most of you are average

much needed break

r2d4 — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:16:17 +0000

Leaving a job today, going to nyc tomorrow, starting a new job on Monday. May be a few days before I get back to blogging, as I have other priorities. Plus, judging from the role and responsibilities at the new job I think I will only be able to post 1x per day, which is what it is.

psychic fraud

r2d4 — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:33:26 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Awesome TED talk, brought to you by the impunity of scam artists in the face of higher education.

boarding pass fail

r2d4 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:07:47 +0000

Loving this site because I wasn’t sure if I was the only person that did stuff like this when I was bored/frustrated at the status quo of information design. Best part is the resulting visual conversation that emerged from the widely acknowledged need for the boarding pass overhaul, which is surprisingly carrier agnostic. I love how the process is revealed from rough sketches to finished design to someone adding the most personal of touches (necessary with a crowded market of identical offerings) below. Via Core77.

50 data visualizations

r2d4 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:26:14 +0000

I don’t remember which Twitter feed led me to this site but it’s definitely worth spending some time on based on variety alone. When it comes to infographics there are plenty of sites dedicated to them, such as graphjam and flowingdata, but few recognize and acknowledge the legacy of geographic maps, newspapers, and textbooks from which they originate. Little more than visual shorthand for displaying data sets these have become increasingly important as of late due to the scale of data points in the cases of finance and the environment. We all heart it when people get witty (or use super clean graphics) in order to enforce their point though.

reposting postings

r2d4 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:01:40 +0000

I accidentally deleted a bunch of stuff from last week due to sleep deprivation. Good news is that they were online long enough to be cached by Google (which is awesome/scary), and were easy to recover. Bad news is that the text formatting is shot to shit for some reason and my color/content rhythm is similarly affected. But it’s better than a complete loss I suppose…..wordpress recovery tips were easy to find here.

unhappy hipsters

r2d4 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:54:07 +0000

Unable to complete another painting, he surrendered to the realization that he was truly…madly…deeply in love—with plywood.

I couldn’t write snarky captions like the one above all day long to save my life. I hate to admit it but I am completely hooked on the Unhappy Hipsters website (you can skip their twitter feed, little more than a RSS), which riffs on the absurdity of uber-modern spaces. It’s hard to describe the humor but it’s one part design school and another Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Sprinkle some yuppie loving mirror-rage over the top and you have the recipe.

flyfire, the future of fireworks

r2d4 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:53:19 +0000

Sure, this was all over the interwebs a few weeks ago but it has taken me time to re-post because I needed to process it a bit. There are some obvious limitations, first of which being the large scale required in order to make this effective, secondly the battery life in order to make it feasible for long enough to create discernible formations, and third, environmental variables such as wind complicate things. Computing power (insert cloud pun here) wouldn’t really be an issue since the signals would include not much more than: x/y/z coordinates, light intensity/color, battery life, and motor strength/speed.

Click here to view the embedded video.So what about the Flyfire project bothers me? It’s the limitations, at least in the near future, for this display system to be used for anything other than entertainment purposes. Each LED enabled helicopter acting as an independent pixel is remarkable, although it requires precision and synchronization. I did see the perfect application in the next 3-5 years; fireworks which require little precision and can be viewed at a distance which allows the helicopters to be much larger in size which affords greater control. Still a sweet little concept project from SENSEable City Laboratory, as seen on various sites including Giz and Cpluv.

too busy….

r2d4 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:21:55 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

To even blog today–preparing for a new job with HR and all that is a total pain in the ass that probably keeps people from moving around more than anyone would care to admit. In the meantime enjoy ‘97 polysiloxane hoses,’ the latest sound installation by Zimoun. Little more than plastic hoses that are drilled through a table top with compressed air flowing through the small tubes which generates unique sounds and movements. Via TodayandTomorrow.

komoda

r2d4 — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:45:04 +0000

Kind of torn when it comes to blogging about uber-mod architecture since I heart Unhappy Hipsters so much, but the work from the Komada studio is just too solid to ignore. Check out their site to take in the depth and breadth of their work, but it’s the image above that really pulled me in. It’s an understatement to say that most Modern/Post Modern spaces tend to look far too sterile, so seeing contrasting space carved out for meditation/concentration that strikes me as inviting is an awesome change of pace. Via whatwedoissecret.

2010 gti

r2d4 — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:47:33 +0000

I can’t begin to say how much I heart this new direction VW is taking the latest GTI, abandoning that psuedo-audi grille that seemed ill proportioned on that tiny little frame. The touch of color still works for it, and I find it nicely refined along with the split grill approach. I’m a fan of the move from the curvilnear styling to something with some nice edges that gently draft away from the headlights. As a nod to where they are taking things I’m interested to see what the 2011 will bring to the table, like the Golf R and the new Polo.