Danes (ker smo že čez polnoč je to torej že včeraj) so na trnfestu nastopile “Tri orhideje”. To so tri klovnese iz avstrije, ki so uprizorile pogreb njihovega brata, in vse zaplete ki nastanejo pri tem. Predstava je bla precej zanimiva, čeprav se je proti koncu malo zavlekla. Zapele so tudi nekaj pesmi (sicer v nemščini (predstava je bila v angleščini), kar pomeni da nisem razumel besedila, se je pa lepo rimalo).
Pa še par slikc… seveda velja isto kot pri zadnjem foto prispevku… moj fotoaparat je bogi… žal
Jap… dans je 200 dni odkar je moj ’server’ prizgan.
Zakaj server na laptopu? ker mu ne dela monitor… oz. dela… sam bol tko.. nazadnje kar sem gledal (torej 200 dni nazaj) je imel ene 6-7 mrtvih vertikal, katerih število se je usake nekaj tednov povečalo za 1 ali dve. Dans tega ne morem pogledat, ker majo ATIjeve kartice in atijevi driverji, ki so trenutno gor, nek čuden bug, da se slika ne pokaže če ga zapreš in odpreš (ATI no more for me). Seveda se je to zgodilo le malo po izteku garancije. Popravilo? 400eur brez davka za nov monitor + zamenjava. Če hočem zamenjati sam, morajo zaračunat provizijo na monitor, tko da še dražje pride. Torej edina alternativa je.. nov laptop. In sm ga tud kupu…. Kaj pa s starim? Server!
Zakaj je laptop ql za server?
Tih je
Mal elektrike troši
Ma ugrajen ‘UPS’
Ker ma mobile cpu, se manj greje. Ker podpira freqency scaling (ki je bil ob času nakupa privilegij večinoma res samo mobile procesorjem)
Ker je majhen, in ga zatlačiš kamorkoli hočeš.
Itd…
In stabilnost? Kot že naslov pove, danes je minilo 200 dni od zadnjega restarta (in tudi ta, tazadnji, je bil hardwareske narave).
Mal podatkov še? Gre se za HP-jev nx6325, Turion X2, 2*1.6GHz, 1gb rama, 100gb disk, ATI Radeon Xpress 1100(?), 1gbit mrezna, Broadcomova b/g wireless kartica, in periferija.
Edino vprašanje ki ostane je: čakat doklr ne crkne sam(pa naj bo softwaresko, ali hardwaresko (zarad pregrevanja), in potem popravt kar treba? Al pa ga zdj enkrat ugasnt, pocistt od znotri, updejtat se kernel, in potem čakat novih 200 dni in se več. Ker sem zadnje čase precej len, bom najbrž kr prvo
I was surprised to find these little pieces of pixel art made with small stone tiles all over Provence. In fact there were so many that it stopped being fun looking for them.
I counted 10 in Avignon alone, positioned from old stone arches, street corners to the old papal palace of Avignon.
Izak Košir, novinar pri Žurnalu očitno ne pozna najbolj primitivnega formata avdio datotek, WAV. V sobotnem Žurnalu namreč piše tako:
Nove pesmi, ki jih je posnel oboževalec skupine pred Bonovo vilo na jugu Francije najdete na http://home.no/vetle93. Posnetkov pa ne morete shraniti, saj so na voljo le za poslušanje.
Gdo ne razume imena patenta? Naj samo omenim da je to Micro$oftov patent… pa gremo:
Poglejmo izvleček:
A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page. For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.
Hmm.. se že bolj razume? Ene par besed umes je jasnih… in ja… Microsoftu je dejansko uspelo patentirati “Page up” in “Page down”. Kar je (po mojem mišljenju) precej zanimivo, še posebej ker sta ti dve tipki obstajali še dosti pred tem, ko se je Microsoft začel ukvarjati s čimerkoli podobnim (baje(!) že na IBM-ovem S/34).
In kako jim je to ratal? Po ameriško seveda. Uzameš nekaj, kar je že splošno znano, in dodaš čudno ime (”metoda in sistem”), zakompliciraš opis, in imaš za sabo eno izmed največjih pravniških ekip v ameriki (in najbrž tudi na svetu). Seveda, če imaš slednje, se podrazumeva da imaš tudi dovolj denarja in dovolj moči v državi in na tržišču.
In zakaj je to problem? Predvsem zato, ker tako delovanje (pomik za eno stran gor-dol) uporablja mnogo ne-Microsoftovih aplikacij. S tem patentom Microsoft (če dokaže da neka aplikacija uporablja Microsoftov patent) lahko uloži tožbo proti podjetjem/programerjem/… Ker pa je večina podjetij, precej manjših od Microsofta, in ker na***ejo še posebej pisci odprtokodnih programov, ki ponavadi sploh nimajo nikogar za sabo, tak patent lahko povzroči totalni kaos. Me pa zanima (pravniki pomoč!), kako je z aplikacijami, ki so to ‘tehnologijo’ uporabljale še pred microsoftovim patentom? Oz tudi celo pred Microsoftovo implementacijo page up/down v katerikoli microsoftov program?
Sicer nevem čigava ideja je bila narediti page-up in page-down, bi blo pa zanimivo če bi to bil IBM. Se še kdo spomni IBM vs. SCO? :))
ps: se opravičujem ker je ta post nastal še enkrat, imel sem manjši problem z bazo
pps: Jure, tudi tvoj comment je žal izginil zaradi baze, napisal si da se morajo upoštevati vsi claimi tam napisani (in tudi formule). Tiste formule so samo najbolj enostavne formule za izračun pozicije na strani. Vse ostalo se nanaša na to, da če se premakne za en ‘ekran’ dol, je ok, če se premakne za eno ’stran’ (torej celo stran, ne glede na to kolikor jo je vidne na ekranu), pa ni več “ok”. Tudi v nekaterih odprtokodnih aplikacijah se pageup/down tako obnasa.
Speaking of French engineering achievements, here's another one: Aiguille du Midi is an inaccessible tower of rock in the middle of snow, ice and granite. With buildings and walkways on the top. And a cable car that brings you to them from the valley below in some 15 minutes.
This is even more impressive when you get to know that the first version was built before helicopters and that the heavy steel cable was brought up on foot. You can see and feel the huge difference in height from the cable car when it rises almost vertically at the top end of the catenary.
Going to 3800 m above the sea level was an interesting experience by itself. This is most likely far the highest place on Earth I'll ever stand on. Before going on the cable car I did question the safety of making an altitude gain of 2800 m in a couple of minutes without leaving some time for the body to accommodate. Then I saw hordes of other tourists going in and coming back without any doubts in their minds.
While the experience is obviously survivable, the thin air on the top does make climbing 10 steps feel like you're going 10 floors up. It certainly makes you respect people that come this far on their own feet.
And question the sanity of bringing that many tourists there.
Startup Snap has been with us for as long as I can remember the modern Web 2.0. While a lot of geeks really hate it, it’s a great thing for novice internet users, since it turns out that they are afraid of clicking links and this removes the ambiguity of that link. Snap.com kindly provided a detailed use case and usability findings about their widget that supports this finding. Even though it’s from the makers themselves, it’s still a good read.
Recently Apture, introduced similar, yet not the same, functionality by providing contextual information for certain types of links, like Wikipedia. They made some interesting progress in fluid dynamic, so their boxes bounce around in a really cool fashion.
They’re both very useful for your site visitors, especially if you want to keep on your site, without making them lost in Wikipedia, with no hope of ever finding outside web. There’s only one thing you have to watch out when using them - don’t use them together. Otherwise you’ll get this kind of situation like on the TechCrunch today:
Snap and Apture fighting for Top overlay location
There’s also an alternative solution for both popup makers to detect when they are running side-by-side and develop their algorithms in a way that doesn’t overlay one on top of each other.
I’ve been traveling across a few time zones recently and I’m suffering from a mild jet-lag as a consequence. This is a well known phenomena, when you’re changing time zones very quickly, with a help of an airplane. But how do you deal with all those strange time zones if you are in a middle of the ocean, like on a transatlantic ocean cruise? Do they just arbitrarily decide when they pass a certain time zone, or do they actually keep track of these things?
I started searching around and soon I stumbled upon Tom Galli’s RedToeNail blog, where he writes how they solved this problem in his cruise:
These time zones at sea are interesting constructs. No one lives out here so what is the big deal. There is a six hour time difference between Miami and Tenerife and to smooth the time transition, the ship advances the clock one hour per day on six succeeding days. So we have 6 days of 23 clock hours in length. Time is really a weird phenomenon. Is it an element of nature or a construction of man? Einstein and Hawkins advocate the former while I remain uncertain. I nevertheless understand the importance of being on time. While a novice at the physics of time, I fully understand breakfast! That said; I must go and eat. Read full post
So there you have it. They just speed up time when they’re approaching their destination, but overall ignore the whole concept of time zones while on the sea.
Fry published few neat Greasemonkey scripts recently and since I am also a fan of this Firefox extension, I thought I might share one myself. It’s a script I am using right now, while I am typing this post.
Script hides everything but editor on “Create New Post” page in WordPress. It also adds a toggle to the right which you can use to control visibility of hidden parts.
I did this because I don’t want to be distracted when I am writing and close-to-empty page helps me stay focused. If you’re like me, then please download the script.
Učeri sem bil na trnfestu spet. Nastopal so Trankileshe. Na kudovi strani piše da so ‘Ska Jazz’, men se zdijo pa bližje trubačem kot skaju ali jazzu Muska je bla zakon! (baje se da njihov cd kupt na kudovi stojnici). Folk pa tud (seveda niso manjkale niti po-tleh-padajoče punce, ene par penzionerov, drugače pa večinoma mladina in kar nekaj turistov.
Seveda tle sodi tudi opravičilo zaradi naslova, ker je (baje) trobenta bila samo ena, so bili pa še saksofoni in pozavne, toda zame, ki o glasbilih nimam precej pojma, in mi je bolj pomembna sama muska, in ker so vse te zadeve podobne trobentam, jaz kar pravim da so trubači No ja,… pa bil je še gitarist in bobnar. Pa še usake tok je en igrau na en čuden inštrument, za katerega sm prvo mislil da je piksna piva, take podolgovate valjaste oblike, in na njega udarjal z neko kovinsko paličico (al so ble pa kokr neke vilice, nism zihr, nism biu tok blizu). Jap, nimam pojma o tem
Ker je moj fotoaparat precej bogi, škljoc škljoc avtomatski digitalc, in niti pod razno ne zna nič delat pri slabši svetlobi, razn seveda s flashom pa še to od blizu, so slikce mal boge … no ja.. precej boge. Ena clo s flešom slikana, pa se bl vid publiko kot nastopajoče. Na eni je pa ql efekt, ko je negdo, z malo boljim fotoaparatom slikal s flashom glih tkrt k sm jst sliku z ~1s osvetlitve in so nastale precej zanimive barve. Uglavem, slike so krš
Usak dan dobim ene 5, 6 sporočil od offline kontaktov, ki mi pošiljajo čudne linke na msnju. Prva misel… virus? Lahko bi bil.. toda potem se spomnim da nekateh teh ljudi sploh ni doma, in da imajo računalnik izklopljen. Torej virus ni (vsaj ne pri vseh). In potem kliknem na enega od teh linkov, in pridem na eno izmed “Checked who blocked you” strani, kamor vpišeš svoj msn email in geslo, in ti njihova web aplikacija (najbrž) izlista par nickov, ki te nimajo med stiki (kar meni pidgin pove tudi sam).
Ljudje! Kaj je z vami? Upisujete svoje maile in gesla na kr ene zblj strani. To je prblizn isto kot ce ti negdo (nek neznanec) na ulici ponudi da ti pove koliko denarja imaš na računu, in mu ti daš kartico (da si naredi kopijo) in mu poveš pin. Ja, isto tok neumno je tud to kar naekateri počnete z msnjem. Daste naslov in geslo. In potem se čudite ko ljudje dobivajo spam z vašega naslova. In potem se čudite tudi ko piše da se je negdo drug vpisal z druge lokacije in vas vrže dol z msnja. Sami ste si krivi!
Zdej pa, vsi ki se vam to dogaja, prvo na online virus scan (klik na online scanner), potem pa takoj zamenjat vsa gesla za msn, in vse ostale stvari kjer uporabljate isto geslo.
Zanimal me je, ce se kj spremeni napetost v utičnici, če na isto fazo priključimo malo večjega porabnika. Torej, za porabnika sem izbral 1kW mikrovalovko, napetost pa meril v sosednji utičnici (na isti fazi), kake 2m stran. Zarad visoke frekfence (2.4ghz) mislm da bi se dal učinke indukcije na (nažalost) neoklepljene kable zanemart. Ker je sam voltmeter oklepljen, tudi neb smel bit nekega upliva na notranjo elektrniko. (glede na to da so novejše mikrovalovke kar precej zaščitene pred uhajanjem EM sevanja sploh nevem kaj ma smisel to še govort, ker še wifi antena več seva kot nepoškodovana novejša mikrovalovka).
Meril sem z vc840 voltmetrom, prek rs232 povezave povezane na kompjuter (2400baud povezava). Meril sem prvo približno 30 sekund z izključeno mikrovalovko, 30 sekund vključena mikrovalovka, ki greje ~2dcl vode, in spet pribl. 30 sekund izključeno. Graf je izrisan z gnuplot-om. Na vodoravni osi je čas v sekundah, na navpični pa rms napetost v voltih.
Če se slabo vidi, klik na sliko, da se poveča:
Zanimivo, že samo zarad enga 1kW porabnika, pade napetost za 1.5-2V. Če bi meu kej močnejšega, bi sprobu še s tem, sam žal nimam. 1kW je mal nad 4 ampere (če rečemo da je breme ohmsko), torej bi rabu kej, kar porab ene 3kW, da bi varno lahk delu na 16A varovalki Me pa zanima kok bi takrat padla napetost.
Traveling to France I drove under the Mont Blanc last Friday.
When you're focusing on keeping a safe distance from the car in front of you using the lines of blue LEDs as a guide, 11 kilometers don't seem that long.
Only after a day or so I realized that at the deepest point I was under 3.5 km of rocks. In a car, no less.
With all the glaciers and mountains around it it's easy to overlook what an engineering feat this tunnel is.
Kaj mi je? ne vem Začel sem spet mal igrat igrce Po Powermangi je prišel na vrsto Prvi del Monkey Islanda.
Igrco sm nasu na enm starem backup-dvdju, ko sem iskal nekaj čisto drugega. Mislm da je bla ta verzija mišljena za igranje pod DOS-om, ampak na srečo so eni geeki napisal interpreter za SCUMM-based igrce, ki sliši po imenu ScummVM. Tudi ta je (na mojo veliko srečo) opensource, in dela tudi na Linuxu. Na strani od scummvmja se da tudi najti nekaj popravkov za igrice (predvsem videe) in (mislim da) dve cele igrice, ki delajo s pomočjo njega.
The secret of Monkey island je prva od štirih delov Monkey islanda, in je izšla že leta 1990 (torej tudi temu primerna grafika in pomanjkanje zvoka). Začne se na enem izmed otokov na Karibih, kjer Guybrush Threepwood hoče postati gusar. Seveda v igri vodimo njega. V baru od gusarjev izve da mora opraviti tri preizkuse, in da lahko šele po tem postane pravi gusar. In tako se avantura začne.
Kar je meni najbolj ušeč pri vseh treh monkey islanda (četrti je 3d, mi ni ušeč, fuj fuj, in ga nočem niti videti, zato ga tud ne štejem zraven), je to da je povsod polno humorja in raznih prikritih satiričnih vložkov. Natakar preverja osebno, sredi džungle je telefon, s katerim pokličemo help-line od LucasArts-a (avtorja igre), bar se imenuje SCUMM (beri zgoraj), in več ali manj use osebe imajo neke lastnosti sedanjosti, medtem ko prikazujejo čas gusarjev. K samemu humorju v igri pripomorejo seveda tudi razne izjave, reklame za druge igre, itd. Sama igra zna biti tudi precej težka, in če nimaš ravno sreče, boš tudi potreboval/a precej časa da prideš do konca in rešitve iz vedno novih zapletov. Seveda je tu tudi Elaine, gusarka, v katero se Guybrush zaljubi, in s tem uvede vedno nove težave :).
Igra se igra z miško; izbereš dejanje (spodaj desno) in potem objekt, na katerem hočeš to izvršiti. Odvisno od verzije igre, se včasih pričakovana ‘dejanja’ osvetlijo, in jih avtomatsko izvršiš z desnim klikom na objekt (recimo desni klik na vrata izvrši open ali close, torej odpre ali zapre vrata).
Dans sm se spravu delat corner reflector. Template je sicr na netu, vendar sm ga mal priredil. Stranice kvadratov so 122mm (isto kot v templateu), za gorišče sem pa kar uzel trikotnik s templatea. Namesto lukenj, in zatičev sem uporabil prvo selotejp in potem gluegun. Nosilne ’stene’ so iz kartona od nekih starih listov, prelepljene pa so z navadno aluminijasto folijo. Notri je utaknjena usb kartica z zunanjo (precej majhno) anteno. Čas izdelave? 15 minut (z čakanjem na gluegun da se segreje)
Nad performansami sem biu tudi jaz presenecen. Lovi kar precej daleč (sodeč po število ap-jev). Problem je le v relativno ozki usmerjenosti, ki je pač tudi pogoj za večji doseg. Ker je antena polarizirana, je tudi problem z polarizacijo, torej je treba paziti kako je antena obrnjena. Toda če je kaj takega uporabljeno za enostavno dvosmerno povezavo z recimo prijateljem nekaj 100m stran, mislim da to niti ni problem.
Slikce:
Na prvi sliki je slikano z roko-čez-okno od spredaj, vidijo se tud packe od lepila. Na drugi je od zadaj slikano, kjer se vidi folija, tretja pa kaže kismet (scenzurirano mal seveda).
On my way back from NUK I stopped at the bookstore Azil, where the kind resident feminist librarian offered me free coffee and a nice debate. After checking out any law-related new stuff I started burrowing through the free books box and...
Lo! There was a fantasy book with a sticky note of a running book on it!.
Odd, I thought.
"Wha's dis all'bout?", I required of the kind resident feminist booklady.
"Aye, there's more where tha' came from.", she replied and showed me two more — namely Kite Runner and an Arthur C. Clarke book.
She went on "Tis a book ye can take fer free, read and then drop somewhere for someone else to read if ye're kind 'nuff."
So I happily took it home and clicked on the link on the label and the bookmark in the book — http://bookcrossing.com — and discovered a great community of people who like to read books and share it with others. This is how the system works: person A registers a book it owns on BookCrossing, equips it with its unique BCID number and gives it away to someone or leaves it somewhere for someone to find it. Then person B finds the book (or got it directly from A), reads it, enters the BCID into the BookCrossing register and can see where the book has already been, what people think about it and also write a comment about it and how it was found. Then person B also does the same as did person A — give it away or leave it somewhere for people to find it.
It's brilliant!
The person who first registered and realeased it can track where their books have already travelled and how many people had it in their hands and what they think about it. And on the other hand the person who found it can read it for free and also see how well-travelled it already was.
I already made my account on BookCrossing and already "caught" my first book. I've left the Rendezvouz With Rama and other books in Azil for others to hunt for them.
hook out >> nap, study, feed, study, start reading the book I found, sleep...
Dans sm po dougm cajtu spet igral Powermango. Ob poplavi raznoraznih 3d streljačin, skoraj realnih strategij, in raznoraznih drugih iger, kjer je za kontrolo potrebno imeti usaj 6 rok in tri tipkovnice, mi je prov zapasal mal igrat kaj bolj old-school.
Powermanga je vertikalni shoot-em-up. Torej ti si vesoljska ladja, sovrazniki pa prihahjo vecinoma od zgoraj navzdol, proti tebi, ti pa streljaš navzgor (in malo tudi v strani) in jih poskušaš vse pobiti. Ker ima igra ogromno izboljšav, raznih novih orožij, novih ladij, ‘guardianov’ in podobnih igračk se je še dolgo ne naveličaš. Tudi nivojev je veliko, umes so pa še (kot se za stare igrice spodobi) razni ‘bossi’, ki jih je kr precej težko premagat, še posebej če nimaš dobrega orožja.
A few days ago ISO announced that the the two ISO and IEC technical boards rejected all four appeals to the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 — these were from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela (the latter I forgot to mention before because it came quite late).
At the same time it announced the publication of the final ISO/IEC DIS 29500 text to occur within the next few weeks.
Sprobu sm ze kr ene par youtube downloaderjev in podobnega crapa, razne plugine za firefox in podobn crap, ampak edini ki deluje tako kot mora (usaj po mojem misljenju) je clive.
Zadeva je spisana v pythonu, torej mislm da bi lahk bla kr precej portabilna. Use kar je treba narest je samo zagnat (v terminalu) `clive <youtube link>`, in program sam poisce ce obstaja high-qualitiy verzija (ponavadi mp4), ce pa ne, pa povlece kar .flv. Hitrosti so tud kr precej velke, sicr se u screenshotu ne vid, sam po parih sekundah kr doseze nekih 600kbps (torej zgornja meja moje 5mbit povezave).
Večina Pidgin userjev, ki uporablja MSN protokol, se je najbrž že soočila z dvema večjima problemoma.
Ni statusnih sporočil (podnickov? nevem kako se temu reče po windowsasko)
Počasen prenos podatkov
Ocitno so pidgin developerji bli mal zadrgnjeni, in enga developerja niso prevec uposteval, in zato, tipično za linux sceno, je ta developer naredil svoj fork
Torej, na google-code strani najdemo source, in tudi binaryje (za lamerje) Zadeva je tudi v gentoo porage-u. In ja… statusi se vidjo lepo sicr je to v pidginu malo moteče (ker je nick lista precej bolj natrpana s tekstom), ampak še zmeraj bolje kot prej, ko se jih ni videlo sploh.
Dcc? nazalost se zmeraj ne Bo pa … nekoc (upam). Trenutno gre transfer se vedno prek M$jevih serverjev, in je zato omejen na ~5kbps (ce majo serverji dober dan, kar je pri microsoftovih redkost)
Dans sm mal brsku po netu, isku mal tipkovnce ksne (happy hacking, das keyboard, etc), in naleteu na Space-cadet keyboard.
Normalna tipkovnca ma tri ‘posebne’ tipke, s katerimi spremenis namembnost tip, torej Alt(Gr), shift pa control. Space-cadet jih ma SEDEM! (control, meta, hyper, super, shift, front, top). torej lahko istocasno napises mali ‘l’, veliki ‘L’, malo in veliko lambdo, in se dvostrano puscico (poglej si vikipediin link spodaj. Torej nic vec \Lambda, \Rightleftarrow ipd, ampak le dve tipki.
Zanimiv je tudi en stavek z wikipedije: “Many users were actually willing to memorise the command meanings of that many characters if it reduced typing time (this attitude shaped the interface of Emacs).
Zanimiv bi blo kj tazga dobit pa met v muzeju za obcasno igranje (ce je slucajno ze nimamo pa kje v ksni omari nabira prah na sebi).
Jap, še en ‘Sir’ je med nami… le da je ta pingvin. Ime mu je Nils Olav. Najbolj zanimivo je pa še to, da to ni ‘originalni’ Nils, ampak so ga umes zamnjal z novim, mlajšim pinvinom, ker je stari umrl.
We should start making “real world”, more like a game. The term she coined for this is “Reality UX”
1997 Movie - The Game, staring Michael Douglas
Consumer Recreation Service, their moto is “Make your life … fun”. A lot of people were inspired by this movie, in year 2001 four different companies started prototyping real world games that were inspired by this movie.
Reality is broken
68% Americans report playing games in last two week
92% kids under 18 play games every week
People feel that they’re not good at their life.
WoW example
Lots of people are there to help me. When I wake in the morning, there are not many allies that try to help me, I don’t get constant feedback, missions. I don’t get constant feedback how amazing I am.
The WoW wiki - second largest wiki in the world, just after Wikipedia.
People who edit this wiki feel really smart and produce something of a value to other readers.
Games work better than reality
1) Better instructions; clear goals and you know when you succeeded, a great framework for when you acomplish things
2) Better feedback; you get sense to be grounded in cause and effect
3) Better emotions;
4) Better community; we agreed to play by the same rules, we buy into methodology of the game etc. Secretly deep down we’re all happy that we’re collaborating.
“We are witnessing what amounts to no less than a global mass exodus to virtual world and other online gaming environments.”
— Economist Edward Castranova
It’s a quality of life problem
And quality of life is just another way of saying “user experience of reality”.
So what is the future of reality UX?
In order to see forward, we need to look at least twice as much back, as we want to see to the future.
3k years ago, the first description of games. Sheep’s knuckles turned into dice.
What humans crave
1) Satisfying work to do
2) The experience of being good at something
3) Times spent with people we like
4) The chance to be a part of something bigger
These four things are hardwired into our human brains.
Book ideas:
Authentic Happiness - Marting Seligman
Happiness - Richard Layard
Against happiness - Eric. G. Wilson
Are UX designers in the happiness business?
A future forecast (2013): the rise of the happiness engineers
Quality of life becomes the primary metric for evaluating interactive, service, environments, and experiences
Communities form around different visions of a real life worth living.
Good user experience is defined as a measurable increase in real happiness, or well-being - the new capital.
By 2013, Reality UX design, will be the cutting edge of this happiness engineering.
Alternate Reality Gaming
Oxford English Dictionary for Science fiction citations. [Really cool geeky resources]
My car is a video game; real time feedback on driving, so Prius is really cool game.
Chore Wars - a real life game
Nike Plus
Zyked - hybrid video games and recreations
PlusOneMe, where you can give people strengths points and level them up in kindness, creativity, etc.
SharkRunners - trackers and sensing device on sharks, so when you play online, you play with and against sharks
Social networking collar for dogs. Massively multiple-dog game.
Trackstick - takes GPS reading where you are, and creates incredible maps
Book suggestion
Here comes everybody. Clay Shirky - The power of organizing without organizations
We will harness our cognitive surplus. 100 million mental hours to create Wikipedia. This is 5 days of World of Warcraft. It’s also 4 episodes of American Idol; alternatively it’s 1 season of American Idol votes.
We will increasingly operate within an economy of engagement.
So what’s important
Reality is broken
Games work better
You, the UX designers, are our best hope if you choose to harness the power of the games.
Ker imam 25. zjutraj izpit, se tega SMS-a žal ne bom mogel udeležiti, mi pa to ne preprečuje da zaspamam še tle in nardim mal reklame za SMS.
Kaj je SMS? SMS je Improvizacijski longform.
Če ste kdaj bli na impro ligi (med sezono, ob nedeljah zvečer v kudu), potem veste kako izgledajo impro. Torej, določijo se neka osnovna pravila discipline, moderator pobere predloge iz publike, in improvizatorji imajo nek kratek omejen čas da iz predloga naredijo nek prizor/dogodek/etc. Prizori trajajo nekaj minut (ponavadi 1, 3, ali 4).
Pri SMS-u je koncept podoben, le da je vse skupaj malo povečano, raztegnjeno, in (upam da) boljše Samih “pravil”, kot so pri impro ligi, in ki bi omejevala nastopajoče ni. Torej nastopajoči improviztorji lahko zgodbo peljejo kamor oni hočejo. Velika razlika je tudi da SMS, za razliko od ’standardnega’ impra traja dlje časa (precej dlje, torej je bližje ‘pravi’ predstavi, kot 3minutnemu prizoru). Seveda je pa tudi potreben predlog publike (v zadnjih dveh SMS-ih mislim da je to bil _prostor_ kjer se nastopajoči srečajo), ki se pa ne pobere s pomočjo moderatorja ki teče gor in dol med publiko, ampak gledalci pošljejo SMS sporočilo, na neko izbrano številko, in najboljši predlog se potem sprejme.
Torej, vabljeni v KUD France prešeren, v nedeljo, 24. 8. 2008. Prireditev naj bi bila v sklopu trnfesta (usaj tako je bilo povedano meni).
Writers strike rumors, Viacom started suing YouTube uploaders, etc.
Old clips were in an archive that was designed as a stand-alone application, even though it was a web page.
The scale of The Daily Show show
1996-2008
1,400+ episodes
10,000+ video clips
Core responsibility, to connect the people to the content
Know your content
Old news is not news anymore, but give it a decade and it becomes history. This you can thread out through the time, etc.
Old Media vs. New Media
Knowing your content is something that differentiates New Media from Old Media.
How did they do it
16 Writers to tag the whole history
12 Video Encoders
Two shifts
Over 15,000 tags
It took about 16k human hours just to go through the content
There are three important things
Depth - a sheer volume that is important to the user
Date - organizing principle of the show; Wayback randomizer, really accessible way to find something random from the archives
The show is lots of “desk sitting”, to overcome the problem, they added “quote overlay”, over the video which tells you what the video is about, and has a big play button.
Topic - tags
Each video is embedable so audiences can use it in their own ways.
They record videos since it’s easier to explain to new users.
Confluences of trends that they have to think about when designing a service
Gas prices
Education members about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Urban Living
More people living in urban area then ever before. Cities in US are vitally important to lifestyles.
About 40% percent of global population is living in a city, and in 20 years this number will grow to 60%. It’s a worldwide trend.
Sustainability
People are more concerned about greener and sustainable lifestyles. Living green is a big issue for consumers now.
Example: hybrid only parking spaces
Self-service
The ATM started this, but with Internet things like Netflix become commonly available service. Even self-service checkout option at the grocery stores.
Zipcar mission statement - to enable simple and responsible urban living
People aren’t really in love with their car, they’re really in love with the freedom that this car gives them. So the goal is to give as much freedom to the users as possible.
It’s all built on self-service built user community.
Five core values in place:
Be a Zipster: develop a sense of belonging and an unparalleled user experiences for our membership community
Keep it Simple: We win through simplicity and continuos innovation
[and three more, less important for this presentation]
Another cool slogan: Selling car ownership - one hour at a time
Every Zipcar takes 15-20 personally owned cars off the road. It also means that you save about 600 dollars a month.
The Zipcar Experience - Behind the Scenes
Philosophy - the experience is the brand.
What back office tools and infrastructure is needed to be able to provide such experience to the front-office, it’s something that’s always on mind.
They have 225k members randomly using 6k vehicles. Bad things happen, a lot.
Approach
Traditional product marketing replaced with experience team
Member feedback and input
Internal alignment on priorities
Strengthen social contract members
Social contract with members
6 simple rules → member education
The brand is about freedom, not about cars .
The brand is the total experience and the experience is everything
Core values that drive a culture of high performance service
It takes a commitment to the experience approach from leadership - to make the hard choices
Video recordings of all sessions at Wikimania 2008 appeared at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina site a few days ago. Among others was also the video of my talk about the technology behind Wikitag, the in-text link generation system I developed at Zemanta.
Unfortunately the videos are only provided in form of pretty large MPEG-2 files and the site seems pretty slow. So I've uploaded my video to YouTube for more convenient viewing. It's split into three parts and a small part of the recording is missing for some reason (which may be for the best, because now you can't see my futile attempt at pitching Zemanta service to Wikipedians).
Somehow I can’t make a really good notes from Neo-futurists presentation, so here’s one of the short videos from them, which is still really enjoyable:
Word 97 - 1024×765 (1996) - Toolbars: 18 (added clippy); people used to describe it as bloat
Word 2000 - 1024×765 (1999) - Toolbars: 23 (reducing the perception of bloat)
- IntelliMenu; the menus are too long, we can shorten them. But instead of shorting them we can just hide the things in the menu. But to make it extra tricky to the user, we’re intertwine the showed and hidden. On top of that, the computer learns how to arrange the visible/invisible menu.
- Rafting; all the menu items that wouldn’t fit, fell of the screen
- It proved out to not work really well
Word 2002 - 1024×768 (2001) - Toolbars: 30
- Created the Task pane (the right column). Since anyone couldn’t find anything in the menu, they added the things into right column.
Word 2003 - 1024×768 (2003) - Toolbars: 31
Word 1 - 50 menu items to 300 in the end.
Menus and toolbars we designed for less full-featured programs. The feature set of Office had grown and stretched the existing UI to full limits.
A new UI was needed .. To reawaken the soul of software
The Design process of Office 2007
Part 1: The Art part - Research
People have an emotional relationship with their computer.
They learned from “real people”. Video, visiting, interviews etch.
The fish - Framework for understanding the different kinds of feelings that people had at the overall using the office.
When people are frustrated, why are they frustrated. Which of the factors are important and which less.
Revelation: The sense of mastery of our software was gone
We don’t know just what the software is capable of, but we actually understand how to go around it.
Science: The Role of Data
Over 3 billion (anonymous) data sessions collected from Office users
Every month, tracked 150 million command button clicks in Word
Tracked nearly 6000 individual data points
We couldn’t have done this without the data
The data doesn’t lie
Part 2: Design tenets
Design tenets - a set of principles that your team believes in, and it allows your team to have a shared goal.
Igor Stravinsky - [I feel] a sort of terror when, finding myself before the infinitude of possibilities that present themselves, I have the feeling that everything is permissible…
…If nothing offers me any resistance, then any effort is inconceivable, and consequently every undertaking becomes futile.”
[Showing Office 2007 UI Design Tenets]
Design tenets have to be religion
Part 3: Prototypes
Created hundreds of discrete prototypes
Conceptual prototypes
Designed to explore a few key concepts deeply (as opposed to broadly)
Part 4: Evaluation Is it Good or not
Standard Usability Tests - give you a good sense of what someone’s first 30-90 minutes turn out. But it’s different from the other users.
Longitudinal Usability Tests - Weeks or months of observing users. Singular most usable usability testing tool.
Eye Tracking - “special monitor that watches you”. It turns out that users mouse is in a totally different spot that what the user looks at. Heat map and screen gazing.
From initial design to final product - ITERATION
Iteration Built Into the Product Cycle - Planning to iterate. From product schedule to changes in code that allowed late prototype
Happy ending
The attention to Design Pays Off. Lots of awards and people buying the software at 2x the size of the earlier versions.
Often people assume it’s someone in a small organizations, or just starting their careers. But she’s actually thinking of a state of mind, rather than the situation.
Working with interesting constraints, that created opportunities and makes our work [of UX designers] interesting.
Humble origins, we’re standing at the crossroads at what we’re doing now, and what we’re doing in the future. The best we can do is to make the best of it.
It’s all about people, but the process matters too
Caring for people won’t make a good experience, but it’s the process.
Stakeholdeers -> Planning -> Saying No -> Looking at content
It’s not just about a process, but having a right process.
[Leah tells her life story]
Things are changing
Five tips for the team of one, involving:
Lightweight tools - get comfortable with pen and paper. Pen and paper is important, because it signals to other people that this is the part where it’s allowed other people to give feedback
Collaboration - Think big pictures. Put things on the wall, and create space for conversations to emerge - http://tinyurl.com/sketchboards
Be a good host - Open our doors to brainstorming to other people who are not UX designers. Allow other people to start sharing. Every single one has an opinion how it should be done, and it’s going to come out at one point or other. Better earlier than ever.
Decorate your space - show your work as you work on it. People think of design as a finished product and don’t understand that it’s a process and that they’re important part of the process.
Clarify UX goals - Business needs + User needs = Design criteria.
We all know that it’s not enough to have business needs, or just user needs. A great user experience it’s something that tangible and draws us to get back.
V tale post me je spodbudila Elenina kolumna na Vesti. Glede opisane problematike imam tudi lastno izkušnjo, ki bi jo rad opisal z namenom, da širni Sloveniji odprem oči. Včasih imam občutek, da smo tako zaslepljeni…
Zgodba se začne z velikim naključjem, ki je rodilo še večje. Preko kolega, ki sem ga spoznal v študentskem domu sem nekako prišel v Srbijo (fant je po mami Slovenec, vendar živijo v Srbiji). To so bili večinoma žurerski izleti, na katerih nas je navduševalo predvsem poceni pivo, odličen roštilj in seveda pregovorno lepe ženske. Na enem od teh izletov sem spoznal Natašo. Naključje je rodilo simpatijo, ta je prerasla v zaljubljenost in tako naprej. Najprej je izgledalo, da se bo zgodba, tako hitro kot se je začela, tudi končala. A iskrica je bila dovolj močna in z njimi frekventnost mojih obiskov pri južnih sosedih. Moram priznat, da na začetku nekako nisem mogel razumeti, zakaj je bilo na drugi strani večkrat začutiti odlašanje z začetkom postopka za pridobivanje vize….. dokler tega nisem izkusil tudi na lastni koži….
Postopek izgleda približno takole. Prosilec mora najprej poklicati na posebo telefonsko številko, kjer mu izredno neprijazna in neuslužna telefonistka dodeli termin za oddajo vloge, ki je tipično približno slab mesec po klicu. Vsakršno vprašanje je ponavadi po hitrem postopku nesramno zavrnjeno, tako da je pridobivanje informacij o potrebnih dokumentih precej težavno. Čez kakšen teden na dom prispe pošiljka z obrazcem in seznamom potrebnih dokumentov. Seveda je nujno priložiti garantno pismo, saj je brez njega pridobitev vize nemogoča. Poleg izpolnjenjega obrazca in garantnega pisma je potrebno vlogi priložiti polico zdravstvenega zavarovanja za željeno obdobje bivanja v Sloveniji. Poleg tega je potrebno plačati takso v višini 35€, ki je v primeru zavrnitve vloge ne povrnejo. Nato počasi pride dan predaje papirjev. Ob določeni uri prideš pred veleposlaništvo, kjer že čaka približno 10 sotrpinov. Nesramni varnostniki na vhodu te pustijo čakati pred vhodom kljub morebitnemu peklenskemu soncu, nevihti ali snegu. Oddajo vloge na okencu tipično spremljajo ponižujoča vprašanja tipa: “…. a šta če vam 40 dana dana u Sloveniji?” ali pa “… a ko vam dodje on(garant)?” in podobno. Kakšna vprašanja ponovno niso mogoča, saj je referent skrit za približno 10cm debelim steklom, z njim pa komunicirate samo preko domofona, katerega seveda vestno izklaplja. Edini odziv druge strani je majhen pildek, na katerem je potrdilo o oddaji vloge in datum prevzema potnega lista. Sledi nekajdnevno čakanje. Na dan, ko poteka prevzem potnih listov se moraš ponovno zglasiti pred veleposlaništvom. Tokrat gre vse skupaj bolj živalsko, saj ob isti uri naročijo po moji oceni cca. 100 ljudi, ki se brez kakršnega koli reda prerivajo pred vhodom tudi dobro uro. Gužva, pekoče sonce, razgret asfalt, živčne pripombe negotovih prosilcev. Ko končno prideš na vrsto, greš do okenca po potni list in če imaš srečo si že na poti proti Evropi. Žal ni vedno vse rožnato. Možno je, da je vloga brez obrazložitve zavrnjena, ali pa kljub popolni vlogi bivanje ni odobreno v željeni dolžni. Seveda ponovno brez kakršnekoli obrazložitve. Tako gre lahko v nič tako zdravstveno zavarovanje, ki se sklene za točno določene dni, kot tudi taksa. Da ne govorimo o dveh ali več poteh v Beograd (če recimo prihajaš iz Niša to pomeni cca. 200 km v eno smer). Nama konkretno se je zgodilo ravno to. Brez kakršnegakoli utemeljenega razloga so izdali vizo za krajši čas od zaprošenega.
Podobna zgoba se mi je zgodila pred kratkim, ko smo zaprosili za dovoljenje za bivanje v RS z namenom opravljanja prostovoljnega dela (za Natašo so odobrili projekt Evropske prostovoljne službe), le da je bila tokrat še neprimerno bolj stresna, živčna in začinjena še z nekoliko več hudimi besedami… Na koncu se je sicer vse skupaj dobro končalo, vendar je bilo po mojem mnenju za to porabljene veliko preveč (predvsem negativne) energije.
Ko sem vse to doživljal, sem se spraševal, zakaj je vse to potrebno. Konec koncev smo bili toliko let v isti državi. Kakorkoli je že bilo, smo le skupaj ustvarjali svojo prihodnost. Strinjam se, da je srbska politika naredila marsikaj. Vendar niso edini. Zločini so se dogajali na vseh straneh in prav nihče ni poklican, da o tem sodi in pretekla dejanja izkorišča za svoje (večinoma politične) cilje.
Moje izkušnje z Srbi in Srbijo so fenomenalne. So prijazni, gostoljubni in srčni ljudje. Sploh Slovence (kljub vsem) vedno toplo sprejmejo. Nikoli mi ni bilo jasno, zakaj na njih gledamo kot na barbare. Ravno tako so ljudje, ki si želijo mirnega in kvalitetnega življenja.
Zelo me je začudilo, ko so me po vrnitvi iz enega od mnogih izletov spraševali, če sem še živ, če mi je kdo kaj hotel, če sem se vsak dan tepel in podobne neumnosti. Tja sem namreč odšel slab teden po požigu Slovenske ambasade spomladi letos. Ljudem nikakor ni bilo jasno, da sem se svobodno sprehajal po ulicah, govoril Slovensko, ponosno povedal iz kje sem in ga po nočnih lokalih žural v družbi domačinov….
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