19
December 1999
Murray's
cheese shop on Bleeker street has a sign on the awning
that says, "this is MURRAY'S CHEESE SHOP".
It always makes me think how in a couple of years, it
will be a quaint affectation to put "click here"
on a button.
The
doctoral
thesis of one Timo
Honkela at Helsinki University of Technology. It's
entitled Self-Organizing Maps in Natural Language
Processing. So for, very interesting and well-researched...
I've been obsessing particularly on his (tangential)
hypothesis that moving beyond a set of predetermined
symbols to using continuous, unfiltered data might result
in more autonomous descriptions... In my imagination,
those relationships start to acquire a sort of dream
logic rather than anything I can work backward from
(possibly, that's the idea)...
An
accidental find: Auditory
Information Design, which freely associated itself
with Mappings
and Metaphors in Auditory Displays: An Experimental
Assessment.
How
Stuff Works.
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15
December 1999
More
chat on nudity... I'm wondering why it's lately
become acceptable to admit a fascination with the figure.
I'm not opposed to it (in fact, it's kind of nice to
own up to it), but I'm confused because it's not as
though there is a consistent message or idea behind
the presently popular works. In fact, a lot of them
seem to be straining to make painfully explicit all
sorts of messages that, while not necessarily cliché,
are not particularly inventive or relevant either...
That's ridiculous though. I s'pose nothing's actually
new... In fact, I'm sure
someone already said so, but better.
Honeywell's
user experience gets slammed. This is what I'd like
to see: As products
become digital and therefore acquire the capacity
for greater customization (a greater degree of interactivity
requires more from the user), the line between product
design and interaction / information design will become
more nebulous. We can begin designing the ergonomics
(for example) in concert with the digital interface.
That means an explicit digital interface eventually
starts to go away, and the designer is creating a physical
product to accommodate and respond to a predefined set
of possible interactions (personalization?)... Rather
than, as is presently normal, the interactions are rigidly
choreographed to match the product...
The
Inner Room.
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12
December 1999
There
is writing that starts on the back of my hands and reaches
to my elbows, detailing all the Things to Keep in Mind.
All the exceptions to error handling and all those delightful
places where we are superimposing a user interface that
parses everything into nice usable, conceptually digestible
groups that map much less than directly to a back end;
which, though elegant as a data structure, was unhappily
designed without client side users in mind... My first
mistake was washing my hands before lunch.
I'm
reading a weighty
biography of Virginia Woolf (it's very good), not
because I am particularly desperate to glean more insight
into her psyche (I enjoy her writing for what it is),
but because when I picked it up in the store, it fell
open to an excerpt of the collaborative literary efforts
of Virginia
and Vanessa
Stephen in parodying the romantic novels of the time.
It recalled the ever-expanding epic story of Suavela
and The Tall Dark Stranger, that we used to work on
during every year over Christmas vacation. Maybe this
year, it's time to illustrate that oeuvre in gingerbread...
Incidentally, I found an interesting paper
discussing the covers of the American paperback publications
of Orlando,
one of my very favorite books. I know it so well, I
can almost finish the sentences. It was a tremendous
story when I was a child and when I grew up it acquired
a lovely layer of irony. Now, to my amusement, the biography
is further illuminating a number of sly jibes at the
Bloomsbury
group (e.g. the lady Euphrosyne and Euphrosyne,
that publication featuring all those boys from "Oxbridge")
I
have been taken for a Russian twice in two days by Russian
cab drivers ("Very pretty, the women of my country."
and he tweaks my cheek) and I am childishly flattered
to be mistaken for anything but a very ordinary looking
American white girl (which I am). Unfortunately, I can't
map the Russian "type" to anything familiar.
It doesn't convey anything to me the way Malaysian or
Icelandic might... However, I will charitably credit
the Russian people (and myself) with further distinguishing
features than extremely pale skin and black circles
under the eyes.
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08
December 1999
Oh,
I was so happy to be back to my boring ordinary life
where everything is what it seems. Las
Vegas is exhaustingly self-referential. Like wandering
though a forest of mirrors and projections... But then
I had to pack up and fly away again. Here I am, laundryless
and the batteries of my laptop are faltering... I am
laundryless because I dropped my dirty clothes off even
though the laundry was closed. I lugged my giant purple
bag down and was standing there in front of the darkened
doorway trying to decide what to do next when the proprietor
signaled me with a histrionic "psst." He told
me he had someone who wanted to do my laundry. I was
intrigued so I permitted him to take my laundry. He
said to call him when I wanted to pick it up. The entire
transaction was conducted in hushed tones with a lot
of disclaimers about "this not really happening."
However, whether or not it happened, the fact remains
that I am flying off to LA for a week, short nearly
all the socks and underwear I own because the laundry
is not in the phone book, nor is there a number outside
the locked door... Blasted conveniences.
While
I walk, eat, and brush my teeth, I have been reading
and rereading The
Alexandria Quartet:
