promethea DVD
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I’m used to read comics on my computer (all I have to do is to turn my notebook to the side, and view the pages as a slideshow) and since I installed iDVD, i was dying to try it out.
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so, I decided to make a comics DVD, which means, a slideshow DVD with an entire comic collection. I wanted to make sure the navigation was the same or better than the paper version, so I decided for a comic I didn’t read it yet and I would surely love. alan moore’s promethea seemed like a good bet.
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below are some screenshots of my progress. sadly, I realized I had no more blank DVDs to spare, so I have to wait till I’ll buy a new batch.
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click on each image to view it bigger, with technical notes (another nice feature of flickr). then, roll the mouse over each square to read them.
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DVD cover menu: this one is default from iDVD. since you can’t use more than 12 chapters and I had 31 issues, I organized each 3 issues on one.
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chapter detail: iDVD shows the exact same folders and organization from iPhoto (pictures) and iTunes (music). it’s no good at refreshing, tho, so the best move is to organize all folders & pictures on iPhoto, and then start on iDVD.
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project map: iDVD has a limit of 99 images on each slideshow, so a manga has to be chopped down, for example. it worked fine with american comics, tho.
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disclaimer: I made it for my own consumption, and although I downloaded the entire collection from bittorrent (bad boy) I also own the editions. i guess I don’t have to bother about it, since ABC comics is a small company, and instead of think “ohmygod, those little rascals found another way to rip us off” they’ll probably think “hey, another source of revenue for our collections, and look: it’s cheaper to produce than our trade paperbacks!” (sadly, it only works good on dvd notebooks - you have to rotate the monitor to read it)
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update:sadly, ABC comics is a branch of wildstorm comics, which is an offshot of DC comics, owned by warner. shoud I wait the media conglomerate unleash its minion of ferocious lawyers upon my (literaly) poor soul, or is the plutocratic police state of amerika not done yet?

from woostercollective, a graffiti collective blog from the whole world.
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i’m amazed with flickr. cute interface, nice features, the right policy (releasing their API for free to any non-commercial project).
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i was getting worried about my picture collection growing impossibly big because of our new camera (it’s easy to get lost if you don’t index it wisely), but flickr is a good tool, both for image input (by web, mail, desktop app and bookmarklet) and output (groups, calendar, blog feature, this nice zeitgeist flash app on your left…).
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since brazilians are migrating from orkut to multiply, I’m preaching my fotolog friends to move to flickr.

DIY nation
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o’reilly network (the good, geeky ones, not the anal-retentive fella at fox) are publishing a new magazine, called make.
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hm, nice hacks (and good idea for them, i’m so afraid of big technical books, but chop the content in fancy lessons, and i’m fine with it).

RIAA ownz U
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RIAA radar is a bookmarklet that warns you if the band you search is RIAA related or not.
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think of it as a “moral scanner” of your listening habits.
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i had an idea, so, of an app that scans your entire music library and gives you a percentage of how much RIAA owns you. below, my mail:
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Hey, I loved the idea of a RIAA Radar. We are living in strange times, with big corporations bombarding us with misleading information, so some form of accounting is good to return to reality.
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The bookmarklet is a nice idea, but it just checks one band per time.
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My idea (here we goes) is to have an app that imports your iTunes Music Library, analyses it, and in response brings you to a page with your % of RIAA-owned songs, with a banner so people can copy it on their blogs/websites.
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in this sense, the service would be an oracle, or a social badge, where you advertise how much RIAA “owns” your musical tastes. People could in this way compare their habits with each other. a social game, so.

back button troubles
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reading at slashdot about usability problems on OS apps, i remembered some nightmare cases from the company i worked with, still in brazil.
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we were building a corporate CMS, the program was getting bloated (impossible marketing promisses, lack of planning) and we reached an impasse: in addiction to the task at hand, some other tools were added - like IM, bookmarks, notes, quick tutorials - and with just a window to navigate, each new task competed for the user’s attention.
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our solution (me and another interface designer, amid a sea of 11~12 programmers) was to divide the window in frames, separating the central tasks (workflow, word processing, programming) from the peripheral ones (messages, dictionary, to-do-list, quick tutorial).
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the problem: we invalidate the back button (back what? the message? back the work at hand? back the action of sending the message? undo?). since it’s the most used feature, we had to find a solution.
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and we did: a small log window on the bottom of the peripheral tasks window, with a history of what you did, and the possibility to return to where you were, and possibly undo some features. the default would be 3 lines, but a multitasker user could change the preferences to 10, 12 lines. with a better back button than the original one, we could drawn the users to our interface and reduce confusion.
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they loved the ideas, both. sadly, they implemented the first one (the frames), but not the second one (the log window). dunno why, everytime i asked for the second feature, they answered it was easy and could be done later. i assume that the mindset of programmers works this way: if it’s hard to do, it has to be important. if it’s easy, it’s probably irrelevant. that is, a subset of loving to do hard mental jobs, is the impression of any easy job as a personal offense to their abilities.
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don’t get me wrong, i love work surrounded by technical people. they are straightforward, they love a new challenge, and if they are in a project with you, they are all to this, with no passive-agressive, competitive sabotages that some artistic people are full of. but if you get this only-hard-work feature unchecked, you soon get trapped in a bloated, neverending project, with a lot of contempt for criticism.
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well, in the end they accomplised the first feature, but never the second one. the back button was still there, confusing users. some months later, we were moving to another floor, but two programmers were busy finishing something “really important” for the client. i asked what it is, and they said “it’s a fullscreen for the system”.
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“why would they need a fullsccreen system, anyway?” (at the time, it was already know that users feel annoyed by fullscreen browsers, and tend to move away, simply. they didn’t know why the fullscreen. i asked some other people around.
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in the end, all the client wanted was to get rid of the back button. it was his solution to the problem, because we failed to offer a complete one.
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and yeah, the users complained later…

some links worth note
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• The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus [comic] in the same model of those silly xtian pamphlets, hilarious!
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• pornography, with pictures removed pornpix, with the bodies edited out. eerie! :)
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• John’s War [depoiment] from a “guy from the future”… i’m a sucker for those fringe depoiments… the concept of a new civil war in america fits like a glove on what i’ve been looking at… damn…
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• Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems [dictionary] from the principia cibernetica people (a bunch of serious transhumanists), to help you not to get lost in the buzzwords
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• Alice’s Adventures under Ground the original precursor of alice in wonderland, page by page
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• Fluidtime [concept] using cellphones to share & organize limited resources between members. that’s revolutionary

wi-fi kama sutra
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with a notebook, wi-fi card and no internet conenction at home, i’m exploring new places to work.
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first i was in the bryant park, nice and peaceful place, but now i’m in the chelsea piers. water. sun. wind. lovely.
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today is 4 july, and the fareheint-911 gives me hope american will rethink their dumb move. I would say “option” but i question the election). i didn’t see the movie, but jade did, and we discussed about it. and we drank wine, to the roots.
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(BTW, the 8 circuit theory of leary is here… we were addressing similarities between the 8 and 7 chakras)