It was 1981 and Ernő Rubik had a lot to answer for. The 3x3x3 cube was already driving the world crazy. By now it was commonplace for competitions to be held to see who could solve the puzzle in the fastest time. Everyone knew that every scrambled cube could be solved, since it became scrambled by starting with a solved cube and every twist can be reversed. What was more interesting was that solving a cube didn’t require one to reverse the scramble, but instead there appeared to be a systematic approach to the solution.

While Groups, Matrix Permutations, Transforms and other quirky stuff of Number Theory were largely unknown to me at the time, I did reason that a [click title to read more…]

The rapid pace of device capabilities and HCI modalities has resulted in an ever-confusing smorgasbord of UI options. With many years to reflect on this evolutionary trend, I have the pleasure of being able to offer a glimpse of the next generation UI, one that finally deals with the confusion we have amassed over the decades. You may be surprised with the elegance and simplicity of this revolutionary advance.

De-WIMP

We start by addressing the confusion created by pointer context, which applies to the “traditional” mouse and touch-based input. In this input model the user is presented with a vast range of possible options (clickable regions) with varying impact on the advancement towards particular goals. For example, clicking on a [click title to read more…]

An observation on the changing face of mathematics education in Ireland.

In my lecturing days a few years ago (OK, “few” might be an understatement) we used to complain about having to provide “remedial maths” to each fresh intake of students. It seemed to many of us, charged with the task of producing the next batch of computing experts, that for many of the raw cadets the light of mathematics just had not shone on them. Sure, there were many who had passed their second level tests quite successfully, but a lot of these seemed to have been denied enlightenment. We blamed rote learning, the pressure of the points race, strategic teaching practices (teaching designed to maximize the points but [click title to read more…]

FireFox is now at version 10. Chrome uses a whole string of digits to convey its version details. Maybe someday we will stop tagging numbers onto the end of everything in an attempt to make them look better than the competitors’ numbers.

Then again, maybe the problem is us. Are we too influenced by numbers?

You only really understand how important the mouse pointer is when you don’t have one. I am trying to enter this short passage with the help of a mouseless tablet. Editor icons and other controls can be a little difficult to decipher and so I subconciously use the tooltip as a confirmation that I’ve picket the right button. Right now it is a little annoying that the screen no longer has this useful dynamic feedback. And as I am typing on a touchscreen, I don’t have that physical feedback of the travelling keys. I could set this tablet to buzz each time I press a virtual key but it just does not feel right.

Maybe this tablet editing takes a [click title to read more…]