Katelyn M. Thompson's Blog

I bought a pair of fingerless gloves for when I am out caching and using my phone. Unfortunately my hands still get really cold. I haven’t really been looking for anything, but I came across these cool gloves from Muji which use a conductive material woven in the index and thumb fingers.

For those of you who are handy with a needle, there’s always the DIY option. All you need is some conductive thread, a needle, and scissors.

via SwissMiss

A really cool set of letters from Marc Böttler.

He uses perspective and depth to turn these rectangular wooden blocks into letters. Check out the K a little closer to see what I mean. (The left half of the letter goes from the ground up while the right side sits entirely on the ground).

via SwissMiss

This poster by Ork Posters of the Boston neighborhoods is pretty cool! I always get confused as to what is actually a part of Boston and what isn’t. This is helpful and interesting to look at all at the same time!

via beaktweets

I never really played Chess. I have a hard time strategizing, so it’s not really the game for me. I also had a hard time remember which pieces were which and what they could do. That’s why I really like checkers! Every piece moves diagonally forward 1 square (or jump), but if you have another piece on top of the other, it can move backwards.

That’s why I had a glimmer of hope for my chess playing when I saw Alessia Mazzarella’s chess set. She uses the shape of the pieces to illustrate the moves that it can make.

Now if only this chess set could help me to solve this Geocaching Puzzle: Check & Mate.

via Core77

I’m sorry I’m confused.

I was a $9.99 streaming and 1-DVD member of Netflix for about a year. I enjoyed the DVDs, but it usually takes me a few weeks to watch them, so they sit there unwatched for a while, but I figured for $2 more, why not. In July, Netflix announced that they would be changing their pricing structure so that my plan would now cost me $15.98. Well, bah humbug!

Just a few weeks ago (on Sept 1) the new pricing went into effect. I wasn’t sure if I was going to drop the DVD, I figured I would try it out and see if I can increase my DVD consumption (while simultaneously vowing to watch less TV in general).

Last week, Netflix announced that it was cutting the customer forecast as they were losing a ton of customers over the price hike (DUH!).

Well, this morning I awoke to find that Netflix has apologized and decided to make up for their mistakes by splitting the DVD service and streaming service onto two different websites. UH, WHAT? Is it just me? This doesn’t make sense to me. I like to be able to search all movies and see if one is streaming or DVD and to move things between queues if it becomes streaming. Why split them into two websites? What is the business plan behind it?

According to the Netflix CEO: “So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.”

Now that’s all fine and dandy, you probably should have two different teams working on things to make each one the best it can be, but does that mean you have to push that split onto consumers? Just because your internal team is structured that way doesn’t mean that’s how the customers want to interact with your product.

After checking out the comments on the announcement, I can see that I am not the only one who feels this way! You’re splitting up a single experience (I want to watch a movie, preferably by streaming, but if it’s not available yet, send me the DVD).

This has pushed me over the edge, and I will be canceling my DVD subscription (just as soon as I watch Schindler’s List).

UPDATE 9:45AM: I just came across this blog post by Joshua Porter about how Netflix in Danger of Ruining their User Experience (via @ryaninteractive).

Andrew Bush’s book Drive features portraits of people driving on the freeway. The book is a little pricey for me, but it seems like a really cool project.

via SwissMiss

Do you ever feel the need to “Like” things, but they aren’t on Facebook. Now, you can! Kid Forever is offering a “Like” and “Disklike” stamp.

via Core77

10 years ago I was a sophomore in high school. I don’t have a good idea of what I was doing or exactly how I was told, but I remember sitting in D block Spanish and having someone come on over the speakers and make an announcement about what was happening. We didn’t have TVs in any of the classrooms, but there was a TV in the band/chorus room and I remember throughout the day that my friends who were in band telling us about what they had seen on the TVs. I came home and was glued to the TV watching the news coverage. I couldn’t really comprehend the things that were going on. I had never been to the World Trade Centers, I didn’t know anyone working or living in NYC, but I still knew that this was a big deal.

Last year I had the opportunity to go to the Pentagon Memorial and it was different from any other Memorial I visited in D.C. – I had witnessed the events. I was not alive during the Vietnam War or the Korean War. But on 9/11/01 my life changed, as it did everyone else’s. It was moving to be faced with the reality of the events. I went to the World Trade Center site which to me looked like a large construction site. Having no comparison of what the area had been like before, it was difficult to fathom the difference and the impact off the attacks on the lives of those in NYC on that day. But seeing the Memorial, seeing the parts of the building that was damaged and the number of people who had died at the Pentagon that day to me was very meaningful.

Today I will remember how lucky I am and will think of those directly impacted by the events on 9/11. I hope that I have a chance to return to the World Trade Center site to visit the Memorial and better understand the impact and see how we are rebuilding.

To those of you reading this, the blog is probably about to take on a slightly more web-design focus over the next few months while I’m taking a class in web design. I’ll be on the lookout for cool things that can be done with code, but will try not to focus on the code and just present cool things that can be done.

With that out of the way, I present to you a new way to design tabs on the Interwebs, the File Folder Tabs.

CSS Tricks provides a step-by-step explanation of how this works and then provides the code for you to implement it. Also, check out the demo.

I will be starting my 2nd course in the Graphic Design Certificate program at SMFA next week; the class is Web Design. I’m really looking forward to the class!

I came across an article which talks about a new project at Adobe, code-named Muse. It is essentially Illustrator but for websites. It allows you to manipulate objects, draw boxes, etc. At first, I imagined something similar to the “Design” view in Dreamweaver. But, it appears that the program has the ability to provide animation and interactivity, which is becoming somewhat expected in the world of the web these days.

I think I’ll be downloading the Beta tonight and trying it out.

via @brainpicker