Friday, January 31, 2014

Hyper card - it's back and developing Iphone apps!

LiveCode | Developers



I quite like the historical irony of this. HyperCard was originally designed to be the Interface for the original Newton( smart PDA). It succeeded as being one of the best applications on the Mac. In fact Douglas Adams one used it as being one of the three things which might impress an alien archaeologist looking over the remains of the earth. ( I think the quote was the wheel, Mozat and hypercard... not bad).



Now hype HyperTalk the language behind HyperCard has been reinvented as an open source language and has been used to develop a cross platform Mobile development system called liveCode.



Four example in a button you would have the text



on MouseUp

 ask "hello world"

end mouseUp



I liked hyper talk as it broke the Vice like grip over the necessity to have something for programming which is like  mathematics. This strong mathematical influence on programming notation was paccording to inventor of Hypertext had Nelson urely a historical accident . HyperTalk used entirely English like syntax but in a  natural way, unlike other attempts at English language interfaces like COBOL.



I liked this because if you didn't know the syntax for something you can just say it out loud and that was formerly the right syntax.



Four example if someone said how do I put the contents of a URL into a variable the code would be.



put URL "http://www.thepurehands.org/page.html" into pageText 



I like HyperTalk because it opened up the world of programming to everybody ( like Scratch)



Well I haven't tried it but live code looks to be really fun definitely worth a go with.


Monday, January 27, 2014

Software Engineering Vs Engineering and what it means for HCI.

Just Say No | profserious the blog of software Engineer   has just been musing on the differances between software engineering and engineering.



I do like the the elements "First, complexity and scale are different in the case of software systems: relatively functionally simple software systems comprise more independent parts, placed in relation to each other, than do physical systems of equivalent functional value. " 



I guess my big problem has always been what is the difference between human computer interaction ( or design ) and the design of interaction with  of other everyday items. Please where are large overlaps but what are the differences? There was one book on human computer interaction I remember reading which failed to use the word computer for the first hundred pages.

"Third, software systems operate in a domain determined principally by arbitrary rules about information and symbolic communication whilst the operation of physical systems is governed by the laws of physics."



Again this is interesting in that form the design notion we can't have form follows function. Anthony also ignores the fact we have electronic and electrical engineering with not problem.





"Finally, software is readily changeable and thus is changed, it is used in settings where our uncertainty leads us to anticipate the need to change."



This is one of the elements which I found the most intreasting. Yes we do use software when we expect change and want to easily accommodated it. So I guess user interfaces are something we build when we expect what is to be controlled will change frequently. stimulating and stuff





It’s all creation; it’s made. It’s not a given. (Thomas Struth)

Exhibition of Photographer THOMAS STRUTH at the  Marian Goodman Gallery

I kind of like this picture of the labs at Georgia Tech as it makes me feel better about the state of our Pervasive lab. Does haver the slight feel of a playground for me.  I think the authors text says it all. 

Struth writes, “With the new, work, I attempt to take a wider, more principled point of view. I want to reconsider how the process of imagination and fantasy works in general, how something which has built up in someone’s mind has materialized and become reality. The German expression “sich etwas ausmalen”—to paint something in one’s head—refers to the picturing capacity of the human brain. It is a condition, without which we cannot create anything.

“My thoughts about this were partly inspired by Katja Eichinger’s 2008 article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) about the altered perspective and reading of Disneyland since its beginnings in the 1950s. In a time when information technology and the picture-making industry accelerate their efforts to bring imagination and physical reality closer together, thus turning the passive experience of watching a screen into something more bodily, I thought it would be interesting to return to this early example of the constructed imagination, Disneyland.

“I went to Anaheim in 2009 to test its potential for a new body of work and returned in April 2013. My focus was particularly drawn to the ambiguity between what Walt Disney had remembered from his trips to Europe and how it was later rebuilt as a kind of latent reality in California.

“The six pictures from Disneyland I combine in my exhibition with other works I have made at various research or medical facilities in Berlin, at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, and at exemplary urban locations in Ulsan, South Korea and St. Petersburg, Russia. The surprise of what we have collectively created becomes more evident when one takes a more general perspective. Showing real experimental physics, a 21st-century urban landscape, or a surgical robot in action reinforces the question: How should we judge what we see? More intimately, let us consider the vulnerability of the human body and soul under these circumstances. It’s all creation; it’s made. It’s not a given.” 

- Thomas Struth, Los Angeles, December 2013


I guess what I wonder is, does the creaction of technology have any diffrent influence on sociaty than the creation of law or the creation of food or the creation of literature? 

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

psychotropic-house

http://www.guestprojects.com/programme/the-psychotropic-house/

I'm due to talk about the psychotropic-house at a London gallery next week.

 Psychotropic House Symposium has been announced. Tickets are free, booked via Eventbrite
Axisweb have decided this is 'top what's on recommendation' this week

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Proto.io - Silly-fast mobile prototyping.

Proto.io - Silly-fast mobile prototyping.

I've been a bit off line over Xmas  ( and feeling the more refreshed for it).

This is a nice iPhone prototyping website but what I like is the fact you can prototype anything.