blog.strakt

I remember looking at ASCII art when I was knee high to a grasshopper and thinking back then what an amazing but laborious task it must be to create them. This takes it to a whole new level, and instead of looking crude on a low bit depth screen, actually looks sophisticated; the perfect embodiment of ‘Geek Chic’ !

“There’s absolutely no shortage of ways to geek up the inside of your domicile, but few creations posses the perfect balance of class and geekiness like the ASCII Curtains. Reportedly hand-crafted by designer / artist / undiscovered genius Nieke Sybrandy, these nerdalicious curtains feature a light gray tree motif that is compiled entirely from code.” - Quote from Engadget

Via: Freshome

If you have blue eyes (like myself) you may find the following interesting.

A University of Copenhagen team has identified the gene which around 6-10,000 years ago underwent a genetic mutation in one individual who eventually gave rise to all blue-eyed people.

The proof that all blue-eyed people have a common ancestor comes from the fact that whereas eye colours ranging from brown to green are caused by relatively large differences in the amount of melanin in the iris, controlled by “considerable individual variation” in the area of the DNA responsible for melanin production, the variation in iris melanin levels across all blue-eyed individuals is very small.

“From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor. They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.”
Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/01/blue_eyes_mutation/

The working draft of the HTML 5 standard was released a few days ago. HTML 4, the current standard, hasn’t really been reworked in 10 years - a long time in the relatively short lifespan of the modern web.

Much has changed since the early dot-com days of December 1997 when HTML 4 was published, as developers, designers and users have unlocked the web’s potential. Web sites have moved from being a collection of static pages to media-rich communities leveraging participation.

HTML 5 is designed to reflect this, with APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and controlling multimedia, managing client-side data storage and editing parts of documents. Turning to more bread-and-butter stuff, HTML 5 will also make it easier to represent familiar page elements. A full list of changes can be found here.

“Ajax and related innovations have propelled demands for a new standard that allows people to create web applications that interoperate across desktop and mobile,” the group said.

A drawing API? It will be interesting to see sites that use no graphics at all, just typography and browser-rendered graphics. Speedy. Though would this be regarded as presentational markup? - something we’ve been told to separate from our content? Either way, I don’t think we need to start making flashcards for the array of new tags just yet.

Read more here: Reg Developer

A friend linked me to this the other day.

If you’re like me (with not the most photogenic of faces), I’d hope that the end user has some control over which images are automatically uploaded, as I wouldn’t be too pleased if some of the unsavory candid snaps that appear on my camera, especially after a night out, magically appear on my facebook profile for all to see.

Other than this, I’m amazed at how what was once a expensive commodity can now fit inside a device 1mm thick.

“Forget about colour swatches, colour swatch mugs are the way forward. A quick and easy way to brighten the kitchen or the office.”

By W2 sold at Urban Outfitters.

£10 for a pretty bog-standard mug, but it sure screams ‘esoteric design geek-chic’ when suggestively placed on your coffee table.

I’m sat on this rather lovely street in Bristol posting this.

You have to love idiots without WEP/WPA!

In 2002, when my friend James Kelly and I started building web sites forged with the table and the spacer gif, we often looked to the greats of that time for inspiration. One thing that seemed unanimous across these sites was their choice of hosting; they all sported the ‘hosted by (mt)’ logo. It was the wide spread adoption by these design-focused companies that has given mediatemple it’s reputation, least in my mind. Back then, our sites were hobbies, learning experiences, or for favours & friends. We would never have needed, nor afforded such hosting requirements.

Given this humble anecdote, it’s surprising that 5 years on I find myself transferring the sites we manage to a mediatemple dedicated virtual (dv) server.

Good things come to those who wait.

You can now purchase items from the Ikea website.
Stock up on your cheap n’ cheerful office furniture now!

If you get chance, take a look at the 150th issue of Grafik magazine this month. Each cover has been screen-printed making no two covers the same.  In the same vein, the issue details case studies of unique printing & packaging processes - some of which are nothing short of spectacular in both idea and execution.

http://www.plasmapong.com/

PLASMA PONG is a variation of PONG that utilizes real-time fluid dynamics to drive the game environment.

Last night I came across Plasma PONG. This version of the coin-op Atari classic adds real-time fluid dynamics into the mix, resulting in

It’s minimum system requirements are a far cry form the MOS 6502 CPU used in the Atari 2600. A 2.0 Ghz P4 or AMD equivalent & 128MB GPU is recommended, to cope with calculating the real-time fluid dynamics.

At only 7mb, it’s well worth a download, if only to play with the various settings in the sandbox mode to produce some pretty spectacular visualisations.