daniel.fallman.org

added 2010.03.18

i've installed snow leopard a couple of weeks ago. it's a good update. not much new stuff in terms of eye candy, but some nice tweaks and things seem overall more stable and quicker. and it's cheap to upgrade from leopard, too (almost to the point where you start to ask why they charge anything at all for it. you know, charging for bug fixes reminds me of another operating systems manufacturer). however, i have two issues with the upgrade. first, the dock still has that weird curve that everyone hated as soon as it got out years ago. i can't believe apple hasn't changed it. i have, for sure. the other thing that amazes me -- and that is not being said appreciatively -- is the very, very, very useful ~~new~~ [edit: apparently this feature/annoyance was available in leopard as well, though i've never triggered it there, which is a bit weird. according to my sources, apple did disable this lunacy through an update after a while, but now it's back as default. ahh, office politics...] function of being able to use the multitouch pad on your choice of macbook to zoom the size of the icons on the desktop. just the icons, that is, not the entire desktop. ~~my god how i missed that in leopard!~~ my better half discovered it too today, all by herself, and she was equally thrilled to have her hd icon fill the entire screen on her macbook air for apparently no particular reason what so ever, oh, and get all her icons garbled. i keep a ton of icons on the desktop, old habit of mine. problem is that when you zoom in, by mistake obviously, and then recognizes your mistake and zoom out again. the icons don't return to where they were. oh no. now, i'm wondering, what happend to the really talented interaction design people that used to work for apple?

added 2009.10.12

fall equals meat stews. and great ales.

added 2009.10.11

albeit our much-beloved local team continue to fail to live up to our (somewhat exaggerated) expectations (...oh, and are showing red numbers, again), hockey season is finally on over here. ahh, i can breathe again! thus, in celebration of the season, over-priced coffee in styrofoam cups, and the annual increase in ticket prices, this clip featuring coach samuel l jackson is just an utter necessity.

added 2009.09.25

what's going on with google's front page? is it just me or did the search form and the buttons suddenly grow substantially in size? interns at work? being a safari user, i've been hitting cmd + 0 all day, without much luck. i don't quite see the point. why? as for privacy, broadcasting one's searches to everyone in the vicinity feels, well, odd.

added 2009.09.11

i like cars a lot, even love them, but it's only the driving side i like about them really, not fiddling with them. or, perhaps rather, i do like the mechanics of the car, the theory, it's just the practice of mending it that i totally don't like. couldn't care less. so, for people like me, this 30's (?) clip explaining the differential gear is really quite informative. oh, and there's the limited slip differential too of course. here's a simple lego implementation.

added 2009.09.03

i've been looking forward to it, no doubt, but not without qualms. reunions are often, well, miserable. what if it isn't any good? remember, these guys are my heroes. well, dinosaur jr's latest record farm is actually just as good as the old ones. in fact, it's epic. 'pieces' is a great song. 'over it' got that weird chaotic, whine-a-long quality that only dino at their best can do. there are other good ones as well. like 'friends' and 'i don't wanna go there'. oh, 'plans' is just brilliant, too. still 'see you' is the masterpiece, definitely. there is still god music being made, apparently.

added 2009.08.14

the 2005 morone vino nobile the montepulciano is a real bargain! i'm getting a case. it might age well, too, for a couple of years at least. not that i will know. but in theory.

added 2009.07.15

the 2001 was great. the 2003 a bit of a disappointment. our 'friends' at systembolaget -- the swedish monopoly we all love to hate -- have finally decided to switch to the 2004. let's hope it's up to the standards of the 2001. i have a bottle i haven't dared open yet. barolo's need time, they say. well. i'll give it a try later this week. looks promising, though. fontanafredda's serralunga d'alba has been a favorite of mine for years. [edit: it's now gone and the verdict is: yes, good.]

added 2009.07.10

i really like the styling of the new jaguar xj. i'm especially impressed with the rear. the xj is by no means an easy car to design. unlike the xf for instance, which is more of a sports saloon, the xj has to be classy, laidback, gentleman-like, worthy and sporty and modern at the same time. that combo is not easy to get right. for me, it's that rear end that really makes those things come together. with an aston rear (like the xf's), it would just have been another gt. now it's an xj, albeit somewhat reminiscent of a maserati quattroporte. not that there's anything wrong with that. oh, the interior's pretty good too. not to mention the b&w sound system. i wish they would stay away from that baby-blue interior lighting, though. it makes the whole interior seem a bit cheap, which it actually isn't. still, jaguar is one of few car companies these days that seem to have got their act together about what cars to make. but hey, what's going on with the c-pillar? interns at work?

added 2009.07.10

there's an obvious irony in this sony product that's quite amusing (or is it just me?)

added 2009.07.03

i've just replaced my previous, trusted 3 pairs of nike pegasus with saucony's ride. so far so good. update: i'm now 'loyal to the sport' over 'just do it', apparently. feels much better now, thanks.

added 2009.06.27

this is why you can't listen to the radio anymore. give me some neil young instead ...eh, wait a minute, bad example.

added 2009.06.17

apple iphone 3gs. doesn't really sound like an apple product, does it? let's hope they haven't let the market people back in.

added 2009.06.08

come barbecue season (finally, to the cold north), i've once again discovered what a great product shoyu is. just mix it thoroughly with olive oil, a little muscovado sugar, lemon juice, and black pepper. no salt! perfect with chicken.

added 2009.05.31

apple's pinch-for-zoom feature is a neat way to show off gestures on a multitouch surface. it's great with the iphone, when one actually needs zooming every now and then, but not so great with the macbook pro. in fact, with the macbook, it's rather annoying. it's still neat of course, but the problem is that you don't actually need it that often, like...ehh...never. with that in mind, it's way too easy to activate and as a result, i keep accidentally triggering this gesture all the time in safari, which is really quite a nuisance. oh yes, it's a feature that can't be switched off, either. it's the apple way. you can get back to default with cmd + 0, but it's still very annoying. if i'd designed this, knowing the problems involved with recognizing and understanding gestures as well as the expected frequency of use of this 'feature' (never), at least i'd opted for a hotkey trigger, like cmd + pinch. or, just abandoned the idea altogether. all in all, surprisingly half-baked for an apple implementation.

added 2009.04.25

woohoo! mascis, barlow, and ehh, that third guy, are back together! can't wait. i've had a dino phase for quite some time now; where you been is on my list of the best 10 albums ever made, possibly top 5. or 3. almost up there with if i should fall.

added 2009.03.25

safari 4 beta's new top sites thing looks neat, but i don't really see the point. because they're my favorite sites, i already know the urls (and so does safari's address input form), then when would i use this? for me, this is more of a technology show-off, something to show your friends, and as such, it's really not that impressive. maybe top sites should rather preview sites it thinks i should know about? or maybe sites i used to frequent but haven't visited in a long time? or maybe sites everyone else is currently visiting?

added 2009.03.19

a mac blog i used to check every now and then, cool osx apps, is now for paying members only, apparently. no, it's not the 1st of april quite yet (for a minute i mixed it up with macosxhints, which would have been truly disastrous). trying to get people to pay for online content has been tried before, so good luck to coolosxapps! and no, i'm not paying. [update: it's now for sale, apparently. i'm not surprised. comments off.]

added 2009.03.17

just installed safari 4 beta. best news so far, click2flash still works.

added 2009.03.05

my better half just bought a shiny new macbook air. now i wish i'd bought one too instead of that heavy 15" macbook pro i did end up buying and is now carrying with me everywhere. most people have probably seen the air being introduced at macworld and the tv ad that followed. after that, there was a sudden explosion of homemade parodies, some of which were actually quite funny, some were quite dull, and some were made by people that clearly need to hang on to their day jobs.

the air did also receive quite a bashing for a while, in the media as well as by ~~amateu~~...ehh, bloggers et al. why so is simply beyond me. oh, yes, it could have something to do with that song.

in practice, the air's an astonishing piece of design and engineering. i can't get it, really, why some people seem to get so upset about it. those who don't care for design but rather counts the number of ports on a laptop aren't usually mac users from the beginning, are they? and those that really need firewire over usb 2 -- i.e. video editors -- aren't really air users, are they? the lack of an optical drive might be the most serious flaw, possibly. still, i've had my pro for several months now and have yet to use it's optical drive, so... to me, the macbook air is as close as you get to having a piece of the future right here, right now.

added 2009.02.27

i used to love this game. at the time, the graphics were sublime. especially since i came straight from this. by today's standards? well, not quite far cry 2. still, at least the music was much better back then. limited resources, i.e. a confined design space, is always good for creativity. when you can do anything, like you do nowadays, not much gets done really. 'music? ehhh...let's add some bongos'. games are all about graphics these days. sigh.

added 2009.02.25

it's been really cold here lately. that's not the kind of info you want first thing in the morning. thanks to apple too for equipping the iphone with such means of photographic preeminence! who needs that d90?

added 2009.02.17

i've started to like blogs with really limited slash focused coverage. this is a good example, here's another.

added 2009.02.17

pioneer is unplugging its line of plasma tv screens. crap. sigh. their plasma screens are still the best there is, by miles. i like their elegant product design, the quality feel of the whole product, and of course the picture quality (black levels, motion picture quality, picture depth, ~~menu design~~) is yet unrivalled, those terrible lcd displays are still far behind.

added 2009.02.13

spotify is a too-good-to-be-true app. did i mention it's swedish? my fear right now is that it's too good. when something's too good AND legal, it has to be stopped, it seems. when legal stuff becomes nearly as good as the illegal options they're always shut down, starved to death, or become useless because of drm crippling and/or corporate takeovers.

in the meantime, it's wonderful. try slow dog and now they'll sleep, by belly. true 90s indie classics. i wonder why people bother these days with all the corporate indie bands.

added 2009.02.13

this little add-on (or plugin? hack?) for safari is quite useful. flash for mac has really never been very good. something's wrong with it, it tends to slow the whole system down. especially safari. and especially if you've got multiple flash-heavy pages open at the same time. some of our swedish newspapers, for instance, are practically unreadable these days. not only because of the quality of the actual articles (another story altogether), but because each page has 20+ flash banners on them. well, not anymore. oh, and there's a white-list too, for pages like this :)

added 2009.02.12

there's a lot of talk these days about how complex the world has become and how much one needs to know to keep buoyancy in our modern society and so on. Well, without going any further into this discussion (where one might question if this really is something recent, i.e. if 'now' hasn't always been quite new and somewhat scary?), it seems to me that a both necessary and welcome technological way of maneuvering this is to design simple and elegant stuff. apple understands this. what's more, they've also designed a framework for design, mac os x, where they basically force app developers to do the same. i love it. it's basically impossible to design something ugly, even if you try really, really hard.

i watched a stanford talk by steve jobs recently, where he talks briefly about his university years. he mentions that one of the most important courses he took was in typography, and how that opened up his eyes for the simple, the proportional, the elegant. i wish more designers would start in this end.

luckily, some do. i'm using coda for all web stuff these days. these guys have got their act together, no questions there. it's a brilliant application. simple, useful, and elegant throughout.

added 2009.01.15

a lot of old music lately: here's one of my all time favorites. while we're at it, here's another one. i've been listening to these two songs more or less every day for years, the first one since i was 13...

added 2009.01.15

youtube's got to be the best time-killer in the history of time. that last entry (see below) made me click around for quite some time, and it's when you stumble on clips like this that you realize just how long ago this was -- and how timeless the pogues's music is. though it has always bothered me that most people never go beyond fairytale, as there is so much more. not to mention this, this, and this. oh, yes, this too, obviously.

added 2009.01.09

nw3, the best pogues song never released. classic.

added 2008.12.19

i'm not sure i enjoy watching this as much as i appreciate the amount of labor that must have gone into making it happen. it's a bit like watching all those 3h+ epic movies i suppose, like the longest day or lord of the rings -- we all know what's going to happen, we're really just there for the carpentry.

added 2008.06.30

i wonder who came up with stereo photograph? low-fi surely is the best fi.

added 2008.06.27

if you can stand the sound, this simple experiment is a pretty convincing way to show a quite weird property of nature.

added 2008.05.14

this guy is really on to something. i've been reading his latest book entitled in defense of food lately. there's a lot of somewhat self-evident, low key ingenuity in there, like for instance when he suggests that when you shop for food, try to avoid the center of the supermarket. rather, keep to the walls, because that's where all the real food is. at first, it sounds pretty silly, but the more i think of it, it's actually true -- even for whole foods market! all the processed food tends to end up in the middle. also, the advice to avoid everything that says it's healthy and good for you is also just brilliant (why didn't i think of that?!). real food doesn't shout at you, it just sits there. i showed up to attend his talk at stanford earlier this spring, but the place was packed; i couldn't even get in through the doors. we've actually stopped eating processed food as far as it's possible. trust me, it's good for you.

added 2008.05.06

i'm getting more and more ~~frustrated~~ annoyed with adobe updater. it's beyond me how a fairly respectable software company can release a cpu hogger like that? it's pretty ridiculous: 100% cpu for doing what? checking a server? after i force quit it, too? well... even though i fully understand there might be some scaling issues involved in distributing updates in a safe way to thousands of users, several other companies in the business seem to be able to handle that just fine. it seems to me that all the pieces of software that adobe releases that are not directly concerned with graphical design is, lets face it, crap. as i'm really fed up with having to reboot, here's how to get rid of it. oh, yes, even adobe thinks this might be a good idea. touche. [edit: the freeze + having to reboot thing might be due to adobe updater not understanding pac files and safari -- still no word on the cpu hogging though]

added 2008.04.24

while it's great to be back home, one of things i can't understand is why it's impossible to get hold of anything even close to decent salsa here. from what i know, it's pretty much the same all over europe. where we shop there are only three brands, all of which were probably canned at some point in the 90s, they're impossible to distinguish from each other, and all taste like ketchup. so, the only viable solution is diy -- and it's actually quite easy to make. you'll need:

2-3 large tomatoes,

1-2 cloves of garlic,

one red or yellow spanish chili pepper or jalapeño,

1/2 red onion,

the juice from half a lime, and

1/2-1 chipotle
put all of the above except the lime juice into a hot, dry frying pan. let it all blacken for a minute or two in the pan. remove from heat and pour everything into a food processor or blender. add the lime juice. process it until smooth. we find this one especially nice with salmon fish tacos. depending on the kind of chili pepper you use, this can be quite hot as is. but if you're into real power, use habanero.

added 2008.04.21

ted talks are really bad for productivity. this frank gehry talk from the early 90s is great. there's some dry humor there i really enjoy.

added 2008.04.15

i've just got a few days left in the bay area this time [*sob*]. i'm really going to miss a couple of things:

whole foods is just brilliant, why are there other grocery stores? the cheese section is spectacular;

all the really good sushi places, much better than those i've seen on the east coast, not to mention the ones here in europe;

peet's;

waking up and realizing, yes, it's going to be another sunny day;

yelp-ing around;

stanford's seminar culture;

pacifico;

running in santa cruz;

pancho villa taqueria in the mission;

all the micro-brewery pale ales;

sonoma tasting.

...and there's stuff i won't miss:

101;

my red toyota camry rental;

eating alone;

having to drive everywhere.

added 2008.04.07

one of the first things i did when i came to the bay area was to look for an acoustic. i've been looking to pick up a used martin d28 or maybe a hd35 for quite some time now (ok, i admit, ever since i was young and played in bands and all that stuff). they're horribly expensive and quite rare in sweden, at least decent used ones. so, i checked ebay and craigslist for a while without much luck. i then spent a weekend checking out various bay area guitar shops, like berkeley's fifth string, two amazingly horrible guitar center stores on van ness and in san jose, and quite a few others. i even thought about driving down to carlsbad to buffalo brothers, but i never did that. finally, however, i walked into gryphon in palo alto, not far from stanford. it's actually the best guitar shop i've ever been in (except for friis musik in umea obviously). they have a good selection of both new and used instruments and very knowledgeable, helpful yet not overly sales-oriented staff. i tried a number of different guitars for quite some time, including several new and used martins. in the end, none of them actually came close to the sound of the westerly, ri built guild dv-52 '96 i picked up. this has to be one of the most underrated guitars in the world, selling for less than half of an equivalent martin d28 and sounding better (!) at least in my ears. the sound is simply spectacular.

added 2008.04.07

here are the best sushi places on the sf bay peninsula: sushi sam's edomata, san mateo; yuzu, san mateo; sushi tomi, mountain view; sakae, burlingame. i've sampled at least 15 different places on the penisula, and to me, these are the best. i'm not familiar enough with all the places in the city to really make much of a judgement, but from those i've tried so far, ebisu really stands out from the crowd.

added 2008.04.06

lesson: don't start a blog if you haven't got time to update it. (well, maybe i'm being too hard on myself -- after all, it's only been a little more than two years since the last post, see below)

added 2008.04.06

this game is annoying. but fun.

added 2005.12.04

tired with the delivery time that comes with online shopping, i went downtown this morning to pick up a new mobile phone that i've had my eyes on for a while. it has a very nice screen, and form factor i like, and a pretty decent camera in the useless-camera-built-into-phones category. here's an example picture. btw, the cat's name is missan.

added 2004.08.23

who said programmers have no sense of humor?

added 2004.06.18

your guide to social engineering.

added 2004.06.18

ping with pong.

added 2004.03.16

imac, ibook, ipod, iduck.

added 2004.02.23

this is pretty close to the original...ahhh.

added 2004.02.23

looks like i've finally made my way to the matrix! although, sad to say, they'd be better off picking some other conspiracy.

added 2003.07.29

check out our mirror site!

added 2003.07.22

friends of asian-style cooking will find this recipe outstanding! or not.

added 2003.07.18

if you, like myself, are a swedish speaker with some english-speaking aspirations, this list of translated swedish idioms is fairly amusing.

added 2003.05.20

after an unreasonable wait, caesar has finally arrived. and yes, it's even better than i imagined it to be. a few years ago, i honestly never thought i'd be using one of these again. but hey, everything that compiles joe must be worth it, mustn't it?

added 2003.05.14

i must admit i think this is fairly amusing

added 2003.04.30

mmmmmmm...

added 2003.04.29

on the same trip, i had some days in nyc. i can't believe how bad these guys play with the line up they have.

added 2003.04.15

i've just got back from a three-week trip to the us, visiting don ihde's technoscience group at state university of new york at stony brook (here's a memory), and preseting some stuff at chi 2003.

added 2003.04.15

if you, like me, aren't in the mood for yet another war -- this 404 is pretty amusing.

added 2003.02.17

a while ago, i bought a very modest amount of stock in ericsson. since then, they've swapped ceo (to slick) and lost an unimaginable amount of swedish money. anyway, now their first 3g phone is to be released. it's foldable. great?! well. let's see.

added 2003.02.17

if your're in the mood, this is quite funny, too.

added 2003.02.11

watch john's switch to canada, quite funny if you like apple's commercials.

added 2003.02.04

i've seen the future, and it comes in variable bitrate

added 2003.02.04

oh no! my last bag of the world's greatest espresso coffee (although hardly the world's most politically correct design :-) has just run out. anyone knows if it's for sale over the net?

added 2002.12.07

december is truly umea's finest hour.

added 2002.12.02

just how far beyond hci is interaction design? is a good any fleshy critique of the emperor's new clothes.

added 2002.12.02

if you haven't read it yet: it's a good read.

added 2002.11.12

i'm off for new orleans on the 14th for cscw2002 -- looks promising.

added 2002.11.07

here's a picture from this year's chi that i just got from this guy. thank you.

added 2002.10.14

oh no, back from italy, and it has become cold.

added 2002.09.25

btw, this is well worth reading.

added 2002.09.13

here are three (one, two, three) pictures of how one's desk look while writing up one's phd thesis

added 2002.09.13

thanks (again) to this guy, the folder browser now features an in-browser picture viewer. you could try it with this shot. or, you can try that guy's version of it, with for instance this picture, which is quite funny.

added 2002.09.13

he looks nice, but he's not.

added 2002.09.11

did you know that this hotel in copenhagen offers their guests free use of their in-front-of-the-elevators-desktop with high-speed internet connection. i almost feel as if i work here :) a good time and place to dl putty and get going with updating the homepage, is it not?

added 2002.08.09 (yes, 23:03)

if you run over a squirrel, this is invaluable.

added 2002.07.04

before, during, and after dis2002, i took a few pictures, some of which might be considered a bit touristish to their character.

added 2002.07.03

here are some pictures of idl employees setting up the design school's booth for the umea forum exhibition. too bad tickets are 1200 SEK each.

added 2002.06.15

pictures from chi 2002 is now available in the resource section's picture folder. more specifically, they are here. note the bluriness, it's a feature of my digital camera...or maybe of the photographer?

added 2002.06.13

thanks to jonas, there's a new user-friendly resource browser. still somewhat experimental (it doesn't allow access to protected files yet), but quite nice anyway.

added 2002.06.08

to and fro, i've been at home sick with the flu for two weeks now. just great. good to have these though.

added 2002.05.14

here's a picture of my poster at this year's chi (chi2002), taking place in minneapolis, mn. it's made available in a size of your choice; 1600x1200 or 800x600. if you are really at it, you might as well grab the poster pdf too (either this one optimized for the screen, weighting in at 560k; or why not go for the 9 meg one (destined to look good even on that really, really, really large printer of yours).

added 2002.04.29

a picture of byron (the dog). his character came through nicely here, i think.

added 2002.04.17

my interactive poster at chi2001 in seattle won the chicamp piggy press' prestigious 1st prize award for best interactive poster/short talk. while not quite the pulitzer perhaps, it is still somewhat interesting as the users of the prototypes are kids age 4-7. so whether or not you buy the concept, dupliances seem to strike a chord or two after all. here's more info and a somewhat blurry picture. also, don't forget to check out the dupliance project's home page.

added 2001.05.01


			trajectory / home miscellaneous