Tessa Blakeley Silver | aka: Tessaract » Interests | Tessa Blakeley Silver | aka: Tessaract

Upcoming Project/Ideas:

tessaract — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 17:02:57 +0000

A running list…

CargoJS: Time for some updates and documentaton to this powerful little “Git Gist” jQuery plugin of mine (I’ll also be bringing Cargo’s friends: Enquesto and Eligio out into the light)
The Disorganized Disaster’s Guide to GTD and Time Management: An eBook? An online course? I’m not sure yet. But if GTD and various Time Managment/Productivity systems seem to fail you – you’ll find out why (it’s you) and how to get back on track (in spite of yourself, and that convoluted “productivity system” you’ve bought into.).

Books by… well, me:

tessaract — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 14:01:33 +0000

Currently Available:

All current titles published by Packt Publishing

WordPress Theme Development – Beginner’s Guide
WordPress 3.0 jQuery
Enhance your WordPress website with the captivating effects of jQuery.
WordPress Theme Design (2nd Edition: WordPress 2.8 Theme Design)
Joomla 1.5 Template Design Covers the new jdoc tags, template overrides and custom module chrome!
Joomla Template Design
A great title for sites that still opt for the Joomla 1.0 legacy version.

Jolly Alpha Five Niner

tessaract — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:45:14 +0000

As you can see, Zombies are pretty darn slow. (whew!)

Website: Nice use of Twitter’s Bootstrap and Google Maps!

I’m enjoying the app (Android – a lota space off my lil’ LG but worth it) and no longer quite so allergic to “gamification” – or running.

Your mouse is already dead.

tessaract — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:42:39 +0000

My ~~partner~~ calls them “pricey toys”. I call them the future. Check out my latest FTF post.

I know, right? Toys! You get one measely little iPad… sure, there was that other tablet… oh hey, remember that Annotate pen thingie I had!? Ahem, well they’re still the future.

Note: This post was originally posted onto Capella’s public blog: FreeThinkingFriday.com – The blog has been pulled from the public and given internal-access-only at meteor.capella-id.com

And you wont even need those dorky, three-finger gloves they used in Minority Report!

Gestures

Leap Motion brings affordable multi/3d gesturing to the rest of us (who don’t want to shell out for an MS Kinect – and then hack it).

See the full gallery on Posterous

Check out the vid on the homepage. Total hand (pencil, chopsticks – whatever) control. And for $70 bucks? Yep, I preordered mine.

Thought Control

On a related note: I’m very close to picking up an Emotiv EPOC headset.*
(*purchase is pending approval of my financial-advisor aka: spouse)

Forget gesturing with your hands (pencils, chopsticks – whatever), this device lets you use your thoughts and emotions to control your computer (well, the specific data those thoughts and emotions send to the 14 channel research-lab-quality EEG sensor array). This isn’t as out-of-the-box as the Leap Motion is – the headset and software require you “train” it to control your OS and other software – but the potential of uses for the physically disabled alone are stupendous.

There’s already FDA approved software controlled by this headset for motorized wheelchairs and an assistive typing app that allows people previously limited to Sip-and-Puff devices or using incredibly expensive eye-tracking word/array-lookup hardware and software to type as fast or faster than a touch-typist on a standard keyboard.

And yes, there’s tons of insanely cool stuff people are doing with this for the rest of us – do check out the vids on the home page of the site and Tan Le’s TED talk.

What this means for our media

Up until now, gestural interface design has been reserved for mobile devices and being able to keyboard through a piece has deemed it 508 compliant – but with the release of these two comercially viable and totally affordable devices – I can easily imagine we’ll soon be making sure our media is fully “gesturable” as well as 508-TC compliant (Thought Capacitive? Who knows what they’ll call it) .

I’m excited for the Leap Motion to (hopefully) ship in February and you can always make a donation to “Tessa’s EPOC Headset and Developer SDK Fund”* at my desk. ; )

*2014 update: I got an EPOC headset and an actual financial-advisor. Will post my thoughts on how these two devices compare and work together.

Finally, Going Paperless… with Paper

tessaract — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:31:19 +0000

It’s the bleeding edge future of tech: writing stuff out by hand. Find out about a neat app and why your super-fast computer actually slows you way down.

Yes. I got an iPad.

Note: This post was originally posted onto Capella’s public blog: FreeThinkingFriday.com – The blog has been pulled from the public and given internal-access-only at: http://meteor.capella-id.com

I don’t own an iPad (this hasn’t stopped me from pre-ordering a Touch Pen Polymer from LunaTik). But 53’s new(ish) app, Paper, may be the thing that pushes me to pick one up (that and the fact that I’ll already have a handy stylus/pen-thingie).

While Paper’s pricing has a few users disgruntled, the app itself gives me hope that my dream of a genuine paperless sketchbook is finally here (or at least very close at hand).

I do feel strongly that all designing/planning/conceptualizing should happen on (real) paper FIRST – before ever looking at a screen. No, it’s not a “hard-core/old school” designer thing – I’ve just come to believe that attempting to capture and organize any deep, creative or problem-solving work via any software’s interface – no matter the device – slows down and can even kill the creative/conceptualizing/problem-solving process.

It’s a lengthy explanation, but I’ll attempt to nutshell it:

A GUI (aka: Graphic(al) User Interface) activates your brain’s limbic system, and that’s not necessarily a good thing – depending on what type of thinking you need to do. While we can dual process plenty between our brain’s left and right hemispheres, apparently we can’t dual process very well between the limbic system and our super-cool neocortical systems (this is according to current Neuro/Sci types like Jeff Hawkins and John Medina).

You probably know that the neocortex (aka: “grey matter”) of our brain is essential for our rich “when”, “why” and “complex how/how much” thinking. Not to mention our linguistic capabilities, imagined visualization abilities and executive functions which fuel and direct all that awesome thinking.

Our limbic system sits just under those 6 neocortex layers and primarily handles “what” and “where” processing along with rudimentary “how/how much” processing. This is uber-handy for navigating our environment and core survival, hence it’s (rightly) easily visually stimulated.

As a result, our limbic system totally ❤s software GUIs.

This is your brain on GUIs:

“What do I need to capture or represent this?”, – navigate through options – “Where is it again in this app?”, – navigate through more options – “How do I…” “Oh! oooh! I see it! I see it!” – click (or touch) – “Easy!” “Now… but, what was I thinking?!! hmmm… ”.

Any questions?

According to Dan Roam (referencing Jeff Hawkins’ work), drawing and writing directly with pen and paper* keeps you in this “higher”, neocortical, creative thinking mode for longer durations than if you were working through a software’s GUI, essentially, “looping” your thought processes from neocortical to limbic and back.

Capturing and processing deeply creative work via a robust application interface is essentially “mental multi-tasking”. It forces you to gear shift every time you have to switch between the two types of thinking, effectively interrupting your creative/problem-solving workflow. Yes; multi-tasking, being interrupted, shifting gears and losing context – all the things the productivity experts tell us to avoid!

Hence, I’ve come to the conclusion that if you want to be as productive as possible, do the “real” work by hand with pen and paper first. Your desktop, laptop and various mobile devices are really just tools to be used for: communication, media consumption and once you have it all planned out, production. They do not aid your true genius and creativity in any way (no matter what the app’s marketing tells you).

That said, Paper looks promising: Practically no GUI at all and when you do reference the interface to switch tools, it appears to work more “naturally” – similar to simply picking up a different pen and “flipping” over a fresh sheet. As for other uses, looks like exporting images to just about anything is a breeze so the sky’s the limit. I hope future upgrades bring the ability to swap/share journals with other Paper users (my Evernote account will get jealous). Ah, and exporting a journal into an iBook would be pretty great as well.

iPad users: If you’ve got Paper, let me know if it’s worth picking up my first iPad!
Update: Never-mind. Got it. Love it. However, it still has its drawbacks. I can’t say I’m truly “paperless” yet, but that’s another post.

*Non-doodler’s FYI: According to Jeff Hawkins, being able to touch-type without looking at the screen or keyboard keeps you in this “higher” thinking mode as well (a coincidence that all the hottest “productivity writing apps” out there simply give you a screen with your text and no interface options?) – but do check out Dan’s work; he makes the case that drawing visual images to design, capture, plan and problem solve has clear advantages over words.