Forever Geek |
- Traffic Light Concept: Universal Countdown and Common Sense
- How to add snow to your Wordpress blogs
- Mares ICON HD Dive Computer: Now in color, still no games
- 2010 FIFA World Cup to be filmed in 3D by Sony
- MovieClips.com snippets of film site launches beta, or should have
- Marvel Land Dubai: Bringing comic heroes to real life
- Four celebs auction off custom designed Toshiba laptops for charity
- Brits spend three days a month online. Is that all?
- Google got bored of real R&D and added fade-in effect to search
- Harman Kardon GLA-55 speakers cut from ice (OK, glass)
| Traffic Light Concept: Universal Countdown and Common Sense Posted: 04 Dec 2009 04:51 AM PST
Designer Damjan Stanković hit the nail on the head with this one on two levels. Not only is the disappearing “red petal” design aesthetically appealing, the actual concept is pretty universal. Stanković’s design goal is to promote eco-awareness. By knowing how long you need to wait, you can opt to stop your car and start it again after several seconds, thus saving fuel and as a net effect, the carbon footprint if everyone does the same. Nice. But I have a different interpretation. Take this stop light and transplant it to any part of the world and I assure you, everyone will understand how the countdown works. Although the worldwide Anglo-Saxon influence in numbers and letters is strong, not everyone will be able to comprehend a 0:30 second countdown in English numerals.
Another example of how it is innate in human beings to comprehend symbols, shapes, patterns. I remember watching a TED talk (sorry if I can’t find the link, it was so long ago) on the “universality of music” as a language that everyone can understand whether we come from the east or west. Music is governed by certain principles (like the stop light) that is innate to human common sense. The question is, why isn’t it so obvious in today’s society?
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| How to add snow to your Wordpress blogs Posted: 03 Dec 2009 07:54 PM PST Spread the holiday cheer with this easy to install plugin (just click install and activate it if you’re running a self-hosted Wordpress). The Let It Snow Wordpress plugin developed by Aen Tan is a boon for guys running blogs from WordPress.com.
It’s definitely a cheap thrill to start new conversations with your readers. The screen shot above is from my personal blog and it’s been perpetually snowing. It would have been nice to have the option of having the snow not disappear as it does litter the bottom of my browser window (we’re running Firefox). On Safari for Mac, the snow seems to render better. The snowfall direction also randomizes with every reload of the browser. Again, cheap thrills. If you’re running a self hosted version of Wordpress, simply search for “Snow” in the plugins section and you’ll find it in the top entry. If you’re on WordPress.com, you’ll find the option available in your dashboard under “Extras.”
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| Mares ICON HD Dive Computer: Now in color, still no games Posted: 03 Dec 2009 04:34 PM PST If you’ve ever tried diving, you should know that one of the more expensive pieces of equipment would be the dive computer. They don’t make these cheap nowadays and buying second hand is usually taken with a buyer beware warning (”Oh we pulled this one out of a diver who was floating down current”).
As of late, the Mares ICON HD is the most advanced dive computer in the market. When we say “advanced” we’re looking at “relative to the industry standard” which really is a bit behind. It’s only in 2009 that they started to introduce color into dive computers. For the uninitiated, a dive computer is that expensive piece of equipment that you wear when going underwater. It’s sorta like one of those Nike+ accelerometers that track your run distance, pace and time but for divers. Standard features include dive logs for average water temperature, length of dive, maximum depth, and air mixture. The ICON HD also comes with a compass. The reason why the ICON HD is in color is because you can store colored photos and maps of dive sites you plan to explore so it’s actually quite useful for dive masters and instructors. You can actually download dive maps from Mares, which will “be improved day by day.” HAHA! I wasn’t kidding about the “still no games.” Ask any diver, and they will tell you that it wouldn’t hurt if dive computers had something to help divers pass the time between safety or decompression stops. In the laws of underwater exploration, divers do need to keep decompression stops at certain depths when they’re exploring beyond 80 feet of depth. Technical diver decompression stops can last for 4 hours — enough to watch two movies!
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| 2010 FIFA World Cup to be filmed in 3D by Sony Posted: 03 Dec 2009 01:00 PM PST
Now, thanks to a deal with FIFA, the governing body of world football, up to 25 games from next year’s World Cup in South Africa will be filmed using professional 3D cameras. Given that HDTV itself is only starting to catch on in a big way (in comparison to regular TV, and bearing in mind that some people think they’re watching high definition when they’re not), I can’t see adoption of 3DTV being particularly quick. That is, people might be prepared to wear those silly 3D glasses in front of a regular HDTV, but when it comes to “proper” 3D TV I think it will be a while before they’re commonplace in the living room. Panasonic told us that this year would be 3D’s year, while an analyst for Screen Digest said major sporting events like the World Cup would help drive new technology. The last one (in 2006) was a major test for high definition TV. So, as you are unlikely to have a 3D TV by next summer, and even if you did you’d be hard pressed to find anyone broadcasting in 3D, here’s how you can grab a piece of three-dimensional football heaven. Live public viewing events in Berlin, London, Mexico City, Paris, Rio De Janeiro, Rome, and Sydney Promo trailers for the Official 3D Film at Sony stores After the event, a Blu-ray disc of the Official 3D Film. Bear in mind that the official specification for 3D on Blu-ray, originally put forward by Panasonic, is still under review. Given how long the HD DVD versus Blu-ray battle took, getting this standard ratified might take until the 2014 World Cup. (Photo credit vramak)
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| MovieClips.com snippets of film site launches beta, or should have Posted: 03 Dec 2009 09:00 AM PST Has anyone heard of the film “409″? No? Me neither, but that’s all I get when I try to visit the new MovieClips.com beta that supposedly launched today. I could understand if the site had generated so much hype that its servers had overloaded. I’d be annoyed, but understanding, if it had told me that I was in the wrong territory to watch films from the six Hollywood studios that have authorised them.
Getting a 409 error isn’t quite what I had in mind. Did I cause the conflict? Well, no matter. Perhaps it’ll be back up later, then I can search thousands of two-minute movie clips, rate and share them, and maybe even embed them on my own site. Will it topple the might of YouTube, which now has its fair share of legitimate film clips? Possibly, if film buffs decide it’s a worthy destination and if the social networking aspects / links are up to scratch. Take a look — MovieClips.com — and see if it works for you.
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| Marvel Land Dubai: Bringing comic heroes to real life Posted: 03 Dec 2009 08:46 AM PST
Ever since Marvel comics went into a huge re-org into toy merchandising and Hollywood earlier this decade, it has really just been hit or miss for them, especially when it came to the movies. Take crap renditions such as Ben Afleck’s Daredevil to Sam Raimi’s lukewarm Spiderman to the other end of the spectrum where they get it totally right with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. You get the picture. But amidst all that, there really has been an ace hidden all this time. Beyond movies. Beyond toys. Marvel decided to bring the fantasy into real life.
With the acquisition of Marvel Comics by Disney and the foresight into Dubai being the new hub for extravagant entertainment (heck they have a ski slope inside a mall), there is “good news of great joy” with the announcement of the development of Marvel Land Dubai. This is a joint project with UAE’s Al Ahli Group and Marvel Entertainment with a total experience package from Disney’s theme park mavens. Marvel intends to bring in the entire stable of superheroes and their corresponding arch enemies along side the replicas of cities and fictional flora and fauna. What you’ve been reading for the past 40 years in comics is coming to life. You’ll get to see the high rise buildings back-dropping the Bugle, the Four Freedoms Plaza, Stark Industries .. it’s absolute comicgasm.
Marvel Land is but a parcel of the entire Dubai Land attraction:
For more information, check out Chimera Design. This is the firm that apparently creates the experiential flavor for the theme park and rides. With the recent news about Dubai’s USD $60 billion debt and its spillover effects to the rest of the world, we can only hope for the preservation of geek culture in places such as this. It’s truly happening. Geeks are now mainstream.
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| Four celebs auction off custom designed Toshiba laptops for charity Posted: 03 Dec 2009 07:00 AM PST Fancy something a bit different to your standard laptop this holiday season and know that you’re raising money for a worthwhile cause in the process? Take a look at these Toshiba notebook PCs featuring exclusive custom designs from four male celebrities: Omar Epps, Joe Perry, Hines Ward and Rainn Wilson.
Hines Ward (Steel City) offers up the Toshiba Satellite P505 with 18.4-inch HD TruBrite widescreen display, featuring a black and gold illustration of himself. He’s raising money for the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation. Rainn Wilson (actor, writer and film star) is seeking profit for the MONA Foundation with his Toshiba Satellite M505 laptop, with art courtesy of SoulPancake illustrator Mike Mitchell. Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry chooses the Toshiba Qosmio X505 kitted out with Harman Kardon speakers and 18.4-inch HD display. The casing features street art, and proceeds go to Project AWARE Finally, actor, writer and producer Omar Epps brings the 16-inch display Toshiba Satellite A505 decorated with Brooklyn art, with money from the winning bid going to Mount Calvary AME Church. Find out more and get links to the current eBay auctions here. You’ve got about 17 hours left, so be quick!
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| Brits spend three days a month online. Is that all? Posted: 03 Dec 2009 05:10 AM PST
Now, either I spend way too much time online (read, just the right amount of time) or people are underestimating, because the figures from a survey by a price comparison website found that Brits spend just three days per month online. I spend three days a day online. (Yes I did mean to type that, it was supposed to be humorous.) UK peeps say they’d struggle to organise their lives without access to the Internet, and that they’d contact their friends and family far less without the Net. If I find out my Net connection isn’t working, I don’t even bother to get up. Quite frankly, what’s the point? (Photo credit: believekevin)
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| Google got bored of real R&D and added fade-in effect to search Posted: 02 Dec 2009 04:18 PM PST Notice anything different about the Google search front page today? You should, because Google wants you to notice.
They’ve added some fancy fading in of everything but the search box and logo, so that header and footer menu items only appear if you move your mouse while on the home page. Fancy, huh? I know Google’s a pretty big company but I wonder how much R&D time was taken from other projects to sort this little gem out. Is Google running out of ideas? I love this section of today’s announcement, which sums up the numerous variations they tried out on test groups:
OK, it’s late and I’m thick, but I don’t really get it, Google.
Not only have you put a ton of code (relatively speaking) on the front page that probably doesn’t even work in IE6 (has anyone tested it? Do we care? Oh wait, Google hates Microsoft. Never mind.) but you’ve intentionally planned to slow down users. It’s not as if you’re showing them ads. You’ve been able to search straight away by typing into the box as soon as you arrive at Google, thanks to a small bit of JavaScript that focuses on the search box. You still can. Now, if you want “Advanced Search” or any of the other searches you usually find on the home page, you have to move your mouse first. An interesting thing happens in Safari on the Mac. If you have the Tab key set up to run through menu items, the first time you press “Tab” you land on the “Google Search” button. You then have to tab through all the stuff at the bottom before you make it back up to the top left menu (Web – Images – Videos etc.)
No biggie you might think, but it seems as if some degree of accessibility has been lost, and for what I see as mainly aesthetic feature. It may not bother mouse users, but how about those who use the keyboard to navigate web pages? I tried testing this in Firefox for Mac, but the fade-in effect doesn’t (yet) work at all. Hey, this is Forever Geek, so you’d expect some thorough testing. If you don’t think this is thorough enough, please help me out by testing it out on other OS X, Windows and Linux browsers. What happens? Do you like the effect? I think it’s OK, and that’s about it. I don’t see (sigh) the need.
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| Harman Kardon GLA-55 speakers cut from ice (OK, glass) Posted: 02 Dec 2009 09:49 AM PST Audio speakers are either boring black cubes of plastic and wood surround, or else they’re in some kind of dock that you stick an iPod into, right? Maybe for you, but for those audiophiles who can afford high-end equipment (and are probably not listening to compressed MP3 files on their iPod) comes the likes of the Harman Kardon GLA-55 speakers.
They’re not carved from ice (because they’d melt, duh) but they’re exquisitely formed from clear glass. My audiophilia isn’t advanced enough to explain the tech involved in these speakers, but I can tell it’s cutting edge. Here’s the lowdown as explained in the press release:
The GLA-55 features many proprietary technologies to provide the highest quality sound possible; including:
So, basically, they look great, sound great, and work with pretty much everything. Price? £750 ($1,250 equivalent)
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