You’ve got to see this Chris Ware animation set to an intriguing This American Life tale about how being behind the camera can change you.
(via Waxy)
Ze Frank Finishes The Show
It’s been one year since Ze Frank started “The Show”. I’ve been a big fan ever since. Yesterday he posted the final episode; he’s come along way since the start.
3 Way Tie on Jeopardy
I’ve been interested in learning more about Game Theory (wikipedia) lately and in particular The Prisoner’s Dilemma. One very interesting example happened on the Jeopardy show last Friday (March 16th 2007)—for the first time in 23 years, Jeopardy had a three way tie.
The tie was an anomaly in large part because one player didn’t play the game to win. Going into Final Jeopardy!, here’s how the totals stood…
- Scott: $13,400
- James: $8,000
- Anders: $8,000
So if you were playing the game, how much would you have bet? If you’re James or Anders, you can’t win by betting nothing and hoping for Scott to wager more than $5,400 and then get the question wrong because he won’t risk that much. In order for either James or Anders to win, you would have to bet everything, get the answer right and have Scott answer incorrectly.
If you’re Scott you have to wager at least $2,601 to win. It’s unlikely that you would get the question wrong and the other two get it right, so even with a really difficult question, chances are you’d still be left with between $10,799 or $8,001 depending on how aggressive you were—either way enough to beat either of your opponents who didn’t bet anything.
Scott probably assumed that one or both of his opponents would wind up with $16,000. What Scott did next is kind of like The Prisoner’s Dilemma (wikipedia) except that Scott was safe from either James or Anders “defecting”.
Scott decided to wager exactly $2,600 creating a three-way tie. He didn’t really lose anything because now he will return on Monday with the same two opponents that he’s already beaten and by not taking the extra $1 (or extra $2399 the most additional money he could have won with a “safe” wager) he allowed both James and Anders to also collect $1600 in winnings.
Scott has a Livejournal entry about the game:
Oh, you want to know about the Final Jeopardy! wager? It was an intentional bet. I counted on Anders and Jamey betting rationally and wagering everything. I thought it would be really cool to be a part of Jeopardy history. I knew that meant I’d be playing seasoned opponents, but it didn’t matter to me. I had already won a couple of games myself, and I thought it would be neat to share the money. (See my post about Jennifer from a couple of days; that’s what the literary people call foreshadowing. :-)). Now there’ll be a notation next to one of my games in the J! Archive. How cool is that?
(via Kottke)
Le Building
I can’t remember why I never posted a link to Le Building when I first saw it, so I’ll do it now, because it is such a fantastic animated short from the talented students at Gobelins.
For those of you that are curious, the pizza delivery kid is completely CG.
Crazy Multi-input Touch Screen
Last year at the TED conference, Jeff Han demonstrated his uber cool new technology, high resolution multi-touch interface.
Wired News has a great piece, including video footage of the technology in action: “TED: Jeff Han, A Year Later“.
Also for your viewing pleasure, here’s another clip:
Artist Eye Tracking
Related to the post about eye-tracking for usability, you might be interested in eye tracking research that shows artists look at things differently.
20 Second Animation Contest – Round 1
A couple of guys from down in California, Justin Ridge and Mike Roush, decided to have a contest where they would both animate the same 20 second clip of music. The results are beautiful. They plan to make it a regular event and I can’t wait to see the next submission—but in the meantime here are the results from round one.
I started my own little animation project, but after an unrecoverable hard drive crash, it looks like the project is toast.
Luckily I emailed a friend an early version so at least I have something, but after seeing such an early version again, it breaks my heart that it’s not even remotely close to what it had become. When the hard drive crashed, the project had triple the amount of frames and a more completed look and feel. For what it’s worth, here is my unfinished animation: The Jumper (220k animated gif).
Eye Tracking for Usability
Have you ever noticed how some websites are just easier to read than others? The New York Times comes to mind as a good example of a site that creates an enjoyable experience through its use of columns that are not too wide, tight writing, lots of white space, and jettisoning unnecessary imagery.
The Online Journalism Review recently ran an extremely interesting article about the science of good page layout. It explains how using eye tracking software, it is possible to create more efficient pages that help uses read pages faster and retain more information at the same time.
Among the different information that can be gleaned from eye tracking, I found the differences between the sexes eye moments to be the most interesting. (Though I will add, I’ve never found myself staring at other guy’s crotches — so that makes me wonder, is this for real?)
From the article:
Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed. Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.
It would be interesting to delve a little deeper into this finding. If it is true, I imagine there may be some evolutionary reason for the differences.
(via Kottke)
SxSW Typography Presentation
Every year for the past 3 or 4 years I have been disappointed that I’m not in a position to fly down to the South by Southwest Conference in Austin Texas.
However, I still enjoy following along with some of the interesting presentations such as this fabulous look at typography for the web by Richard Rutter and Mark Boulton.
Also to check out from SxSW 2007, Will Wright’s fantastic keynote address.
Sprout
More than just a simple puzzle game, Sprout features beautiful charcoal drawings as the basis for its graphics and style—a flash game that thinks it’s a children’s storybook.