Category: Uncategorized

This video is utter, utter genius. It’s a pair of chaps playing table-tennis, Matrix-style. A stage show, with no digital retouching whatsoever, yet they still manage bullet-time effects.

Quite possibly the most inventive staging I’ve seen all year (and last month I took in the Blue Man Group in Las Vegas).

(notes: I can’t get my WindowsXP PC to play this, but bizarrely it works OK in Windows Media Player for Mac. I missed the link from Metafilter – guess I picked it up somewhere else.)

(edit: the MeFi page has a link to a much higher-quality, downloadable version. Unusually, it’s worth seeing both – the illusion is better in the crap-quality version.)

Forget the fast-user-switching history rewrite, what’s interesting about this patent application from Apple is the name attached to it; Steve Capps.

Capps was the principle UI architect of the Newton OS, which (as you may have gathered) I still consider to be the best general-purpose interface I’ve seen. Yes, better than Macintosh. When the Newton was canned and the group dissolved, Capps left Apple, resurfacing quietly in the UI group at Microsoft.

Then all went quiet. We never really heard what he was up to, and it’s been years. Windows XP doesn’t exactly exhibit much of the Newton’s elegance or simplicity; it seems inconceivable that, if Capps had anything to do with it, he’s particularly happy with the result.

And now this latest twist. Is this patent based on new work (which would suggest that Capps is back at Apple) – or is it merely a result of Apple trawling back through the dusty files labelled ‘Newton,’ and giving due credit?

Maybe I should have set up that ‘Cappswatch’ website I mooted a couple of years ago. Heh.

Lovely drive back from Glasgow to Leeds this evening, avoiding the West coast roadworks by meandering through Northumbria. It’s not an area I know very well; a pity, since it’s as ruggedly beautiful as everybody says. Amazing skies capped it off.

Annoyingly, I didn’t have a camera with me. Boo!

This is (a.) a terrific idea, and (b.) so bleedin’ obvious, I didn’t think of it: Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure.

Gutted, I am. Gutted. Looking forward to the Edinburgh run, however.

‘Developing ideas’ is a curious state of mind in which to be. I finish the day’s work with two impressions: that I had a highly productive morning, and a highly unproductive afternoon. I also have the nagging feeling that neither of these impressions is correct.

Blogging from the International Space Station. I’m not sure which impresses me more: that Lu is blogging, or that he has time to write so much material.

As an aside: I should just set my Dad up with a blog of his own, shouldn’t I? I mean, I can’t keep pretending that I find all this stuff, can I?

The Guardian: US Edition. They’re kidding. Aren’t they?

Wow.

It started raining.

‘Welcome to Scotland’ read the next sign I passed.

I’m back in Glasgow, which should be home for about a year, maybe more. It’s good to be here.

Ben Hammersley:

Regime-change is a bit like catching a bus. You wait and wait, and then along come three at once.

Meanwhile, despite not making the bloggers’ power list, I did make the Guardian’s Media 100 list. Sort of. Oh, and – Steve Jobs at 13? Really? Oh.