When I was an undergrad at UC Irvine, I spent about a year and a half in a neuro-opthalmology lab. In the lab I worked on two major initiatives, one of which was computer aided color-blindness therapy. Color-blindness is when the eye lacks a certain type of photoreceptor. Roughly 5-7% of men lack either the [...]
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I think it makes total sense and your instincts for how to tap into students ways of thinking to make this activity work are right on. I also think participating in and visualizing connections is a really great way to teach otherwise abstract ideas that you refer to. Unfortunately I don’t know of tools that [...]
Handles, Aliases, Nicknames, Vanity URLs, etc – you know them by many names. They’re our unique identifiers, quick ways to pick each other out in conversation, be it online or offline. Maybe they represent a bit about our personality, or maybe just a shorter way to say a really long name. Whatever the case, people’s [...]
Recently, I was complaining to my housemates about how annoying all these bugs were that were flying into our house, and someone should invent a laser that zaps them mid-flight before they could enter. We had a laugh and dismissed it as impractical. Well, I’m really happy to announce that as of today, someone is [...]
I have to admit, I really enjoy thinking about the experience of a consumer with all this new media we have available to us today. It’s a sort of weird hobby, but I have always enjoyed the challenge of the whole ‘step in someone elses shoes’ mindset that goes into recreating and living that experience. [...]
Back about 8 years ago when I was in the industry, I really wanted to make a game based on the concept of running around, a race game on your feet with a ton of obstacles. I saw it as a mix of Crazy Taxi (especially the bright colored arcadey look), the movie Run, Lola, [...]
I’ve been waiting for a while for more research to come out like this, describing how thought, ideas, or (in this case) opinions travel between people. I’ve had a project I’ve wanted to create based on these concepts for about a year now and one of the things that has held me back was the [...]
The act of mimicking something is interesting. It’s one part empathy, another part motivation. Empathy is of course feeling what someone else feels, often because we have similar personal experiences. Part of our brain is dedicated to this function, and it helps make us the social creatures we are. One side-effect of this is how [...]
Arthur C Clarke died today, the last of the big 3. We have him to thank for the idea of telecom satellites, and we’ll still be singing his praises when we finally develop space elevators. In the mean time, people can occupy themselves reading his books, such as 2001 and the Rama series.
