An Ideal Evolution

Over the years the "First-Person Shooter" has suffered the stifling limits of it's own stereotypes.

Enter the first-person painter.

This would, I believe, be the most creative variation on the genre I have ever seen.

“For every problem,

there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

-- H. L. Mencken

Fate.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

-- Shakespeare (Hamlet)

Grammaculous.

Very occasionally I discover that something I have known - albeit intuitively - is true in a technical sense as well. Suffering the poor formal linguistic education quite typical of those in my genre, I have always regretified being left to my own devices to develop a crude intuitive comprehension using only teen schlock horror novels, comic books, and the subtitled complete works of Monty Python.

Returning to my original point, I am occasionally delighted to find strong technical support for a linguistic principle I had previously only understood intuitively. I present the Serial Comma.

Of course, before I get too enthusiastic, I must remind myself of my disdain for the respect and fixation by mere human beings on rule sets defined by other mere human beings. There's something belittling in being told to conform to a certain set of rules simply because "they" created them. But that's another topic.

On Comedy;

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."

-- GK Chesterton.

For the sake of balance,

I must also link to a ninja dog.

Hilarious.

Ninja Cat.

Seriously. Funniest cat-based video I've seen in ages.

Remeniscent of a particularly memorable (and genuinely unnerving) scene in El Orfanato.

"Rather than encouraging our children to study more math and science and become engineers, we're turning them into lawyers."

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2005/sb20051212_623922.htm

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Doesn't say a word about who put the "L" in it, though.

From the Wikipedia entry on "Life":

"This article is about life in general. "

"For other meanings of "life", see Life (disambiguation)."

Good to know they're keeping an open mind.

Interesting Photos From Around Perth (5)

And sometimes it's just nice to know that people won't take themselves too seriously when ripping off a well-known brand.

Interesting Photos From Around Perth (4)

Of course, sometimes it's just nice to know that funny names were once all-too-real.

Interesting Photos From Around Perth (3)

Sometimes a familiar name turns up in the strangest place.

(Though how "walking on" became a sign respect is beyond me.)

Interesting Photos From Around Perth (2)

Lord knows where he puts the glasses.

Interesting Photos From Around Perth (1)

"World's smallest construction site office."

Genius At Work.

(Though not at my work.)

Layer Tennis is a fascinating little competition run every year, usually between competing graphic designers. It explains itself, so I won't bother.
My favourite would have to be the mock-facebook:



I may have to set up such a web site.

A Constructive Dialog.

Computers irritate me. Long ago I searched for the ultimate nirvanic computing experience, though I have long since resigned myself to being irritated less.

The source of the irritation, I believe, is that computers are designed by people. Ordinary people. People like you and me (well, not like me. I wouldn't have made some of the fartblastingly stupid decisions that they have, but there you go).

The thing is, ordinary people come up with things like this:



Is this a problem? An inscrutable title, meaningless buttons, and a half paragraph of exposition? Is there a problem here? Many would say "This isn't unusual at all," and you would simply be avoiding the question - familiarity doesn't eliminate problems, it just makes them easier to ignore. The cumulative effect of poor design is an overall poor experience.

What pains me is that many such examples are actually not very difficult to solve. Twelve seconds of effort on my part produced the following:


Not particularly extraordinary (and not without it's flaws), though immediately clearer and easier to understand.

The problem, as I said, is not that these issues are difficult. Rather, it is that they are not being addressed correctly, if at all. The design decisions for each of these simple interactions with the user are falling into a black hole, and are dragging us simple users with them.

Needless to say, I am still irritated.

Hi, and welcome to Men's Hairdresser Co.

Would you like to sit in:

• Awkward silence
• Uncomfortable silence
• Stilted silence
• Disturbed silence
• Silence occasionally punctuated by shrieks and squeals from the receptionist on the phone, reminiscent of a hyena

Note: Please remain completely and utterly motionless for the duration of your haircut. As a service to our customers we actively avoid both conversation and eye contact.

English: The Global Language.

Never has it been more important to consider your marketing from as many angles as possible. There's a fine line between edgy and Just Plain Wrong, but linguistic ignorance is a poor excuse for crossing over.

TrekStor's new mp3 player, while creatively named, clearly wasn't evaluated from the point of view of anyone that speaks English particularly well. Though the gaff was quickly fixed, the reaction was reminiscent of the Nissan Pajero.

I wonder, though, if "Holden" in Chinese actually means "forbidden pleasure cavity", and how soon it will be before we (in Australia) will need to worry about such things.

I Am Saddened.

By this. Do not misunderstand; this is a glorious achievement in user interface design, and an adorable video, but I'm saddened that a phone that a child can use is a cause for celebration.

What if the same principle were applied to cars? Or cutlery?

Have we such low standards?

The Contents of this Post May Offend.

How do you know when to be offended? And, as an extension, how do you know how offended to be?

Pulp Fiction references aside, is "taking offence" at a comment out of our control? I hardly think so.

Firstly, how often do you feign or exaggerate offence so as to play what you think to be your expected role in the community? How many men actually feel that Kevin Rudd entering a strip club renders him as "morally bankrupt" as they seem to claim?

And then, how does one gauge how much offence to take? If I overhear a racist comment should I scream and holler, or just pretend it didn't happen?

(As an aside, I would have very little problem with racist jokes per se, were more of them actually funny. A colleague spent a short time calling me "Jew" in the office, while I responded with various comments about his own ancestry, though the phase was short-lived. We moved on not because either of us took offence, but because it just wasn't very funny.)

From another point of view, many comedians use racial and religious insensitivities as a part of their routine, but how do they know where to draw the line?

I'm sure all these questions can be answered in terms of context, but I find it interesting that, more often than not, many people seem to view taking offence at a comment as a "safe option". I think this is a shame, as such laziness of the mind actually lowers my opinion of their ability to think independently. One could even argue that this leads to a rise in conservatism, but I believe it simply makes genuinely offensive comments (and people) more difficult to spot.