metaphorical

You can also argue that if the theme is about something as expansive as the "dark forest" (no plot spoiler!), flat characters and telling-not-showing are not bad choices for writing style. The humankind can be as insignificant or dull for this context.

Book 3 is where it all comes together. Pretty insane!

Everything looks perfect. Every face looks plastic.

I think I prefer the imperfect photos. But that's just me.

> "dog people are more outgoing, measured in terms of Facebook friends."

Or, perhaps, cat people just don't like adding friends on Facebook as much as dog people!

Funny how 1 data point can be extrapolated to make such a bold claim (best cities for X). Hong Kong is a terrible place for book lovers.

- I think almost all the bookstores are not profitable, many of them closing down (especially the independent "second-floor" ones", ie not street-level stores). The book choices in mainstream bookstores are rubbish. (PageOne and Eslite slightly better.)

- 99% of the HK publishing houses are controlled by Chinese government by proxy. This imposes editorial censorship and determines which books will get promoted in the stores.

- If you publish or sell books that offend the CPC, you may be arrested in China with some false charges

- Generally speaking, most people in HK are not book lovers. If you visit Eslite (a Taiwanese chain), you'll see a large area of their store is devoted to lifestyle goods, not books.

Go to Taipei, go to Charing Cross in London, but don't go to HK for books.

Not sure how exposed you were to clever soft propaganda in those 3 weeks in China :) As a Chinese, I can tell you I don't feel any social optimism at all.

1) Much political infighting at the top

2) The richer people are moving family to Canada / US / Australia

3) Credit bubble, bad debt in banks

4) Migrant workers and women from villages are constantly getting exploited without any protection

5) Pollution

6) Food is not safe to eat. People buying baby formula from overseas

7) I can go on and on...

Technological "innovations" don't solve problems in a society where there's no trust and no fairness. Please tell where those social optimism come from?

The idea "form follows function" (or mission or vision) is as old as modernism itself. Its linear approach, from "vision" down to "visual", neglects an important aspect of design process that is dynamic in essence. Often interaction design redefines a product's core function, or a visual design so beautiful that it becomes an integral part of a product's vision. I'm not convinced that product/design process has to be like a waterfall or a tree or a loop. It can be more like a web too.

These days I've reviewed so many portfolios with post-it notes and hand-drawn flow diagrams. Don't they look all the same like dribbble too? Don't they all tell the same story, over and over?

If its economy won't hit a hard-landing and the current reform is successful, then yes I think China will have a booming middle class by 2020.

But does the emperor have clothes on? No one can really say for sure.

You described the problem very well. When I thought of an idea, it's indeed visual/verbal with memories thrown in. Then when I sit down to code, I have to worry about putting curly braces in the correct places before anything else.

Though I'm not sure if a "visual" IDE will solve this. To me, it's more about a language that can express thoughts with clarity and directness, and also about a kind of literacy in code as poets would have with words and meters.

Sometimes I kept thinking about those stone axes and clay tablets and scribbles on bones, and how, in a couple thousand years, they evolved into lolcats. Given this explosion of technology, what sort of new expressions in code will we see in 10-20 years? It's fascinating to think about.

This is a side project I've been working on for a couple years (when not playing video games :P). I hope you'll give it a try, and I would appreciate your feedbacks. Thanks!

Any demo link?

Carl Sagan once said: "If you want an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe".

As I understand it from this article, it is saying: "Once you invent the universe, then an apple pie will exist... given enough time." ?

Love the lighting effects!

Btw2: there's a "Download SVG" link on lower right. The SVG file can be imported to Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, etc.

Good point. I want to do this as well, but the performance is not good enough yet. To be improved!

Yep! I didn't use the technical names because it sounds technical ;-)

Btw, this is the original "Kubist" I made with Processing a couple years ago. It uses opencv instead of JSFeat for feature point detection, and Mesh library instead of d3.

http://www.metaphorical.net/note/on/kubist (really old website, sorry it's kind of unusable :P)

Cool, I didn't know about Bridson's algorithm. Thanks for the pointers!

Yep, both delaunay ("Triangle") and voronoi ("Cell") uses "best candidate algorithm" to distribute the points by default. It's similiar to poisson disc.

The "Analyze image" uses JSFeat to apply a computer vision algorithm (feature point detection) to add some "interesting" points based on the image.

Yes. I use d3.geom.delaunay or d3.geom.voronoi to create the delaunay or voronoi tessellation.

http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4341156

Then for each polygon, I take its points (center point or vertices or an arbitrary point) and find the corresponding pixel on the image. Then I extract the rgb color, and use that to fill the polygon (as solid color or gradient).

Three Body by Cixin Liu. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765377063

Alien, cult, virtual reality propaganda in a communist regime. A fascinating and entertaining book!

"There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man’s self. The first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not, that he is. And the third, simulation, in the affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be, that he is not."

-- Francis Bacon

I love the visual direction, and I think it will work very well for a diverse set of Google products. The style guide is beautifully done and well articulated.

In terms of interaction design, however, it doesn't break any new ground, apart from better transitions (but at times, too much).

> So the team set about creating this metaphorical material, which is a little bit like magical paper.

A bit of nitpicking: "a bit like magical paper" can hardly be called a Metaphor. It's just a loose analogy. In fact, I have to force my imagination to see the paper-ness in the UI, otherwise it just feels like flat UIs with realistic shadows.

It looks nice. However, my biggest complain is that it's playing too safe. So that it feels more like a style guide than a vision.

E.g. When the style guide talks about mass and force in animation, I was expecting something much more than some recommendations on tweening. In many cases, it feels like a shallow reference to the physical / material, not quite the meaningful "metaphor" that it aspires to be.

Polymer, on the other hand, is pretty awesome.

Bluetooth but no pressure sensitivity? Pressure sensitive stylus is the closest thing that emulates drawing on "paper".

It's a beautiful stylus, but not a very practical one.

I don't disagree, but I dislike the reasoning.

If you truly believe in art (or engineering or plumbing), you do it for yourself, make it happen regardless of whatever "big societal shifts" that may happen in the next 30 years.

Don't over-calculate the future.

Why is it a strawman? The post is about a certain lifestyle, the comment argues about a different lifestyle. It is a debate about lifestyles.

Is it not true that if you spend too much time obsessed about buying things, you'll have less time to care about people?

I fail to see why mapgrep's position is a strawman. Is it not valid to question the opportunity cost of a lifestyle, in which one is obsessed more about objects than about lives? His tone may be slightly mean, but that doesn't invalidate his argument.

Dustin's article is more about lifestyle (his lifestyle), not so much about design.

If it's about design, then I would think his analysis of flatware is fairly shallow.

Or is it about how elite designer's lifestyle should be? If so, then I think you're right to say it alienates people.

Is it a bit weird to compare average weekly wage to median square foot price?

Shouldn't it be median household income?

http://butdoesitfloat.com for visual and conceptual thinking.

Great concept. But some icons (e.g. twitter) render poorly at 16px.