This year saw another iteration of the one-week, European evangelization campaign »ProChrist«. This is of particular interest to me since I was involved in the design work for ProChrist when I was at Buttgereit und Heidenreich three years ago. The office managed to realize unconventional ideas for this project once again.
Watched an interesting documentary about so-called savants on German public TV today. These are (in this case autistic) people with extreme mental abilities. It was fascinating to see Stephen Wiltshire, for example, fly over Rome for 45 minutes and then draw everything in minute detail, down to the number of windows on buildings.
In this context I heard of a condition related to autism, called Asperger syndrome (AS), which is much milder than “classic” autism and is also called “Little Professor Syndrome” or “Geek Syndrome” in English. This online test poses interesting questions for a self-evaluation. (Disclaimer: Of course, this must never replace a professional diagnosis, if needed.)
Made in 1977, this is still a fascinating project about the relative scale of things (I’ve seen the book):
Athanasius Kircher was a Jesuit universal genius who, among many other things, wrote the book Musurgia Universalis, which influenced the music of Bach and Beethoven. Particularly interesting to me is the Arca Musurgica described in the book, a kind of automatic, programmable organ that allowed anyone to compose music. It would certainly be intriguing to recreate this on a modern computer.
Here’s an interesting website that concerns itself with LEGO robots, mosaics and diagrams made of Flickr photos and other “krazy” stuff:
http://krazydad.com/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/krazydad/sets/140323/
A very comprehensive overview of the Cocoa text system and how to customize it:
http://hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System.html
I have had to figure out a lot of this myself when developing JobTimer X (an in-house time keeping tool for Buttgereit und Heidenreich) and Kaleidotype. But this is also the fun in programming – bending the system to your needs.
Watched the documentary film “Born Into Brothels” on 3sat today (more info: http://www.kids-with-cameras.org). It is about the children of the prostitutes in the red light district of Calcutta. While watching, I took a couple of notes about what impressed me most, which I would like to share here briefly.
N.A.D.D. stands for “Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder.” I suffer only partially from it, but there are times when I clearly exhibit symptoms, such as being in “The Zone” when programming.
Read more here: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html
Update: Here’s a screenshot of my computer – showing the program switcher and all open windows in Exposé. Lots of stuff going on.
Here is some collected (human) wisdom for those wanting to venture out into creating a business:
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/03/entrepreneurial_proverbs.html
Of course, this should be balanced with Biblical principles, but for the most part, the suggestions don’t sound too far off. I especially liked this admonition to be prudent with your resources (say, when tempted to rent office space or purchase expensive furniture):
“Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible”.