Listening to: Fix You - Coldplay

Bob Schieffer has some very smart,
sensible and simple things to say about torture… a good sign to see this
stuff starting to be said on the big news outlets.

Listening to: Square One - Cold Play

Fast, slick and out of my face… the perfect combination with software (and it’s
nice having tabs in a stock version of IE). Very nice transparent upgrade from 6 to
7… all my cookies are retained as part of the upgrade. 

Downside… a little tetchy with my various existing toolbars, but it is beta software
so no real stress.

Listening to: Dreams - The Game

Military vehicles are so rich in design and usability case studies, flicking thru
my ‘latest’ (as in not living in the US I get the hard copy AFTER all the articles
have been posted online) I found another… a fascinating
article on the V-22 Osprey.

The Osprey had reached a crisis. Several engineers transferred to
other aircraft projects. The program manager left. The chief engineer was promoted
off the project. A new regime at the Pentagon was demanding that the plane get fixed
in two years or get canceled. The entire culture of Osprey-making had to be fixed,
and a series of significant technological problems had to be solved - fast.

Listening to: Triumphant - Röyksopp

I had seen this Pod
Cast mentioned in a number of places over the past week or so… but over lunch
on Friday Rod suggested that I should check
it out. I’m very glad that I did.

For me it did four things:

1. Validated a sales pitch I did on Tuesday (phew!).
2. Confirmed that I got RSS/Atom and the impact that it will have over time.
3. Pushed me over the edge in how I think about systems design as a whole.
4. Reinforced my love of KISS as a design maxim.

>

Bosworth outlines a number of very simple,
but incredibly important concepts.

Listening to: The hum of hardware

I found a copy of the Scanner
Darkly trailer over on the Apple site… it looks like it will be an amazing movie.
I have mentioned the trailer before, but the quality of this one is higher.

Listening to: Nothing

Design Interact has an interesting,
but relatively high level, description
of the design process used to design the UI for the XBOX 360.

Listening to: Nothing, but having my headphones on means I don’t
get interrupted

Absorb have some nice things to say
about the design skills shown on our website:

Listening to: DOA - Foo Fighters

I know it’s Kiwis playing Kiwi music, but that’s how world domination works - you
do it with a hand from your mates. Welly lads Fat
Freddy’s Drop make it on to the Zane
Lowe Show on BBC Radio 1… well done!

Listening to: Easy Plateau - Ryan Adams

Found this over on stuff and
did chuckle:

For my outa-NZ readers it is election time here in NZ.

Listening to: Up Above My Head - Alabama 3

Eurogamer has a wide
ranging interview/preview of Black & White 2 with Peter Molyneux:

In being more intelligent than previous iterations (Molyneux struggles to quantify
just how much each creature can do, given its vast persona and range), your minion
develops a personality with all the quirks of your behaviour, complete with random
traits that naturally threw up some unexpected elements during development. “There
are surprises all the time,” Molyneux explains. “From generally surprising behaviour
to cataclysmic ‘bugs’… for about a two-month period the creatures would become psychotic
and totally destructive and when they got angry they’d just literally smash everything
- other creatures were absolutely terrified to the point they’d hide in trees. It
wasn’t really a proper bug as such, it was just the way that creature’s mind
worked.”

Another example is offered, in which a tester decided to “toughen up” his creature
by grabbing its teddy bear and repeatedly setting it alight, putting it out of reach
and generally behaving like a bastard to the point that the creature would be emotionally
scarred. Which in turn made it a horrifically angry and brutal beast. Not great for
protecting citizens, true, but handy if you decide to put it as a unit in your army
for fighting - an option for those looking to tread the Dark path in Black & White
2.

Oh how much time did I waste with the first version of this game? A good many
hours I can tell you now.