A Petty Blog

I think we all know this happens, though it’s the Super Bowl in the U.S.

I’ve just never seen it scientifically graphed.

If the implications are not clear, see the explanation here.

It’s National Procrastination Week.  Seriously, it’s real.

Actually, it was last week and I just didn’t get around to publishing this.

I saw it on Lifehacker, where you can find some tips for dealing with your … issue.

Ever since the dawn of email, there have been issues with email distribution lists and users who do not understand the difference between reply and reply-to-all (’r’ vs. ‘R’ in the old days) .  It is always amusing to watch an incident unfold, because it’s always the same - the ’stop replying to all’ traffic so quickly outpaces the ‘reply to all’ traffic.

Flowing Data visualized an incident thus:

I found a new blog today.

I passed over this entry about a dozen times before it clicked.

I came across a couple of advertisements this week I thought were clever.

I have been doing a bit of running at the gym, so I’m getting an unaccustomed taste of TV advertisements.  This one keeps catching my eye.  I like the way it starts with something ordinary, then builds and overlays the sounds to make something new.  Reminds me of the old Coke I’d-Like-To-Teach-The-World-To-Sing commercial.

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The other is a print advertisement for color bleach that comes from a blog about advertising I follow - AdGoodness.

You will want to view this full size.

If you move your head farther away, there appears to be a stain on the shirt.  Move your head close up, and it disappears.  You get some of the effect by focusing directly on the image versus off to the side.

This video is clever, meaningful, and well executed.

The video was entered in an AARP contest, “u @ 50″, by a 20 year old and took second place (or so I was told).

Make sure you read as you listen…

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Fantastic Contraptions

Link rolling wheels together with sticks and water bars to create a contraption that will carry the ball to the goal.

It’s harder than it looks.  Once you finish the game you can play and create custom levels, and you can see the outlandish solutions submitted by addicts.

I finished the game (eventually), including one I solved the hard way because I didn’t realize I could scroll to the right.

Let me know if you can finish it too!

Splitter

The concept is simple.  You get to make a certain number of cuts to make the happy face roll into the goal.  You must have a light sabre, because it cuts everything!

I finished this on in about an hour - let me know in the comments how long it takes you.

Flow

Flow started as Jenova Chen’s MFA thesis exploring Flow Theory in games.

It’s a beautifully simple, addictive game that adapts to your skill level.  Extra credit for playing without looking at any instructions

Flow has been further developed for the Playstation.  I recommend you download the game from one of the mirror links (1, 2, 3) as the online version seems to be a bit skippy.  You can just run the program - it does not need to be installed.

Lemmings

Lemmings is an old classic, now implemented in dynamic HTML so you can play it in a browser.

The lemmings just walk - off a cliff, into lava, … - unless you can save them.

Desktop Tower Defense

This game is an entrepreneurial  icon.  The author of this game posted it on his website, and it caught on.  It spread like wildfire and the author made a fortune from the ad revenue on his site.  He quit his programming job and started The Casual Collective (see Splitter above) to encourage other independent game developers.

Some of us are absent minded. We lose stuff. We forget where we keep it; we forget where we leave it.. We leave our cell phones in the coffee shop, our wallet in our car, our glasses on the bureau, and in my case, I sometimes run around looking for my keys with my right hand, not noticing I’m holding them in my left. There’s a reason the neighborhood kids weren’t allowed to play with me growing up.

If this has ever happened to you, you might need this advice from the Get-It-Done Guy.  If not, you might enjoy it anyway.

I liked the style of this column.  I guess I’ll sign up for a while.

You can get on his mailing list here.

Here’s a cool illustration from Optical Illusions - Planet Perplex.

Our eyes have a weakness - a blind spot, so to speak.  The “optic nerve” displaces the light sensitive cells at a certain spot in the back of your eye.  Wikipedia summarizes it thus:

The optic disc or optic nerve head is the location where ganglion cell axons exit the eye to form the optic nerve. There are no light sensitive rods or cones to respond to a light stimulus at this point. This causes a break in the visual field called “the blind spot” or the “physiological blind spot”. The optic nerve head in a normal human eye carries from 1 to 1.2 million neurons from the eye towards the brain.

Planet Perplex has a neat demonstration of the blind spot (and a lot of other cool stuff):

Let me know in the comments if this works for you!

 

Find your blind spot

So I just said your eyes are not perfect. Allow me to demonstrate. Look at the image below. Since the squirrel doesn’t trust the all-too-friendly smile of the boy, he wants to get out. Let’s make him disappear ! Close your left eye, then look at the boy (probably with your right eye). Slowly decrease (or increase) the distance to the screen until … the squirrel is gone !

Whoa ! Seems you DO have a blind spot, and it’s large, too ! There is a certain spot in the back of your eye where you can’t see. It’s where the optical nerves (”wiring and cables”) enter the eye.
This is also a brain illusion. Think about this : do you see a huge floating gap everywhere you look ? No ? But you just learned you have a blind spot so … your mind just guesses what should be there and shows it to you !

 Your mind “guesses what should be there”, but it also blends the information from both eyes…

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