Good Ol' Lisa

INFORMATION VISUALIZATION:







I don't buy this meme (I've known some pretty dumb sad people in my life) but I like this graph anyway.

!W!__''__!T!

DATA: Via the Urban Dictionary comes the best defenition for w00t ('wewt', 'woot', 'w_(@_@)_t', etc.) I've ever heard:

w00t:It's a state of mind where everything is cool. Wootness differs from chonkey in the sense that it is more 'style-related' : how you do things from day-to-day and how they end up based on the approach you took to do those things you do. When all things are going well in your own life, that's when you know that the wootness flows through you like water - it's a part of you - it's natural to you...When everything goes your way - or for the most part goes your way - that's when you know you have the power of woot within you...All of us do, it can come from time to time - or disappear for a long time, or simply stay w/ us our whole lives - we just have to believe in it...

w@@t visualized for me might look something like this.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Asimov

INFO TECHNOLOGY: I just read Chris Suellentrop’s Slate article about how I, Robot misses the point of Asimov’s book of the same name. I gotta say, Isaac Asimov purists are giving I, Robot way too much flak. I saw the movie on Saturday and was very impressed. Yes, the robots flip out at some point and start killing people. But wouldn’t it be a boring movie if it was just peaches and cream, kittens and rainbows? “Hey kids, look at the future, it’s perfect!” Zzzzzz…







I personally love the way the movie portrayed a logical conflict in Asimov's three rules. (I won’t get into it and spoil it for you.) And to those that argue that the movie is one long robot hate-fest: I didn’t come away with that feeling at all. In fact, I felt the movie was decidedly pro-technology.



Where this movie really gets it right is in its vision of the future. It’s very middle-of-the-road; not a complete dystopia (Matrix, Metropolis, Brazil, 1984, The Terminators, Blade Runner, Minority Report, AI, Gattaca, The Running Man, ad infinitum) but not a pure utopia (to which no sci-fi movies apply) either.



And then there’s Will Smith. This guy has to be the most likable guy in cinema today. He’s the perfect American in everyway. When is this guy going to run for Governor? I’d take him over that Austrian from that other, far inferior, robot movie any day.



Speaking of Robots, have you ever wondered what this line in Styx’s Mr. Roboto song meant?

Mata ah-oo hima de.

Himitsu wo shiri tai.

Find the answer here.



(Read the article at Slate / Buy your own NS-5 / Read the Lyrics to Styx's BEST SONG EVA)

Talking Points

INFO SCIENCE: My best-bud Andy has posted a great clip from The Daily Show where John takes on the entire notion of so-called "Talking Points."







Bottom line: "Talking points: they're true because they're said a lot."



Wonkette also has a posting about the story with a full transcript.

MPAA: Kittens Killed By Movie Pirates

INFO TECHNOLOGY: Is anyone else sick of how -- in lieu of balanced reporting -- most news organizations simply reprint press releases from the RIAA and MPAA regarding peer-to-peer issues? Here's a nice sample of recent hysterics.



MPAA: Movie downloading is new piracy plague

A Quarter Of Internet Users Are Pirates

Movie piracy on Internet called an epidemic

Net piracy hurts Hollywood

Movie piracy on the rise

Broadband eases piracy

Internet piracy hijacks sales

Alarm at internet movie piracy

Download speeds raise fears of movie piracy

Downloading movies ? That’s you and one quarter of surfers …

One - in - four broadband users have illegally downloaded a movie

Illegal Movie Downloads Are Growing , Hollywood Says



I think you'd agree looking at these words that a real reporter would come up with a little less biased wording: Piracy, Plague, Pirates, Epidemic, Hurts Hollywood, Hijacks, Alarm, Illegally.



(via The P2P Weblog)

Visualize Your Midi Files (Yeah, I Don't Have Any Either)

INFO VISUALIZATION: Here's a great way to visualize music. "The Shape of Song" takes a midi file and connects similar note structures with each other using an arch. In their words:

The diagrams in The Shape of Song display musical form as a sequence of translucent arches. Each arch connects two repeated, identical passages of a composition. By using repeated passages as signposts, the diagram illustrates the deep structure of the composition.

It works very well and can actually inform you a bit about the song's underlying structure. Highly repetetive pieces will have a large amount of uniformly connected arches; simple songs will have very thick and wide arches; complex and erratic songs will have more chaotic patterns. Pictured above? "Women" by Def Leppard.



(Via Waxy.org)

P2P Smack Down!

INFO TECHNOLOGY: Wow, Bit Torrent is now the most popular peer-to-peer protocol!







This is great news for everyone, except Kazaa and the RIAA. And well, who cares about those two. Also surprising is seeing good old Donkey up there solidly in second place. Good job eMule! (As much as I may love Bit Torrent, the lack of a search function will keep it from ever being the one-stop-shopping p2p client.)



If you're still not on the Torrent Train, get a copy of Azureus and visit SurpNova.org or subscribe your RSS reader to the SuprNova.org XML Feeds.



Don't forget to tip Bit Torrent creator Bram Cohen or the Azureus dev team.



(via p2pnet.net)

Tall Buildings

INTERFACES: The Museum of Modern Art has on display a "focused study of twenty-five tall buildings" that were designed in the last decade. The online presentation is a flash site with a fairly clean interface and it's packed full of great, interesting and well presented info.











Check out the online exhibit or read the New York Times' article.

Making Something Out of Nothing (Or at Least Very Little)

VISUAL COMMUNICATION: Here's an ink-blot-styled test for ya. What do you make out of this collection of dots?







Probably not much. However, if the dots were to be animated in a certain way, it'd take you a fraction of a second to recognize it as a walking person. (Check out this "walking dots" demonstration to see the dots in motion.) It's not something you have to consciously think about to recognize, your brain does this all subconsciously and automatically for you. I've seen these demonstrations before, but this is the first "walking dots" demonstration I've seen that allows you to play with different variables -- including gender, weight, tenseness/looseness, and mood -- to see how they effect the walking dots' stagger. The algorithm is wonderful but does seem to break down when you move too many variables to extremes. For example, I tried a happy, nervous, heavy male and the dots seemed to just freak out on me.



All of this reminds me of a great book I read called Visual Intelligence by Donald Hoffman.







This book shows us how our minds work on our behalf to construct images, and in many cases the image presented to "us" by our visual cortex (and other brain "organs") is as much a guess as it is the real or correct representation. It's a very illuminating book and it's full of illustrations. If you think what "you" see is the same as what your eyes do, then read this book, because it's certainly not true.

Fallout

INTERFACES: I ran across this screenshot of Fallout Tactics today on Moby Games.







This interface is so rich, I just love it. Yeah, it wouldn't be good for anything other then a game, and it does break all the rules about being simple to understand and uncluttered. But something about it just makes me want to play with buttons and options and see what chaos ensues. (Besides, games are allowed to play with the rules more since they are more about enjoyment then ease.)



The Fallout series was always great about giving their games' interfaces a tactile feel that correlated perfectly with the game's post-apocalyptic plot. RIP Fallout.