Eastbound Subway
A frontrow seat on an eastbound TTC subway ride from the Bathurst to Greenwood.
One frame every two seconds, handheld and all super-8y. I must get one of those plunger-style tripods because stuck to the door window and covered in black is probably a better way to capture the dark tunnel.
Queen East Commute - South Facing
Another westbound ride from the east side: before Jones to Sherbourne on Toronto’s famous 501 Queen car. This time south-facing and without interruption.
Feel free to embed and distribute on your blog just like the other one. If you’re curious as to how it was made, I used the movie timelapse mode of my Canon Powershot SD850 IS.
Shady UI
Kind of funny how OS X looks when you open a few dozen EPS files at a time. Shadow on shadow on shadow.
Queen East Commute
A westbound ride from the east side: Jones to Sherbourne on Toronto’s famous 501 Queen car.
One frame per second with a bit missing from the middle when I readjusted the camera. Check the last few frames for the guy near Sherbourne spotting the camera and then ducking.
Back the !*@# up
During last week’s heat wave my iMac began to act really strangely. Hiccups appeared, slowdowns took hold and eventually video artefacts scrambled the entire screen. I connected my recently replaced backup drive and Time Machine kicked in. I took this photo which kind of reminds me of when action movie stars walk away all nonchalantly from explosions.
The backup was successful and oddly, once the heatwave died down, the iMac returned to normal. I’m only halfway through my warranty, but I know that I will soon have to haul all twenty-four inches of it in for repair.
Quantifying Feedback
One of the challenges companies face when they are developing a new product is incorporating user feedback into development. It’s often easy to get users to describe what they would like to see in a product, but when the suggestions number into the hundreds, and in Google’s case, the thousands, triaging the feedback becomes a nightmare.
This morning I was frustrated by Google Calendar’s colouring scheme. I can select a similars colours for calendars that are related, which is great, but for some strange reason the calendars I maintain are more pale than the calendars I subscribe to. That means visually my calendars are less important than other people’s calendars. Depending on the path you have chosen for your life, this is a problem. I decided to submit some feedback and came across this feedback page:
Partial screenshot of Google Calendar quanitifiable feedback page
While there was a option to suggest “Customize Google Calendar’s color scheme”, my feedback was more specific than this. But in a way it did allow me to express a problem which can be addressed by a redesign of the colour selection. It’s an interesting route to take when you are faced with an unmanageable amount of valuable feedback.
Radiolab’s genius made my brain pee its pants
It’s strange for a science-themed radio show to evoke both memories of Radiohead and Stereolab, but WNYC’s Radiolab does just that. Like those bands, Radiolab is both cerebral and sonic. Imagine if a band like The Books produced a radio show with a mandate to dissect the human condition. Thanks to the convenience of modern technology, this show which airs locally in New York on Fridays at 3pm on 93.9 FM, is also available as a Podcast.
I have been listening to it during my 25-minute commute to Idée for a few weeks and it is pure mind-bending genius. Scientific streams of consciousness flow beautifully along singular themes like Deception or Laughter. As if the content of the show was not engaging enough, the sound construction is dizzying. Field recordings scrambled with interviews, narrative, musical punctuations all serving the show’s theme beautifully. Seriously, you have to listen to this podcast. And because it’s such a sonic experience, I really do recommend grabbing the best pair of headphones you can get your hands on to best enjoy the ride.
Producing Flash video screencasts on a Mac
It’s been years since producing my last screencast and I still can’t believe how difficult it is to produce a screencast on a Mac and publish in Flash (FLV) format.
Vara Software’s Screenflow is an incredibly well-designed screencasting tool. Unfortunately it only supports Quicktime export, which just doesn’t have the install-base Flash does—if it did YouTube would have happened ages ago.
Vara’s support recommended I try VisualHub which works beautifully. And for the embedded player we’re using Flowplayer. My original plan was to embed h.264 video in Flowplayer, but that codec is only available in the very very latest version of the Flash plugin.
Here are the Idée screencasts:
What’s happening with Mail.app?
It’s things like this that make me pine for Eudora.
Apple’s email client has two ways to tell you that there is mail activity, but no way to tell you who, what, and how many. Maybe I was dreaming but pretty much most email clients I have used in the past tell you:
- Message traffic count (i.e. Incoming message 3/5)
- From email address
- Name and size of attachment
They also have a cancel button for cancelling outgoing mail. While there is a button for this in Mail.app, I’ve never seen it work.
Am I missing something?
Facebook bigger than God, Jesus
A recent search on Google Trends reveals that to the Googlers among us, Facebook is now bigger than Jesus, and even God himself.
The Father and Son powerhouse of biblical fame were surpassed by the social utility just before Christmas 2006. While Jesus appears to be more than capable to “take on his old man” in search volume, God the father continues to maintain a commanding lead in media coverage over both Jesus and Facebook.
