brunobergher::blog

This is quite impressive: Super Mario Bros in 14kB JavaScript code with no external images: the sprites are encoded as strings in a custom format that allows for 4 colors. Quite impressive.

Pure canvas magic under Mozilla and DIV positioning (!) under IE. Please do check the original post and find out more about this.

These are a couple of very famous quotations in the tech field:

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

and

I think there is a world market for about five computers.

They are supposedly attributed to Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and Thomas J. Watson, Jr., former president of IBM (1952-1971), respectively.

The wise folks at the Freakonomics blog have been running these so called ‘blegs’, a blog-beg, where they ask the readers of information they’d like to straighten out. These two quotations have been featured recently, and had been properly debunked as myths by both the authors and the readers. See here (Gates) and here (Watson).

I assume more of these interesting and perhaps fictitious phrases might come up in the future, so it’s worth checking back again.

On a side note, these posts broght to my attention The Yale Book of Quotations, which went straight to my Amazon wish list, since I’ve been collecting quotations as a hobby for quite some time. It seems like a great book if you’re into this kind of thing.

I am a huge fan of Jonathan Harris, ever since I found out about We Feel Fine. It just blew me away. Recently, the creator of this and other outstanding works of art and visualization launched I Want You to Want Me, an installation at the MoMA in New York. Harris describes the project as simply as

I Want You To Want Me explores the search for love and self in the world of online dating.

There’s no online version for the unfortunate of us who cannot be in NYC to attend the exhibition to enjoy, but the project’s website is most certainly worth checking out.

If by any chance you’re not familiar with Harris’ work, I highly recommend visiting his sit and viewing each project with the attention they deserve. It can be quite rewarding.

* I had this post kept as a draft for a while, and in the meantime, Harris released The Polaroid Project, which I’m still to visit in depth.

Dutch publisher Onomatopee has in their catalog this interesting poster/pamphlet:

Text by Max Bruinsma and design by the Strange Attractors.

I find it interesting how the attributes of each of the companies which logos are mimicked highlight a few of the many characteristics attributed to the concept of God: Lego brings up God’s aspect of kindness, perhaps, while IBM suggests an all-knowing, designer-of-huge-things God.

Oddly enough, I’m not sure of exactly how Google’s God echoed upon me. I think the logo design itself isn’t as strong as the brand name for Google as it is for older companies, or companies that rely in a heavier way to the visual presentation of their names (as Coca-Cola most certainly does).

I hope this is isn’t offensive to anyone. : )

* The simple header in Onomatopee’s website is nice; very ‘soundful‘ in a strictly typographic fashion.

I signed up for Twitter a few minutes ago (I’m arriving a bit late to this, I know). So far I have no opinion on the service/phenomenon itself, but there’s one thing I can tell. When loading contacts from other services, this screen is presented to you:

And this kind of witty copy writing (the ‘popular’ thing) is inviting in a whole different level than unusual. It can make you like the service before you even start using it. And a user with a positive stance towards the application is as good as it gets for the first step for a successful interaction.

While on the subject of autopsies in art and under-the-skin artwork, Brian Dettmer’s “Altered States (explorations in media modification)” just must be mentioned:

More stuff here (not official) and here (semi-official).

It’s been around the web for a while, but this is just too good to not be posted.

This Sunday I attended to the “Os Trópicos” (The Tropics) exhibition in CCBB (link is in Portuguese), here in Rio. It was a wonderful experience.

Swiss Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger’s installation in the atrium—”Dream of an Office Plant“— is astonishing.

Other pieces that really caught my attention were Walmor Corrêa’s Unheimlich, a set of four paintings of mythological Brazilian characters, painted as if in an anatomy atlas.

Below is Ondina, a kind of tropical mermaid, a nature spirit that lives in rivers, lakes and seas. (Please visit the artist’s website for more pictures—also in Portuguese).

I find this an interesting approach in visualizing data. I mean, it is fictional, but is data nonetheless; the kind of creativity required to imagine and them represent the inner anatomy of a mythological character is quite admirable. It’s what Tolkien does with words, only done with pictures (though in a smaller scale, I’d say).

I think this opens my mind to an infinite number of possibilities in visualization with and art purpose in mind: what’s being visualized does not need to be real, only it’s purpose. And sometimes the aesthetic experiment itself is worth it.

In a less formal and funnier approach, American illustrator Michael Paulus goes bone deep inside cartoon characters:

My friend Nancy sent me a link to this video:

Poetic Prophet (aka The SEO Rapper) has a few other marvels like ‘Link Building 101′:

Jakob Nielsen published a few days ago his findings from research on the way users performance differs along the 25-60 years old range.

The article is definitely worth reading, is not long, and brings some interesting information.

In a nutshell, Nielsen found out that, according to his sample of 61 users, user performance (time spent to achieve each task) increases linearly by 0.8% by year, up to this 60 year old mark (beyond that this number increases faster). But the thing that caught my attention the most as this paragraph:

There’s also a covariant: the age at which people started using the Web. Because the Web is relatively new, a 50-year-old might have started using it at age 40, whereas a 30-year-old might have started at age 20. In contrast, by 2050, a 50-year-old will have used the Web since age 5, and thus benefit from 45 years of experience. A 30-year-old user in 2050 will have only 25 years’ Web experience. This added experience might eventually allow older users to catch up and somewhat reduce the 0.8% gap. Although we obviously can’t predict the future, my guess is that the age penalty will drop to around 0.5%/year. Still, this doesn’t matter much for your Web strategy over the next 10 years: the 0.8% level is where we’re at and where we’ll remain for some time.

We design for a medium that is new to anyone, and which is currently more attractive to younger people (for a while). It surely doesn’t affect designing for the web for now, but it’s interesting to consider that in a few decades, older people with effectively have more computer and web experience than young ones, and this will turn the playing field in a different direction.

It’s also worth of notice his assertion that when designing for people older than 60 requires a whole different approach, and perhaps, in some cases, a different interaction flow than from other users. Kind of like a ’seniors only’ line in a supermarket or bank.

Illustrator and designer Bob Staake is kind enough to keep this outstanding collection of early- to mid-twentieth century posters collection.

Great for inspiration and just plain old contemplation.