connect...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:10:49 +1000

I wonder what a neural language might look like. One day it will be possible to dynamically connect two brains together - allowing groups of neurones to talk directly to each other - via a wire, optic fibre, or computer link of some sort. The parallel information across a group of neurones would be similar to perceiving a greyscale image. Imagine what we might communicate if we could project live video feeds out of our own heads straight in to the heads of others - what symbology might develop. I can hardly imagine words would have much importance at all. Could we one day move past the need for words? We’ll still need a precise language to store our facts and records. Maybe the romance and story telling will become an intimate touch - a projection from one mind in to another. Still, language is a part of how we construct ideas. If we moved away from words and towards something less discretised, I wonder what new types of thought might evolve from that shift.

Photo

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 11:32:19 +1000

This is the guy who runs Instagram (via @alanzeino)

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 11:28:24 +1000

This is the guy who runs Instagram (via @alanzeino)

From Public Radio International’s Bullseye with Jesse...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:05:42 +1000

From Public Radio International’s Bullseye with Jesse Thorn:

Pendleton Ward is a writer and animator, and the creator of the Cartoon Network series Adventure Time.

I think moving lights are really important. In the daylight the sun’s rays move through the...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:37:38 +1000

I think moving lights are really important. In the daylight the sun’s rays move through the gently swaying trees, bounce off people and vehicles, but in the night, the lights are stationary. There are no fireplaces anymore in the cities. The only lights which move belong to computer screens, which try as they might, still seem pale and somehow lifeless. I hope my experiments can fix this, at least a little. Gently moving lights, alike the gently changing movements of the sun filtered through a tree.

Uninstalling, re: Facebook acquisition (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:51:39 +1000

Uninstalling, re: Facebook acquisition (Taken with instagram)

Metronomy’s “This Could Be Beautiful [it is]”...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:12:34 +1000

Metronomy’s “This Could Be Beautiful [it is]” is my new favourite song. :)

"I pulled from my bag the giant book and placed it on the table with a thud. And as the team began to..."

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:50:33 +1000

“I pulled from my bag the giant book and placed it on the table with a thud. And as the team began to flip through it and understand what it was, you could feel the room swell with a strange relief. Finally there were edges to this intensely immaterial process we had all been through. The book represented, I believe, closure on a process that often has no closure. And pragmatically, it would now serve as a repository of the rich interface experiments we had conducted.”

- The Digital↔Physical: On building Flipboard for iPhone and Finding Edges for Our Digital Narratives by Craig Mod

Tonight I made a lightbulb - hollowed out and filled with white...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:49:39 +1000

Tonight I made a lightbulb - hollowed out and filled with white wax, a multicoloured LED light, and a tiny tilt sensor (too tiny! it was horrible connecting it!) and computer. All together about $12 materials. It’s a white light when vertical, and when on it’s side you can rotate it to change it’s hue. Resting on a table it’s whatever colour light you feel like, changable at a moments notice.

I like it so much. I might try and make a whole bunch more and sell a few on etsy. That sound like a good thing?

I made one of those jars with glowing lights inside last night,...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:29:47 +1000

I made one of those jars with glowing lights inside last night, using the same controller as Nat’s Jellyfish. It looks really neat. ^_^

Photo

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:47:40 +1100