Ben Kraal's New Now Know How

Moved. Again. Again.

nospam@example.com (Ben Kraal) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 08:36:40 +0200

Is a change is a good as a holiday?

Does it matter?

I’m now blogging at wordpress.com —> making the ordinary.

Please re-direct all your relevant feed readers, bookmarks and homing pigeons.

Shock and Awe

nospam@example.com (Ben Kraal) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 05:12:32 +0200

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you at how much of my work is doing stuff that I would do anyway like sitting around reading interesting books.

That’s all.

Brisbane Public Transport Smart Card Ticketing

nospam@example.com (Ben Kraal) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 02:26:26 +0200

T’other day, Ricky and I were discussing the soon-to-be-implemented smart card ticketing for Brisbane public transport.

In the conditions of use for the current trial it says that you have to “touch on” at the beginning of a journey and “touch off” at the end. To ensure that you touch off, when you touch on a large amount is deducted from your card and when you touch off the system adjusts itself to deduct the correct fare from your card. What happens if you have just enough credit for a trip? How can/does the system deduct a maximal amount from your card? It seems that this sort of system requires that cards are registered to “owners” so that the system can bill you if you default on a fare.

Another strange thing about the system that Translink seem to be building in Brisbane is that lack of control gates, which seesm to be the norm in other smart ticketing situations (in my limited understanding). Hong Kong’s Octopus card (which I have found is the most written about system) certainly has gates and this article on the relative merits of smart cards vs smart tokens also presumes that some form of gate or turnstile will be part of the wider system. Obviously, gates are a primary way to enforce one or both of touching on and off and thus lessen the incidence of fare evasion. It will be interesting to see how Translink implement their gateless system (I assume it will be a gateless system. The current trail is certainly gateless).

In related news under one of my favourite heading of unintended consequences you can buy special smart-card protectors to prevent “skimming attacks”. Obviously as soon as these type of thing were developed a Hello Kitty version was on the market within nanoseconds.

Slightly stale coffee

nospam@example.com (Ben Kraal) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 04:14:18 +0200

They say that the scent of smell is the most base of all the senses and hence sense most connected with the deeper structures of the brain. Apparently this is also the reason why smells, more so than other sense-input, will trigger memories.

Right now, sitting in my under-designed too-stark office I was transported back to my Oma and Opa’s house through the small of paprika and slightly burnt, or perhaps stale, coffee.

Everything bad is good for you

nospam@example.com (Ben Kraal) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 04:11:58 +0200

I picked up Steven Johnson’s Everthing bad is good for you on Thursday from the library and finished it over the weekend.

It certainly presented an interesting argument that I now see running as a thread through several blogs that I’ve been reading for a while now. And it also led me back to Deluze’s work which I’ve been vacilating between engaging with, because it’s so interesting, and putting aside, because it’s so damn hard and I have work to do.

The basic argument of Everthing bad is good for you is that pop culture has gotten more complex as a result of several factors, not the least of which is the tendency for television shows to be replayed more than once. Where earlier TV was almost a one-shot medium, TV now rewards repeated viewing. Johnson’s examples of modern TV are dramas like The Sopranos and The West Wing and comedies like Seinfeld and The Simpsons. He’s even upbeat on “reality” TV, though he prefers complex relationship style shows like The Apprentice over schlock and gore like Fear Factor (and I’d include Jackass in that category). These style of TV are more complex than in the past because they make use of byzantine plots and many more characters than in previous eras. The argument extends to computer games as well as film and the internet.

In short: watching Big Brother is exercising parts of your brain that watching “quality” television probably isn’t.

And in yet more connected coindicence, this interview with Steven Johnson and this article about the the making of Grand Theft Auto (a game that Johnson thinks is good for you) appeared on my radar this morning.

Space and sociality

nospam@example.com (Ben Kraal) — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 02:09:08 +0200

Recently I’ve been reading a lot about space. Not the Final Frontier kind but the just-outside-the-door kind. Urban space.

It may have started with Stewart Brand‘s How Buildings Learn, which is just wonderful. Brand shows how buildings aren’t usually designed with a view to their use but instead are often designed to look good in architecture magazines. He argues for space that can be adapted by it’s inhabitants, space that can be changed to reflect the changing needs of it’s users. This is usabilty writ large and with a time-scale of years and decades not hours.

I think I then read William H Whyte‘s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces which is about parks and plazas in New york city and also about people and what they do in public and how they do it and how to watch them. Whyte shows that people do the darndest things like having conversations in the middle of busy throughfares. The thing is that people do this, not because they’re stupid or inconsiderate, but because they like being part of the bustle of the people around them. Like the best research, the things presented in Social Life are so amazingly obvious that you are shocked when you see how often they’re done wrong. Whyte’s main contribution is the wonderfully, head-slappingly, obvious insight that the best way to make a space inviting to people is to give them somewhere to sit. If that place to sit is out of the cold breeze and in the sun with a view of the passing crowd, so much the better. For example, Canberra’s dismal mall in Civic is so cold and lifeless on most days because it’s just a wind tunnel, especially towards the Garema place end.

From there I read Edward T Hall‘s The Hidden Dimension. It’s an exploration and explanation of how different cultures percieve space, particularly personal space. Hall is credited with coining the term proxemics. There’s a lot to ponder in The Hidden Dimension, particularly with regard to how people experience and manage cross-cultural interactions.

And I’ve just finished Paco Underhill’s two books on shopping, Why We Buy and The Call of the Mall which are about retail geography. Why We Buy is better.

And now, having read Adam Greenfield’s latest entry, I’m hanging out to find out more on the “New Ludic Urbanism”.