Wednesday
October 14th 2009
12:28 am
Piano Stairs
This is a video of a really nice idea. However I could imagine the novelty for some people wearing off, and anyone who worked within earshot gradually going insane.
Sunday
October 11th 2009
2:52 pm
Spam and teaching computers to read
After my last admission of 43 comments, 40 of which were spam I decided to do something about it. I’ve installed reCAPTCHA for a try out. As well as trying to weed out spam robots, it has a novel secondary purpose of using the results to digitise books.
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.
But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
We’ll see how well it does.
Saturday
October 10th 2009
9:27 pm
The making of Digital Nostalgia: Mobile Evolution
I thought I’d take the time to write up a journey one of my university final project posters went through. When working, I’ve got into the habit of saving as a new file after every major design addition or change. The mobile phone poster had over 25 iterations by the time it reached a finished piece and here are a few of them:
First after some experimentation I decided which typefaces I’d use. Knockout was my first choice as it was condensed enough to fit into tight spaces, and I really like the slight retro feel of using it all in caps for titles. I wanted a serif for large pieces of text for easier legibility and as a contrast to the rationality of Knockout. I went with Caslon mostly out of personal preference as it’s one of my favorite serifs, with a classical edge but still very readable. Lastly I decided to add some Bodoni Poster sparingly in places as a highlight, as I just love its eccentricity and classic look. Read the rest of this entry »
Friday
October 9th 2009
6:35 pm
Photoshop browser templates and page furniture
This site is too useful not to post immediately. Browser templates for mockups with editable features for most of the current browsers (only notable one missing is Chrome) over a range of platforms as well as form elements, all in handy photoshop files.
Friday
October 9th 2009
3:15 pm
Threadless <3
It’s always exciting to get a threadless order arrive in the post, generally because I ordered it over a month earlier and completely forgot about it. The £12 customs charge was a much less pleasant surprise but with the sale on, it works out £8 each a t-shirt which really isn’t too bad at all. My latest haul:
The attention to detail on the tags is nice:
Friday
October 9th 2009
3:09 pm
Thursday
October 8th 2009
2:15 am
The first month
Well I’ve had this blog running one month so far and in that time I’ve had over 300 visits (probably half of them mine) 800 pageviews and the most popular post has been the car game interfaces one.
Firefox is overwhelmingly the most popular browser used on this site, and Windows users just beat out Macs. I’ve had 43 comments, and 3 of them were not spam, and that dipsy viral seeding company got back in touch to remind me about their stupid video and obviously didn’t read the post I made about them.
I’ve got a bit of work going on now but really I don’t think I can post any examples here until they’ve been fully signed off by the client. I’ve got a few posts in mind showing off my final degree project with all the different iterations it went through and hopefully that will inspire me to create an independent site for it for some publicity and maybe a print run if there is a measured interest and I have the finances.
Also tonight I had the hiccups for probably the first time in over a decade and the first cure linked on google actually worked.
Also I need to fix the monthly archive pages.
Thursday
October 1st 2009
11:20 pm
Hardware Packaging
Had to pull the graphics card out of someone’s computer today and it got me thinking about the trend of hardware manufacturers going completely over the top when packaging or marketing these products. I say trend but I can’t remember a time when this wasn’t the case. It’s only fairly recently that graphics cards have evolved from a plain circuit board to being wrapped in a protective case which has given manufacturers the chance to splash about even more of their horrendous creations. Now I think I might have spotted a hole in the market, as there doesn’t seem to be any graphics card companies that don’t feature dragons, elf princesses or giant evil robot dogs on the packaging or device itself. Last time I bought a graphics card, I spent ages shopping around just to get a card with no external decoration at all. My computer is out of sight under my desk, there isn’t a window in the case or anything, so no one would see that I had a graphics card with laser dinosaurs on the front, but I wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of knowing. Although it still came in a box with some kind of wizard man on the front.
Wednesday
September 30th 2009
10:20 pm
Confessional
I’m feeling compelled to update this blog everyday now. Today I was waiting in Specsavers to get my glasses readjusted as theyre wearing holes in my nose and I came across Specsavers Magazine. Now every page and I mean EVERY page has one or multiple pictures of glasses on. I dunno why this would surprise me but flicking through it, I just felt visually assaulted by the tremendous quantity of fashionable eye-wear directed at my attention. Then I saw this one picture of some metal type that just screamed out to me.
Wednesday
September 30th 2009
1:22 am
Vulcan Poster
Knocked this up tonight, was originally just going to do the vector drawing but got carried away learning how to do distress effects in Illustrator. I suspect as with most things, the more subtle the better so I’ll tone them down a bit for future efforts. Also the drawing I traced off an RAF plan and it was wrong – one wing was shorter than the other, so either the RAF has wonky plans or the plane came out of the factory lop sided. Made in Britain indeed.
I angled it going top left to bottom right as it’s supposed to give it an unnerving, slightly depressing feel, as opposed to the other diagonal which is meant to be uplifting. I started originally with a crosshair, which turned to a roundel, but then it looked a bit moddish, so I went with the anti-flash faded roundel, on a white background too so it looks a bit like its on the side of a dirty scuffed up plane. Also makes me think of the nuclear payload it could be carrying.
