Bush You

Bush You, originally uploaded by kaioshin.

A public service announcement from Dubya.

He might be expressing his opinion of foreign policy.

Or, possibly it's an unconcious finger-to-nostril reflex from his college days.

view the full clip (thanks pascal)

 

My Dad on Law & Order

My Dad on Law & Order, originally uploaded by kaioshin.

My father was on the 20th October episode of Law & Order (season 15, episode 05)

Through the magic of the modern technology, I've been able to get a copy only days later.

How being able to download this is anything but a "good thing" is beyond me -- it's time the television and movie industry pulled its finger out and created a vehicle to do this properly.

 

Picture from Bernie

Picture from Bernie, originally uploaded by kaioshin.

Here is a picture that Bernie took in the flat.

There are more of his adventures through London, France and Germany on his website

Especially cool is this one he took of on a people mover.

 

BBC Three

With the rainy days, television has becomes the hub of my sad little life. Which means most of the year.

I've been happy to discover BBC Three, though. I found that if I balance an antenna on my tongue while sticking a fork in the electrical socket, I can get reception for Freeview.

BBC Three has some really amazing original comedy programmes on it. Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps (a.k.a. my guide to northern culture), Smoking Room and the new series of Little Britain.

All great comedies, or as the Americans producers like to call them -- background research for the 2006 Fall lineup.

 

Damn Hippies!

Urban Decay, originally uploaded by kaioshin.

These folks thought they'd protest the posters on Old Street by painting over a bunch and writing their anti-poster message.

Something, I take offense to, given I've just built a website using those posters as the main source of content.

These protester-for-the-sake-of-protest don't seem to understand the nature of urban decay.

When the posters come down, much less-nice grafitti goes up. By that I mean the boring tagging, not the pieces that actually take some talent.

Second, fly-posting is the alternative for small productions that don't have the budget to put a huge "GAP" ad on the Old Street roundabout.

Posters and ads are part of the urban environment. If you don't like it, move to the country.

 

Old Street Kebab -- beta is live ... sort of...

I've finally got my new site, Old Street Kebab live as a Beta.

Right now, it's just a demo until I get some real content in there, but check it out and let me know what you think.

I had to dust off my old coding skills, but it doesn't seem to be falling apart.

 

Resident Evil 2 - The Movie

I thought the new Resident Evil movie was pretty good, in that it came closer to the plot of the game.

The game is of course based on the early zombie movies like Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

On thing the new movie has, unlike the game, are intense fighting sequences. So maybe they will release a new game based on the movie -- which was a movie based on a game based on a movie.

 

The Republican Terror Propaganda Machine

http://www.oliverwillis.com/stuff/gopmashup.mov

It would be funny, if it weren't real.

 

Geek Rant #4080

So, following Stefan's example, I've returned to my programming roots, and I am trying to do a PHP back-end for my new site Old Street Kebab.

But coding again has reminded me how effing frustrating it is. Spending hours to realise you've writting '=' instead of '==', or forgetting whether the scope of a variable is global or local.

To add to this frustration, every modern language is a C++ variant (Javascript, Actionscript, Perl, PHP, etc.) But each has it's own idiosyncracies. So just because I understand how to do something doesn't mean that I know how to do it.

For example, to find the length of an array it might be length($array) or $array->length or $array.length. In PHP it's actually count($array).

Considering programming has existed since the 19th century -- why the hell can't a robust programming language exist as an abstraction?

If you know your if...else statements, for loops, etc. there should be a meta-tool to let you put everything together, and then spit it out as perfect PHP code.

Sure, I've heard about Microsoft's visual programming -- but since it's built by Microsoft engineers, I think it will still be a pain in the arse.

What the next generation needs is a programming language built by Designers for Designers. And let the techies run around in the background and figure out how you make it run.

 

Nico's Quote of the Day

"Don't worry -- I'm not going to sniff your packet"

 

The beauty of Information Architecture

IRConcept, originally uploaded by kaioshin.

As I've been sorting through my portfolio of work, I've found that my later work with Sapient was disappointing.

"You've been getting lazy, man." Nico pointed out.

And it's true, in a way. The profession has been so overwhelmed by (so-called) IA's who don't consider themselves Designers, first and foremost -- if at all.

As a result, you can do a few lazy diagrams and clients will say "Wow! We thought IA's only did wireframes"

There used to be a debate about Big-IA vs. Little-IA, but I think little-IA's have won the battle, because the Big-IA's spent too much time navel-gazing instead of coming up with an industry-wide definition of what should be expected of an Information Architect's skills.

I learned about Information Architecture from Studio Archetype, where it was called Information Design -- which is exactly what it is.

I challenge all the Visio wireframe engineers out there to do something beautiful.

...

In response to Nico's challenge, I pushed myself to present some 'real' design in the work I've been doing for a client. I've posted an example of a concept describing the core brand positioning of a service, and how the service would be perceived by its target audience groups.

Of course this could have been done with two venn diagrams as well.

 

The moving digital finger ... bl**dy h*ll

Realising that I neglected to include a URL for my company in the DVD, I tried a google search on my company ... which will now be referred to as "m****pollen".

If you search, you'll see why ... the results are filled with outlandish nonsense I've posted to my blog.

Not exactly the type of thing I want to show potential investors as I've finished my business plan.

Arg.

 

I dream of the day...

when I will own a 100 TB array.

some geek poetry for you.

But seriously - I figure that if there have been about 3,000 anime since the beginning, and on average each anime series has 26 episodes, and each episode compresses down to roughly 200 MB, then:

3,000 x 26 x 200 = 15,600,000 MB

Which is roughly 15,200 GB or 15 TB.

So if I had 100 TB, it's conceivable to think that I could store locally every single anime ever to exist in my lifetime.

Next, about 2 years ago it cost about £200 (probably an underestimate) for a 120GB harddrive. Today I've found them for about £50. So if prices continue to drop at that rate (25% every 2 years):

15 TB would cost me about £30,000 today but will only cost me about £500 in 6 years!

So in 6 years -- I should have the capacity to store every anime that has been and will ever be created in my lifetime.

Is that cool, or what?