dessalles

Another quick note on the changes that come with recording everything…

I have my instant messaging program, iChat, set to “Automatically save chat transcripts”, which is useful in every way remembering the details of a conversation could be useful. Recently, I’ve found myself referencing these transcripts fairly frequently; and so recently, I’ve found myself frustrated with the habit I have of closing chat windows after every burst of messaging. That is, my conversations are cut up across multiple transcript files since I don’t leave the window open for the duration of a conversation (iChat starts a new transcript every time a window is opened/closed). This obviously makes finding a particular bit of a conversation particularly cumbersome since that bit might be located in any one of a dozen or so files. This got me thinking that I need to break this habit so as to ensure contiguous conversations are saved as single transcripts. And that led me to the following thought…

When everything is recorded, people modify their behaviors so that the recorded information is easier to find in the future. read the rest of this entry »

Unbeknownst to my neighbors, I’ve got a bit of a seed starting operation taking place in my apartment - vegetables on my bookshelves, books on the floor. Once they’re hardy enough to handle wind, nighttime cold and direct sunlight, they’ll be carried up to the roof where they’ll spend the summer overlooking the New York harbor.

Above, a photo of some cucumbers and string beans only 5 days after their shoddy planting. Below, a list of 6 things I’ve learned so far… read the rest of this entry »

Google Earth 4.3 was released yesterday which, with the introduction of photo-realistic 3D buildings and a sunlight simulator, inches Google closer to being the proprietor of impressively realistic models of every major city on the planet. Above, a view of the San Francisco skyline just before sunset. Below, the skyline from the soon to be released Grand Theft Auto IV. I wonder how much longer until Google manages to catch up with the realism of today’s videogames? Right now, they seem to be at about Flight Simulator 2004…so, 4 years behind.

GTA IV has modeled its game world of Liberty City after New York City (replete with a “Statue of Happiness”). And what I’m eager to learn is how the game experience will differ for local New Yorkers who’ll be playing with their own existing mental maps of the city. Will we find ourselves with a distinct advantage over our online, multi-player opponents, unfamiliar with the broken grid of lower Manhattan? Will they know to take the West Side Highway of 10th Ave? read the rest of this entry »

Found myself watching episodes of the 20-year-old television series, The Secret Lives of Machines, in which Tim Hunkin introduces the first seasons’ finale on Television with:

Of all the machines in the home, the Television is probably the most mysterious. […] And all that’s inside these machines is a mass of equally mysterious bits an pieces, none of which appears to do anything at all.

No moving parts, nothing which affords us any understanding of how they work just by taking a peak inside. But once the program does get around to demystifying the inner workings of CRT televisions, juxtaposed against today’s display technologies, we’re reminded just how mechanical they really are: heaters warm-up, guns fire, electrons fly, magnets deflect, meshes intercept and lines scan. In all, there seems to be quite a bit of “motion” taking place inside these machines. And in fact, as Hunkin also reminds us, the very first television system invented by John Logie Baird was in the most literal sense a mechanical device. read the rest of this entry »

The phenomenon known as “spring” descended on New York City today. As is always the case on the first 70° day of the year, myself and many other office-bound New Yorkers intently watched the temperature outside climb one exhilarating degree at a time. While this was once was an activity facilitated by docks, system trays and menu bars, over the last couple years it has increasingly become a ritual dominated by mobile phones. And this year, more than any other, the process of obsessively checking for weather updates on my phone seemed strangely familiar. read the rest of this entry »