jeffwongdesign: January 2011

Jack Speaks

I'm amazed by how smart Jack is (my parent's dog). He's 5 years old, and he still can learn new tricks pretty quickly. With some treats, I was able to teach him how to "speak" this weekend.

Best Kinect Hacks

Watch the video here.

The funniest one by far is the Titty Tracker.

Privacy Policies [Infographic]

Here's an infographic about privacy policies. It's interesting to see the most common words... these are the same things I have to think about when designing the AddThis product and site. Hat tip: Jim and Mashable

LED Cube

Man, I want to build one of these. Hat tip: Fahad Watch the video.

Zen Audio Player

This is an awesome demo of CSS3 and an HTML4 audio player.

Again, this is from Simurai... this dude is on fire.

Check out some of his other awesome demos...

http://lab.simurai.com/css/toggle/#
http://lab.simurai.com/ui/cycle-button/

Traffic in McLean

If you were stuck somewhere in Northern Virginia, DC or Maryland yesterday, it's because a handful of assholes got stuck and caused us to wait in traffic for hours.

I believe that we should pass a law that heavily fines people for getting stuck. If you notice the photo below, there are about 5 or 6 BMWs couldn't go up the hill (since they're RWD). This caused a massive traffic block, and totally shut down a road. Instead of being fined, these cars are rewarded by getting free help and free towing.

Sadly, the responsible ones who bought FWD/AWD/4x4 for these kinds of conditions are punished by the irresponsible ones.

How many hours did it take you to get home? Here's an awesome video of me sitting in traffic (when I live only 1.8 miles away from work).

Black Ops New Map

For some reason, I'm not really excited about the new maps... the last couple times I feel like the COD series has ripped me off (giving remakes of old boards). What do you think?

Watch Video

Justin Thorp Rawks

Today is Community Manager Appreciation Day. Justin is the best.

No Panic Valentines

I whipped together a quick design for our next tournament in Feb. Alan and Jon had a great idea—throw a valentines volleyball tournament where people can show off their skills and love for the game.

What do you guys think? Check out the current site. Ps. The site is getting a huge amount of traffic already. Thanks for all the support!

Data Data Everywhere

If you're into data, you should read this article by the economist. It was highly recommended by one our board of directors. Hat tip: Nigel Morris

Yo Mama So Fat...

Yo mamma so fat, she sat on a binary tree and flattened it into a linked list in O(1) time.

Hat tip: Matt Abrams

Silk

Ok, this is a really cool and sexy site. Check out http://weavesilk.com/ and create your own eye candy.

AddThis Bowling

After our awesome Q1 meeting, our entire team (east coast, west coast and everything between) went bowling. Here are some of the highlights of our evening. Thanks to everyone who could make it out. It was a fun way to start a great year.

Transporting the team to the bowling alley.

Peggy explains the rules of the tournament to the teams.

Mike clears his mind, and prepares to throw a turkey (3 consecutive strikes).

Robert throws a strike of his own, executed with immaculate form and surgical precision.

Will provides real-time color commentary.

Aaron suffers the endless shame of missing a spare.

The finals were won by a microscopic margin. Victory is sweet.

The official 2011 champions.

Check out the rest of the gallery. ^_^

iPad OS 4.3 Gestures

Finally, something that I've been waiting for. I'm so glad they decided to do this. Watch the video here.

Harry Potter at Work

I enjoy the Harry Potter series, but I have no clue what my coworkers are talking about (in terms of spells). I love how geeky everyone is here.

Laws of Spacecraft Design

While these laws are focused for space craft engineers, I'd like to apply them to my next design project. Hat tip: @soleio (Facebook Designer)

Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are wrong.

Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.

Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment.

(Miller's Law) Three points determine a curve.

(Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.

At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader is least likely to be capable of it.

In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.

Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.

When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.

Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over.

There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though.

Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate.

(Edison's Law) "Better" is the enemy of "good".

(Shea's Law) The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up.

The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is therefore no reason to believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to present their analysis as yours.

The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct.

Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though.

The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the speed of light, you may have invented warp drive, but the chances are a lot better that you've screwed up.

A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.

(Larrabee's Law) Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which.

When in doubt, document. (Documentation requirements will reach a maximum shortly after the termination of a program.)

The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until the time your customer fires you for not meeting it.

It's called a "Work Breakdown Structure" because the Work remaining will grow until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce some Structure on it.

(Bowden's Law) Following a testing failure, it's always possible to refine the analysis to show that you really had negative margins all along.

(Montemerlo's Law) Don't do nuthin' dumb.

(Varsi's Law) Schedules only move in one direction.

(Ranger's Law) There ain't no such thing as a free launch.

(von Tiesenhausen's Law of Program Management) To get an accurate estimate of final program requirements, multiply the initial time estimates by pi, and slide the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right.

(von Tiesenhausen's Law of Engineering Design) If you want to have a maximum effect on the design of a new engineering system, learn to draw. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like the initial artist's concept.

(Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.

(Atkin's Law of Demonstrations) When the hardware is working perfectly, the really important visitors don't show up.

(Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

(Roosevelt's Law of Task Planning) Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.

(de Saint-Exupery's Law of Design) A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Any run-of-the-mill engineer can design something which is elegant. A good engineer designs systems to be efficient. A great engineer designs them to be effective.

(Henshaw's Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear lines of blame.

Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.

The three keys to keeping a new manned space program affordable and on schedule:

No new launch vehicles.

No new launch vehicles.

Whatever you do, don't decide to develop any new launch vehicles.

Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the engineering, somebody dies (and there's no partial credit because most of the analysis was right...)

-Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design

No Panic Volleyball

I've been playing volleyball more, and figured it was time to do something special. A couple of the guys that I play with had an idea... about starting a "No Panic" community around volleyball. Right now it seems that Meetup.com is the only online place to set these kinds of things up... I've launched a quick landing page (with the help of Foo) that features our first tournament. It's all beta right now, but eventually I'd like to figure out a way to use the Facebook social graph to connect volleyball players online. This is just the first iteration, but I have a feeling it's going to grow with a little time and love. Check it out.

Ps. Seriously Foo, thanks for helping me out yesterday night. You are awesome.

The book “Traumgedanken” (“Thoughts about dreams”) contains a collection of literary, philosophical, psychological and scientifical texts which provide an insight into different dream theories.

To ease the access to the elusive topic, the book is designed as a model of a dream about dreaming. Analogue to a dream, where pieces of reality are assembled to build a story, it brings different text excerpts together. They are connected by threads which tie in with certain key words. The threads visualise the confusion and fragileness of dreams.
On five pages there are illustrations made out of thread. Their shape and colour relies on the key words on the opposite page. This way an abstract image of the dream about dreaming is generated.

In addition there are five pages where a significant excerpt from a text of the opposite page is stitched into the paper. It is not legible because the type’s actual surface is inside the folded page. This expresses the mysteriousness of dreams and the aspect of dream interpretation.