Machines are digging
So I now have the habit of looking for the things I need on the web. Whether I need a recipe or a tutorial, the Internet is my friend and helps me well to find what I need. However, recently I wanted to get some more information about the painter René Magritte whose paintings really attracted my attention but strangely the Internet didn’t help as I hoped.
Background Story
Le fils de l’homme, Magritte
Posted in Favourites, Organic, Observations, Thoughts, Stories, U.X, Nature of the Web
Today I went to the gym for a change because I have to use my 5 coupons before next week. But I don’t like staying there too long, usually I stay for maximum 30mn. Beyond 30mn I go existential and I think oh man I’m walking towards nowhere, on a machine that doesn’t move, what am I doing ???. So as usual I wanted to make it quick. Usual program : fast walk, and very high slope.
Posted in Observations, Stories, System-Design
I come back from a lipdub session where we wanted to make a fun video in front of the Eiffel Tower for my friend, the bride to be. I was filming the movie so I got to interact with the camera, it was my friend’s camera. First take : the actors played their part. It seemed great. Then we wanted to view the video to confirm, that’s when our real mission started : play the video. Impossible.
Posted in Observations, U.I
Saturday I made an interesting encounter, I met a nurse. We met at a bachelor party I organized for a very good friend. It was an adventurous race through Paris where I had designed some cool and fun actions to complete for my friend (nothing to do with dirty bachelor parties, it was in the afternoon !!!). So that’s in between actions that I got to talk with the nurse.
But where are the engineers ?!!
While we were racing in the street, she told me she was glad because for once she didn’t have to work on Saturday. “Really ?!!”, I naively said. Then she went on and introduced her job. She explained it and described all the stress she had to go through. I was kind of shocked by what she shared with me. She said that the patients were plugged to a pumping machine that was used to pump their blood, and often this machine would break down and SHE had to fix it as quickly as possible. Her words were “when that happens I need to fix it and nobody knows how to fix it, I mean I’m not an engineer, but I do have to fix the machine, so sometimes I just fix it by intuition thanks to previous experiences, sometimes I just know what I should do, sometimes I don’t and the engineers are not there”. My immediate reaction was “but where are the engineers???!”, “No idea”, she said. Incredible.
Posted in Observations, Discoveries, Stories, Machines are digging, System-Design
3 clicks. That’s all it took me to declare my income to the French government so I can be taxed later. Sweet. Regarding the taxes, it seems the government deployed the technical swat team to extract the money out of the citizens. Every year they get better and better. This year, you could even declare your income from your smartphone by flashing a QR code both on Android and iPhone. Also you have the option to get their mail delivered only electronically, no paper anymore. The webapp is as fast as a high level app. Really, I give them 20/20.
Remember though, the Internet voting or the anti-democratic catastrophe ? Now I see where exactly the priorities are. They don’t ask me to install a JVM before they can tax me. Poor voting team, they must be really jealous when they see the tax team working with iMacs and iPhones when they only get to work on Windows 2000.
Well, well, still very good, high five to the tax team.
Posted in Observations, Politics
I’ve read about the new Facebook Timeline feature today. It’s a feature that lets you see your data organized in a timeline in your profile. It looks like this:
Facebook new Timeline feature
Like anything they do, it left a bitter taste on my mind. I already understood why people use this, but I still get rather sad thinking that humanity is willingly formatting itself into that stuff.
The web is a recording device
The web is a recording device, it means that whatever you put there, it’s going to be recorded and be a trail of you. Right now, thanks to the diversity of the sharing platforms available online (unfortunately still not diverse enough), you can have several trails, you can move your trails from there to there, you can delete your entire trail, you can decide of what is left of you online. With tools as popular as Facebook, that just offer you the interface, people tend to forget the innate freedom they have to broadcast from their own “antenna”, and they start formatting themselves into that single possibility of the Facebook profile, because it’s easy. They leave to Facebook the power to format, present and keep their data in a way that they can remember their life, but not in a way they chose to remember it. The format is fixed, inflexible, not customizable, you can just get stuck there without you even noticing. After allowing to list unborn children as family members, it’s clearer and clearer where Facebook is taking its crowd.
Posted in Favourites, Observations, News, U.I, Identity, Nature of the Web
This article is about the forced display of numbers to describe online representations of people, it studies the cases of Twitter and Facebook. What is the difference between an online database of things, like an online shop, and an online database of “people”, like a social network? What’s wrong with numbers? The answer could seem common sense, but this reflection was intentionally developed in detail for the technical minds. Continue reading
I recently noticed that now when someone adds you as a friend on Facebook, this line appears under the name :
I find this line very inappropriate. Why is it there? Am I supposed to judge this person from those numbers? And make my decision of confirming or refusing based on these numbers? WHY ? Maybe for people who use Facebook to add strangers it’s useful to know if the account is real or not, but if really the goal is to “connect people” why tag them with numbers like this?
You know, it feels like when you see a product, you immediately look for the price tag. This line feels like the price tag. It’s like your scores. A measure of your influence and even worthiness. What use could this have other than to make people judge each other by numbers? Is it to encourage people to post more, have more friends etc? I wonder how the meeting to decide this went …
Posted in Favourites, Observations, Thinking, Identity, Humanism, Philosophy
Tonight I went to a social event organized via group texts . I don’t like those events because of last time, but this time I went because I knew at least one person and I set myself on “socialize” mode to meet new people. In general, I never know how to present myself. It’s complicated and I am quite reluctant to talk about my activity in detail, because “computer engineering” sounds a bit mechanical and almost hostile to most people. I haven’t found how to introduce the human dimension yet in my description. And I hate wasting time trying to explain how much it’s interesting when I already get the look “oh, computing….” I still have to think about that, but I always end up saying “I build websites”.
Building ad driven websites
Fortunately, tonight I was glad and surprised to meet someone for who computing is not an alien activity. I was able to talk naturally about the web and science fiction – nice. I discovered an activity of the web I was not fully aware of : building ad driven websites.
Posted in Observations, Stories
I created this video from the S21E02 simpsons episode (Bart gets Z) that highlights the use of technology at school by kids. I struggled to put it online but I think it’s worth sharing, it’s hilarious and actually relevant. The hipster teacher is so funny. Here are some crazy quotes :
Ok. Teach us. Use only the knowledge you have in your own head.
But why talk when I could just text ?!!!
Homework: 20mn of twittering
The school is a glorified hamster wheel run by incompetent bureaucrats who can get you to a test, but you will FAIL the test of LIFE ! ! ! ! !
Posted in Observations, Machines are digging, Videos
I recently started the new ritual of putting honey in my tea. I haven’t tasted honey since maybe 5 years and in my head I remember it coming in a jar. But ever since I saw my brother’s honey coming in a tube, I wanted the same. So I bought that one. I bought that honey UI :
Why? Because it’s fun. I like products that have been thought for the user. Depending on the experience, you – as a user – want, your main concern might be to pour the honey precisely in your cup or on your toast, or you might just want the honey no matter if you need a spoon or your bare hands to have it. Here, UI could be a simple plastic container. In my case, I could have gone with the traditional jar, but I mainly wanted to test the experience of the tube because it’s original and I am curious.
With the tube UI, I finally don’t have sticky hands and honey all over the place. The honey just goes where it’s supposed to go, it’s super precise and efficient, I am not tempted to eat it all from the jar. But what I like the most with this UI is that every time I pour honey in my cup or on my bread, it reminds me of the ketchup experience and it makes me smile to pour ketchup in my cup. Also, it reminds me of the glue tube we used for arts and crafts when we were kids, sweet memory. Finally, the tube is designed in a way that it doesn’t reduce the product to any liquid, it’s honey not astronaut food.
On the web it’s the same 1. think optimization 2. think experience 3. compose. There can’t be good experience without optimization. Without optimization (functional, efficient and quality product) anything else is just packaging, marketing, make-up, not good.
Posted in Inspiration, Study, Observations, Stories, Object-Design
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