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Make: Electronics, Charles Platt.  © 2009 Make Books, Sebastapol, CA; 1st edition ISBN: 0596153740

Just go buy it. It’s the best introductory book I’ve read on electronics.

To start with, the book is gorgeous.  Maybe you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you sure can by browsing its pages.  This book is filled with clear photos and color illustrations (makes it so much easier to read the color-coded wires!) and big, clear circuit drawings and diagrams.  It’s a pleasure to look at, so you want to read more.

Charles Platt writes in a tone, and with a philosophy that I thoroughly agree with:  learn by doing it.  I love the fact that he not only gives exercises, but gives some that he knows are going to fail, and tells you so.  He shows you what can go wrong, and makes you do it, so you’ve already experienced the failure and don’t fear it. Exercises like licking a 9V battery, or measuring the resistance of your tongue seem scary at first, but are safer than they seem, and valuable learning exercises.

Platt doesn’t hide his mistakes, either. He uses them as stories to illustrate his lessons. Reading  – and seeing in pictures — how he blew up a capacitor, for example, is fascinating, and lets you know that when you make mistakes, you’ll survive too.  The stories of his mistakes are very reassuring.

There is plenty of electrical theory in this book, but you don’t feel like it’s being shoved down your throat.  Platt explains conversationally in examples, pictures, and short biographical sketches of some of the big names in electrical history. By the end of each chapter, you’ve absorbed a lot of material, without the feeling of exhaustion that comes from reading most textbooks.

Platt includes shopping lists of all the parts you need, suggests sources, and tells you what acceptable substitutes will do the job.  He makes it as easy as possible for you to get what you need. Even better, he includes directions for cleanup and recycling of your parts too, letting you know what can go in the trash and what needs to be recycled responsibly.  It’s great to see an author treating the whole life cycle of a project as a matter of habit you should learn.  I’ll be taking that away as a lesson for my own writing in the future.

The whole production team on this book deserve praise for this one.  It’s well written, well edited and well designed. It’s a great learning guide, and will be a staple on my shelf.

The students in my Understanding Networks class had a short assignment this past week, to run a couple dozen traceroutes, and do visualizations with the results.  A few interesting points came out of it.

Alejandro Kaufmann did traces mostly on Asian sites, and noticed that many of the traces followed old colonial lines: traces to Hong Kong and India tended to go through British routers, and traces to Vietnam tended to go through French, for example. Not sure if this is coincidence or a result of their telcos still working together, but it was an interesting trend.

Zach Taylor did two maps of traces to the top 50 internet sites. He ran the same traces from home and from the network at NYU, and not surprisingly, there’s a lot of clustering at the outset, as the traces went outward from his provider or NYU. In the NYU map, you can see some load balancing as the traces split across NYU’s various gateway routers, then clear rivers of traffic as they head out through the tier 1 providers, AT&T and Level3.

Zach’s map of the top 500 sites (warning: it’s big) is the most interesting though. More data reveals more patterns, and you can clearly see the AT&T and Level3 rivers of traffic in the 500 trace. I’m surprised at how much of the traffic is along the Level3 river, because I didn’t think they owned as much wire and fiber infrastructure as AT&T, Sprint, or some of the other tier 1 providers.  But I guess owning the crossroads can be more valuable than owning the roads.

Now I want to see the same 500-trace exercise done from several points, and aggregated in one big map!

Strategy & Business magazine has an interesting article on the shan zhai manufacturers in China at the moment. It’s the first business press article I’ve seen in the US that takes a relatively balanced approach to reporting on them.  It’s worth a read, as it’s a trend that’s already affecting business, particularly the electronics business. It suggests a new approach to economic recovery as well, one based on small companies well-networked with each other.

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The chances are good that if you’re reading this, you probably know how to ride a bicycle.  You probably learned so many years ago that you don’t even remember how you learned.  When you get on a bike now, it’s so natural to you that you don’t even think about it.  In fact, if you did think about it, you’d probably fall off. Bike riding is so commonplace that we use it as a cliche for learning and retaining new skills:  “It’s just like riding a bike,” we say, “you never forget.”

That’s easy for you to say.  You know how to ride a bike.  I don’t.  I never learned as a child.  I’ve tried a few times as an adult, and let me remind you, it’s not easy to learn.  You fall off, you scrape your knees, you get frustrated.  Eventually (they tell me), you master it, and then it becomes “intuitive.” Yeah, sure.

Designers and engineers (and users) often praise computer interfaces as  intuitive or natural. It’s commonly held up as the ideal for user interfaces.  But I think the terms are misused. Interfaces in general, and computer interfaces in particular, exist to connect people with technological systems or tools that require significant training to master.  They abstract complexity to make it easier to use. But in order to use an interface, any interface, you need to learn a little something.  You need to be given an idea of what it controls. You need to learn what you can manipulate and what you can’t.  And you need to learn what actions map to what results.  I’ll spare you the Don Norman-esque rant here, because Gibson, Norman, et. al. have already explained all of this just fine.  If you don’t know Norman’s stuff, just think about the bike. It abstracts a lot of physics and mechanics for you, takes advantage of your physical abilities (like your sense of balance and direction), and it amplifies your body’s ability to do something — once you learn how to use it. Many would argue that it’s a good interface.  As a non-bike rider, I might argue the case, but I know I’m in the minority.

When you refer to an interface as natural or intuitive, you assume it doesn’t need to be taught, that “you can just figure it out.”  The example in vogue is the multi-touch interface, particularly Apple’s pinch-and-zoom gesture.  It gets a lot of press as being intuitive, but the truth of the matter is, if Apple hadn’t done a fairly brilliant series of tutorials disguised as commercial ads when they launched the iPhone, there’d be a lot more iPhone users struggling with their phones.  I’ve seen a lot of people pick it up pretty quickly, sure; but I’ve seen equally as many struggle with it the first time.  It has to be learned.  It may only take a few seconds, but it’s still learning.

What bothers me about all this talk of natural interfaces or intuitive interactions is that it makes designers and engineers less symathetic to end users.  If the interface is natural, we reason, anyone can use it. We get impatient with users who don’t understand it.  Not understanding the interface is not natural! They must not have any intuition! Stupid users!

In contrast, if you see all interaction as something that has to be learned, you know that you have a responsibility to teach people to use the things you build. You have motivation to make it as easy to learn as possible, both for your own convenience and theirs.  My friend Bill Braine, paraphrasing any one of a number of cognitive psychologists (including Norman), put it nicely (and I’m paraphrasing him a bit here):

Intuitive interfaces draw heavily on earlier learned behavior, while unintuitive ones require distinct new skills or metaphorical connections. That’s why so many metaphors (cut & paste, gold stars, file folders) made their way into digital interfaces. An interface’s ‘intuitiveness’ or ‘naturalness’ is a measure of  the extent to which draws on existing learned behavior.

In other words, an interface’s ease-of-use isn’t a binary quality.  It’s not natural or unnatural, intuitive or unintuitive.  There’s a sliding scale, and the scale depends not only on the cognitive load the designer assumes is there, but also on the user’s experience. If you must refer to an interface as intuitive, ask how intuitive is it? Better yet, praise the interface as easy-to-learn.

You can never eliminate the learning curve, no matter how much you flatten it out. So next time you’re frustrated by users struggling with your intuitive interface, remember  learning to ride a bike.

In the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, a one-car train of the R142/142A generation of NYC subway cars starts up at approximately 33rd st. on the Lexington line.  It’s carrying 16 people.  With the throttle rigged to full-speed, it is routed towards Coney Island.  One stop before Coney Island, it’s clocked at 62mph. It trips on a red signal at that station, and decelerates to a stop at Coney.

a) Is there a route from Lex & 33 to Coney Island?
b) How far does the train travel?
c) assuming a constant acceleration at the train’s maximum possible, how long does it take to reach its top speed at the station before Coney Island?
d) Is any of this possible?

Refer to the following, and any other resources you have, in your answer:

http://www.nycsubway.org/maps/track.html
http://www.nycsubway.org/cars/r142.html

Nick West passed away yesterday after fighting cancer for about two years now. Nick was a major influence on me when I was a student at ITP, and a good friend, so I want to write down some of my impressions of him, in hopes that I’ll be able to carry on what I admire about him.

Nick was the principal investigator on the Yorb interactive television project at ITP when I met him. The project had been started some years earlier by Dan O’Sullivan, and Nick was running the project and teaching the Yorb class when I came to ITP as a student. The class didn’t always produce successful TV moments. Nick was as enthusiastic about the disasters as he was about the successes, though.  More than anyone I’ve ever met, Nick could embrace failure and pull something positive out of it. We talk about this a lot at ITP; Nick showed me how to do it gleefully.

In my second year as a student, I worked as Nick’s research assistant. We were given a mandate to come up with a new research agenda, and to leave interactive TV behind. We experimented with location-based media, tying a GPS receiver to a series of Quicktime VR panoramas mapped to the map of Greenwich Village. In order to demonstrate it, we had to carry a laptop running Director, a handheld GPS receiver, and assorted equipment — it was no iPhone, for sure. The demos were a mess, but we learned a lot in making them.  It was an incredibly valuable experience for me, getting to spend the whole year working with Nick.  He was  relentlessly curious about everything, so we tried out all kinds of chat systems, virtual environments, navigation systems, and other tools that I would never have explored on my own.  He had a way of blending his interest in politics and cultural theory into what we were doing in an offhand way, so I’d get a larger perspective on the project without realizing it.

What I remember most vividly about Nick is his constant enthusiasm for new subjects, his love for the absurd, and his relentlessly positive attitude. When presented with an obstacle, he did everything be could to see it in a positive light. Our last conversation is perhaps the best example. He was really excited about some of the new cancer treatments he was trying out, and he talked about them with the same geeky enthusiasm he had for everything else he got interested in. “I’m only going to talk about cancer for another 45 minutes, I promise,” he said.  I told him that was fine, he managed to make it into a fascinating story.  “It’d be a lot more fascinating if it weren’t also killing me, I gotta admit,” he said, then launched into a detailed technical explanation of the treatment. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about a wide variety of subjects, making bad puns, and enjoying the sunshine.  It was Nick at his best.

I don’t have a lot of pictures of him, unfortunately.  This one is from November of ‘96; not sure whose the Carmen Miranda hat is, probably Santiago Echeverry’s.  I like this shot, though. It makes me smile, something he was good at.

So long, Nick.  It was good to know you.  I’ll miss hearing you walk into a room and say, “Hi guys!  How’s it goin’?”

Given how pervasive the idea of planned obsolescence is, I’m always on the lookout for counterexamples — cases where a company actually wants you to fix what you bought from them, and keep it longer, rather than just replacing it wholesale. Nicolas Villar from Microsoft Research (and co-chair of this year’s recent TEI conference) sent me the example below, a PDF of instructions on a toy helicopter he bought that actually explains how to repair it. Granted, many of the instructions involve “spare part kit available separately,” but even that is a small step forward.  Let’s see more like this:

Repair instructions

Thanks to Nic for the link.

I’m on the jury for SIGGRAPH Asia’s Emerging Tech this year, thanks to Lars Erik Holmquist. Looking forward to seeing some great submissions, so submit! Here’s the CfP:

Call for participation:

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: ADAPTATION

SIGGRAPHA ASIA 2009
Pacifico Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan
16-19 December 2009
/www.siggraph.org/asia2009/

SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 welcomes contributors and volunteers to participate in the 2nd edition of the annual SIGGRAPH Asia Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

ACM SIGGRAPH is now presenting two conferences each year.  The first SIGGRAPH Asia, in December in Singapore, quickly established SIGGRAPH’s new event in Asia as one of the world’s two leading annual showcases for the next wave of interactive technologies.  In Yokohama, SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 will present technological innovations that will change the way we work, live, and play. Let your work be experienced by thousands of attendees from throughout the world!

Emerging Technologies shares an overall theme with the Art Gallery: Adaptation. For SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, we are seeking works that show how digital technology adapts, or can help us adapt, to a world in flux. Adaptation can have many meanings, from machines that repair themselves under stress to technologies that help humans survive in adverse conditions. Adaptations can also be unexpected or unwanted. We are particularly interested in seeing examples of how computer graphics and interactive techniques are evolving to adapt to new conditions: technical, social, environmental, or something else entirely.

We are looking for creative, innovative technologies and applications in many fields, including:

• Audio
• Biotech and biologically inspired technology
• Computer graphics and animation
• Context-aware applications
• Design
• Displays
• Games
• High-speed networking
• Interaction technology
• Mobile technology
• Physical computing
• Robots
• Ubiquitous computing
• Virtual and mixed reality

Feel free to submit even if your work is not covered by the above list! If it is new, cool, and exciting, we want to see it at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009!

The main form of presentation at Emerging Technologies is live, working, hands-on demonstrations. It is essential that your work can be effectively demonstrated by the time the conference opens in December. To ensure this, the submission process requires all submitters to provide extensive technical, logistical, and practical documentation. Running an Emerging Technologies demo is hard work, but it is also very rewarding. Your work will be experienced by thousands of people, and thousands more will learn about it in international media reports.

We invite submissions from academic institutions, corporations, and individuals. All submissions will be reviewed by experts in relevant fields, and the final selections will be made by a jury. In addition to submitted works, a portion of the exhibition will be curated; please contact the Emerging Technologies Chair if you have suggestions for curated works! Juried and curated works will be clearly distinguished in the conference program.

The members of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Emerging Technologies Jury are:

• Mark Billinghurst, HIT Lab New Zealand
• Cynthia Breazeal, MIT Media Lab
• Paul Debevec, USC Institute for Creative Technologies
• Tom Igoe, New York University
• Jun Rekimoto, The University of Tokyo
• Kimiko Ryokai, University of California, Berkeley
• Albrecht Schmidt, University of Duisburg-Essen
• Annika Waern, Interactive Institute

Accepted Emerging Technologies works will be presented as on-going demonstrations throughout SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 in Yokohama. Technical support will be provided to make the most of each demo. If your work is accepted, you will have the opportunity to give a technical presentation, advertised in the conference program. Press tours and other media outreach will be organized to further increase awareness and publicity. A promotional video will be widely distributed, and a description of each exhibit will be published online and in a printed catalog. Additionally, we will seek to offer selected works the opportunity to be published as peer-reviewed papers in an edited special issue of an academic journal.

The submission deadline is 5 June, 23:59 UTC/GMT. The jury’s decisions will be announced in early August.
Full submission details can be found at: /www.siggraph.org/asia2009/for_presenters/etech/index.php

We look forward to seeing your submission for SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Emerging Technologies!

Lars Erik Holmquist
Emerging Technologies Chair
Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Södertörn University

A few people asked for the story of my visit to Tony Di Fiore’s research site in chronological order.  Here are all the posts in order:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• part 5
• part 6
• part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9
• Part 10
• coda

I’ve been collecting notes and ideas on open source hardware (and open fabrication in general) and sustainable technology development for awhile now, and over the next few weeks I’ll finally get a chance to try them out in a couple of presentations. In February I’ll be presenting at the Tangible and Embedded Interaction conference in Cambridge, UK. Looks like there’s a good lineup of other presenters there too, including Ayah Bdeir, Leah Buechley, Durrell Bishop, Timo Arnall, and Einar Martinussen, among others.

Following TEI is a trip to Shenzen, China, hosted by Bunnie Huang of Chumby. He’s bringing a few of us who are working on open hardware/open fabrication projects to see the factories and markets they work with there.  I’m eager to get a sense of what it’s actually like there.

After Shenzen I’m going to Japan for a symposium on ubiquitous content and smart cities and environment, hosted by Keio University’s new Graduate School of Media Design.

Following Tokyo is San Jose, CA, for O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology conference. I’ve been going to Etech for several years, and I always have a great time there. This year I’m really excited, they’ve gathered a great group.  I’m doing a hands-on RFID workshop, as well as a talk called Open Fabrication and the Environment, or Taking Spime Apart. There’s a ton of other great talks at Etech this year, from folks like the aforementioned Leah Buechley (we seem to be following each other around the world), Jennifer Magnolfi of Herman Miller on Programmable Work Environments, Raffi Krikorian on Wattzon, Drew Endy on open source biology, and a whole lot more.

After that, home for a bit, I hope.