2009-07-16
2009-07-01
85
Currently, as I'm writing this, the number of movies I've seen on imdb's top 250 list and the number of geocaches I've found are exactly the same. 85. What a coincidence.
A while ago I added two counters on this blog to show my progress with both of these activities. You can see them to the right.
These two things, watching movies and geocaching, are two of my main hobbies at the moment. Though I have been watching movies for quite a longer time than I have been geocaching. Given that I have only been a geocacher for less than a year the number of geocaches I've taken will exceed the number of movies I've seen pretty soon. It's possible to take quite a few caches in a short time and it's also a good way to get some exercise. It's not quite the same for watching movies.
Although I am not completely bound to the imdb top 250 list I find it is a very good source for watching good movies. Last night they showed the Hitchcock movie Rebecca on Swedish television which I enjoyed very much.
A while ago I added two counters on this blog to show my progress with both of these activities. You can see them to the right.
These two things, watching movies and geocaching, are two of my main hobbies at the moment. Though I have been watching movies for quite a longer time than I have been geocaching. Given that I have only been a geocacher for less than a year the number of geocaches I've taken will exceed the number of movies I've seen pretty soon. It's possible to take quite a few caches in a short time and it's also a good way to get some exercise. It's not quite the same for watching movies.
Although I am not completely bound to the imdb top 250 list I find it is a very good source for watching good movies. Last night they showed the Hitchcock movie Rebecca on Swedish television which I enjoyed very much.
2009-06-28
What makes games fun?
It has happened more than once as we sit and play some board game that we try to analyze why we think the game is fun or not. Why is it fun, what is it that makes us want to come back to a game over and over again? Quite frankly, I don't know much about this, even though I happily engage in these kinds of discussions and offer various explanations. It's an interesting topic.
There are of course people who have looked into these things, game designers who want to know how to best please the game playing crowd. And it can be very interesting to hear what they have to say. Some time ago I came across an article which talked about randomness and how it affects the popularity of a game. Even if you only have the slightest interest for these kinds of things I can recommend that you read the article. It really goes into some depth as to when randomness is perceived as something positive and when it has a negative influence on game play. Any attempt from my part to summaries what he's trying to say would do it injustice so I won't comment on it any further. Just read the article.
Also, make sure to read the extra section on Randomness in Chess which has some interesting nuggets such as this one:
There are of course people who have looked into these things, game designers who want to know how to best please the game playing crowd. And it can be very interesting to hear what they have to say. Some time ago I came across an article which talked about randomness and how it affects the popularity of a game. Even if you only have the slightest interest for these kinds of things I can recommend that you read the article. It really goes into some depth as to when randomness is perceived as something positive and when it has a negative influence on game play. Any attempt from my part to summaries what he's trying to say would do it injustice so I won't comment on it any further. Just read the article.
Also, make sure to read the extra section on Randomness in Chess which has some interesting nuggets such as this one:
All good games have a "rock, paper, scissors" metagame. By "rock, paper, scissors," I mean to imply three or more strategies that work to defeat one another without any one being dominant. How do I know this? Because if one strategy could dominate, it would, and the game would collapse in on itself. Thus by the knowledge that a game has lasted the test of time, I know it has an inherent "rock, paper, scissors" metagame.
2009-06-02
Asperatus
Last week we had some really interesting clouds here over Gothenburg. The light they give feels rather ominous and they have a very characteristic wavy underside. In the Cloud Appreciation Society these types of clouds are referred to as Asperatus and considered to be a class of its own different from the standard and well established types of clouds. This name and classification has not yet gotten widespread use outside of the society.
I didn't take any pictures of the clouds when they appeared but there are plenty of nice pictures in the Cloud Appreciation Society Gallery along with a little bit of discussion about this type of cloud.
I didn't take any pictures of the clouds when they appeared but there are plenty of nice pictures in the Cloud Appreciation Society Gallery along with a little bit of discussion about this type of cloud.
2009-04-20
Winning and losing at the Crucible
I've noticed an interesting pattern among those players who reach the final in the World Championship in Snooker. For many of them it seems better to actually lose the final. Of course everyone wants to win it, but if you take a look at the history it shows that handling a victory is a lot more difficult than winning in the first place. This naturally doesn't hold for the more experienced players like Ronnie O'Sullivan but for younger, more inexperienced players, being the runner up might be one of the best things that happened to their careers.
The first piece of data I'd like to present is the fact that no-one has ever defended the title the first time they became reigning world champions. Steve Davies, Stephen Henry, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Williams, none of them could repeat their first victory the year after. Indeed, it's only Steven Henry and Steve Davies who have defended a title at all in the Crucible.
Next let's look at a few examples of wins and losses in recent history. In 2005 we saw Shaun Murphy take the victory. He dismissed his opponents with a form of play never seen before nor afterwards. No shot seemed to difficult for him, he potted everything in sight. But after becoming the world champion he struggled a bit and basically had to rebuild his whole style of play, leaving his impossibly offensive play for a more tactical one. He has said in interviews that he was very disappointed not having defended his world title and that surely must have had a detrimental effect on him.
Another example of a struggling champion is Graeme Dott. He won in 2006 but after that he started a decline which hit rock bottom during 2008. It seems he didn't pot a single ball during that year, I even saw him miss the pack of reds in the first shot of a frame. I'm glad to see though that his slump is over, he's won a couple of matches this year and won his first match this World Championship against the ever unlucky Barry Hawkins.
What about those who lose the final? Here we have two excellent examples to support my theory: Mark Selby and Ali Carter. Mark Selby has become the one that many people see as the true contender against O'Sullivan. And indeed, after his defeat against John Higgins in the final at the Crucible in 2007 he has displayed a lot good snooker and won several tournaments. It seems as if he took his game to the next level after being in the final. The same holds for Ali Carter who has had a fantastic season, taken his game to absolute top class and won his first tournament. It's clear that both these players has benefited a lot from their successes in the World Championships.
If you know your snooker history you'll be likely to point out that Graeme Dott did in fact lose a final before actually going on to win it. The thing is, I don't remember enough to recall how that affected his play afterwards but it could have been that bad since he came back to win the championship two years later. So if anything I'll count him as yet another case in point.
So there you have it. For many players it might actually be ultimately better for them to lose the final. They have a lot less pressure to live with, only the fantastic experience of performing really well at the most important tournament of the year. It's the really great players who manage to come back after an early win in their career and repeat it, even several times. This is a testament to how important the mental part of snooker really is.
The first piece of data I'd like to present is the fact that no-one has ever defended the title the first time they became reigning world champions. Steve Davies, Stephen Henry, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Williams, none of them could repeat their first victory the year after. Indeed, it's only Steven Henry and Steve Davies who have defended a title at all in the Crucible.
Next let's look at a few examples of wins and losses in recent history. In 2005 we saw Shaun Murphy take the victory. He dismissed his opponents with a form of play never seen before nor afterwards. No shot seemed to difficult for him, he potted everything in sight. But after becoming the world champion he struggled a bit and basically had to rebuild his whole style of play, leaving his impossibly offensive play for a more tactical one. He has said in interviews that he was very disappointed not having defended his world title and that surely must have had a detrimental effect on him.
Another example of a struggling champion is Graeme Dott. He won in 2006 but after that he started a decline which hit rock bottom during 2008. It seems he didn't pot a single ball during that year, I even saw him miss the pack of reds in the first shot of a frame. I'm glad to see though that his slump is over, he's won a couple of matches this year and won his first match this World Championship against the ever unlucky Barry Hawkins.
What about those who lose the final? Here we have two excellent examples to support my theory: Mark Selby and Ali Carter. Mark Selby has become the one that many people see as the true contender against O'Sullivan. And indeed, after his defeat against John Higgins in the final at the Crucible in 2007 he has displayed a lot good snooker and won several tournaments. It seems as if he took his game to the next level after being in the final. The same holds for Ali Carter who has had a fantastic season, taken his game to absolute top class and won his first tournament. It's clear that both these players has benefited a lot from their successes in the World Championships.
If you know your snooker history you'll be likely to point out that Graeme Dott did in fact lose a final before actually going on to win it. The thing is, I don't remember enough to recall how that affected his play afterwards but it could have been that bad since he came back to win the championship two years later. So if anything I'll count him as yet another case in point.
So there you have it. For many players it might actually be ultimately better for them to lose the final. They have a lot less pressure to live with, only the fantastic experience of performing really well at the most important tournament of the year. It's the really great players who manage to come back after an early win in their career and repeat it, even several times. This is a testament to how important the mental part of snooker really is.
2009-04-10
Beating O'Sullivan
It's been a while since I wrote something snooker related but since the world championship is around the corner I thought I'd jot down some of my thoughts.
Just as last year, the player to beat is Ronnie O'Sullivan. Indeed, he's always the player to beat but in recent years he has found a bit of calm that makes him more stable and his performance more even than before. For his opponents that means it's much more unlikely that he has a bad day which makes it at least possible to beat him.
Back in the years, one of the more subtle symptoms that The Rocket had a bad day was that he would start playing faster and faster. He normally has a very high potting speed but sometimes he would increase it to go at a neck breaking pace. O'Sullivan explains this behavior in his autobiography "Ronnie
" that it depends on him feeling bad and uncomfortable and he just wants to get out of the place. My own interpretation is also that if his head is full of bad thoughts then increasing the speed means that he needs to force himself to focus on the snooker and thus keep the bad thoughts out, at least momentarily. Even though this speed-snooker has many times made him lose matches I think it also has helped him keep up the pace in his over-all game. A bit like speed-reading were you can increase your reading speed by successively increasing the reading pace until you no longer understand what you are reading. If done repeatedly this will make you read faster over time. And I think we're seeing the same effect in Ronnie.
Over the years O'Sullivan has acquired a mental advantage over many players. Just the fact that playing against O'Sullivan seems to instill a fear, or makes his opponents full of adrenalin. In these cases it doesn't take that much to win, O'Sullivan can play for him average snooker and still win comfortably. I've seen both Stephen McGuire and Ali Carter coming in full of adrenalin being determined to give The Rocket a match, but failing then missing the simplest of pots simply because they haven't been able to calm down. Another example was a match against Tom Ford, where O'Sullivan play some of the worst snooker I've ever seen him play. But Ford just couldn't take the chance he got. Despite leading the final frame and the balls being in good position he failed to win the match. It looked almost as if he just refused to win, even when O'Sullivan gave him chance after chance. O'Sullivan won in the end (and in the next match he beat Ali Carter with five centuries, of which one was a 147).
There are a few players which are not intimidated by O'Sullivan. None of the old masters like Davies, Henry, Higgins, Doherty, Williams, Ebdon and Fu get their nerves out of control. They're just too professional for that. But there are some younger players who also can handle the situation with The Rocket at the table. The first and foremost is of course Mark Selby but also Ricky Walden seem to be doing just fine. These are the players that have a chance to beat O'Sullivan and can hope to beat him on one of his bad days.
Who can beat O'Sullivan when he plays his best snooker? Some people say none. Others say Higgins is the only one with the capacity. Personally I don't know. Sure, Higgins can give O'Sullivan a match but ever since Higgins won his last World Championship he hasn't been able to demonstrate his best game, and when he has been playing good, it's only been for short periods of time. So realistically, over a long match I don't think Higgins has what it takes to beat O'Sullivan. Not anymore.
O'Sullivan used to have a weak spot when it came to complicated defensive games. It was possible to get him out of balance and he would lose his patience. He has improved a lot in this respect the last couple of years. It seems he has decided it's ok and sometimes even fun to battle out a defensive duel and he's not going to be thrown off by it. Sure, he can still improve his defensive game but it is still good enough to outmaneuver many of the players in the circuit.
It's going to be great to see Ronnie again in the crucible. That's when he's the most concentrated and really wants to win and it's at those moments he plays his best snooker. And he is looking as hard to beat as ever. Is there anyone capable of beating him? There might be a few players who will give him a match but I think in three weeks time we will see Ronnie O'Sullivan get his fourth and second consecutive world title.
Just as last year, the player to beat is Ronnie O'Sullivan. Indeed, he's always the player to beat but in recent years he has found a bit of calm that makes him more stable and his performance more even than before. For his opponents that means it's much more unlikely that he has a bad day which makes it at least possible to beat him.
Back in the years, one of the more subtle symptoms that The Rocket had a bad day was that he would start playing faster and faster. He normally has a very high potting speed but sometimes he would increase it to go at a neck breaking pace. O'Sullivan explains this behavior in his autobiography "Ronnie
" that it depends on him feeling bad and uncomfortable and he just wants to get out of the place. My own interpretation is also that if his head is full of bad thoughts then increasing the speed means that he needs to force himself to focus on the snooker and thus keep the bad thoughts out, at least momentarily. Even though this speed-snooker has many times made him lose matches I think it also has helped him keep up the pace in his over-all game. A bit like speed-reading were you can increase your reading speed by successively increasing the reading pace until you no longer understand what you are reading. If done repeatedly this will make you read faster over time. And I think we're seeing the same effect in Ronnie.Over the years O'Sullivan has acquired a mental advantage over many players. Just the fact that playing against O'Sullivan seems to instill a fear, or makes his opponents full of adrenalin. In these cases it doesn't take that much to win, O'Sullivan can play for him average snooker and still win comfortably. I've seen both Stephen McGuire and Ali Carter coming in full of adrenalin being determined to give The Rocket a match, but failing then missing the simplest of pots simply because they haven't been able to calm down. Another example was a match against Tom Ford, where O'Sullivan play some of the worst snooker I've ever seen him play. But Ford just couldn't take the chance he got. Despite leading the final frame and the balls being in good position he failed to win the match. It looked almost as if he just refused to win, even when O'Sullivan gave him chance after chance. O'Sullivan won in the end (and in the next match he beat Ali Carter with five centuries, of which one was a 147).
There are a few players which are not intimidated by O'Sullivan. None of the old masters like Davies, Henry, Higgins, Doherty, Williams, Ebdon and Fu get their nerves out of control. They're just too professional for that. But there are some younger players who also can handle the situation with The Rocket at the table. The first and foremost is of course Mark Selby but also Ricky Walden seem to be doing just fine. These are the players that have a chance to beat O'Sullivan and can hope to beat him on one of his bad days.
Who can beat O'Sullivan when he plays his best snooker? Some people say none. Others say Higgins is the only one with the capacity. Personally I don't know. Sure, Higgins can give O'Sullivan a match but ever since Higgins won his last World Championship he hasn't been able to demonstrate his best game, and when he has been playing good, it's only been for short periods of time. So realistically, over a long match I don't think Higgins has what it takes to beat O'Sullivan. Not anymore.
O'Sullivan used to have a weak spot when it came to complicated defensive games. It was possible to get him out of balance and he would lose his patience. He has improved a lot in this respect the last couple of years. It seems he has decided it's ok and sometimes even fun to battle out a defensive duel and he's not going to be thrown off by it. Sure, he can still improve his defensive game but it is still good enough to outmaneuver many of the players in the circuit.
It's going to be great to see Ronnie again in the crucible. That's when he's the most concentrated and really wants to win and it's at those moments he plays his best snooker. And he is looking as hard to beat as ever. Is there anyone capable of beating him? There might be a few players who will give him a match but I think in three weeks time we will see Ronnie O'Sullivan get his fourth and second consecutive world title.
2009-04-03
Joke of the Day
"Doctor, doctor! I think I'm a snooker ball, what should I do?"From the blog 147 at eurosport.se.
"Go to the end of the cue."
2009-03-03
Joke of the Day
Why is six afraid of seven?
Because seven eight nine.
I suppose it's an old joke but I've never heard it before. Came across it in the game Violet.
2009-02-12
Good Old Slashdot
Back in the days (like in the 90's) I used to read Slashdot, the geek news site. I don't anymore, I waste my time elsewhere these days.
But today I found out a pretty cute thing about Slashdot. They send random silly quotes in their response HTTP headers. If you don't understand what I just said, it means that when Slashdot talks to your browser it includes some stuff that is unnecessary and which the browser will simply throw away. But this extra stuff is actually silly quotes.
If you're on linux you can do curl -I slashdot.org to watch all the headers.
Here are some examples:
X-Fry: Sweet justice! Sweet, juicy justice!
X-Bender: Stop doing the right thing, you jerk!
X-Fry: But this is HDTV. It's got better resolution than the real world.
X-Fry: The butter in my pocket is melting!
X-Bender: I'm tired of this room and everyone in it!
X-Bender: My full name is Bender Bending Rodriguez.
Wow, these guys really have a thing for inserting silliness everywhere.
But today I found out a pretty cute thing about Slashdot. They send random silly quotes in their response HTTP headers. If you don't understand what I just said, it means that when Slashdot talks to your browser it includes some stuff that is unnecessary and which the browser will simply throw away. But this extra stuff is actually silly quotes.
If you're on linux you can do curl -I slashdot.org to watch all the headers.
Here are some examples:
X-Fry: Sweet justice! Sweet, juicy justice!
X-Bender: Stop doing the right thing, you jerk!
X-Fry: But this is HDTV. It's got better resolution than the real world.
X-Fry: The butter in my pocket is melting!
X-Bender: I'm tired of this room and everyone in it!
X-Bender: My full name is Bender Bending Rodriguez.
Wow, these guys really have a thing for inserting silliness everywhere.
2009-02-01
Wordle
Wordle is a nice online service for creating word clouds. Here's some words from my blog:
From this there are a number of feature that I would like wordle to improve on. First of all, when reading off a blog it's clear that they're just concatenating the different posts. But it seems that they forget to insert a space between the posts which results in some funny words with a period in the middle. Secondly it would be nice to be able to treat several words as a single one. In the above example you can see that I've written "Star Wars" quite a lot. But the words "Star" and "Wars" are treated separately. It would be swell if I could say that any occurrence of the word "Star" before "Wars" should be treated as a single word.
From this there are a number of feature that I would like wordle to improve on. First of all, when reading off a blog it's clear that they're just concatenating the different posts. But it seems that they forget to insert a space between the posts which results in some funny words with a period in the middle. Secondly it would be nice to be able to treat several words as a single one. In the above example you can see that I've written "Star Wars" quite a lot. But the words "Star" and "Wars" are treated separately. It would be swell if I could say that any occurrence of the word "Star" before "Wars" should be treated as a single word.
2009-01-30
Fancy Pants Adventures: World 2
Finally! I have waited so eagerly. A couple of years ago I came across this incredibly awesome flash game called Fancy Pants Adventures. It's a platform game in the style of Sonic the Hedgehog and sports a really cool main character which is very well animated despite being a stick figure. I really enjoyed it, the only problem was that the game was too short. But already from the start it advertised that there would be a continuation.
And now, much to my joy, the sequel has been released: Fancy Pants Adventures: World 2. And it definitely lives up to my expectations. We meet the same main character but now he has learned a few tricks, like sliding in oil. He can even slide up oily walls. The music is also largely the same, which I don't mind since I liked the music a lot.
So what has changed? Quite a lot. Now there is actually a story to the game but that particular part I don't consider to be an improvement... The graphics has gotten quite a face lift and there are some levels which are quite beautiful. There are also some clear influences from other platform games here. The levels are generally longer and offers more varying game play that World 1.
The secret levels are now more well hidden and have gotten quite a bit of attention. Each of them uses graphics from/inspired from some other game made by friends of Bram Borne, the man behind Fancy Pants. Some of them are not only bonus level but are also a bit tricky to get through.
Another new game element is a kind of golf that can be played on each level. On each level there is a snail and if you jump on it its shell will remain and you can kick that around. The goal is to get the shell into a special hole. The price for doing so is a new color on your fancy pants.
The final boss is also a bit more of a challenge in World 2 compared to the pretty harmless penguin in World 1. This time it's a rabbit which has some clear influences from Bowser in Super Mario World. It took me a while for me to figure out how to beat him and even then he can be a bit problematic since he's throwing spiders at you from time to time.
All in all I really like World 2 and all the improvements it made. My only problem with it is the same as with World 1. The levels are too small and the game is too short. It took me twelve minutes to complete the game the first time. The second time I found all secret levels. I wish there was more. I'm already waiting on World 3.
And now, much to my joy, the sequel has been released: Fancy Pants Adventures: World 2. And it definitely lives up to my expectations. We meet the same main character but now he has learned a few tricks, like sliding in oil. He can even slide up oily walls. The music is also largely the same, which I don't mind since I liked the music a lot.
So what has changed? Quite a lot. Now there is actually a story to the game but that particular part I don't consider to be an improvement... The graphics has gotten quite a face lift and there are some levels which are quite beautiful. There are also some clear influences from other platform games here. The levels are generally longer and offers more varying game play that World 1.
The secret levels are now more well hidden and have gotten quite a bit of attention. Each of them uses graphics from/inspired from some other game made by friends of Bram Borne, the man behind Fancy Pants. Some of them are not only bonus level but are also a bit tricky to get through.
Another new game element is a kind of golf that can be played on each level. On each level there is a snail and if you jump on it its shell will remain and you can kick that around. The goal is to get the shell into a special hole. The price for doing so is a new color on your fancy pants.
The final boss is also a bit more of a challenge in World 2 compared to the pretty harmless penguin in World 1. This time it's a rabbit which has some clear influences from Bowser in Super Mario World. It took me a while for me to figure out how to beat him and even then he can be a bit problematic since he's throwing spiders at you from time to time.
All in all I really like World 2 and all the improvements it made. My only problem with it is the same as with World 1. The levels are too small and the game is too short. It took me twelve minutes to complete the game the first time. The second time I found all secret levels. I wish there was more. I'm already waiting on World 3.
2009-01-28
George Lucas in Love
Following up my latest post on Star Wars, here's a movie about how George Lucas found the inspiration to Star Wars while being in College. It's a really well made little movie that takes inspiration from Shakespeare in Love and applies it to George Lucas. Lots of fun stuff for Star Wars geeks. Enjoy!
2009-01-26
Star Wars: you don't need to see the movies to know them
Here's about the funniest thing I've seen in a while. It's a recap of the original Star Wars movies (episode 4-6). It's retold by someone who hasn't seen the movies. Laughter warning for Star Wars fans!
Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.
Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.
QOTD - "It's obvious"
Conal Elliott discusses the use of "It's obvious" in discussions and how it thwarts creativity. He summarizes the basic misconception as follows:
I understand discussions of what is “obvious” as being founded on a fallacy, namely believing that obviousness is a property of a thing itself, rather than of an individual’s or community’s mental habits (ruts).
2009-01-23
Validation
Here's a wonderful little short movie which I can heartily recommend. It's called Validation and has won more prizes than I knew existed. It's only ~16min so it's a quick watch. I saw it on my lunch break today.
Via Ulisses Costa.
Via Ulisses Costa.
2009-01-10
Hierarchical tabs
Over at the Chromium blog they have a nice article about their thoughts on tabs in Google Chrome. Clearly they've given this quite some thought and also studied how users use the tab functionality to organize their surfing. One particular thing that I learned was that in Chrome they loosely group together some tabs that come from the same origin. But that's not the point of this post.
For quite some time now I've had another idea on grouping tabs together. I think it would be interesting for a browser to have hierarchical tabs. Hierarchical tabs would allow certain tabs to contain a whole new set of tabs, much like directories are a kind of file which can contain files.
Most people already have a first approximation of hierarchical tabs. The bottom layer is that which is provided by the window manager, showing which programs are currently running. For instance, right now I have a file browser, Open Office, Evince (a pdf reader) and Firefox running. The next level is in the browser itself which of course contains the web pages.
Allowing hierarchies of tabs would allow grouping together sets of tags quite nicely, and would help solve the problem which tab overflow when the number of tabs grow large.
I realize though that it would require some thought and experimentation to see if this can work out. One problem is that deep hierarchies will take up screen real estate. But introducing an arbitrary limit on the depth doesn't feel like a good measure either. Another problem is how to easily create a new "directory" tab and send tabs into it. The risk is that the user interface becomes unwieldy.
I know that there are some experiments out there but the one I've seen, Tabgroups is rather underwhelming. It doesn't really deserve to be called hierarchical tabs.
All in all I'm not sure whether hierarchical tabs can be made into a useful feature. But I can't stop thinking about it. I would be totally excited to see some serious experiments with the idea.
For quite some time now I've had another idea on grouping tabs together. I think it would be interesting for a browser to have hierarchical tabs. Hierarchical tabs would allow certain tabs to contain a whole new set of tabs, much like directories are a kind of file which can contain files.
Most people already have a first approximation of hierarchical tabs. The bottom layer is that which is provided by the window manager, showing which programs are currently running. For instance, right now I have a file browser, Open Office, Evince (a pdf reader) and Firefox running. The next level is in the browser itself which of course contains the web pages.
Allowing hierarchies of tabs would allow grouping together sets of tags quite nicely, and would help solve the problem which tab overflow when the number of tabs grow large.
I realize though that it would require some thought and experimentation to see if this can work out. One problem is that deep hierarchies will take up screen real estate. But introducing an arbitrary limit on the depth doesn't feel like a good measure either. Another problem is how to easily create a new "directory" tab and send tabs into it. The risk is that the user interface becomes unwieldy.
I know that there are some experiments out there but the one I've seen, Tabgroups is rather underwhelming. It doesn't really deserve to be called hierarchical tabs.
All in all I'm not sure whether hierarchical tabs can be made into a useful feature. But I can't stop thinking about it. I would be totally excited to see some serious experiments with the idea.
2008-12-15
The "Napoleon Dynamite" Problem
Yesterday I saw the movie Napoleon Dynamite. And what did I think of it? If you've read my blog you might think that you can figure out what I thought about the movie based on other movies I liked and did not like. But as it turns out Napoleon Dynamite is a very particular movie in this respect. It is particularly difficult to predict what people think of this movie, even when their movie tastes are well known. And that made me really curious, I just had to see this movie.
Netflix is an online company that lets you rent as many movies as you like against a monthly fee. For them, it's important with happy customers that wants to keep renting movies. And one way for them to make their customers stay is to give them accurate recommendations. In fact, making accurate recommendations is big business for them. Netflix have had people working on improving their recommendation system for many years. But after some time they hit a well, they didn't make any improvements anymore. Or if they did, they were minuscule. But they still had their mind set on improving the recommendation system so they took drastic measures: in the spring 2007 they announced a competition. Any programmer who could improve upon Netflix own recommendation system by 10% would win the competition. The prize was set to one million dollar.
Given that kind of prize money this has naturally attracted a whole lot of programmers world wide. And initially they were making good progress towards the 10% goal. They were making leaps of several percentage units coming up to seven, eight and now even over nine percents improvements. But as they crept closer to the goal it keeps getting harder to make new improvement. And as it turns out there is a small class of movies that turn out to be extra hard to predict. And the hardest one seems to be Napoleon Dynamite. This movie has some special quality that makes it singularly unpredictable. It is this movie and a small set of others that are fooling the algorithms to make anymore progress.
You can read about all this in more detail in this interesting article in New York Times.
So, what did I think about Napoleon Dynamite? It was not my kind of movie, I didn't like it at all. It was actually a pain to watch it until the end but I forced myself though it. But I can see why some people like it. The movie is set in an 80's style and the protagonist is an incredible looser. I would have maybe appreciated the retro style if I liked the rest of the manuscript but as it is now it didn't help the film a bit for me. The people in the movie are quite angry with each other and that's one thing I certainly don't appreciate in a movie, especially if it's over small stupid things. The only redeeming things for the movie is the intro and the fact that the ending is a happy one.
Netflix is an online company that lets you rent as many movies as you like against a monthly fee. For them, it's important with happy customers that wants to keep renting movies. And one way for them to make their customers stay is to give them accurate recommendations. In fact, making accurate recommendations is big business for them. Netflix have had people working on improving their recommendation system for many years. But after some time they hit a well, they didn't make any improvements anymore. Or if they did, they were minuscule. But they still had their mind set on improving the recommendation system so they took drastic measures: in the spring 2007 they announced a competition. Any programmer who could improve upon Netflix own recommendation system by 10% would win the competition. The prize was set to one million dollar.
Given that kind of prize money this has naturally attracted a whole lot of programmers world wide. And initially they were making good progress towards the 10% goal. They were making leaps of several percentage units coming up to seven, eight and now even over nine percents improvements. But as they crept closer to the goal it keeps getting harder to make new improvement. And as it turns out there is a small class of movies that turn out to be extra hard to predict. And the hardest one seems to be Napoleon Dynamite. This movie has some special quality that makes it singularly unpredictable. It is this movie and a small set of others that are fooling the algorithms to make anymore progress.
You can read about all this in more detail in this interesting article in New York Times.
So, what did I think about Napoleon Dynamite? It was not my kind of movie, I didn't like it at all. It was actually a pain to watch it until the end but I forced myself though it. But I can see why some people like it. The movie is set in an 80's style and the protagonist is an incredible looser. I would have maybe appreciated the retro style if I liked the rest of the manuscript but as it is now it didn't help the film a bit for me. The people in the movie are quite angry with each other and that's one thing I certainly don't appreciate in a movie, especially if it's over small stupid things. The only redeeming things for the movie is the intro and the fact that the ending is a happy one.
2008-12-06
Wine
I've mentioned a couple of times that I use Wine to run applications on Windows on my Ubuntu Linux laptop. So it's high time I give it the praise it deserves: Wine, I love you! Well, in a platonic way anyway. I'm really impressed with what this application does and how well it achieves it. Sure, I've tried a whole number of Windows applications that it doesn't handle but it doesn't matter. For me it's more like for each program that actually run it's a bonus, a happy surprise. Today I tried one of my favorite games Happyland Adventures and it ran perfectly, although I had my screen set on such a high resolution that window of the game was a mere dot in the middle of my screen as it runs in what I believe to be 640x480.
Earlier today (well, technically yesterday) I also managed to find AppDB, a database which records how various Windows programs work under Wine. The interface is a little cluttered but apart from that this is an extremely helpful thing. Just go there, look up your favorite Windows program and see how it works for others. Even if it doesn't work right out of the box some people might have found out a little trick to make it work. Pure awesomeness.
For me Wine makes life on the Linux side quite a bit brighter.
Earlier today (well, technically yesterday) I also managed to find AppDB, a database which records how various Windows programs work under Wine. The interface is a little cluttered but apart from that this is an extremely helpful thing. Just go there, look up your favorite Windows program and see how it works for others. Even if it doesn't work right out of the box some people might have found out a little trick to make it work. Pure awesomeness.
For me Wine makes life on the Linux side quite a bit brighter.
2008-12-03
Eye of the Tiger
I've just hear the most brilliant cover ever! I was browsing around for music in Spotify and came across a title I knew well,Eye Of The Tiger
. But the artist was a big surprise: Paul Anka. He has made an album called Rock Swings
which contains some surprising covers. And his version of Eye of the Tiger sounds nothing like the original, it's a big band swing version. The only thing left from the original is the lyrics, it has none of that pumping electric guitar. Yet I couldn't help laugh when I heard it, barely recognizing the original behind the cover.
. But the artist was a big surprise: Paul Anka. He has made an album called Rock Swings which contains some surprising covers. And his version of Eye of the Tiger sounds nothing like the original, it's a big band swing version. The only thing left from the original is the lyrics, it has none of that pumping electric guitar. Yet I couldn't help laugh when I heard it, barely recognizing the original behind the cover.
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