Sunday, February 10, 2008
I eat beef to get even
quoted by a cowboy talking about his job working with cows. thought it was funny.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
stream of consciousness 1
3 feb 2008
my interest in interface is strong. there is no doubt of the direction I think and have always thought I would take for a thesis project. I think it's a good idea at this point to explore some other ideas before committing, though. what I'm not sure of is how to approach a period of experimentation in other interests in the context of this project. two things concern me at the moment: I don't want to get behind on the serious work of the thesis for one and I do want to spend some time thinking about other things that I think I would find to be interesting additions or other options to the thesis but I think that approach will want some kind of limits or structure to keep it from becoming an unwieldy distraction rather than a chance to open my horizons.
some of the things that always have interested me are visualizing information (really a subset of design for interface) and using animation to communicate information. the final presentation last semester also brought up some ideas that could prove to be fruitful directions to explore: interest in the hand-drawn scans in my presentation had me thinking for a while. I don't really think it is feasible to consider that as a thesis research but contemplating the difference in the freedom of design using traditional tools against the refinement of what is accepted as professional work done with the current tool set, mostly adobe products, could be a wonderful concept to bring into a more widely defined project. also, I started making the movie for the sound project using photos I took and by overlapping them in photoshop I started getting effects that fascinated me. I have not done much work using photoshop as an image editor so the whole experience opened my mind to ideas I have never had before. putting those images into a movie was also interesting. it's possible that the movie making and animation to communicate ideas are somehow linked together in their general direction.
I've also been paying some attention to dreams this week and some messages are coming through. one night I dreamed of something that had to do with something from a long time ago in my life. odd, but it seemed to do with arranging living space. not sure how that fits. there were more dreams but lost now. I'll pay more attention later.
another area I've liked to play around with is creating stuff using some kind of code. I've never been able to focus on that kind of work to any degree. there has always been some kind of distraction in terms of work to do or work to search for that has drawn me away. it would be good to work on ways to make prototypes of interface designs. things that don't show something working just don't do justice to the idea and could be said to fail to communicate effectively.
at a really basic level, things I find important are color, concept, contrast, structure, logic and typography. that seems like a weird grouping. I hate an application that requires training. when it's a web application that requires training I always think it's because the application is poorly designed. today, with new, interactive possibilities for web programs, that idea may be entirely too demanding. but if it is, what is the new baseline to describing how applications on the web work?
obsession, obsession, obsession, obsession.
I have questions about how changing from hierarchical file structuring systems will affect how we understand our computers and how it will change the way programs work.
so here's the split.
for interface design, I have a lot of ideas for directions project(s) can go and a lot of ideas for how to go about thinking about it.
for everything else, I am at a disadvantage. I know what I like and what I dislike and what I might consider doing and which things I would not want to consider doing. but I don't know where to start thinking about those thing or how to identify possible projects within the group.
it seems like a good idea to take a moment now to consider - explore as best I can - directions I haven't taken seriously to see if something strikes me as a likely alternate direction or as a modifier to my other interests.
I don't know how much effort would be good to put into that search for direction or how emphatically I should deviate from my expected path. should I start by researching in 2 directions at the same time to keep from getting behind? would it be better to spend a finite amount of time thinking about other things and then stop and see what kinds of things have shown up by then.
I like interface.
To the point of obsession
And other stuff too.
my interest in interface is strong. there is no doubt of the direction I think and have always thought I would take for a thesis project. I think it's a good idea at this point to explore some other ideas before committing, though. what I'm not sure of is how to approach a period of experimentation in other interests in the context of this project. two things concern me at the moment: I don't want to get behind on the serious work of the thesis for one and I do want to spend some time thinking about other things that I think I would find to be interesting additions or other options to the thesis but I think that approach will want some kind of limits or structure to keep it from becoming an unwieldy distraction rather than a chance to open my horizons.
some of the things that always have interested me are visualizing information (really a subset of design for interface) and using animation to communicate information. the final presentation last semester also brought up some ideas that could prove to be fruitful directions to explore: interest in the hand-drawn scans in my presentation had me thinking for a while. I don't really think it is feasible to consider that as a thesis research but contemplating the difference in the freedom of design using traditional tools against the refinement of what is accepted as professional work done with the current tool set, mostly adobe products, could be a wonderful concept to bring into a more widely defined project. also, I started making the movie for the sound project using photos I took and by overlapping them in photoshop I started getting effects that fascinated me. I have not done much work using photoshop as an image editor so the whole experience opened my mind to ideas I have never had before. putting those images into a movie was also interesting. it's possible that the movie making and animation to communicate ideas are somehow linked together in their general direction.
I've also been paying some attention to dreams this week and some messages are coming through. one night I dreamed of something that had to do with something from a long time ago in my life. odd, but it seemed to do with arranging living space. not sure how that fits. there were more dreams but lost now. I'll pay more attention later.
another area I've liked to play around with is creating stuff using some kind of code. I've never been able to focus on that kind of work to any degree. there has always been some kind of distraction in terms of work to do or work to search for that has drawn me away. it would be good to work on ways to make prototypes of interface designs. things that don't show something working just don't do justice to the idea and could be said to fail to communicate effectively.
at a really basic level, things I find important are color, concept, contrast, structure, logic and typography. that seems like a weird grouping. I hate an application that requires training. when it's a web application that requires training I always think it's because the application is poorly designed. today, with new, interactive possibilities for web programs, that idea may be entirely too demanding. but if it is, what is the new baseline to describing how applications on the web work?
obsession, obsession, obsession, obsession.
I have questions about how changing from hierarchical file structuring systems will affect how we understand our computers and how it will change the way programs work.
so here's the split.
for interface design, I have a lot of ideas for directions project(s) can go and a lot of ideas for how to go about thinking about it.
for everything else, I am at a disadvantage. I know what I like and what I dislike and what I might consider doing and which things I would not want to consider doing. but I don't know where to start thinking about those thing or how to identify possible projects within the group.
it seems like a good idea to take a moment now to consider - explore as best I can - directions I haven't taken seriously to see if something strikes me as a likely alternate direction or as a modifier to my other interests.
I don't know how much effort would be good to put into that search for direction or how emphatically I should deviate from my expected path. should I start by researching in 2 directions at the same time to keep from getting behind? would it be better to spend a finite amount of time thinking about other things and then stop and see what kinds of things have shown up by then.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
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