Archive for the 'english' Category

Yesterday we took our bikes and left all concrete behind to have a picknick along the river of the city we inhabit. Although windy and cloudy at first, it turned into an enjoyable evening. The girls and social scientists teams won in Boule against the teams of the boys and engineers–if you permit fuzzy borders and some overlap. Thanks everybody for joining in. Uwe found it to be a paradise-like place and took some beautiful photos.

It was rather silent here the last weeks, mainly because i have finished my diploma thesis recently and defended (successfully) shortly thereafter. The title of the thesis is Towards a Better VIEW: Visual Information Exploration on the Web. The core idea is the combination of multiple interactive visualization widgets or VisGets that are used to explore web content, for example, from RSS feeds. If you want to know more about it check out the thesis page, where i have put abstract, thesis, and defense slides.

I just stumbled upon these two interactive art installations by Uta Hinrichs and Holly Schmidt: memory [en]code and EMDialog. I think both projects showcase how interactive tabletops and large displays can be engaging and inviting in public settings. I am excited to see more of this. Check out the websites for photos and videos.

I am kind of undecided about Flickr’s recent move to allow small video snippets. Quite a few members are at least not amused. Flickr sells the very short films as long photographs which seems kind of ridiculous at first. The video service Vimeo tries to focus on high-quality, original short movies. There i just went through some of Philip Bloom’s videos and they are amazing! Great perspectives, interesting people, wonderful colors, and good music. In particular, Autumn in Richmond, Piccadilly Furs, South Bank, and Kew Gardens. While only paying pro members can upload video on Flickr, i wonder if this approach towards video – videos are just photos that move up to 90 seconds – will attract such good videos, or better their makers. Right now the video group on Flickr is dominated by mostly snapshot videos.

Icaro Doria came up with the great idea of using national flags to visualize social issues of different countries. The project Meet the World (larger images) was actually an advertising campaign for the Portuguese magazine Grande Reportagem.

This saturday the third see conference on visualization of information is happening in Wiesbaden. It features quite a speaker list including Ben Fry, Bruce Sterling, and Frank van Ham. I really wanted to go, so i got my tickets well in advance, but something came in my way and now i hope for good video streaming. By the way, i was promised to get the money back. Very nice.

Yesterday a lonely bicyclist had an unpleasant encounter with a slippery curb that didn’t want him to get onto the bicycle path. He fell and later felt severe pain in his knee. Now he can’t really bend it, but the doc said it aint broken – just a bit bruised. The irony is that just two minutes before the lonely bicycle commuter had his tragic fall, a police officer yelled out of the car and demanded that he used the [non-mandatory] bike path - which the bicyclist refused first knowing that it was not mandatory… Well, he is working diligently again on his diplom thesis, but once in a while he procrastinates away, e.g., by reading the first bike shop web comic that has all the necessary cyclist tragic, bike lane content, and car contempt.

Today it occurred to me (again) that urban planning and city lifestyle weaves itself like a red thread through many contemporary issues. In the previously mentioned CBC radio programme it was discussed that among other factors, the location where one lives in the city and the fact whether certain services and shops are within walkable (or public transport) distance seem to have quite an impact on one’s health and happiness. Tonight the editor and founder of WorldChanging Alex Steffen gave an inspiring and motivating talk about interesting ideas for how to address global warming and the general disconnect between humankind and earth. Check out his TED talk on similar things. He talked about all kinds of ideas, products and services that make a contribution by contributing less waste or emissions and by using up less resources. Great examples are sharing of cars, tools, and even handbags. When asked what he considers the three major innovations, he responded with a list of interventions and named urban planning as the first one. While i am not sure whether it is interesting what some urban planners are doing, i certainly think that what they should be doing is worth taking a closer look.

I just listened to a very interesting two-part podcast about the social gradient in health produced by the CBC. The issue is that many contemporary diseases such as diabetes or obesity can be determined by looking at social factors like income, social relations, education and others while health advocacy still focusses on the individual. Get the shows from the CBC Ideas podcast page or listen here (each is about 52 minutes long):

Sick People or Sick Societies? Part 1 (MP3):

Sick People or Sick Societies? Part 2 (MP3):

To learn more about social determinants of health check out the WHO’s special section.

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