I found this curious typographical layout in Ambient Findability and since then I’ve been trying to imitate it wherever I’ve been able to get away with it.
I know it seems like nothing special but I’ve come to find it strikingly elegant—specially when compared with what it might have looked had it been done in today’s more prevalent dummy bulletpoints. The laziness that such bulletpoints encourage would have probably led us to this:
But let’s forget Al, for a time, and delve instead into the depths of human irrationality, beginning with some well-documented decision-making traps.
- When considering a decision, our minds are unduly influenced by the first information we find. Initial impressions and data anchor subsequent judgments.
- Through selective search and perception, we subconsciously seek data that supports our existing point of view, and avoid contradictory evidence.
Had we been lucky, there would be labels to each bulleted paragraph but they would still be obscured within the text and the typejunk bulletpoints:
But let’s forget Al, for a time, and delve instead into the depths of human irrationality, beginning with some well-documented decision-making traps.
- Anchoring: When considering a decision, our minds are unduly influenced by the first information we find. Initial impressions and data anchor subsequent judgments.
- Confirmation: Through selective search and perception, we subconsciously seek data that supports our existing point of view, and avoid contradictory evidence.
And that’s why I like this layout so much: it lets you do without meaningless bulletpoints and it forces you, as a writer, to create a meaningful headline for each paragraph that greatly enhances reading speed and comprehension. I don’t know if it has a name yet but meaningful bulletpoints sounds good to me.
“Y mi mente ha parido nostalgia por no verte ya… Hasta en sueños he creÃdo tenerte devorándome, y he mojado mis sábanas blancas recordándote”. Extraña esta cancion de Lalo Rodriguez, Ven devórame otra vez. Es tan burda que es chida in a campy sort of way. De cualquier forma, es destacable por el solo hecho de ser una canción inmensamente popular (hasta yo la conozco) que menciona (aunque algo eufemÃsticamente) la masturbación y los “sueños húmedos”.
I just noticed today that AT&T has a redesigned logo. I like the change —especially the sort of shadow inside the sphere— but of course there are those who disagree.
The review itself is long and, though interesting at times, overall not that good, but there was a quiet, demure paragraph in it that kept me laughing the whole (did I say it was long?) review. Today I reread the paragraph in my notes and I’ve had a smile in my face ever since. This one’s a keeper:
A huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen. Obviously, there was no previous data to compare this with, but millions of suburban dads were quite adamant that they had been born too soon.
Click to see full-size.
Isn’t the “simply have a bit of human contact” part surprising?
- Given a sufficiently complete Beatles discography, every song will include at least one song from the Beatles among its best-acoustic-match recommendations.
(Read more on the wonderful Predixis Mixer.)
Extracted from a dialogue with Chepe.
How would you say “unos novios comiendose a besos” in English? What’s the English phrase for “comiendose a besos”? Do you realize there’s no ready equivalent of “novios” in English? There’s “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” but no “novios” (a word for a gf and her bf). Couple is probably the best ersatz but there are subtle differences. “Couple” hints of a more formal, older-people affair than “novios.” It’d feel strange to call two tweens in love a couple, but it’d be perfectly normal to call them “novios.” If I were to announce that “Bere y yo ya somos novios” I wouldn’t use the stiff and over-formal “Bere and me are now a couple”, I’d say “Bere and me are now officially a couple.” Now, in what dictionary do you find that officially is often used to de-emphasize formality?
...es el titulo de una cancion de Miguel Gallardo. La cancion es buena pero a mi lo que me encanta es el titulo. Es mi eleccion para ristra de 5 palabras mas romantica (y cachonda) de la lengua Española. En Frances, mi delfin es aquel inovidable (y fatalmente ironico) Je veux baiser votre âne! de Vince Cassel a Monica Bellucci en Irréversible (al que ella responde, sonriendo y tambien con 5 palabras, Tu es un tel romantique!)
Aunque ahora que lo pienso, siendo el campo de juego ristras (y no solo frases), preferiria: lima, axila, cadera, media-mañana y pupila.
En que cosas divago… supongo que yo tambien ando en busca de una amitié amoureuse.
This is fantastic: a cool website that specializes in selling royalty-free stock photos, iStockPhoto, has created a new way to search through their whole catalog: by arrangement. They call it ColorSpace, and is wonderfully simple, yet powerful. It consists of a 3×3 grid of squares. You change the color of each square to indicate what you want in that area: green, if you want it clear; red, if you want it occupied; grey, if it’s the same to you.
It works. If, for instance, you search for “flower” with this colorspace, 
, you get:
Or if you search for “sky” with this colorspace, 
, you get:
The star here is not only the algorithm but the clever, information-design interface.
Overall, it’s a very impressive site, its web developers really do care about it, and that’s always refreshing. The weirdest thing is that they’ve convinced me that selling royalty-free stock photos on the web makes perfect sense…
Since Javascript 1.2 and later there has been a cool and very powerful literal syntax for functions:
var sum = function(x, y) {return x+y}
A couple of weeks ago I found an interesting use of this syntax. Missing Ruby’s wonderful each function, I decided to implement something similar in JS, and, after some experimentation, ended up with this:
function each(a, f) { for(var i=0, l=a.length; i<l; i++) f(a[i]) };
The function syntax comes in handy when you use this each:
each([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], function(e) { alert(e) });
It may not be as satisfying as Ruby’s each, but it’s quite useful.
