I haven’t actually tried this yet, but I’ve always been intrigued by locks and their vulnerabilities.  This diagram purports that any combination lock can be cracked relatively quickly with an applied process.  Hmmm.

I believe that this is from Intel’s lobby.  Really puts Moore’s Law and the explosive expansion of technology in perspective.

Neat blurb about a startup art project documenting ‘heroin brands’ – the stamps found on bags of heroin identifying their maker or seller.  This has always been a little intriguing to me.  You can support their project with a small donation here.

Wow.  The New Orleans Saints, after 43 years of disappointment, won the Super Bowl last night.  Pretty crazy.  Overshadows the historic municipal elections over the weekend, and Mardi Gras is firing up to boot.  Pass the Tylenol.

And to underscore the point, there’s this:

Like many, I’ve had a long, strange relationship with Apple.  Since the 80s I’ve owned Apple II’s, Macintoshes, Performas, Quadras, G4s, G5s, Powerbooks, MacBooks, iBooks, iPods, iPhones, etc etc etc.  My disposition toward the company teeters between unabashed fanboy-ism to outright fury.

Because we live in an age of rapid progress, I can’t find fault with Apple for replacing their products more frequently than I can seem to purchase them – these days, that’s the way of the world to some degree.  Still, my ‘Apple graveyard’ could fill a garage.  Premium-priced devices that never seem to serve me for more than two years before emerging hardware or software renders them obsolete.

So here comes the latest ‘insanely great’ earth-shattering product – the unfortunately-named iPad.  My initial reaction is somewhat skeptical, though I love to see new form factors – I can’t wait to play with the interface.  That said, from what I understand, it’s a iPhone on roids.  No multitasking, no Flash, and no printing are all pretty big downers from my perspective, but I may end up caving and picking one up a bit further down the road.  For now, I’ve got my iPhone for the road and my MacBook Pro for everything else, and I don’t feel like there’s a void in my life…

I guess I’m just not big on “Magic” when it comes with a price tag.

I was a huge fan of Marvel Comics growing up, and love Scott McCloud’s books on comic art’s ability to communicate across languages via symbology, etc.  Found an article recently by Lukas Mathis of ignorethecode.net that applies cartoon principles to User Interface (UI) design.  Not quite ‘less is more’, but rather ‘just enough is correct’ – check it out, it’s an interesting read.

People are confused by symbols if they have too many or too few details. They will recognize UI elements which are somewhere in the middle.

The goal is not to make your user interface as realistic as possible. The goal is to add those details which help users identify what an element is, and how to interact with it, and to add no more than those details. UI elements are abstractions which convey concepts and ideas; they should retain only those details that are relevant to their purpose. UI elements are almost never representations of real things. Adding too much realism can cause confusion.

What’s changed?  A lot. Click image to get to glorious ‘big’ view.

Delicious infographic from the economic crisis blog.  Apparently something called Consumer Sentiment is down to its lowest levels since 1980.  Coincidentally, so is my Frequency of Visits to Crappy Stores at Crowded Malls index.

This is pretty rad – a RFID wireless ‘puck’ that can be used as a remote to interact w. sensors to control whatever parameters you’ve got set up – in this case, mood lighting…