Meta/Noise
Lots of change around here. I have a new job and Giant Ant has a new site. As part of this transition, I’ve moved my personal weblog to a new domain (http://www.decipher.org/). I’ve gone and set up some mod_rewrite rules (thank you Apache!) to redirect old Antenna posts seamlessly, but I’m sure lots of stuff will fall through the cracks. Please bear with me and if you see something messed up or missing, I’d appreciate a quick email letting me know. Thanks!
Happy Arbitrary Date-Change Day!
This consultancy sounds really cool. We’re thinking of hiring them to help us out with some stuff.
Antenna turns 5 today. Go little weblog!
We’ve always known that ants are cool. (via)
As of December 1, 2004, I am the father of Elias Owen-Savio. Eli is a beautiful, amazing boy. Photos to come once Nadav sleeps. Mmmmm…. sleeeep.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. Congratulations to all the FSMers, and well done!
ps - Here’s a nice pic of my dad back then from the Chronicle:

Since I’m going to have a son in a few months, I felt the need to stock up on sporty imagery. To that end, I just received these 3 sweet Otl Aicher posters from the ‘72 Olympics:

Well, everyone else has photos on their weblogs… sure maybe it’s a little self-indulgent, but I’ll try to keep the photos vaguely on-topic.
I’m going to Hawaii for a week and man am I looking forward to a few days off and swimming with the fishies :)
FilterCategories Plugin for Movable Type is kinda useful if you want to maintain multiple sub-categories. Or you could do it by hand if you were so inclined.
ps—Thanks to all you smart people who wrote with categorization suggestions. I’ve followed almost all of them to some extent, although it’s very much a work in progress.
I really need to slim down that list of categories over there to the minimum number (but no fewer). Anyone seen a blog with a comparable scope but a better set of categories? Or do you have suggestions for ways to combine several of the categories I have? I’d be much obliged!
I finally got around to switching over to Movable Type so’s I kin categorize all the amazing entries to this here weblog. Since the perfect’s the enemy of the good (and worse is better and all that), I went ahead and did it before making it perfect. This means my classification scheme is very much a work in progress (suggestions welcome!), and there’s sure to be stuff messed up. But well, it’s done!
Richard Anderson is giving a Workshop entitled
Addressing Organizational Obstacles to, and Achieving (Greater) Business Benefits from, User-Centered Design, Ethnographic Research, Multidisciplinary Collaboration, Usability Engineering, Information Architecture, etc.Having attended a past workshop Richard led, I can highly recommend him as an excellent teacher who knows a lot about this wordy but very important topic.
I’m asking for help.. I’m looking for favorite interfaces and best practices for browsing/searching, examining, and purchasing things like stock photos, clip art, and fonts on the web. I’m curious about all aspects, including the classification scheme used, the specific UI widgets, and the larger systems (e.g. “my lightbox”) that help people browse through a large multi-faceted collection of visual objects, examine individual items more closely, and (hopefully) find what they need. Even if you just have a favorite site, but can’t say what exactly you like about it, I’d love to hear.
Recent recipients of my attention:



The street finds its own uses for technology: GPS Drawing
Antenna aims to please, you aim too, please: How to use Japanese style toilet
um, and if you can’t get enough, here’s the rather focused author’s Tokyo Toilet Map
If you want to spread the seeds of love and peace in the world, you might consider downloading and posting IEEHA’s Peace stickers.
I promised myself I wouldn’t start posting disaster porn and political stuff here, but I just have to say that this kind of stupidity makes me want to cry.
I’m back from “up north.” I won’t burden you with a whole lot of pictures and long descriptions of all the fun I had, but I will say that the Mt. Shasta area is well worth the drive from San Francisco: 5 days, 5 caves, 4 waterfalls, 3 shooting stars, and 1 red-tail hawk flying with a rattlesnake in its mouth.
Gone fishin’… I’ll be back refreshed and full of good will in a week. If you can’t be bothered to check back, spyonit (which seems to be down right now). In the meantime, I’m sure alex, victor, taylor, chad, christina, and so on can satisfy all your IA-surfing needs.
If the current recession has fueled your revolutionary fires, the Organizer’s Collaborative has a page of links relevant to computers and social change organizing as well as a collection of Technical Tips for Small Nonprofits and Social Change Groups .
I’ve been putting off switching to Greymatter for a while. So, I went and did it and I’m sure there’s bugs and interface no-nos and yadda yadda, and Greymatter ain’t perfect, etc, but it’s done. Please do let me know what I messed up.
Probably should’ve mentioned I’m offline-ish in NYC, so no posts for a few days. Happy our-missiles-are-bigger-than-your-missiles day!
Probably should’ve mentioned I’m offline-ish in NYC, so no posts for a few days. Happy our-missiles-are-bigger-than-your-missiles day!
I’m a micro-mini-star! Check me out in “web dreamer.” (er, was that crass?)
HI-larious: Area citazioni.. I’m right there in between Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. The funniest part is the actual quote.
Happy Birthday to me!
Figlet Server.. now you too can have a rad ascii sig file:
_| _|_|_| _|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_| _|_|_| _|_| _|_|_| _|_|_|_| _|_| _|_| _|_| _|_| _|_|_| _|_|_| _|_| _|_| _|_|_| _|_| _|_|_|_|_| _|_| _|_|_|_|_|
(via currentform)
One of the best things about having a college-age brother is that his thinking isn’t all ossified yet, so he points me to things like Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, which (as all you hippies must surely know) is “Scientific Study of Consciousness-Related Physical Phenomena.” Seems they have 20 years of research suggesting that human consciousness can affect physical phenomena (i.e. you could reach out your hand while strung upside-down in an icy cave and pull your lightsaber to you). I want to believe!
Moment of silent appreciation for Argus, which has just closed down.
So, I am leaving on Wednesday for a 5 week trip (can’t help but hear that to the tune of Gilligan’s Island: “A 5 wee-eek trip. A 5 wee-eek trip”) Anyhow, Wendy and I are going to Tokyo (and Kyoto) for a little over a week, where we will immerse ourselves in the pinnacle in human achievement of office products, electronic miniaturization, and vending machines, with the occasional break for a zen garden or temple. And then about 3 weeks in Vietnam (thank you, Vince, for all the good suggestions).
As usual, here’s the link to be alerted when Antenna is updated. And, if you know something I have to do or someone I have to meet in either Tokyo or Vietnam, let me know.
Bye for 2000.. I’ll be scuba-diving in mexico for the next week, so the only interface I’ll be thinking about is that eerie moment when you put your head under, leaving air for water. Probably good to keep in mind that computers are like that for some people. Happy holidays (or not, if you’re anti-social).
ps—I know, I know, I haven’t been posting much lately, but at least I’m not clogging your data stream with noise about the last trip I took (I’m in Denver) or the new wireless hub I got so I can not-post from my deck.
If I don’t post here much in the next few months it’s because I just bought a skateboard and I’ve probably broken my neck or something. Who says 30 is too old to be reckless and foolhardy. Only problem is the 13-year-old boys who laugh at me as I fall off into the bushes.
Updates will be few and far between for the next week-ish, since I’m going to speak at Web Design World in Seattle. As usual, you can always set up a spy.
So, several people have written me in the past few days to complain about the colors on this site (and point out the irony of my having criticized Jakob Nielsen for insisting on the default colors when my own site—devoted to interface issues, no less!—is “unreadable” …
Well, ok, I hear you. I’ve never had any trouble reading the site or seeing the links, but I’m not everybody, so just as soon as I have a sec (hopefully this weekend), I’ll pick some less offensive color scheme. Maybe black text on white with blue links or something like that. And my apologies to those of you who have been suffering in silence.
I’m off this week, so I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit inside updating some weblog all day. If you want to know when I post something, you can always spy on antenna.
I’m starting this little weblog as a place for interesting interface, interaction, and experience links and blurbs. In other words, I’m keeping an archive of all the stuff I see on other people’s weblogs, but minus all the intervening diary entries and blah blah blah (which I find I enjoy, despite myself).