The Ondes Martenot and Expressive Power in Instrument Design

Since Radiohead started using it I've known the Ondes Martenot was a very cool instrument, that it's rare, and that it was used by the composer Olivier Messaien. But I never realized how it worked, and just how ridiculously cool...

Posted on April 10, 2009 2:06 PM

Most ridiculous feature of the week

NIKON COOLPIX S610 ($197). Small, light and inexpensive, nice brushed-metal case. 4x zoom. Active Child mode in this camera supposedly tracks your children even if they move briefly out of the frame. From the Times' camera roundup....

Posted on December 11, 2008 9:58 AM

Protecting us from ourselves

For a while I wondered why NYTimes.com shows a list of the "most e-mailed" articles as its measure of Most Popular, rather than simply most viewed. It does seem to work pretty well, but surely leaves out the voices of...

Posted on April 5, 2008 1:01 PM

A New Year, A New Look

So I've gone and redesigned the entire site. The effort to do so started about a year ago, with off-and-on efforts since then. The motivation was largely aesthetic and to some degree functional. The new site also reflects a lot...

Posted on January 6, 2008 10:53 PM

Slideshows are the bane of my existence

There's an odd design quirk on the New York Times web site that's been bugging me for a while now. When you open a slide show on the site (this gift guide, for example) you immediately see a count of...

Posted on December 6, 2007 2:46 PM

Taxicab of horrors

I'm glad to see the discussion on the Times's City Room blog about the new official TLC Taxi logo and paint job. The change took me by surprise and no one seemed to be saying much about it for...

Posted on October 18, 2007 4:22 PM

Bonus Gripe: Washington Mutual ATMs

Washington Mutual ATMs (and I'm sure those of other banks are similar), when sitting unused, have a sort of screen saver mode with a slideshow of advertisements for the bank. When you start using it, it shifts to showing screens...

Posted on August 28, 2007 4:12 PM

Pidg-malion

As I passed by the bird store "33rd and Bird" after work yesterday, the window displays, which until recently had been occupied by small parakeet-type birds and a toucan, were filled with these pigeons. They were as motionless as...

Posted on February 28, 2007 7:06 PM

How many clicks does it take...

As many engineers do, I sometimes help out computer novices of varying degree with questions or problems. The last couple of times I did this I noticed a point of confusion that is rarely discussed. I saw the people I...

Posted on February 9, 2007 4:33 PM

Recipe for Confusion

Lately Maya and I have been preparing dinner from recipes 3-5 times a week, mostly recipes we have never used before. As a result, I've come to the conclusion that there might be some room for improvement in the presentation...

Posted on December 1, 2006 1:17 PM

West Coast Thoughts

I'm in California on a business trip, and unusually I've had a weekend-long lull with no car and little to do but appreciate the surroundings. The work is in Menlo Park, but I'm staying two towns to the north, in...

Posted on September 25, 2006 12:35 AM

Baumbach on the rise

A while ago I saw a movie on IFC a couple times called "Kicking and Screaming" (not the Will Ferrell one from last year). It was directed by Noah Baumbach, and was really really good. I was dismayed to find...

Posted on May 31, 2006 11:47 PM