Category Archives

General Entertainment

Pixels in the round

Art, Technology by
  • Comments Off on Pixels in the round

Pixels didn’t have to be square.  Like Frankenstein’s monster, it’s just how their creator made them.  In digital imaging’s fetal years, Russell Kirsch decided to choose an arbitrary shape for a unit of visual media.  And thus the pixel we know and love was born.

“Squares was the logical thing to do,” Kirsch says. “Of course, the logical thing was not the only possibility … but we used squares. It was something very foolish that everyone in the world has been suffering from ever since.”

As was Kirsch’s regret.  Regret that he is now rectifying with software that can minimize the shape of square pixels by resampling them into more complex shapes.

Don’t fret too hard, Russell.  We’d never have Diesel Sweeties without your mistake.

RootsxDouglasCoupland

Art, Books, Fashion, Technology, Want by

I love Douglas Coupland, having read Microserfs more times than I can count since middle school. I love Canada, having visited Toronto all throughout college (how I miss being just a few hours from Canada!) And, of course, I love both telecommunications and fashion in equal measure. So reading the following in an article on Alt.Engadget was like watching worlds collide:

Douglas Coupland may be best known as the author that popularized the term “Generation X,” but he’s also an artist, a designer, and a Canadian, so it makes a bit of sense that he would team up with that most iconically Canadian clothing retailer, Roots, for a new clothing line […] inspired in part by Canada’s history in telecommunications, and by Coupland’s idea that “what really links Canadians together is that we’re all far apart.”

Brilliant! The collection can be preordered via Facebook and features lots of tech-prints like television test patterns and matrices. There are also wireframe beavers on t-shirts and more than a few shopping totes in loud neon colors. My favorite item of all, the motherboard scarf, doesn’t seem to be available online (I hope just “yet.”) Prices for everything else are reasonable – gift, anyone?

Summer drink mixing

Food/Drink, Recipes by

Discovered in the newest issue of Everyday Food, this drink required the purchase of a massive bottle of Maker’s Mark, a brown liquor that I would normally shun.  However, after muddling a slice of peach or two with three blackberries, tablespoon and a half of honey, tablespoon of lemon juice and some powder sugar, splashing with seltzer and allowing some dried mint to infuse, it was infinitely sippable. A truly Southern sort of beverage.  Bravo to Kate.

Twenty-four hour shopping in Rapture

Cars, Unexplained by

The scene: Kate and I pull up behind a blue pickup wearing two massive bumper stickers on the tailgate while at a red light on 213. Upon reading them, I am smitten but the light changes too fast for us to get a good picture.

Kate: “Do you want me to follow them until we get another light?”

Nick: “Sure…let’s hope they aren’t leaving town.”

A chase ensued.

We only had to make it to the parking lot of the nearest shopping plaza. You can see it was well worth the pursuit. And I thought I’d have nothing to blog about today…

So, about that word

General Entertainment by

I do it all the time: begin my sentences with the word “so.” I do this frequently enough that a part of proofreading has now become the active removal of this two letter word from blog posts. I was chuffed to learn that The New York Times put writer Anand Giridharadas on the case.

This logical tinge to “so” has followed it out of software. Starting a sen­tence with “so” uses the whiff of logic to relay authority. Where “well” vacillates, “so” declaims.

…

“So” seems also to reflect our fraught relationship with time. “Well” and “um” are open-ended; “so” is impatient. It leans for ward, seeks a con­sequence, sums things up. It is a word befitting a culture in which things worth doing must bear fruit now, where it is more fulfilling to day-trade grain futures than to raise grain.

So, it’s a nerd word. And an impatient one at that. Sounds about dead on, frankly…

I have a new portfolio

General Entertainment, News by

Since so many of my web design projects are built on blog platforms – specifically, WordPress – these days, I thought it might be smart to remake my portfolio using the same technology. So, gone is the Flash-based navigation and SlideShowPro display system and in its place is a much more streamlined WP theme that I’ve customized to suit my needs. Added bonus: completely compatible with iPhone and iPad!

Visit at nicholasjsmerker.info/Professional (or from the Portfolio link on the right.)

Focusing on…Focus

Internet, Rant, Technology, Television by
  • Comments Off on Focusing on…Focus

A few days ago, I posted briefly on a New York Times article talking about the remapping of our brains that occurs when we multitask heavily or even just use computers in general. Echoing this article’s view that more media = less focus is a piece by Nicholas Carr from the June issue of Wired (which I was reading on paper, thank you very much) which discusses the distracting nature of hypertext hyperactive content.

A 2007 scholarly review of hypertext experiments concluded that jumping between digital documents impedes understanding. And if links are bad for concentration and comprehension, it shouldn’t be surprising that more recent research suggests that links surrounded by images, videos, and advertisements could be even worse.

The takeaway seems to be that we are causing our brains to remake themselves in order to deal with a wide breadth of stuff – that never goes very deep.  Bad, computers!  Shame on you, technology! Or maybe not.  Because in the exact same issue, Wired, asked two researchers of personal motivation, Clay Shirky and Daniel Pink, to discuss what is being termed (by Shirky) “the cognitive surplus.”  Their argument goes a little something like this: with more options for putting our time to use than ever before, free time pursuits will become more varied, taking forms never seen before.  Though not precisely related to the idea of focus, this statement did get me thinking:

When someone buys a TV, the number of consumers goes up by one, but the number of producers stays the same. When someone buys a computer or mobile phone, the number of consumers and producers both increase by one.

Whoa!  And it’s true – I often find myself cursing the lack of hours in the day to get caught up on my favorite TV shows when I fill my evenings with blogging, online reading or freelance design.  If it weren’t for these infernal computers stuffing my free time with their distractions, I could take part in the much more honorable 200 billion hours of television that I should be watching with my fellow Americans this year!

(As originally posted on my Instructional Technology work blog.)

48hr Magazine, issue zero

General Entertainment, Print by
  • Comments Off on 48hr Magazine, issue zero

You may recall me mentioning that I had ordered my very own copy of 48hr Magazine, a super creative project that aimed to do just what the name implied: put out a magazine in just 48 hours.  Well, a few days ago, issue zero arrived in the mail and it was stupendous.

Tucking in with a bowl of leftover curry chicken, I discovered that it doesn’t take weeks and millions of dollars to produce a smart, well-laid out publication afterall.  (In fact, I think that all students should be required to look at 48hr before embarking on any school publication from here on out.)  A truly dedicated team with enough coffee, beer and donated office space – as well submissions from around the globe – can produce one of the smartest, funniest magazines I’ve read in recent memory.

If you pick up your own 48hr Magazine from MagCloud, be sure to go straight for “20 Minutes with Lady Gaga” by Rob Dubbin and “Catastrophic Black Hole Insurance Sales Manual: An Excerpt” by William Poor.  An excerpt from the latter:

Instead ask: How might a black hole affect you and your loved ones?  Who will provide for your children if you are taken by a singularity?