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Archive for July 2008
Researchers Create Computer Models of Staggering Drunks to Aid City Planning via Gizmodo.
“IF YOU’VE ever been part of a crowd spilling out of a late-night bar, you’ll be familiar with scenes of drunk people staggering around, the arguments breaking out, not to mention the occasional violent brawl.
Now a model that mimics the movements of drunken crowds might help find ways to design streets so that they direct late-night revellers safely home to their beds rather than into the path of potential conflict.
Simon Moore at the University of Cardiff in the UK and his colleagues wondered how the staggering gait and loss of balance associated with being drunk would affect a model based on the behaviour of sober crowds. Models have been widely used to predict how crowds will behave, for example, during the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, to improve crowd control. This is the first time a model has looked at crowds of drunken people, says Moore.”
Behold the fruits of my labor this evening:
So I had a ton of “important” documents that were crammed away in a drawer for the past few months. I figured that I was shuffling enough paperwork at the office; why did I have to do it at home too? Anyway, after a quick trip to Office Depot, and a couple hours of organizing and discarding, this is what I’ve come up with. The iPod (read: beer) definitely helped keep me on task here.
Also, you’ll note my keys in the lower right-hand corner of the first photo (I know it’s a crappy picture)… the totally awesome motel-style keychain (above) is courtesy of the crew over at Plaid (@plaid)! The keychain came with a neat mini-button, a kick-ass t-shirt, and a nice thank-you note (next to the keys in the first picture) from Sara (@sarachamp). Now, time for that beer… thanks again, Sara!
The Plaid t-shirt… great to wear while:
- Sleeping
- Drinking
- Wrestling crocodiles
- Sucking at guitar (I hate barre chords)
- Watching a “Mama’s Family” marathon
- Checking your basement for radon gas
- Sorting your ALF pog collection
- Sweating (to both oldies, and new-ies)
- Completing the mazes on the backs of cereal boxes
- Entertaining special lady-friends
- Participating in tomfoolery, monkeyshines, and general shenanigans
The gang over at Plaid are at it again; it’s time for the Plaid Nation Tour 2008!
This time, focusing on the West Coast, the Plaid crew will be visiting Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Redding, San Fransisco, San Luis Obispo, San Diego and Vegas, (and if they’re lucky, a few In-N-Out Burgers). *If there are any East-Coasters headed out West any time in the near future, do yourself a favor and head on out to The Dude’s favorite burger joint while you’re out there. (Then try to leave without ordering a burger for the road… I dare you.)
Back to the tour… Plaid, while tooling around in a camera, twitter (@plaid), blog, and IM-equipped van, is on this mission to share the knowledge of how different social media tools can work for a brand. They’re kind of like social media missionaries, spreading the good word of the interwebs.
Believe me, I’ll be glued to my computer following Darryl and the gang through their trip. I wasn’t a twitter-addict when they did their East coast tour last year, so I’m really looking forward to watching them make their way around, and I’m even more looking forward to learning how social media works for other companies out there.
Over at SheltAir, we did our 11-city road trip back in April; did a lap around FL, then up to NY and back in my boss’ 38′ RV (4,641 miles of awesome). Though our trip’s focus was mainly on employee safety (bad things can happen to someone when they’re working around aircraft engines and not paying attention), we also got a chance to meet a lot of our customers and spend some much-needed time getting to know our coworkers in our other cities.
We tried the live web-cam from the road thing as well, but it wasn’t nearly as slick as what the Plaid guys have hooked up. We got pretty decent viewership on it, and we’d get calls from our friends and coworkers as we cracked a few adult beverages asking us, “Wasn’t this was supposed to be a business trip?” On a bright note, the Safety Tour ended up being a great excuse for me to start a company blog, and the boss loved it. By the end of our trip, though, I was ready to sleep for a week, so to the Plaid gang, I know your struggle (though our van was a little bit bigger than yours).
So, good luck on your trip, Plaid-folks! Watch out for smokey, make sure you get your daily intake of adult beverages, and mooning people from a moving vehicle is still funny… even if you’re an adult.
John Markoff of the New York Times has written an article regarding the redesign of the Internet to fit better on small screens (ie. the iPhone/iPod Touch). As a new owner of an iPod Touch, I found this to be a pertinent read.
“As it turns out, Mr. Jobs may well have understated the quality of the iPhone Web experience. Visiting Web sites that have been redesigned for the iPhone is often a quicker and more pleasing experience than it is on those increasingly cinema-style desktop displays, which routinely have 20-inch or larger screens.
It seems counterintuitive, but small really is beautiful.”
Markoff even goes on to cite Edward Tufte,
“In a recent article and accompanying video posted on his Web site, Edward Tufte, the information and visualization designer at Yale, argues that the iPhone’s success is attributable in part to the decision by iPhone designers to dispense with clutter — all of the irritating buttons and menus that are part and parcel of a typical computer interface.
“The content is the interface, the information is the interface, not the computer administration debris,” he said in a video critique of the iPhone.”
…it turns out that less really is more!
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