randomosity

There was a time when the the brilliant illuminated manuscripts of Irish Monasteries represented the passionate collection of the works of the solitary monk/artisan/craftsman. The intricate knot patterns are a study in a real pattern language. Years ago, when my creative juices were sought a middle ground between a clear systematic approach and yearning to find break out of these same systems, I discovered the work of George and Iain Bain. - father and son. The elder Bain made a lifetime study of finding the patterns in the knotwork and devising techniques to allow others to appreciate these and to replicate these celtic masterworks for themselves. His son built on these techniques to devise a an even simpler way of creating the elabourate designs. I was hooked and produced some large scale knot patterns. I also discovered the wonder of doodling in square and triangular knot patterns. At one point I even delved into zoomorphical celtic artwork and dicsovered and even larger challenge.

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I hadn’t been to the Digg Labs area in a while. Wow. They have a wonderful assortment of story and author visualization tools available there that are both mesmerizing and thought provoking. Navel gazing is a wonderful past-time and methinks that Digg is making a concerted effort at perfecting the art. I am particularly attracted to the new Arc tool. Its shows story popularity in realtime and also makes a link between stories dugg by the same users. Thicker vectors indicate story popularity. Interesting.
The Stac visualization is also extremely cool. A collection of stories represented by bars of varyiong shades based on popularity spread across the bottom of the screen and then as they are dugg, weight blocks fall from above reinforcing the story title. Just neat. And as before far to mesmerizing.
Its a quick way to gauge popularity and user activity. The animation is smooth and entertaining. Popular of course has nothing to do with my interest or relevance, but the visualization is effective in conveying the info and it does make a fine screensaver. Apple’s new RSS visualizer in Leopard is another cool infofeed screensaver. Visually stunning.

So…48 hours back on a Macintosh laptop and I am in seriously danger of getting drunk on the kool-aid again. What is it that pulls one back? Having never really left was part of it. I simply was being interdenominational.

I have my iMac in the living room and an HP Media Centre in the den. I conduct most of my daily work on my laptop though. I am a happy user of an IBM ThinkPad X32. I did not come to the X32 blindly. I started using ThinkPads on a daily basis back in 1999. Before that I was that bane of the Windows world: the Mac bigot.
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Bill Turkel posted another great thought piece today on the Importance of Infrastructure. This post is, as his others always are, very erudite, well phrased and provoke one to think. In this case, his framing question seems to be whether one can really environmentally engineer innovation. His post suggests that letting the right people play in the right sandbox, with the right toys can yield astonishing results. He addresses the nature of how we construct personal space in order to bolster productivity, creativity and all those good things.

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Jim Pickworth pointed me to Hans Rosling’s series of TED talks. Clearly I have been sleeping and missed pointers to these in the past. Hans Rosling is an amazingly dynamic and fluid presenter who has embarked on a mission of data liberation. His talks have seemingly inspired the UN to release public health data that had been kept a guarded secret. Armed with this data he has created a wonderful flash based data animation tool called GapMinder. The tool is fun to play with if only purely from a visualization perspective. That he has provided UN worldwide data on matters such as infant mortality, carbon emissions and wealth, allows a layperson such as myself to explore the relationship between these variables for individual countries.

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Information Aesthetics points to a great background article on the visual representation of taste in Ratatouille (a movie I absolutely recommend - great story, superb animation). I watched these sequences and didn’t think much about them - but what a great question : how can one visually demonstrate the sensation of taste? Additionally, how do tastes sound - the animations that Michael Gagne created for the movie were used as inspiration for the accompanying soundtrack. Is this a sign of sensory convergence? That flavours will combine and produce an entirely new visualization makes absolute sense, but how do you account for synergy or for catalytic behaviour. What a wonderful challenge to be presented with and to muse about.
There is a lot more to discover at Michael Gagne’s site. His work had appeared in a string of well known productions. Moreover, Gagne is a Québecois and Sheridan graduate - so wonderfully close to home.
I wonder what smell looks like?

Last weekend Toronto dedicated a starkly breathtaking park/memorial to the Irish Famine immigrants of 1847. Ireland Park was opened by Mary McAleese, President of Ireland and features a rather striking memorial wall made up of glass bricks commemorating those who died during the exodus and also those who died trying to help them. The aim of this park is to commemorate this historic tragedy and also to remind us of similar events occur today.
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There is a great discussion at Bricoleurbanism on the absence of people-scaled spaces in Toronto’s urban streetscape. The discussion takes as a starting point construction hoarding on two sides of the street near Bloor that inadvertently created a humane street scale not unlike that found elsewhere in the world.
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Sorry for the drought of postings of late. Things get in the way.
There’s a unique concept hotel opening at Gatwick in July. Modeled on the compact sleeping spaces that I have always associated with Asia, they provide what they term ‘cabins.’ The Yotel provide upscale, high quality space designed around human dimensions.
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As the weatherman forecasts that the temperature will reach its hottest thus far this year (28C is warm enough for me), I am linking to the remnants of a trip journal to Munich during winter 1998. The HTML is a wee bit broken, but its largely there - badly scanned photos and campy commentary ;-) I am appreciating being cast back into the chilly warmth of a Christmas season past. I used to take a week away in early December and go to Munich for the Christmas Market there. I have fond memories and really love Munich. Apart from a very strange sojourn there in 1990, didn’t ever make it there in the summer until 2001. The Englischergarten, which I am sure I have mentioned in a part post, is a magical place. But in the winter, Bavaria and Munich becomes a wondrous winter kingdom. I am not certain that my pictures capture the essence, but I share them in hope that they might. I will have to clean up the HTML at some point - I was however loathe to alter it. Its simplicity is reflective of where things were then. Rather like going back to your primary school drawings and ‘improving’ them. Just doesn’t seem cricket ;-)