Sections: Uncategorized Oct 29th, 2003 2 Comments 
Here's a prototype from Sharp of a new screen for handhelds with an extremely high-resolution of 300 pixels per inch. It's just unfortunate that the guy holding it needs a good thumb nail trimming.
Sections: Uncategorized Oct 29th, 2003 9 Comments So as you can probably tell my posting has slowed down just a bit on this site and focused more on the MINI site as of late. There are two reasons for this. First I just got a new job and will be starting Monday (which I'm very excited about) and I just had a pretty nasty accident.
The accident happened yesterday and involved an exacto knife and my right index finger. Long story short I cut off a healthy portion of my finger with a brand new exacto blade. The cut was an avulsion but luckily nothing very serious. I'm told the portion that was cut off will grow back fully in 3-4 weeks. That being said I've lost use of my right index finger for the time being - making it very hard to type at a decent speed. I even thought for a moment about posting the picture I took with my phone a the emergancy room (yet more reason to get a camera phone!) but figured it would turn this site into some gross link on too many bizarre weblogs. Besides my finger wants it's privacy these days.
So if things are a little slow in the next several weeks that's the reason.
Cheers
Gabe
Sections: Uncategorized Oct 29th, 2003 No Comments From CNN.com
Another spectacular eruption on the surface of the sun sent charged particles hurling toward Earth on Wednesday, and scientists said the cloud could significantly disrupt communications on Earth and may even hamper firefighting efforts in California.
“It's headed straight for us like a freight train,” said John Kohl, a solar astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This is the real thing.”
In Tokyo, Japan's space agency announced the Kodama communications satellite malfunctioned mode after being affected by the flare. The agency said it was temporarily shut down and would be reactivated after the solar storm subsided.
The explosion of gas and charged particles into space from the corona, the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere, isn't harmful to people. But it can knock out satellite communications, which some emergency crews are relying on in battling California's wildfires.
Sections: Uncategorized Oct 22nd, 2003 4 Comments There's a great article in the latest Newsweek (of all places) about the rise of McMansions across the country and the ramifications they have on architecture and our society. Here's an excerpt:
MOST NEW off-the-rack houses aren't so much designed as themed: Mediterranean, French country, faux Tudor, neo-Colonial. These houses may offer—on the high end—every option money can buy, from a media room to a separate shower for the dog. But the market actually gives consumers little true choice: the developer house, in most price ranges, is amazingly similar from coast to coast, across different climate zones and topographies. If you ripped off the roofs—and the turrets and gables and fake widow's walks—or peered into the windows—double-hung, round, Palladian, picture (often in the same house!)—you'd find essentially the same thing: a vast foyer with chandelier; formal living and dining rooms (rarely used); open-plan kitchen/family room; master suite and bedrooms; many bathrooms; at least a three-car garage.
…Not all these houses are ugly and shoddy: though most are badly proportioned pastiches of different styles, some are built with attention to detail and materials. But, as the epithet McMansion suggests, they're just too big—for their lots, for their neighborhoods and for the number of people who actually live in them. And why do they keep getting bigger, when families are getting smaller? In 1970, the average new single-family house was 1,400 square feet; today it's 2,300.
The housing industry says that we want bigger and bigger houses. But I think they're not taking credit for their marketing skills. Last year's annual report for Pulte Homes, one of the nation's biggest builders, contains an astonishing fact: if you adjust for inflation, houses of the same size and comparable features are the same price today as they were in the 1970s. That means that if business is going to grow, the industry has to sell more product—not just more houses but more square footage. It's like the junk-food-marketing genius who figured out that people wouldn't go back for seconds but they'd pay more upfront to get, say, the 32-ounce Big Gulp.
…And now that McMansions not only are the staple of new suburbs but are invading older, leafy neighborhoods, built in place of tear-downs and overpowering the smaller vintage houses nearby, communities from Greenwich, Conn., to Miami Beach are beginning to take action.
It's great to see this subject get some attention in the mass media. It's dreadful to see nothing but McMansions in the new suburbs of America as many times they're nothing more than a caricature of several styles combined.
Sections: Uncategorized Oct 17th, 2003 4 Comments 
Well it's here. iTunes for Windows. For all you Windows users out there I can't recommend iTunes enough. Not only is it the best jukebox software out there (especially at the low price of free) but it's by far the easiest way to buy downloadable music. Here's a pretty telling review from a Windows user:
OK, I've had iTunes installed for a few hours now, and it's already one of my favourite Windows apps. It completely blows away WinAmp 2, WinAmp 3, MusicMatch, WMP, or jetAudio.
If you use a Windows box, go download it now.
See, this is a good example of why Apple systems are designed so much better than Windows ones. I spent about the first five minutes trying to figure out how to add my music library. Do I need to browse to the drive? Enter the network path? Enter some obscure drive string letter obtained from an awkward DOS emulation search? I couldn't figure it out, at first. And then I realised, this is because I was “thinking like a Windows user.” So then I was like, “What is the intuitive way? No . . . it can't be that simple . . .” And it was - it turns out all I needed to do was drag the drive icon onto iTunes. This is how things should work.
It's smooth and fast, too. It added all my songs in about 15 minutes (20,435 songs, 59.5 Days, 150.65 GB.) I then went to install it on Denise's machine. I thought I would have to add all the music from my server all over. Wrong again! All I had to do was share my library, set up her iTunes to look for shared music, and voilà - completely synced.
If I had any excuse at all to buy a new computer right now I would buy a Mac. Perhaps before too long . . .
Check it out and then download it here.
Sections: Uncategorized Oct 12th, 2003 No Comments 
Not a bad weekend for the middle of October.
Sections: Uncategorized Oct 6th, 2003 1 Comment 
And this is at Wrigley where the game wasn't even held. Of course now we have two more tough series to get through before the real celebration begins. (photo from the Chicago Tribune).
Sections: Uncategorized Oct 1st, 2003 1 Comment An excerpt from an SF Gate article about Apple design goodness:
Could this be, in short, something that actually adds a modicum of refined grace and simplicity and aesthetic warmth to the world, instead of sucking it away like so many disposable DVD players and garish LED-spasming boom boxes and 10-gallon drums of spaghetti sauce from Costco? Nah.
And you open the gorgeous black box and lift the white cardboard inside flap, itself adorned with clean offset typeface declaring “Designed by Apple in California,” and you are confronted with what is quite possible the most thoughtfully designed and pleasing packaging you've ever seen, not like you care about this stuff and hey it's all just Styrofoam and garbage anyway, but still…
You can check out the entire article here.
Gabriel Bridger is an associate creative director, and part-time blogger living in Chicago. Bridger.us is a rambling collection of thoughts, comments, and various media in no particular order and, at times, of no particular merit.
