Nitin Nain

Category: Design

  • What’s inside Google Glass?

    What’s inside Google Glass?

    It’s impressive to see how much punch “Google Glass” packs in an elegant and light-weight construction.

    Google Glass breakdown

    (Image: iFixit)

    I’ve long believed that the ability to create new materials is a good indicator of a country’s production and economic ability. Just look at what Britain, US and Germany did with materials during the industrial revolution and Japan and China in the last century. Right now, US scientists are trying to use the power of Big Data to sequence ‘the materials genome’. 1000 years back it was probably the Middle East, China and India who were acing the material sciences and were indeed economically prosperous.

  • Visualizing data using graphs and charts

    There’s been a surge in reporting data using charts on the web. This has brought in the trend of infographics and several tools (JS libraries) that simplify the task of drawing charts.

    Many people get too occupied in visual design and overlook whether the chart actually fits their use case though. Software charting libraries/plugins ought to be used judiciously and not plastered all over a report. The rotating dials and gradients on several corporate website homepages are usually just pointless and irritating. The graphics on Google Trends on the other hand are so useful cause they are crisp at presenting data. 10 years back the world wide web used to be full of hotch-potch gifs, flash and blinking orange/green lights on jet-black backgrounds! You have to be cautious not to do that with your graphics. What’s really bad is is sometimes the infographics end up representing the information incorrectly and can cause some serious damage.

    I think that a simple 2D Bar or Line chart is what most people need when they instead pic some 3D chart graphic.

    Here are my tips on how to go about creating a graph or a chart:

    1. Start with the problem — not by picking up a cool graphics library.
    2. Ask yourself if you have enough data. Use good statistical methods to analyse that data. If you aren’t ready to crunch the numbers, find help but don’t do it wrongly.
    3. Simple 2D representation with optimum contrast and colours that are easy on the eyes might be what you need. The decision on which chart to use comes at the end, pick 3D only if you need it, not because you liked a similar animated visual on some other website.
    4. Think about Accessibility: Use colours that are readable by colour blind people.
    5. Don’t leave it upon the user to figure out what is being said. That’s cognitive overhead which needs to be avoided.

    Here’s an interesting infographic showing the basic chart types

    (Source: http://online-behavior.com/analytics/chart-types)

  • Redesigning Windows desktop theme with Rainmeter

    One thing I miss about the Windows OS is the nifty selection of desktop applications developed by some amazing people over the years.

    Macs were too closed and expensive when I started working with computers. While, Windows and Linux gave me an opportunity to dissect my PC and play around with installing different OSes. An invaluable excercise for software developers IMHO.

    The thing I really dislike about Windows is the web development environment — I have to do all my web development work in Linux. And switching OSes is quite a drag. But Win 7 is pretty wonderful if you intend to use it for other purposes.

    Anyway, here’re two screenshots of my desktop from 2010. I created these using a Desktop customization tool called Rainmeter. Not the most user-friendly configuration, but it was fun exploring how much the desktop theme can be bent to your liking.

  • Turn the volume down

    Jan 18, 2010

    Reposting comments from a discussion about earphones on slashdot —

    Re:Turn down the volume (Score:4, Interesting) by Khyber
    No, your ear drums are not a nerve. They’re a tympanic membrane. Where you lose your hearing is from the loss and the degradation of the three inner ear bones caused by intense sound pressure that the tympanic membrane transmits, either as a result of standing next to loud speakers or having a set of earbuds crammed almost up against your ear drum.
    This will also affect your balance, as the cilia in your cochlea break from this, and so do the tiny sodium/calcium deposits in your cochlea that act as balance weights.

    Turn the volume UP (Score:5, Funny) by KingSkippus
    “Turn down the volume.”
    How does that help? If you have hearing loss, the obvious solution is to turn UP the volume, so you can hear the music better, of course.

    Happy listening people… take care!

    Source: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/10/13/1355220

  • The Art of Engineering

    Ever given a curious thought to what happens when that 220 Volts is plugged into the computer? Here goes:

    A basic circuit converts the 220V AC to a 5V DC and feeds it to the Oscillator on the MotherBoard. A wave of electrical pulses that flips about 109 (1000,000,000) times a second is generated. For the uninitiated, the 0’s and 1’s they show in digital/sci-fi movies (‘The Matrix’ et al.), represent these high (1) and low (0) currents. A simple math with these binary bits lets you play those high-action video games!

    The latest processors house 45nm transistors — about a Hundred million (and growing) would fit in the size of your thumbprint — each flipping meticulously to load this website you read right now. The advances in Chip production technologies blow my mind!

    People are fond of their cool gizmos (iPhones!) and associate them with the “Art” in engineering work. But to me, THIS digital dance is the sexiest aspect of electronics engineering… and I’m a fan of the canvas!

  • Electric Emotions.

    Sep 30, 2009

    You never compromised. Why should anything be less than perfect.
    The things you loved to do, you couldn’t. And still been there, done that.
    Who was it that you actually cared for. Who got sidelined.
    How many have you left behind — when they wanted you — and then the order reversed.
    It’s been an amazing ride. You’re excited, you’re tired. You still want to gather yourself. Tread that one extra mile. Crack the Matrix.
    Do you know me? I don’t know myself. My world’s spinning with electric emotions.

    —

    A very old blog post. Sounds childish now. I left it here for old times sake 🙂