*g* I love FailBlog
October 13th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
It’s all in the family
October 11th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
I’m really loving these old family photographs.
[Eva McCormic, my great-grandmother]
Family Photos
October 9th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
A couple of months ago I was at a family reunion that spanned five generations. It was the second time that we all got together, that last being about 7 years ago when I was a lot younger and didn’t really appreciate the whole idea. Since then, a number of members of the family have been gathering old photographs and even video, and projector slides, with a lot of it accumulating in a flickr group. I can’t imagine how any of this would have been possible without the accessibility of flickr. Hopefully, in a couple of months I am going to use some of this to develop an interactive multimedia family tree. In the mean time although, it’s pretty amazing to look back at the generations that came before you. It makes you realise what a short impact you make on the world. Before, I would have only heard their names in passing. Now, I am full with photos and stories, that seem to put into focus my own beginnings and heritage.
[In the photo above is my grandmother (who I never met) on the right, with her cousins and sister at the Dublin horse show]
Pop a bubble wrap bubble a day calendar
October 8th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
A massive bubble calendar with a bubble to pop for every day of the year. Pretty darn satisfying, but at nearly 50dollars, I think I’d like to take a stab at printing off some paper with the numbers and placing a sheet of bubble wrap on top. Granted, these guys have actually printed onto the bubbles themselves.
Anyone have any ideas on why exactly it is so satisfying to pop bubbles?
[via fffound]
Irish Autism Action and O2 Affinity Plan
October 7th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
Irish Autism Action and O2 Affinity Plan
This year, O2 has come up with a new concept whereby members of Irish Autism Action, their families, their schools and their local communities can help make a difference to individuals affected by autism in their community by becoming a member of the IAA Affinity deal.
The Proposal:
Help us be the voice for children who have none.
Just one text message can make a difference.
You can donate 5% of your O2 bill to Irish Autism Action.
All it takes is one text message. And since O2 makes the
donation it won’t cost you a cent extra.
Your donation will go directly to the support and development
of autism services in your community.
To show your support and help make a difference, freetext
AUTISM to 50308.
[via Kieth]
Adaptive Hypermedia
October 6th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia*
Special issue on Adaptive Hypermedia
Guest editors: Peter Brusilovsky & Paul De Bra
Adaptive hypermedia is a research area at the crossroads of hypermedia and user modeling. Adaptive hypermedia systems offer an alternative to the traditional “one-size-fits-all”hypermedia and Web systems by adapting to the goals, interests, and knowledge of individual users as they are represented in the individual user models. This chapter is focused on adaptive navigation support technologies originally developed in the field of adaptive hypermedia. By adaptively altering the appearance of links or and the content on every browsed page, these technologies support personalized access to information. Over the last 10 years, adaptive navigation support technologies have been used in many adaptive Web systems in a range of application areas from e-learning to e-commerce.
The two earlier special issues of the NRHM journal focused on adaptive hypermedia (1998 and 2004) presented a collection of papers reporting projects focused on classic pre-Web hypermedia as first generation adaptive hypermedia systems on the Web. Since that the field has achieved its maturity. Five international conferences on adaptive hypermedia and adaptive Web systems (AH2000 to AH2008) and a number of workshops have reported a variety of work devoted to all aspects of adaptive hypermedia and the adaptive Web. However, there is a clear lack of archival journal papers that present in detail state-of-the-art works on the “modern-Web” adaptive hypermedia. This special invites research papers on all topics related to the area of Adaptive Hypermedia.
For this special issue by adaptive hypermedia we mean any hypermedia application that automatically adapts its behavior to the broader context in which it is being used. This includes adapting to the user of the application, as well as groups of users, and a range of usage factors such as time, place, platform, and other context conditions.
The special issue focuses on foundations of adaptive hypermedia that are not specific to a particular application domain. (However, such foundations may be illustrated by applications in a specific domain.) Suggested topics include but are not limited to:
* acquisition and updating of individual and group user models
* (distributed) user modeling service architectures
* intelligent agent technology for adaptive systems
* composition of and communication between adaptive systems
* data mining for personalization and adaptation
* adaptation methods and techniques
* architectures for scalable high-performance adaptive systems
* usability and scrutability in user modeling and adaptive systems
* security and privacy in adaptive systems
Submissions that extend mature research publications at major conferences related to (adaptive) hypermedia are encouraged.
Submissions may take the form of research papers or shorter technical notes and should be submitted electronically at the Journal’s Manuscript Central site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tham. Questions and enquiries are welcome.
Important Dates:
Submission deadline: November 17, 2008
Acceptance notification: December 28, 2008
Republican puppets
October 3rd, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
The Theremin has arrived
October 3rd, 2008 / No Comments » / by Victoria
The other half has finally received his birthday present, a B3 deluxe theremin, on which he will be creating effects for his upcoming animation film.
