"What are the odds?"

In studio Abby sits across from me, our desks are separated by a pair of fairly high bulletin boards. I can't remember where the centipede came from, but we've taken to tossing it each other over the bulletin boards. It always comes as a surprise and we never acknowledge that the other has tossed it. Except one time when Abby stepped around the corner of my desk holding a knife of peanut butter in one hand and the centipede in the other the only thing she had to ask was, "What are the odds?"



Now the centipede has peanut butter stuck between his legs.

Translations

I've been getting e mails for another Ellen for the past couple of years from a rowing club in the Netherlands. Usually they're mass e mails, but this one was specific and so I translated it before writing back to say the wrong Ellen is getting the messages.

I'm assuming this is a loose translation (but I especially like the "with decisive regards"):

Hey Ellen,

I hear network of Arjan you wanted to know where you stand. You are not yet classified, but that of course we still do! We had agreed last week that you would availability by mail to pr @ pelargos, but I have still received nothing. Can you imagine availability doormailen again? Then we can organize. Furthermore you are always welcome to make nice to come;)


With decisive regards,

Do You Recognize This Man?

Because he threw away my surveillance camera.

I'm always the only one laughing...

...and it's probably at one of my own jokes.

My Desk

I vote in Champaign, but...

Urbana, IL became the first community in the nation on Super Tuesday to direct Congress by referendum to prevent war with Iran. The vote was 5,681, or 81%, in favor, with 1,364, or 19%, opposed.

Surveillance

The catcam is part of an experiment for my thesis. For my thesis I established a schedule of weekly experiments, each week was to deal with a different design theme. For the theme of surfaces I decided to do a surveillance project after seeing the web site of Mr. Lee catcam. Fortunately, Mr. Lee sells a timer chip you can solder into a keychain camera to make your own catcam, or in my case, surveillance camera. And after learning how to solder electronics, I had a surveillance camera to conduct an experiment on surfaces.

But I didn't just want to document surfaces such as objects and planes and so by abstracting what initially I thought of as physical surfaces I could, with the notion of surveillance, observe interfaces that I wasn't thinking about. Now surface can mean a point, or plane of interaction. One of the major questions I'm working with in my thesis is how can I design for a place and time I can never exist in (this is getting at planning for the unpredictable future), folding this idea in with the notion of surveillance I wanted to observe interactions without being present.

What I discovered is that a lot of action takes place in two minutes. In the first set of images from the sophomore computer lab I only got 10 images with people in them. I had placed the camera in the computer lab knowing a class would be meeting there for three hours and I was hoping for a lot of human movement, but ended up without many people and a series of images that documents the light moving through the room. One of the sophomore moved the plant the camera was in onto his desk in the sophomore studio and from this move I got a series of images that showed a stack of papers moving. I can't explain why they're moving, but so far the surveillance camera is showing that things I assume to be static move quite a lot. I'm calling this experiment a success because it's countered one of my assumptions, and the images are supercool when you string them all together like a stop-motion animation.

I was so happy I spun around in my chair

This afternoon I borrowed Mary's SD card reader to see how the catcam test photos turned out. And omg are they awesome. Monday will be the first day of actual surveillance with the camera and yellow plant and I'm so excited!