NJS[BLOG]

With shades of 2001 and Dune, I’m in love.

Japan’s new ‘communications robot’ will prevent astronauts from getting lonely in space — by being absolutely adorable.

Yep.  (Thanks, io9.)

I’m glad creator Mike Ando was so patient with his dream of building the linking book from Myst.  As an ardent fan of the game and its sequels, I was beyond excited to see this story pop up on Wired – and the teenager in me flipped his shit while watching the video.  I’ll take one!

Looking for a way to jazz up your used book sales?  Try the Biblio-Mat, which promises to convert $2 into a randomly selected title from its inventory.  Genius.

These gorgeous bubbles of scenery are by photographer Catherine Nelson.  And they are spectacular.  See more and learn about the technique at Wired.

Apple has recently let go of the former head of iOS and OS X, ending an era – and support for a particular kind of design, one with a reliance on skeuomorphic elements.  Now that the top proponent of the opposing mindset within Apple – chief hardware designer, Jonathan Ive, is at the helm, what might we expect?

[...] the logical guess, given his interest in streamlined, relentlessly consistent design, is that skeuomorphism — the kind-of-campy mimicking of real-world details like plush leather and shiny wood surfaces — may become a thing of the past.

The bottom line: Ive has always been one of the most important people at Apple, but with this reshuffling, he gets the opportunity to become the most important person at Apple. That makes this the most important thing that’s happened at the company in the post-Jobs era.

It’s an important move, and one that is sure to herald in an age of Apple’s software taking on the sparse elegance of its striking hardware.  Count me in.

(Time)

I used to buy a new computer every 6 months when I was a decade younger.  I’d package up and eBay the previous generation gear and roll the money into the latest and greatest from Apple twice a year.  But when I got my 13″ MacBook in October of 2008, I found that the cycle had played itself out.  2009, 2010 and even 2011 came and went and the designs were mostly the same – and my little notebook kept chugging right along without any real issues.

This last year of freelance projects and a need for occasional forays into Windows has become increasingly sluggish, though.  And then the advent of the Retina display on notebooks sealed the deal:  it was time to upgrade, both for my strained eyes and for my cooked lap, burned under a more and more taxed set of four year old components.

So I plunked down an ungodly sum of money and placed an order for the above 13″ MacBook Pro on launch day today.  I’ll be checking the tracking site and scouting the driveway for FedEx trucks nonstop from here until up to 5 business days from now.  In some ways, perhaps nothing has changed in the last ten years…

While it seems somewhat silly in the form of a grocery store with no products, just photos of items and QR codes, the Tesco example in this article from Ubergizmo does make a lot of sense:

Yihaodian has already done something similar on a smaller scale by sticking up posters in subway and bus stations, while in South Korea, Tesco has launched something similar where customers can shop for groceries at the subway while waiting for their trains.

Otherwise known as me making new footage for use in classrooms this academic year…

Normally I pay no attention to YouTube ads before my video content loads, but damn did Prada do a fine job on these spots for their Fall/Winter 2012 collection.  These are “Real Fantasies” that I can most assuredly get behind.

I love the way the scene vanishes to reveal the credits at the end of this one.

The most intriguing game of moon-chess you’ll ever see, guaranteed.