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User Groups and Their Needs
For the course I’m TAing this semester, CSC318: The Design of Interactive Computational Media, the main group project is to develop a contacts/address book application. Part of the design process we get the students to go about is to think of a specific user group and then go do interviews, questionnaires and other investigations to…
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The State of Kinect Gaming
I’ve played almost every Kinect game available, and I have to admit, most of them aren’t very good. There are a few exceptions, which I’ll get to below. The “controller-less” aspect of the Kinect was what brought it so much initial excitement. However, we’re still not good at designing experiences that take advantage of this.…
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Kinect Body Paint – Kinect Workshop @ Pervasive 2012
Look at what I and my team made in a couple hours at the Kinect Workshop (run by David Kim): There are “buckets” of paint on either side of the space. One can grab paint and draw it all over your body and your friends! Only two people can play at a time. “Sorry”. Download…
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Your code doesn’t need to be THAT good
I’m currently crunching to finish a software project. It’s my first time collaborating with a large number of non-co-located people with a shared repository. It’s been interesting and frustrating to manage tasks and larger-scale goals across such a group. One of the problems is that different members have different aesthetic values on what “good” software…
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Test Strip Hero
You know when a compulsively cool idea occurs to you, and you can’t stop yourself from doing it? I’m thinking of playing other parts of the world, too.
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Dustin Freemans of the Internet
My name is relatively rare, but not so rare that I’m in the only one with it. I first became aware that there were other people with my name out in the world when I was 12. I was getting my first bank account so I could be paid for a paper route, and my…
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Truckers 4 Life
I like the artifacts of sub-cultures, by sub-cultures and for sub-cultures. I another one of my many, many transits across the 401, this time from Kingston to Toronto, I can across this wonderful booklet: Over The Road, June 2011 issue. A magazine for and by truckers. It is…fantastic. It’s a little secret window in to…
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The Coolest Traveller I Have Ever Met
This story comes up again and again when I tell travel stories, and it was briefly mentioned on Taylor and I’s 2007 Southeast Asia travel blog. The guy’s name was Manfred. He was 70-ish. We met him while taking the Mekong river boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang in Laos. His deal was, he’d…
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Cultural Imports
I’ve been around the world more than the average person in the last few years, both traveling through places and living places. When I encounter a new bit of culture that I like, I try to incorporate it in to my life. Over time, I should end up with the best culture ever. Here’s the…
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Four Bikes
Once I moved to my semi-permanent apartment flat on Sleaford Street, the bike each day to Microsoft Research Cambridge was about 20 minutes. There was lots about the unique -ness of Cambridge I wanted to capture, so I got a hold of a helmet-mounted camera, and started recording it. The video shows four rides over…