Candid Hands

Posted on January 30, 2007

Amy and Jeff told me of a picture they saw at the store where they bought their weddings rings. After describing it to me, I tried to recreate it for them, and this is the result. I hope you like it.

Villains

Posted on January 29, 2007

I was riding to soccer practice with my good friend and fellow film-aficionado Chris, when we stumbled upon the topic of movie villains, and how sometimes the villains are so much cooler than the good-guys. Then I asked Chris, “Was there ever a film in which you wanted the bad-guy to win?”

After some deep soul-searching and setting aside our moral convictions, we decided that one such example was Bruce Willis’ character in the film The Jackal. Despite being a cold-blooded, non-idealogical assassin-for-hire, there was just something about this brilliant, ultra-slick and deadly villain that made you cheer for him throughout the whole movie. We decided that is partly due to the fact that it is nearly impossible for any character portrayed by Bruce Willis to not be really cool.

Finally, after some more deep-thought and brain-cell stretching, we decided that movies in which you end up rooting for the bad guy almost always star the bad-guy as the main character. You see, even though the character is morally nefarious, the story focuses on him, forcing the viewer to perceive him as the protagonist. Since almost every other film’s story revolves around the good-guy protagonist, we automatically link the main character of any story with the qualities of a good-guy. Additionally, we form a relationship with the evil main-character. We see many sides of his well-developed character, and no matter how evil he is, we relate in some way or another. This is opposite of a normal protagonist v. antagonist plot-line. In normal plots, the good-guy protagonist is very well developed and thus can be easily liked by the audience. In these plots, the bad-guy antagonist is often left somewhat mysterious– only his dark-side is revealed, making it easy for the audience to dislike him. This lends credence to the old saying, “He’s really not a bad guy, just misunderstood”

“Real Reasons” for Space Exploration

Posted on January 29, 2007

Why do humans (and more specifically, Americans) place so much value in space travel and exploration? The answer is hard to explain, but in a speech given at the Quasar Award Dinner in Houston last week, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin differentiated between “acceptable” (or logical) and “real” (or not-so-logical but most-compelling) reasons we desire to explore the depths of space.

Real Reasons are intuitive and compelling to all of us, but they’re not immediately logical. They’re exactly the opposite of Acceptable Reasons, which are eminently logical but neither intuitive nor emotionally compelling. The Real Reasons we do things like exploring space involve competitiveness, curiosity and monument building.

Griffin likened the work put into space exploration to great medieval cathedrals of Europe and the ancient pyramids of Egypt– projects of monumental size begun by men who knew they’d not live to see the final product.

We owe Western civilization as we know it today to that kind of thinking – the ability to have a constancy of purpose across years and decades.

A transcript of the speech can be found here. It is a fascinating and inspiring read. Enjoy.

Props to Josh Butcher for sending this to me.

Don’t Have a Fitt

Posted on January 28, 2007

A friend sent me a link to an interface-design quiz based on Fitt’s Law. More important than quizzing your design abilities, it will educate you on Fitt’s Law and what makes or breaks a good interface design (for an operating system, computer program, etc.).

Trust me. It’s more interesting than it sounds.

A Dialogue on Design, Marketing, and the iPhone

Posted on January 28, 2007

Now this is interesting. A few days ago, Pete Mortenson in the Wired.com Cult of Mac blog, wrote a rebuttal to an article written by a Whorton College professor who was criticizing the iPhone and Apple’s marketing/design strategy. Pete Fader, the college professor, later repsonded with a short and friendly note defending his position. This has opened up a very interesting dialogue. Pete Mortensen’s latest contribution is a great crash-course in design vs. marketing in the technology world, and provides some great insight into the mind of Apple, Inc.

Why People Love to Hate Apple

Posted on January 25, 2007

I find that there are three types of computer users: People who use Macs, people who use Windows PCs, and people who use Windows PCs and would like to switch to macs but are afraid to for some reason.

As a general rule, most Macintosh users are fanatics. We love our Macs because they are so superbly designed with me, the consumer, in mind, and because there is nothing else out there that matches the start-to-finish user experience of a Mac. There are some Mac users who are less enthusiastic than others, but very, very rarely do you find someone who has used a Mac for any decent length of time and dislikes the platform.

Then there is a class of people who use Windows PCs, and admit that Macintosh computers are probably better, but are too afraid to switch because Windows is what they’re comfortable with, and they’re afraid of the unknown. Or, they hold to one of many outdated opinions such as Macs are incompatible with everything else in the world or Macs are more expensive than PCs (both of which are untrue).

Finally there is there is the average Windows PC user. This group makes up most of the computing demographic. Most of them use PCs because that is the only thing they have ever known. However, every once in a while, I find a true Windows fan-boy. Or as one journalist has called herself, a “Windows Apologist”. Many of these Windows fans, for many reasons, mostly untrue and poorly conceived, despise Apple Inc. and everything they do. They refuse to buy an iPod, instead buying inferior mp3 players when they know that 62% of the market says the iPod is the best thing out there. These are the same people who are now attacking the iPhone with ridiculous attempts to curb the hype while most of the rest of smart phone useres, Apple fans or otherwise, are already thinking of creative ways to destroy their Treos, Q’s, etc. after they buy the iPhone. Why do they do this? Because they hate Apple. Why do they hate Apple, you say?

Time for the punchline….

Read more

Audio from the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest

Posted on January 24, 2007

You may or may not have heard about the death of a 28-year-old Sacramento, CA, mother who competed in a radio show contest where the one who could drink the most water while holding their bladder won a Nintendo Wii. After competing in “Hold Your Wee for a Wii”, Jennifer Strange, mother of three, died of water intoxication.

The Sacramento Bee has audio excerpts from the show where the DJs talked about the possibility of dying from drinking to much water. They were even warned by concerned listeners who called in. At one point, the DJ shouts into the other room where the contest is being held, “has anyone died yet?” And the other employee replies jokingly, “One guy is about to”, to which the DJ replies “make sure he signs the release waiver”.

Morons.

Don’t listen to this unless you want to be really angry. If you’re having a good day, you may want to pass. The good news is that 10 radio station employees, including the DJs, have been fired, and local police are investigating the incident.

Don’t Miss the Next

Posted on January 23, 2007

I was talking with some friends the other day about the state of the Christian church, and we were complaining (as we often do) about it’s mis-direction– particularly that many churches now are so intensely focussed on the worship experience that they’ve forsaken other important responsibilities of the Church. I’ve mentioned that as I’ve studied History I’ve found that many of today’s movements are simply regurgitations of previous eras in church history. For example, in my little circle of friends, we feel a strong calling to resist the power of tradition and instead focus on life-giving community such as that found in the early church of the new testament. We’ve grown jaded with the traditional American church paradigm and find it to be largely ineffective compared to the more spontaneous and flexible congregational movements in other parts of the world– especially in third-world countries.

I noted that there have been other movements and groups in church History that focused on community and mimicking the early Church (for example, the English Puritans who came to America for religious freedom) but somehow lost their way. Their intentions were good, and they were following the direction of God, but somehow they either allowed the corruptibility of man infect their system, or they stayed so focused on their God-given directive that they missed what He had next. God still valued the original discipline of community, worship, etc. that his followers had developed, but He was ready to lead them to the next thing– the next level.

So I asked myself and my friends this question: have we missed what God has next? And that’s the question I ask you today. Have you been so focussed on achieving a particular spiritual goal that you’ve missed the next call? Do you feel stagnant where you’re at? Dried-up and ineffective? Then step back and evaluate your situation; and ask God to reveal to you that next thing that you may have missed.

Lesson: How to Spot a Virus

Posted on January 23, 2007

Today I almost laughed at an email virus that was sent to me (for two reasons: 1. It didn’t fool me, and 2. I don’t have to worry about viruses). I realized, however, that maybe not everyone knows how to spot an email virus. So here’s a little lesson using a real-live email I just received.

Subject: postcard

Sender: brent martin

Hi, you.ve just received a postcard.

For:
adam@nyholt.com  From: ---

Text:
Happy New Year!

Postcard:
Click on attachment to view a postcard.

ATTACHMENT: POSTCARD.ZIP
----
Pre-holidays Postcards.
http://postcards.wired2000.net/

So there you have it. Let’s analyze this little piece of malicious email sneakery:

1 . It’s from Brent Martin. I don’t know a Brent Martin. Why would someone I don’t know send me a postcard? LESSON ONE: IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE PERSON, IT PROBABLY ISN’T A RANDOM ACT OF INTERNET GENEROSITY.

2. The message is “Happy New Year”. Why would someone I don’t know send me a New Year’s greeting 22 days late? LESSON TWO: USE COMMON SENSE.

3. The message has an attachment. LESSON THREE: ATTACHMENTS FROM PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW ARE BAD. Also, most e-greeting-card companies either use embedded pictures or links to an online greeting card (see lesson two).

4. The attachment is a ZIP file. Why on earth would a greeting card be in a zip file? Only to conceal the actual contents of the file, of course. LESSON FOUR: ZIP FILE ATTACHMENTS FROM PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW ARE REALLY BAD.

So what did I do with this obviously virus-laden email? I opened the zip file of course, and out popped a little .exe file that tried to infect me. Why did I do this? Because I have a Macintosh. LESSON FIVE: BUY A MAC.

AND THIS CONCLUDES THIS FREE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

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