Life & Research Notes

The past couple weeks I’ve had a few nice paper prototyping sessions. It’s fun to create little modular UI components and then rearrange them, almost like a game.

I’m drawing inspiration from a couple nice references people have shown me. Jess pointed me to this Vimeo design (which I would include here, except it’s all rights reserved). It’s a really nice, clean style, and I know I like Vimeo’s feel, so I’ve been looking through this whole series.

And then I really like the mock interaction approach in this one (via Deeplinking):

We’re now making some screencasts of clickthroughs on top of the paper. Hopefully we’ll get a few up online soon. They’re a lot rougher/messier than these, but watching the mouse click and interact with the paper UI is really satisfying. It’s a fast process to create this stuff, and users pretty much get it right away, so it seems like a nice way to get feedback quickly.

While I’d like to be reporting lofty revelations about transformational design and social data analysis, those topics seem like a lot to tackle at this point, especially since I’m sitting on the floor and low on batteries. So I’ll just summarize my situation: Florence is beautiful, the workshop yesterday was excellent, and dinner at Buca Mario last night was delicious (few things can beat a fantastically giant 30 euro aged T-bone steak, except perhaps those succulent shavings of lard). Subsequent guinnesses at the nearby Irish bar (staffed by legitimate Irish expat bartenders) didn’t hurt either.

Not sure of my exact plan yet, but I have four days here at CHI, and pretty much every day has at least a few presentations I want to see. I’ve already run into a couple crews of people I know from Stanford, MIT, and the visualization community. It’s great to see familiar faces here, and to be meeting and interacting with all these creative, curious people.

After CHI I’ll take a week to cruise around Italy, most likely hitting Rome and Venice. For a number of reasons, when traveling alone I tend to want to stick to cities. Looking forward to sitting on park benches in piazzas, drinking beer, eating paninis, feeding the pigeons, and scoping out the locals and tourists as they wander past.

My favorite easy standby comfort food recipe is turkey chili. It’s really hearty and filling, but super healthy too, low fat and low carb, etc. It also keeps and reheats well for a few days after you make it, so it’s great for leftovers. It’s simple to make. A few easy ingredients:

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 1 large can stewed tomatoes
• 1 can kidney beans
• 1 onion, chopped up
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped or pressed
• 3 tbsp chili powder
• 1-2 tbsp ground coriander/cilantro
• 1-2 tbsp cumin
• 2-3 tbsp oregano
• a beer or three (for you; preferably an ale)
• salt and pepper to taste
• red chili flakes (optional)
• grated cheddar cheese and/or sour cream (optional)

In a pot that will fit everything, coat the bottom with a thin layer of olive oil, then saute the onions on high heat, stirring until they’re somewhat tender, maybe even a little browned. Add the garlic, maybe some salt and pepper too, and stir it in and continue sauteing until the whole mixture is fragrant. I like a wooden spoon for all this, but whatever you’ve got around. Sometimes I add in some beer during this step, though I have no real reason to think it matters. I just like pouring in a little of the beer I’m drinking. For the dead turkeys.

Add in the ground turkey meat, chopping and mixing up with the spoon and stirring in with the onion/garlic goodness. Stir regularly until white and kinda cooked, but still with bits of pink so that it’s not quite something you’d feel comfortable eating. Add in the cans of kidney beans and tomatoes. Stir it all up into a big soupiness.

Now add in the chili powder. Then the herbs. Stir around, letting it come back to a low boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for a while until you’re confident all the salmonella nasties are dead. Taste it. Something is missing! Add a little bit of whatever it needs most. It probably needs some salt and pepper. Maybe a pinch or two of chili flakes. It definitely needs more chili powder, and probably a smidge of cumin. Put in a little at a time, but don’t be scared. Trust your taste and smell. You’ll figure it out, and if I told you exactly what to do, you wouldn’t have quite the sense of accomplishment afterward.

When it tastes good, leave it simmering without too much stirring. Some of the liquid will boil off, and if you did it all right a nice thin filmy coating will form at the top. That’s the special chili way of sealing in the yumminess.

At some point it will all be a nice even, rich deep red-brown color, and you and your companions will be achingly hungry. This is when you should eat. I like some grated cheese on top. Crackers can be nice too, especially if you’re eating it for lunch. Some people like sour cream, especially if it’s spicy. If you don’t manage to eat all of it, let it cool a bit then store it in the fridge. It heats up really well in the microwave or on the stovetop.

Eat it with a nice beer, maybe watch some TV or a movie, read the paper, look at Facebook, whatever. It doesn’t actually matter what you do, because you’re so stoked on how awesome your freakin’ chili turned out. Nice work.