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  • admin 7:50 pm on September 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Model the world with Google SketchUp 8 #yam 

     
  • admin 3:29 pm on August 31, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    The first step is to start 

    Many people ask me, “How can I get started in web design?” or, “What skills do I need to start making web applications?” While it would be easy to recommend stacks of books, and dozens of articles with 55 tips for being 115% better than the next guy, the truth is that you don’t need learn anything new in order to begin. The most important thing is simply to start.

    Start making something. If you want to learn web design, make a website. Want to be an entreprenuer and start a business selling web based products? Make an app. Maybe you don’t have the skills yet, but why worry about that? You probably don’t even know what skills you need.

    Start with what you already know

    If you want to build something on the web, don’t worry about learning HTML, CSS, Ruby, PHP, SQL, etc. They might be necessary for a finished product, but you don’t need any of them to start. Why not mock-up your app idea in Keynote or Powerpoint? Draw boxes for form fields, write copy, link this page to that page. You can make a pretty robust interactive prototype right there with software you already know. Not computer saavy? Start with pencil and paper or Post-it Notes. Draw the screens, tape them to the wall, and see how it flows.

    You probably don’t even know what skills you need, so don’t worry about it. Start with what you already know.

    You can do a lot of the work with simple sketches or slides. You’ll be able to see your idea take form and begin to evaluate whether or not it really is something special. It’s at that point you can take the next step, which might be learning enough HTML to take your prototype into the browser. The point is, go as far as you can with the skills and tools that you have.

    Avoid self doubt

    Many times the reasons we don’t start something have nothing to do with lack of skills, materials, or facilities. The real blockers are self-criticism and excuses. In the excellent book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the author, Betty Edwards, discusses how we all draw as kids but around adolescence, many of us stop developing that ability.

    “The beginning of adolescence seems to mark the abrupt end of artistic development in terms of drawing skills for many adults. As children, they confronted an artisitc crisis, a conflict between their increasingly complex perceptions of the world around them and their current level of art skill.”

    At that age kids become increasingly self-critical and equally interested in drawing realistically. When they fail to draw as well as they know is possible many give up drawing at all.

    This feeling continues into adulthood. We want to design a website or build an application but if our own toolset doesn’t match up to the perceived skillset we never start. It doesn’t help that the internet gives us nearly limitless exposure to amazing work, talented individuals, and excellent execution. It’s easy to feel inadequate when you compare yourself to the very best, but even they weren’t born with those skills and they wouldn’t have them if they never started.

    Do—there is no try

    People who succeed somehow find a way to keep working despite the self-doubt. The artist, Vincent Van Gogh was only an artist for the last ten years of his life. We all know him for masterful works of art, but he didn’t start out as a master. Compare these examples from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain showing an early drawing compared to one completed two years later:


    Vincent Van Gogh Carpenter, 1880 and Woman Mourning, 1882

    He wasn’t some child prodigy (he was 27 when he started painting), he learned his craft by hard work. If he’d listened to his own self doubt or despaired that his skills didn’t compare to Paul Gauguin’s it’s likely he never would have even tried.

    This is all to say that there are many things that can get in the way of the things we should be creating. To never follow a dream because you don’t think you’re good enough or don’t have the skills, or knowledge, or experience is a waste. In fact, these projects where there is doubt are the ones to pursue. They offer the greatest challenge and the greatest rewards. Why bother doing something you already have done a hundred times, where there is nothing left to learn? Don’t worry about what you need to know in order to finish a project, you already have everything you need to start.

     
  • admin 3:29 pm on August 31, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Arcade Fire meets HTML5 

    What would a music experience designed specifically for the modern web look like? This is a question we’ve been playing around with for the last few months. Browsers and web technologies have advanced so rapidly in the last few years that powerful experiences tailored to each unique person in real-time are now a reality.

    Today we’re excited to launch a musical experience made specifically for the browser. Called “The Wilderness Downtown”, the project was created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google. Building this project on the web and for the browser allowed us to craft an experience that is not only personalized, but also deeply personal for each viewer. “The Wilderness Downtown” takes you down memory lane through the streets you grew up in. It’s set to Arcade Fire’s new song “We Used to Wait” off their newly released album The Suburbs (which you may be familiar with, especially if you were one of 3.7 million viewers who live-streamed Arcade Fire’s concert on YouTube earlier this month). The project was built with the latest web technologies and includes HTML5, Google Maps, an integrated drawing tool, as well as multiple browser windows that move around the screen.


    “The Wilderness Downtown” was inspired by recent developments in modern browsers and was built with Google Chrome in mind. As such, it’s best experienced in Chrome or an up-to-date HTML5-compliant browser. You can launch the project and learn more about it on our Chrome Experiments site at http://www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire.

    We hope you enjoy it.

    Posted by Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Lab

     
  • admin 7:45 pm on August 30, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    HTML5 Experiments – Arcade Fire, best with Chrome 

     
  • admin 10:37 am on August 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Un-bull-ievable! Calf saved from the chop grows into towering 6ft 5in, one-ton beast | Mail Online 

     
  • admin 8:32 pm on August 16, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Street artist braves ‘terrifying’ conditions to paint 3D waterfall on Moscow pavement | Mail Online 

     
  • admin 9:04 am on August 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    HTML5 Games 

    Why do people develop in flash still?

    Posted via email from David’s posterous

     
  • admin 6:53 am on August 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope subway art 

    I take the Q train from Brooklyn to Manhattan a lot and am always fascinated by this animation that’s viewable from the train slightly after you pass the Dekalb Ave. stop (animation starts :20 in, there’s some NSFW language in the background):

    So I finally decided to do some research on it. Turns out it’s Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope and it was installed in the abandoned Myrtle Avenue subway station in September, 1980. It’s made up of 228 hand-painted panels viewed through a series of vertical slits. It works on the principle of the Zoetrope, a 19th century optical toy.

    zoe

    Below is an old news story about Masstransiscope that interviews Brand. He talks about how being a filmmaker led to the idea: “Instead of having the film go through the projector, you could move the audience past the film.”

     
  • admin 7:23 am on August 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    shitmydadsays (shitmydadsays) – shitmydadsays 

     
  • admin 10:46 am on August 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Why You Can’t Work at Work | Jason Fried | Big Think 

    Managers are the real problem. Their job is to interrupt.

    Posted via email from David’s posterous

     
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