Endless Tea Party.

Getting Into Austin

2008-11-12T00:19:00.002+01:00

A few weeks have gone by as me and Rach have settled into living out by Lake Travis in Austin. Moving down here has been our plan for some time, but once we arrived, it felt as though it was the craziest whim ever. We felt dependent on others to get rides (to get anywhere), and owing the people around us that hosted us. Since this week, however, things are looking up, and it all started with us saying "damn this apathy! we will not sit and whine about being stuck in the woods! we will make the best of it!"

So Rachael got inspired to start making soap again, and went googling for providers of lie and essential oils in the area. She found one that had exactly what she needed, and more (herbs and dietary supplements of all kinds), just down the street from us! She emailed them, asking if they needed help, and they replied that they indeed had posted a job ad the same day, and were thrilled get Rach's note (since it was sent out of pure interest in natural products, not in the job itself). The next day, she had the job.

Two weekends ago, we were at the Oxblood Masquerade in Lytton Springs outside of Austin. Being a music & art festival, you could find painters with easels in the pastures, and there was a tent, brightly lit, where anyone could come up and make stop-motion animation using play-doh, chalk, and other materials. This turned out to be the highlight of the festival for us. Put on by filmmaker Anlo Sepulveda, the workshop featured four easy-to use stations with digital still cameras on tripods. There was clay in different colors (and with different smells!), and string, rubber bands, and other accessories. Me and Rach put together this funny story, and the clip with everyone's creations of the night can be seen here.

We started talking to Anlo, and a project he's working on came up: Otis under sky. It turns out they need a programmer/physical computing guy, and I'm just the sort. Last night we met up at his house, everyone was excited, and I now have a creative project to get started on in Austin!

Then, today, I got an email from a local game development company where I have applied for work. They said they'd like to interview me over the phone, and two hours later I was conversing with a very nice senior front end developer. I would love to work for them, but of course I will have to see how it pans out.

Video Sniffin' - Guerilla Video Production using CCTV

2007-11-07T17:47:00.000+01:00

Mediashed has a free-media video toolkit online called Gearbox. It's a collection of techniques for low-budget video production (starbucks spycam, Movieset on a dime). They describe one of the coolest guerilla hacks I've heard of lately: video sniffin', or using a video RF receiver to hijack and repurpose video imagery from wireless CCTV cameras.

You didn't think in the good ol' days were over, did you? There's a lot of interesting stuff floating around the ethereal realm, for the taking of anyone who cares to look. Here's a "commercial" for the technique created in conjunction with MediaShed. (direct link to video)

Via wmmna.

Mobile Phone Usage Patterns in Public Spaces

2007-11-03T18:03:00.000+01:00

This morning I went to one of my favorite coffee shops in Seattle's Capitol Hill area, Caffé Vita. I really enjoy working in coffee shops, as the buzz and energy of other people conversing and thinking really seems to motivate me. I went to the upstairs area, which this at this early hour only had two other patrons. I like this early morning quietness as well, before the coffe has started working on my sleepy system.

I opened up a book to do some reading (A Designer's Research Manual by Jenn and Ken Visocky O'Grady), as the silence was broken by a harsh voice on the other side of the room. He must have come up right after me, and he was sitting facing the wall, clad in a blue fall jacket and beanie, speaking quite loudly on his cellphone.

Why is it, that face-to-face conversations help me focus, while cellphone conversations where only one party can be heard, pierces my wall of work-privacy and leaves me unable to concentrate on anything other than the others' conversation?

1. People speak louder than needed into handsets.
- This may be due to an affordance of the cellphone, remote communication, that reminds us of speaking to someone on the other side of a wide gorge.
- People are not suited to relate to two contexts at the same time. Speaking into a cellphone puts you in a certain headspace, an imagined privacy where there exists only two people. The environment around you fades away into the periphery. You lose track of which speaking volume is appropriate in the context you're actually in.

2. Conversation naturally happens between at least two people.
- Hearing someone talk when their conversation partner isn't visible, highlights their presence. Traditionally and stereotypically, only mad people speaks "to themselves".

Cell phones doesn't do anything to help tie physical, communal community bands, but reinforces the distant, networked, virtual community that exists within individuals. If we are to re-design community into our neighborhoods, we have to consider the usage patterns of cell phones in public spaces.

WordPress and Flash Video files, effortlessly!

2007-09-22T00:50:00.000+02:00

I've been setting up a WordPress installation for an Arduino course website, and wanted to put up Flash Video content. I came upon the Simply Working WP plugin "flv-embed", and it saved my day.

By the way, WordPress has been a good experience so far. This is the largest installation I've ever made (meaning I only ever played with it before), but it does just what we want and not much more (unless you make it).

flv-embed has simple configuration, and is implemented using a very simple wp template tag: [/path/to/video width height]

Sometimes I just feel like pluggin :)

Experience Design - "Awesomeness"

2007-09-19T18:47:00.000+02:00

Andrew Crow of Adaptive Path spoke at this month's talk at Vancouver User Experience group. The theme of the talk was "awesomeness", and how design is a powerful force that can evoke emotion and awe. The following is a paraphrase-analysis of the talk.

To evoke desire in consumers, and keep them coming, designers have to consider how the product they are designing is part of a larger system. Experience design can be thought of as design carried out with attention to the entire context that affects the designed product, its' users and dependent systems. The iconic image for successful design right now, of course, is the iPhone:

As a designer you are not designing a product. You are in fact designing an experience that may (no, should) change how people live their lives.

The example that Mr. Crow gave is a classic one, but one that bears to be repeated: How Eastman-Kodak transformed the complicated and mysterious technology of photography, and made it into an accessible, and, in the long run, indespensible part of people's lives. The users of Kodak no longer had to mess with dangerous chemicals and handle sensitive photographic film. The philosophy?

"You press the button, we do the rest."

And that is an offer you cannot resist as a consumer. If the product (the system) is providing a desirable service, and on top of that is offering to minimize the consumer's effort in obtaining that service, you're hitting gold.

Don't use the Javascript for...in loop for arrays!

2007-08-14T11:59:00.000+02:00

Like most web developers, I use several languages, and sometimes I get them mixed up. I recently took a deep dive into Ruby, and during the summer I took a break from code work. Getting back to it now, I started on a project involving some simple Javascript, and I ran across some source code containing a for construct that looped much like php's foreach or Ruby's object.each. I welcomed a break from writing tedious for loops with counters and tried to use the construct to iterate over an array. It went great! I.e.


abc = [1, 2, 3];
for (letter in abc) {
 alert(letter);
}

However, when I grabbed a collection of elements using Prototype's document.getElementsByClassName() function, and tried to iterate over it using the same technique, I ran into big problems. It turns out:

A for...in loop iterates over the properties of an object in an arbitrary order. [...] Although it may be tempting to use this as a way to iterate over an Array, this is a bad idea. The for...in statement iterates over user-defined properties in addition to the array elements, so if you modify the array's non-integer or non-positive properties (e.g. by adding a "foo" property to it or even by adding a method or property to Array.prototype), the for...in statement will return the name of your user-defined properties in addition to the numeric indexes. Also, because order of iteration is arbitrary, iterating over an array may not visit elements in numeric order. Thus it is better to use a traditional for loop with a numeric index when iterating over arrays.

(Source: MozDev JS reference)

Lesson learned: RTFM.

Edit: it's amazing how easy you can find information, once you know what you're looking for. Here's a blog post that explains the problem and its reasons clearly.

klimatförändring

2007-01-09T00:33:00.000+01:00

så forskare världen över verkar nu ha bestämt sig för att världen utan tvivel blir varmare. sverige blir turistparadis.[http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=603641&previousRenderType=1]

vi går mot en framtid som blir annorlunda än vad vi hittills sett.

The Destruction of China Creek Skate Park

2006-10-20T09:03:00.000+02:00

China Creek skate park in Vancouver, built 1979 and said to be the first skate park in BC (and one of the oldest in North America), is threatened under a new city park bill to renew the area. The plan is to demolish the skate park with pools and ramps and put a playground in its stead. The "skateboard spirit" would be preserved, presumably, by adding an area designed for young kids to practice skateboarding.

I went there last night to check it out, and the place is absolutely magical. It's all built within a circular perimeter with a chest-high fence around it. There is one completely circular pool that I can't wait to go ride as soon as this rain stops (I'm guessing it's easier to learn pool riding in a symmetrical pool). Then there's a funkier shaped one next to it (the "Teacup"). What really blew me away though, are the seemingly home made ramps that use the perimeter fence as coping! It's just such a smart DIY design, and I could literally feel the love poured into this place. It made me sad and angry that this place with its significant cultural and historical values would go to its demise because of urban planners and a few complaining neighbors.

Now, I understand that the main issue concerning this area is that the neighbors think the skatepark is a) noisy and b) filled with drunken littering bastards. As to the former complaint, the money alotted to either move the bowls or, which is now more likely, get rid of them altogether, could be used to build a sound wall toward the nearest houses. As to the latter, the drunken bastards are usually not the skaters (unless they're having a competition, I've gathered), and lately, the skaters have come together to make sure thah the skate park area is clean to show the neighbors that a peaceful coexistence is possible.

The comment has also been made that, due to the nature of the area, without the presence of older skateboarders in the park, it may become a haven to injection junkies. Imagine a playground with needles nestling in the sand.

I really want this valuable spot to be saved! Is there anyone out there with a plan?

Nerve Magazine - China Creek nostalgia (scroll down to the bottom 2 stories)

brainstorming themes for my undergraduate thesis

2006-10-04T00:11:00.001+02:00

scenario:
food court. everyone's sitting at separate tables (that are set up for two or four). no one is attempting to meet anyone else. there is a problem in that we too seldom meet people outside of our social comfort zone. it leads to stagnation in our creative thinking, to narrow-mindedness.

theme:
designing for encounters with strangers (see Samba Meeting project below)

scenario:
-reacting against getting an extra DISPOSABLE (that word is loaded with meaning) plastic tray just for a Naan bread that might just as well lay on top of my curry. I wouldn't mind and I would normally say no thanks, but she had already 'solied' that tray with the bread.
-realizing that i don't need to flush the urinal

theme:
designing to not make possible wasteful behavior. if a urinator flushes automatically, why not preprogram it to flush at an interval that will conserve water, and at the same time not let urine build up to create a stink?
harder problem, needs restraints: embed environmental consciousness at an early level of our 'cultural education'

Maracas and Bumblebees

2006-06-16T17:03:00.000+02:00

The spring term is over. The past few weeks I worked on a project of my own (for the first time, it felt like) that was originally called "Interfacing People Using Icebreaking Technology" but later got the catchier name "Samba Meeting". I wanted to create new situations for people to meet new aquaintances and friends, and since music unites people, it felt natural to make an installation that invites two people to play music together. It consists of two toy maracas, that instead of peas inside has a sensor that measures movement. By shaking the maraca you trigger different drum and percussion samples, and it is possible to play a rhythm together. Here is a link (about 10Mb's) to a .zip file with a movie clip of an early test.

Our teacher David Cuartielles is great with contacts, he got us an exhibition at the Malmö Museum the whole summer. The exhibition is called Implement, and feaures physical computing installations made by students from the undergraduate Interaction Design program at K3, Malmö Högskola. I hope my Samba machine will do allright there, since the exhibition is in a part of the museum that is the kids' experimental technology playground. I built'em real sturdy though, so they should be fine.

I have sublet my flat in Malmö, and I'm currently visiting my family and friends in Gävle. Not for long though! On Monday I am flying out of Sweden, into Vancouver, Canada! I won't stay for long there either though, as I'm taking the Greyhound Bus the next day into the U.S. of A and Seattle, to finally see the light of my life, my girlfriend Rachael, again. I will be in Seattle the whole summer, I'm really excited! Then I'm going bck to Vancouver to do a one semester exchange at Simon Fraser University.

Will keep everyone posted as to what I'm up to!

Quote of the Day

2006-04-22T14:44:00.000+02:00

<WarMoose> Think about how stupid the average person is. Now realize that half of them are dumber than that.
<Chunda> Why half?

bash.org

Graffiti

2005-10-17T20:17:00.000+02:00

I ride past this wall on my bike, every day on my way to school. Today I finally took some pictures of it, and made this (admittedly hurried) stitch. I love this painting!

Tic - tac - luffarschack

2005-10-17T07:33:00.000+02:00

I have just finished a tic-tac-toe game for the web programming class. Javascript is kinda hard to work with, but I'm getting the hang of all its' quirks. Getting up early in the morning to code is extremely geeky, I know. But for me there is a feeling of serenity and quality time to it, time for myself that I don't get later in the day and in the week.

mooms

2005-10-04T21:27:00.000+02:00

mooms
Originally uploaded by coopy.

i was invited to the general repetition of moomsteatern. it was ok, the funniest part was a clarinette playing guy in a brown latex mask, dancing madly to the beat like duke ellington.

måndagsproblem.

2005-10-04T01:25:00.000+02:00

nordea
Originally uploaded by coopy.

nordea fick stänga sin i-bank efter att någon skickat ut ett helt otroligt mejl från nordea@nordea.com. genom att be om en "autentifisering" försökte de lura sig till inloggningsuppgifter från nordeakunder ::)

jag har tvingats lämna in min ibook på service, eftersom den vägrar starta, eller vara igång mer än en minut. jag tror det interna batteriet är paj eller något. så jag har en trevlig återförening med min pc...

in memoriam

2005-09-23T08:58:00.000+02:00

hop

2005-09-22T22:35:00.000+02:00

i have found a black and white kitten, i have named him "hopp", swedish for both "hope" and "hop". i hope he will live. i've made a little tuckin for him in the apartment, and tonight i think i'll let him sleep in my bed.

rjd2

2005-09-17T21:11:00.000+02:00

rjd2
Originally uploaded by coopy.

Got some really good music from a friend, some of the mp3's were by a producer called rjd2. never heard of him, but realize he's recieved quite a bit of attention in different media lately. anyway, it's brilliant.

listening to the track "ghostwriter", fucking awesome song, i recognized the "mmm-ahh-aaahhh" in the background as a speeded-up, sampled elliot smith. then, reading this interview, i realized i must be right.

his new album is called Deadringer, check it out.

Electrons go 'round

2005-09-08T00:24:00.000+02:00

We have started a new class this semester called "Interaction Design 3: Sensors and Senses". The first laboration turned out to be a real hands-on experience: we were asked to get us some soldering irons and ditto paste, and before we knew it, we were putting together our very own Arduino boards! Not everone had used a soldering iron before, and for me even, it was a very long time ago, but with the assistance of our bearded Spanish teacher, it turned out to be a breeze.

With this little micro-controller, we will be able to control things like LEDs, robot arms, or even MP3-players. Anything we can concieve of. You plug it in to your USB port, write and upload code using the processing/wiring language, and you have a compact, computer-independent prototype to present to art galleries and investors.

Feeling blue (but mostly tired)

2005-08-25T09:43:00.000+02:00

I don't know if it is the impeding winter season (lasts way too long in Sweden), me feeling left behind, the old Malmö depression, being broke, or what, but my emotions throw me between highs and lows.

Rachael is having a great time over in Seattle, and sometimes I feel jealous that I am stuck here, but man does she deserve it! She didn't exactly have the time of her life living in Malmö (except for the part about living with me :), and I hope she is savouring every second of her newfound independence and friendships. I know she is.

Me feeling this way is not about her, even though I miss her like hell. It is about me being unable to live in the present moment. I'm like forever stuck between the nostalgic shimmer of was-time, and my unrealistic ideas of what it will be like in then-time. This goes straight against my new life philosophy, and I will stop it right here. Right now.

Manifesto:
In whatever situation you find yourself, and whatever events, good or bad, led you there, remember that the past is solid as rock, but the present is moldable like body-temperature clay. The future history is part of you, but remember: your only instrument of change is the present!

You can affect the outcome of any situation, not only by your actions, but also by your thoughts, your mood, and most certainly by the way you act towards other people.

Thankfulness does not go by unnoticed.

Everything is connected.

And I mean it!

Home Again

2005-08-18T04:49:00.000+02:00

I used my last money to get back home to Sweden, after an eventful trip up through the meditteranean beaches of France, ending in Lyon.

It was time to go home. It feels great to be here, staying with my brother, awaiting my suplet apartment to fall back into my hands.

Here I am, in Barcelona!

2005-08-10T16:54:00.000+02:00

I live in a smallish apartment in El Raval, Barcelona, Spain. It's smack in the middle of all the action, second floor balcony perfect for people-spotting. I was invited by my cousin-in-lwaw, Linus, to stay with him and a couple, Maria and Christoffer. In the mornings (in Spain, morning occurs at 10 a.m.) Linus and Christoffer go to work at a web bureau downtown, and sometimes i get there later in the day to scan pictures, and surf the web. Otherwise I'm mostly hanging out at the MACBA square, around the corner from our building, where a huge amount of skaters hang out on a daily basis, always ushered back from the museum entrance by the security guards.

Barcelona is Big Brother. Everyone seems to be suspicious. Every store larger than your local butcher has its' own rental cop, and there's cameras Everywhere. It's a place heavily infested with paranoia, and going out in Barcelona wasn't at all the "once-in-a-lifetime" experience I thought it would be. It was merely like going out anywhere, the drinks were as pricey as in Sweden, and the people were acting very uptight. I don't know, maybe I hit the wrong places, but I prefer the beach where all the Irish, French, Belgian, Canadian and open-minded Spanish people are at night.

If you want to ses pictures from my trip here from Amsterdam, go check out my photoset at flickr!

From here, I'm headed north-east towards Poland and Finland, see you there!

Here I am, in Amsterdam.

2005-07-18T20:06:00.000+02:00

I am staying in an apartment that i was trusted the key to, by some new but close friends. It is here my journey starts, but how can it already be so late in July? Before I set out for this adventure, I couldn't wait to get started, and the need to travel filled me up.

Not so anymore. Every time I settle into a place, I have to leave. Every person that I meet, I have to say goodbye to. Ultimately, we are all alone, but without a home and the people who love you, you are much lonelier. I am alone. I am lonely.

The Adventure of traveling, covering ground and meeting new people, sometimes seems like a hassle to me now. Traveling with little money takes planning and careful finances, none of which I am keen to adhere to. Mostly I enjoy the hitch-hiking. There's nothing like sitting down next to a person, who have gotten out of their way and their safety, just to help you out. Nothing like it. And I am always grateful, and we always get along, and I always get a feeling of belonging, of home, in that car. And of course, I always have to get out. Sometimes it really hurts to say goodbye to these people.

I am alone, yet I am not. Rachael is a part of me now, and she still is here, even though she's not here. That part of me is yearning, and hurting, and wanting, and longing, for the time we can be together again.

This is life. THIS. The fleeting moment. You know. But life seems empty without my baby.

Traveling Thru Space and Time Simlutaneously

2005-02-15T18:05:00.000+01:00

A Comic Sketch of an Old Dream

2005-02-08T20:23:00.000+01:00

Me and my girlfriend are driving down the road, when I notice the mountain range to our left is attracting thousands of thunder bolts. They are blitzing down into the mountaintops, and going horizontally between the giant rocks. I'm so caught up in this spectacle, that I apparently forget to keep the car on the road.

I try to get back on the road, but overcorrect, and we end up plunging out from a cliff on the other side. We are about to crash onto the ground, where many other drivers have met the same fate as us, when my alarm goes off (!) and I'm brutally jerked out of the dream. The whole experience was quite unnerving.

Blogger.com seems to think I'm japanese, btw.

Fish Soup

2005-02-04T01:37:00.000+01:00

I work at a dollar store in Lund, that keeps eight ten-gallon fish tanks for decoration. I've been hired as the tank guy for two years, it was a job for extra money that I got right after I started studying at the university there. It's interesting to spend four hours with fish, changing their water, trading them around the tanks (occasionally), and, as happened today, in the process dropping them on the floor (oops).

I guess you can get emotionally attached to fish in some way. I do feel sorry for their tiny lives inside their glass cages. I know from the fish tank 101 webpages I read after getting the job, that they do like to hang around their own kind. Certain fish dies if left alone. Yet they don't seem to take very big interest in each other, even if those two suckfish guys that eat algae always swim together.

Today I set loose ten Hemigrammus erythrozonus in the tank with the most shrubby undergrowth. I think that a couple of them are [insert aquarist term for pregnant], so I felt that they should have some shelter should they actually survive to lay their eggs. We'll see about that.

In its infacy

2005-02-02T23:29:00.000+01:00

I need a purpose with my life. Work 8 hours, play 8 hours, sleep 8 hours doesn't quite cut it for me. I go to a college that I like and I have a loving girlfriend I adore. But there's something missing. I want to tell the world who I am! There's so many ideas inside my head that could come to use for someone else!

Actually, I don't get that many ideas on a daily basis, only when I sit down and consciously write down random ramblings, quite like this. I need more ideas. New ideas are a reason to live.

Solution: start blogging! It's the latest fad and all the kids are going wild about it, and it gives me a reason to think about the outside world. Maybe I will even meet some new friends. Blogger friends.

There's just no end to the possibilities. So here I am. Blog you!