Archive for March, 2006

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

There’s a Stein quote for every occasion

Hunting down the airplane quote from yesterday in Everybody’s Autobiography, I found another passage I’d marked out of sheer homesickness when I lived in Ann Arbor:
I also lectured in Brooklyn and that was interesting… because I met Marianne Moore and because an attentive young man accidentally closed the door on my thumb and we had […]

1 Comment » - Posted in Personal, Culture by Misha

Monday, March 27th, 2006

Monkey versus robot

…and, on a much lighter note, a video that finally reveals what all of post-Enlightenment culture has been leading up to, had we but known it: a combination Roomba/animatronic chimp ape.

As my coworker Josh put it, this makes you want to run out and buy both of them, together.

3 Comments » - Posted in Technology by Misha

Monday, March 27th, 2006

Their own contemporaries

In the past week, I have had both an MRI and a CAT scan (both for entirely unthreatening conditions, worry not). So I feel qualified to tell you that if you have a choice between the two, choose a CAT scan — it’s faster, quieter, and you get to ride back and forth on […]

1 Comment » - Posted in Culture, Technology by Misha

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006

Product launch

Here is how crazy last week was — there was something even better than seeing the Pogues live in concert.
And that was the launch of the IQ MAX, the new turret (a specialized financial trading-floor communication system) from IPC. I was lucky enough to be part of the team of industrial and interaction designers […]

1 Comment » - Posted in Interface design, Technology by Misha

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006

What’s my job again?

For the “please come up with a name for my profession” files, from a posting to the NYCCHI list: “whether you call yourself an information architect, experience planner, interaction designer, or customer anthropologist, we’ve probably got a position that would fit you well.”

Sadly, I probably could make an argument for all of those as separate […]

No Comments » - Posted in Interface design by Misha

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006

The Pogues, New York 3/16

The Pogues, New York 3/16
I had a seriously bipolar week last week — some ridiculously high highs and some nastily low lows — but one of the highest points of all was getting to attend the first New York show of the reunited Pogues’ tour.
(Well, not quite all the Pogues reunited. My college […]

6 Comments » - Posted in Culture by Misha

Sunday, March 19th, 2006

Grammar nerds of the world, unite!

I got name-checked on Eschaton, for noting (in comments) that an article Atrios pointed to misquoted Kanye West’s famous “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”* in a way that introduced stereotypically “black” grammatical errors.
This can only reinforce my street cred as a massive, massive grammar, spelling, and punctuation nerd. Holla!
* […]

5 Comments » - Posted in Personal, Culture by Misha

Sunday, March 19th, 2006

Ajax all over

I had this post half-written in my head about how Daily Kos’s implementation of an Ajax-based commenting system was proof that the typical knock on Ajax technology — that it’s not yet ready for heavy-volume commercial sites — was totally wrong. Daily Kos isn’t a commercial site per se, but it’s hugely high-traffic, so […]

No Comments » - Posted in Technology by Misha

Monday, March 6th, 2006

This isn’t the technopr0n you’re looking for.

From the iChat logs:
Friend: so, I tried to look at your blog.
Friend: It is blocked from my work network as pornography
Misha: ?
Misha: !
Friend: yeah.
Misha: ROCK ON
Friend: ahahaha
Friend: I thought you might appreciate that
Friend: of course this is the company that blocked linked in because it was a dating site

No Comments » - Posted in Administrivia, Technology by Misha

Sunday, March 5th, 2006

Hedda Gabler

Were it not completely sold out, I would encourage everyone I know to go check out the Sydney Theater Company’s production of Hedda Gabler at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Cate Blanchett is acting a smoking hole through the center of the BAM Harvey stage in the title role. Her Hedda is […]

4 Comments » - Posted in Culture by Misha