Great Image Zoom
I came across a great jQuery plugin called “Cloud Zoom” that enables really effective image zooming. In particular, the “inner zoom” feature is a very clean alternative to using two windows and, with the fade settings, you can create a clean transition between the scaled-down and zoomed-in image.
http://www.professorcloud.com/mainsite/cloud-zoom.htm
It’s also a pretty simple and intuitive UI. If you need a non-flash image zoom (or any image zoom for that matter) you should definitely check it out.
Using PHP markdown extra for superscripts
It’s actually Markdown for WordPress, which is based on PHP Markdown, here’s the test paragraph below:
…
The discipline of design may be a relatively recent development, but the practices it utilises have ostensibly existed since the beginning of civilisation, in fact, civilisation is the result of these design practices. Historically, design was directed toward mediation between man and the natural world, and there are myriad examples of how early cultures used design to improve the conditions of life. continued…
WP-Footnotes test
Just checking out this footnotes plugin and testing it with some text below (continue to main post).
The discipline of design may be a relatively recent development, but the practices it utilises have ostensibly existed since the beginning of civilisation, in fact, civilisation is the result of these design practices. Historically, design was directed toward mediation between man and the natural world, and there are myriad examples of how early cultures used design to improve the conditions of life. continued…
Semester in the City – Spring 2012
This 15 credit (DIAL 390, 391, 392) full time course will be held at
Vancouver’s CityStudio and is be open to students from six Vancouver
post-secondary institutions (SFU, UBC, BCIT, Langara, Emily Carr,
VCC). Students will work full-time as a cohort with the City of
Vancouver to implement Greenest City 2020 urban sustainability
strategies and focus projects towards meeting the these goals. The
best and brightest students will be selected from interdisciplinary
areas represented by all post secondary institutions; geography,
health science, engineering, planning, social sciences, arts,
business, food systems and design.
continued…
CORE: Course on Research Ethics
This is the required online course that all 3rd year core students must take as part of the approval process for their research project. Here is some background on it:
The online tutorial TCPS 2: CORE (Course on Research Ethics) is an introduction to the 2nd edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS 2). TCPS 2:CORE consists of eight modules that reflect the content of TCPS 2. It is applicable to all researchers involved in human participant research, regardless of discipline or methodology. The purpose of TCPS 2: CORE is to provide an introduction to TCPS 2, primarily for researchers and, secondarily, for Research Ethics Board members.
The certificate of completion for the tutorial is required of all University researchers conducting primary research with human participants, and recommended for all REB members. A copy of the certificate should be sent to the Emily Carr University Research Ethics Board – ethics@ecuad.ca. Annual renewal is required for all University researchers conducting primary research with human participants.
And here’s the direct link below, it’s not that long of a course (relatively speaking) but it isn’t a quick quiz either. Will probably take you a few hours to complete so you may want to start as soon as you have a few spare moments (your progress is saved when you log out so you don’t have to do it all at once).
http://pre.ethics.gc.ca/eng/education/tutorial-didacticiel/
Okay, good luck. Or maybe I should say Gambare (Japanese for “Do your best”).
Hiroshima
As the anniversary of the American dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima approaches in just a few days, I thought I would post this important documentary online. It gets closer than many I’ve seen in explaining the reasons behind the US decision to drop a uranium atomic bomb on Hiroshima on the 6th of August followed by a plutonium atomic bomb on Nagasaki only 3 days later. It also speaks powerfully of the immense immediate and long term suffering inflicted on the civilians, who were the direct target of the attack, as they made their way to work that morning.
Whatever your beliefs are about the use of atomic weapons or justification for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this film will provide opportunity to think again about those events and the people they affected.
Modernism/Postmodernism
An excellent and concise explanation of the difference between modernism and postmodernism, courtesy of the Open Learning University.
The modernist tradition rejected the mythical and religious views of the world and gave rise to science, democracy, liberation movements and a belief in the supremacy of rationality. Within this tradition there was an implicit belief that there existed a given external reality and that the task of all enquiry was to develop a better and better model (or map) of that external reality.
The postmodernist perspective is that the assumption about a pre-given external reality is not valid, especially in the domain of human culture, values, beliefs and organisations. In general, and particularly in these social domains, it is impossible for anyone to have a model of reality that does not constrain their perception in some way. So while postmodernists do not say that there is not an external reality, they would claim that it is impossible to have an unbiased perspective on what it is.
Some Information Design Links
Here is a short list of Information Design or Information Visualization links. Please use the comment section in the main post to suggest others that you’ve found interesting.
http://www.edwardtufte.com
http://www.fastcodesign.com/tag/infographic
http://www.visualcomplexity.com
http://www.theluxuryofprotest.com
http://www.measureofamerica.org/maps
http://www.infographiti.com
Programming Designers
Below is a great video on the value to designers of having even a little programming knowledge. As Daniel Shiffman points out, one shouldn’t wait until grad school to learn programming.
Towards a Meta-design for Social Service
Many in the business community are turning to design thinking1 as a means of revitalizing existing practices and finding new ways for staying competitive in a time where rapid change is the only constant. continued…
- 1. The term design thinking is one that has been adopted by many within design research to describe not just the thinking but also the processes and methodology behind design practice. It has become a particularly popular conceptual framework for implementation within the business community and often emphasises a variety of approaches that include but are not limited to multidisciplinary collaboration, co-creation, user-centred design, and iterative processes in design practice. [↩]
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