Design: October 2003 Archive Page

This Vampire Killing Kit complete with a wooden stake and 10 silver bullets sold for $12,000 as part of Sotheby's sale of 19th century furniture and decorative works of art in New York, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2003. The kit, a walnut box that also contained a crucifix, a pistol, a rosary and vessels for garlic powder and various serums, was bought by an anonymous phone bidder. (AP Photo/Sotheby's)
--19thC Vampire-killing Kit (Yahoo/AP)

That doesn't look like a crucifix to me -- it should have a representation of Christ "fixed" to the cross. That's just a metal cross.

Once adopted, the credit hour became a driving force in higher education. | It presented students with a specific time frame in which they were expected to complete course work, usually one semester.... But Wellman and Ehrlich, a senior scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argue in their book that using time to measure 21st century learning is ineffective. --Steve Geigerich --Academics Make Case to End Credit Hour (AP/Newsday)

--Canstruction

Model of Independence Hall, birthplace of the American Revolution. Made out of cans. Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.

How Amazon can make money from books you already own.

We tend to think of search requests as generally taking the form of "find me something I've never seen before." But real-life search is often different: You're looking for something you have seen before, but you've somehow mislaid or only half-remembered. You search for your glasses or your car keys. Or, in the case of books, you search for that paragraph about the Russian revolution's impact on literacy rates that you read somewhere a few years ago. You know it's in a book somewhere on your shelf, you just can't remember which one. | "Search inside" could be the perfect solution to this common problem. --Steven Johnson --The Best Search Idea Since Google (Slate)

Amazon's "Search Inside" is starting to feel more and more like Vannevar Bush's memex.

It begins to creep in, almost unnoticed. The levels are further apart. You begin to notice that newly acquired skills are carbon copies of the old ones, with a different coloured icon and a two percent damage increase.... You try out all the little distractions the developers have put in the game to make things 'deep', only to find they're broken, bugged or plain pointless. But you're a trooper. You stiffen that upper lip and press on, certain that if you can only hang in there the good times will arrive and the game will be FUN again. | It is at precisely this point, that me and others like me will part ways with our more determined MMORPG brethren. I, you see, am a quitter. --The Trouble with MMORPGs (Ferrago)

I was approved to be part of the "There.com" beta-test, but when the actual invitation came, I was too busy to follow through. Oh, well.

Microsoft's menu bars are awash in anachronistic images, and it's especially evident in the latest edition of the Office 2003 application suite. This struck me as I was authoring my 364th "Inside PCMag.com" newsletter. Clicking on the Save icon, I found myself wondering why it's still an image of a 3.5-inch floppy disk. When was the last time you saved a file on a floppy? --Lance Ulanoff --Icon See It Now (PC Mag)

Hmm... this may be true in the business world, but the ledge of the whiteboard in the front of every computer room starts collecting abandoned floppy disks around midterm time, and there are often ten or twelve there by the end of term. I suppose this could be taken as evidence that students are abandoning such floppies, but my point is that they are still in use. Only once or twice have I seen an abandoned Zip disk. Nevertheless, I have a little keychain USB drive that I use to bring files back and forth from the office.

In critiquing the "cut" and "paste" icons, Ulanoff says "What a clipboard and a document have to do with pasting is beyond me." It sounds almost like Ulanoff doesn't know that "cut" and "paste" are references to actually taking a pair of scissors (or a razorblade knife) and clipping a chunk of text off of one page and actually sticking it on top of another page. When I was working for the (sadly defunct) University Journal as an undergrad, we would re-use graphics and logos, and while I don't recall whether we actually kept them on a clipboard, I think we kept them in the front cover of a notebook. So the clipboard icon makes sense to me. Ulanoff's point is, of course, that these images come from the print world -- a world that is more and more remote, and more and more metaphorical, to users of electronic text.

--'The other phone's a little...' (No Media Kings)

Jim Munroe is a new media generalist -- a writer, interactive fiction designer, and video filmmaker. I enjoyed his video ">interactive," and was Googling just now for something or other, and came across this short film, with a very dry, understated punchline that made me laugh out loud. (I'm not sure what the title of the phone vid is, so I just quoted part of a line.)

She singled out a campaign by Disney - "Remember the magic" - which, she claimed, was used to invoke real or imaginary childhood memories in consumers. | She reported an experiment in which people were shown an advert suggesting that children who visited Disneyland had the opportunity to shake hands with Bugs Bunny. Later, many of those who had seen the advert "remembered" meeting Bugs on childhood visits to the theme park, a feat that would have been impossible, given that the cartoon is a Warner Brothers character. Loftus said: "This brings forth ethical considerations. Is it OK for marketers to knowingly manipulate consumers' pasts?" --David Benady --Selling You a New Past (Independent)

Feeling Cheated by Rule Changes in Final Level of 'Neverwinter Nights'Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Grrr. I've spent several hours trying to get past the final stage of Neverwinter Nights. On every level of the game besides what I presume to be the final level, the game features a way to teleport from wherever you are fighting, back to a central area where you can rest, buy new supplies, and rearrange your equipment in safety. Then you can teleport right back into the thick of the battle.

I don't mind a difficult battle, since an easy game is no fun. But on the final level, the teleportation stone doesn't work. Likewise, on every other level, you can rest to restore your hit points and spells -- but not on the final level. The designers made no attempt to provide an in-game explanation for the change in the game rules.

It wouldn't have been hard at all to provide that in-game explanation. The game had already established that the chief villain is a lizard queen who can speak to people, and eventually possess them, through their dreams. So, if, when I tried to sleep on the final level, a cut scene played in which the lizard queen comes and possesses me, then I'd blame the queen, not the game designers. And if some event within the game disabled the stone, I would easily accept it if the game made me feel like I sacrificed that ability for a higher good. For example, if I traded the stone for a key that would get me into the final battle.

I have been a good citizen of this virtual world -- I've painstakingly learned the rules, willingly suspended my disbelief. Again, I don't expect the final battle to be easy, but I don't expect the difficulty of that final battle to arise from a change in the rules at this late stage in the game. Yes, the designers are in charge of their world and ought to be able to do whatever they want. And yes, I suppose I could go online and look for cheat codes and hacks, but that wouldn't help my desire to suspend my disbelief and enter into a story.

I personally like a fast-moving endgame that wraps up a lot of plot threads, showing you the consequences of your earlier actions. But Neverwinter Nights is a monster-bashing role-playing game -- the story is grafted onto the basic "move around, kill things and find stuff" scenario. Of course, it's a very good monster-bashing role-playing game -- but since its strength was the RPG part, the final change in gameplay pretty much kills my desire to finish.

Knowing that the story is pretty much over at this point means I know I won't be rewarded with more context as the battle continues to rage. Oh, well. Having a family and a demanding job (I always bring work home with me, whether it is grading, reading, or planning for next term) means that my game-playing time is limited. I got my money's worth out of this game, but bleah -- I feel that after investing so much time to learn the intricacies of this game world and its interface, I shouldn't be expected to finish the game in a completely different environment.

Now that I think about it, there are a few doors that I passed on the way to the lizard queen's lair, and someone gave me an artifact that I haven't yet figured out how to use (I think I have to advance another level yet). But quite frankly the change in rules, without even the slightest attempt to use the storyline to explain the change, has really sapped my interest in seeing this story to its resolution.

Would today's tykes tolerate the classic games you grew up with? Kids do say the darndest things... --Kids Play (EGM)

The premise: force a bunch of tweens to play the games my generation grew up with. Just how badly do yesterday's games suck... and how badly to today's kids suck while playing them?

The article is annoyingly laid out without a table of contents, so you have to click blindly through chaining "next" links... so...

• Pong
• Donkey Kong, Football, Tetris
• Super Mario Bros, E.T., Space Invaders

Found on MetaFilter.

I'll be going to an academic setting in order to become a game programmer. What's interesting is that just as there are film degrees (one of which I currently own) that combine the fields of literature and art with a variety of other disciplines, including physics among others, there are degrees in game creation. Places that do not seek to be known as giving out "degrees in playing games" as my aunt and uncle sometimes derisively refer to it call their degrees things like "Human-Computer Interaction" which, to be fair, can cover more than just games. Things like biofeedback for medical purposes are also examined. While gaming in education has yet to pan out, these people are doing some amazing things. As a part of the curricula, students also examine the historical place that gaming holds. In addition, they also examine how to integrate filmic and literary concepts into interactive computing. --Dade --Gaming in Education (Switchbox)

"The entire ideology of information technology for the last 50 years has been that more information is better, that mass producing information is better," he says. | But the net is now so much an machine with all the answers instantly, it has mutated into a "procrastination apparatus", which spews information without much prioritisation Dr Nielsen argues. --Jo Twist --Web guru fights info pollution (BBC)

A good interview with Jakob Nielsen. The bit about procrastination isn't new to anyone who's spent time on a college campus recently... and I'm definitely guilty of using my blog as a way to convince myself I'm being productive when I've got ten or fifteen minutes to kill... when in reality, I often read gad about online for an hour or more before I find something that really motivates me to blog.

P.S. Jo Twist? Really?

Monkeys can control a robot arm as naturally as their own limbs using only brain signals, a pioneering experiment has shown. The macaque monkeys could reach and grasp with the same precision as their own hand. --Duncan Graham-Rowe --Monkey's brain signals control 'third arm' (New Scientist)

--Muppet Terror Alert (Geek and Proud)

Found on Sarcasmo's Corner

A study carried out by USA Today and seven other newspapers in 2001 concluded that faulty design, not punch-card machines, was responsible for voters' confusion in Palm Beach County in 2000. Despite this finding, states have focused their election-reform energies on upgrading old punch-card machines to optical-scan systems or on implementing electronic voting. They have dismissed or ignored the butterfly layout's problematic design as an aberration—a stupid mistake on the part of local officials. --Jessie Scanlon --Wanted: A Legible Voting Ballot (Slate)

See also "Why Usability Testing Matters" -- my quick-n-dirty treatment of the Florida presidential ballot that caused so much controversy in 2000. While usability got a bit of broader exposure due to that flap, it looks like local officials haven't tackled the real problem yet.

Defendants will distribute the Net Settlement Fund by providing a discount at the cash registers of all KB Toys, KB Toy Works, KB Toy Outlet, Toy Liquidator and KB Toys Express stores nationwide, including Guam and Puerto Rico, equal to 30% off all qualifying purchases of $30 or more during October 8-14, 2003. This distribution (the "In-store Distribution") will be done without requiring a request of any store customer and will be separate and apart from, and in addition to, any previously planned promotional events for 2003. --Class Action Suit Settlment: 30% off Everything at KB Toys? (KB Toys)

I'm not affiliated with KB Toys, but found this interesting link on Fark. Apparently the suit comes from the store's practice of printing in black text what appears to be the ordinary price for an item, and then simulating in red print a handwritten slash through the price, with another, lower price written next to it. The suit says that the black price was inflated, and that the simulated handwriting tricks customers into thinking an item is on sale.

--Movie Posters Redone in Lego

--Senators butt heads over Iraq funding (Yezbick)

Is there subliminal editorializing in this headline? :-)

"We now have a greater understanding of why biscuits develop cracks shortly after being baked." -- PhD student Qasim Saleem, quoted in an article by Christine McGourty --Broken Biscuit Breakthrough (BBC)

A biscuit in the UK is what Americans refer to as a "cracker". Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.

[M]ore than 1,000 fans [were] turned away from turnstiles for up to 1-1/2 hours over a bizarre ticket snafu.|The fans - many of them season ticket holders - were forced to wait on line until as late as the fourth inning to get replacement tickets after accidentally tearing their ducats out of ticket books without the stubs. --Stuck at the Gate  (NY Daily News)

Blame the user -- a typical management ploy. I haven't seen a picture of the tickets in question, but if 1,000 people all made the same mistake, the ticket books were poorly designed. Period. Usability testing could have caught that long before it angered so many people.