A time-saving way to waste time.

I was falling asleep one night and realized the world was missing a very important thing: A micro-site that allows you to select two animals from a matrix and immediately be presented with a YouTube video of those animals playing together. Well, guess what, all you seekers of inter-species cuteness? I have heard your laments and have toiled tirelessly at my laptop to make your lives easier. I present to you… CritterVidder.

Free icons! Get yer free icons!

As a thank you for visiting my blog, please accept these complimentary cuddly animal icons. Use them as you see fit. Make a t-shirt, or a stamp or a sticker. Arrange them into a story. Really, do whatever you want. These animals are free. You can see them in action at CritterVidder.com

To get the vector file, right-click (or control-click) here or on the image above and select “save linked file as” or “save target as” (depending on your browser) Then save the PDF file to your desktop. Once you have it, you can use a program like Adobe Illustrator to extract or edit the images. Have fun!

This post is also an experiment in search-engine optimization to see how many people land on my site after searching for “Free Animal Icons”, or for that matter: Free vector animal icons. Free vector icons. Free cat icon. Free dog icon. Free bird icon. Free monkey icon. Free squirrel icon. Free baby icon. Free rabbit icon. Free bunny icon. Free turtle icon. Free fish icon.

I’ll let you know the results, if you’re curious.

Some of the circles appear convex, others appear concave. But why?

If you’ve ever taken a close look at the buttons you click on your computer screen, you might have noticed that there’s something about them that just seems “clicky.” The secret to making things pop off the screen, (as anyone who’s ever designed a button can tell you) is to cast some virtual light on it so the top is brighter than the bottom. This gives the illusion that the element is actually catching the light because it’s so thick and poppy.

Interface designers are painfully aware that users are basically lazy – but in this case, that laziness has been exploited to our advantage. Human brains like to take shortcuts and jump to conclusions whenever possible. One of these shortcuts is to tell us “if something reflects more light from its top edge than it does from its bottom edge – then its definitely popping out at you.” It’s actually a pretty safe assumption, since, from the time we were apes, the main source of light has been the sun (which is above you, as you’ve probably noticed.) And if the thing popping out at you was a hungry lion instead of say – the back button on a web browser, you might be glad your brain cut some corners to buy you a few milliseconds of running time.

In his book The Telltale Brain, my new hero V.S. Ramachandran discusses this phenomenon and points out that your brain is even lazier than you might have bothered to notice. When it informs you “that thing is coming at you,” it isn’t basing the assumption on its knowledge of the sun’s location (above you,) it’s actually just basing it on where the top of your head is. That’s usually a safe bet, since the top of your head is often pointed towards the sky, but try turning your head to the side and looking at the illustration above. If you’ve got a normal brain, the shapes don’t seem to pop anymore.

For the longest time, the light source in the typical system interface was located in the upper left, at the 10:00 position. You’d paint a little white highlight on the top edge and left edge of a button and, simple as that, the illusion of depth was achieved.

But about ten years ago, with the advent of Mac OSX, there was a dramatic, cosmic shift that few people seemed to notice. The light moved overhead – to the high noon position. Suddenly all the highlights and shadows had shifted! Did Steve Jobs just decide to move the sun without telling anyone? (I guess if you can forge deals with the RIAA and AT&T, then moving the sun is pretty easy.)

What does it all mean? Do we assume that it’s somehow getting later in cyberspace? First it was 10:00, now it’s noon? Should we expect another shift? Will the light start to come from the 2:00 position, then 6:00? Is this some sort of doomsday clock we need to be watching? Is it counting down to when the computers finally break free of our screens and start to steal our parking spaces??

Whatever it means, just remember, my friends: The light shines not from above, but from within.

Is this you?

Many people try to make something and fail or become frustrated along the way. As a reminder to myself, and to others who want to make things, I’ve outlined this handy step-by-step guide. For small, personal projects, some of these steps can last a few seconds and exist entirely in the mind. For more ambitious collaborations, each step might require a lifetime and a team of thousands to complete.

STEP 1: Decide what you want to make

This is by far the hardest part. 80% of mankind never makes it past this part – usually because there’s something good on TV. If you’re having trouble with this part, let me know, as I’ve got a lot of unmade things lying around.

STEP 2: Sketch it out

In a simple way, communicate to yourself and possibly others what it is you decided in step 1. This can take many forms:

• A drawing
• A mission statement
• An outline
• A prototype
• A model

STEP 3: Plan it out

This step can get complicated, because it requires jumping ahead to see what’s coming up in steps 4 and 5. (You can do that now if you like.)

Now, figure out how long it will take and what resources (people, finances, tools, materials) will be required to complete steps 4 and 5. Make sure you have enough of, and the right kinds these things before you start. And please, for everyone’s sake, make a schedule (with a set of milestones and deadlines). If you’re working alone and you blow past this part without much thought, you’ll hate yourself. If you’re working with others they’ll hate you too.

STEP 4: Design it

Figure out all the details, preferably on paper (an eraser is recommended). Again, this can take many forms:

• A set of blueprints or drawings
• A vivid description of each what you’re making, broken down into component pieces
• A “working prototype”
• A script
• A business plan

In many cases, this step is skipped, or done poorly. You can usually tell when this happens by looking at a finished product and seeing that it sucks.

STEP 5: Test it out

By the end of the previous step, you should have something you can share with a few of the people for whom you’re making the thing. They should be able to take a look at it and/or use it enough to tell you whether the thing you decided in step 1 is worthy of step 6.

If your test group says stuff like: “Hmmm,” or “I don’t get it,” or “Do you need a hug?” – then my advice would be to re-visit steps 1-4 and see if maybe you glossed-over something important.

STEP 6: Make it!

This is where you start seeing some real progress as your grand vision unfolds. For the most part, this step should be fun and satisfying. If it’s not, something probably went wrong in steps 1 through 4. Or to put it another way: “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Ok – maybe there are a few things you didn’t count on and the whole thing is just a big mess. If this happens, stop everything, and re-visit steps 1-5 where necessary.

STEP 7: Share it!

Regardless of how well you executed the previous steps, this part can be pretty difficult and unpredictable. Hopefully you enjoyed Steps 1-6 enough to make it all worthwhile, no matter how things turn out in this step. Best of luck. Just know that I’m proud of you.

Sometimes there’s just too much talk. Sometimes a rude statement or insensitive remark only adds to the noise and makes the conversation become even more intolerable. In such cases, it’s often possible to employ a silent, time-tested sign-language that can render a conversational opponent speechless with the movement of a single hand.

"The Whoop-De-Doo"

"The Cuckoo"

"The Tiny Violin"

Here are some downloadable graphics to use when engaged in a particularly tiresome social network or message board discussion. Just right-click or control-click on the image and select “save” or “download” or whatever makes sense.

150 x 150

75 x 75

A Word in the Kitchen... A Drive in the Car.

From a sketch drawn while watching a crime show on television.

The Long, Quiet Room

An illustration of the bedroom in my old apartment.

If anyone can tell me where I can find a machine like the one in this music video, I would appreciate it.

From "The Boundaries of Knowledge" collection

I found this book in a thrift store a while back. There’s a chapter in it called “Art and the Animal” that describes a series of experiments in which scientists gave a bunch of chimpanzees some art supplies then watched to see what happened. Once the chimps were introduced to the idea of  ”colors + surface = something curious” – scribbling with crayons and smudging paint on canvas quickly became an activity they would spontaneously engage in when given the chance. If  someone tried to take their supplies away, the chimps screeched and got upset. There were even cases of mild-mannered animals biting the hands of researchers who tried to mess with their work. In other words – they were into it.

Then in one of the studies, the pesky naturalists decided to associate the spontaneous scribbling with a reward. Very quickly, the selected chimps figured out that any kind of scribble at all would earn a tasty treat. They seemed to lose interest in the character of their work – scribbling aimlessly, looking up now and then to see when the researcher would show up with their banana. Meanwhile, their counterparts who were scribbling and smudging just for the pleasure of accomplishment, were drawing spirals, repeating patterns, playing with symmetry and engaging in other publication-worthy activities. One chimp named Congo went on to create over 400 paintings, three of which went for $26,000 at a 2005 auction.

If you’re an artist, you might ask yourself  ”Am I working just for the banana?” If the answer is no, then you might also ask yourself, “How do I get a cage in one of those chimp labs where I get to paint all day?”

A Good Dog Can Smell Your Entangled Photons

Do you have a dog who barks or sits by the door when a family member is about to return home? Besides being adorable, this curious behavior may lend some insight into the very nature of the universe.

If you’re thinking “Sure, my dog does that, but it’s just because he knows the time of day to expect us,” then: 1) You’re no fun and 2) You should take a close look at the work of British scientist Rupert Sheldrake. In his book Dogs Who Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home – And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals, he takes a topic which was once nothing but a source of quaint countryside anecdotes, and elevates it to a real scientific phenomenon worthy of scholarly exploration. His methods adhere to such rigorous skepticism that, if you’re not convinced your dog has ESP, then you at least need to start doing some serious de-bunking.

The evidence is actually even weirder than you might think. One of the more talented dogs in Sheldrake’s book would start wagging his tail and looking out the window the moment his owner made the decision to start heading home. The owner was given a random time to leave the house, a random destination (over ten miles away), and no knowledge of when she would be returning. An experimenter at another location, (with no knowledge of the study) would then telephone the owner and tell him it was time to come home. Even before the owner got in the taxi, the dog (who was being videotaped) would wander up to the window and start showing signs of excitement. The experiment was repeated enough times, with the same results, that it appeared to be much more than a statistical anomaly.

Setting aside any questions of scientific validity for the moment, let’s just say that little Fido, while he’s chewing apart a tennis ball and coughing up a pile of green fuzz onto the carpet, is actually in tune with some some naturally occurring aspect of the universe which is beyond our senses – some way of connecting to the mind of his owner over great distances. Where would we start looking for it? Is it a smell of some sort? A mysterious magnetic field? What’s going on??

As it happens, there was a breakthrough in the world of physics last month in which quantum information was passed between two photons over ten miles away. (You can read about it on Ars Technica.) The physicists, (no doubt raised on a healthy dose of Star Trek) called it free-space quantum teleportation. Unfortunately, the use of the word “teleportation” is a bit misleading in this case,  unless you’re the kind of person who thinks of a fax machine as a “document teleporter.”

For a taste of what this experiment entailed , let me quote:

The phase-locking laser is injected into the interferometer to probe phase drift for feedback control on the PTS. The results of the BSM and the time information are modulated to laser pulses with Hamming code by Encoder…

I won’t go on, as I’m sure you can guess how it ends.

The gist of this discovery is that a mechanism for knowing the state of another item in the universe, regardless of distance, is something that exists. Is it possible then, that our furry friends already knew that? From what I know of photons, (which can be summed up by this article on HowStuffWorks.com)  they are basically what light is made of. We know by looking into their droopy little eyes, that dogs have a biological tool for detecting changes in photons. Their eyes and brains can tell the difference between different wavelengths of light in the form of color. Would it be any more miraculous if they could also discern differences in the quantum state of photons?

There’s talk that quantum-teleportation could be used for instantaneous communication across vast distances with no possibility for interception. (So those naughty video-chats with your mistress on Mars will remain a secret from your political enemies once and for all.) If that happens, and we later find out that dogs have been doing the same kind of thing all along, would it really be that surprising? It wouldn’t be the first time that we find out that nature has developed a technology before us. Which came first – sonar for dolphins or submarines?

Maybe it works like this: When your dog marks you by licking your hand or rubbing up against you, he also causes a set of photons to become “entangled” like the ones in the free-space teleportation experiment. Some of those photons bounce off your body and enter your dog’s eyes. Others remain with you as you travel and are sensitive to hidden biological shifts that occur in your body when you decide to head home. When those photons near you change state, so do the ones in your dog’s brain – triggering him to run to the door with your slippers in his mouth.

Speaking as someone who knows virtually nothing about quantum mechanics, I would have to say that this is the perfect explanation for a phenomenon which we’re not completely sure even exists.