Flo Ledermann

Empty Inbox!

2008-07-29T22:50:00.003+02:00

Usually I sort incoming mails into folders immediately, besides the ones that require some kind of action or a reply, which I leave in my inbox (I sometimes even pull automatically sorted emails back into the inbox if I want to remind myself to act upon them). This means there are always some messages in my inbox, usually between 10 and 30, depending on my workload and other factors. Some of these emails can get very old in there, years in some cases where I just don't find the right mindset for a reply.

I am leaving for holiday tomorrow and wanted to answer some of these long waiting emails before that. The basis was laid already a few months ago when I decided to declare as abandoned some private email threads that have been waiting for multiple years, but now the impossible has happened:

Empty Inbox! I can't remember if this has ever happened before since I started using email in ... 1995 I guess.

How do you handle your inbox?

syn:wall at ITNOA exhibition

2008-04-22T11:19:00.002+02:00

I just finished my first Flex project, an interactive projection wall for the exhibition ITNOA - In The Name Of Architecture. The exhibition brings together projects of students of the three universities in Vienna teaching architecture (TU Wien, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Die Angewandte) in a self-curated setting. While the projects coming from different universities are presented in different areas of the printed-out part of the exhibition, syn:wall brings all projects together on one surface and creates neighborhood relationships between similar projects using quantitative attributes and tags.

The result of such an exploration can be printed out on a color laser printer and taken home by the visitor as an individual page of a distributed, virtual exhibition catalog.

One thing I learned (again) in this project is how inferior projectors are as an output medium. In a single grid cell of the exhibition, measuring 120 x 45 cm, a whole architecture project can be communicated in printed form, including texts, diagrams, plans and renderings. In the same area of the projected image there are 240 * 100 pixels, which can hold a lousy, pixelated thumbnail of the same project. Therefore I really like the idea of on-demand printing, and I would like to investigate this further in future projects, including producing larger prints with a plotter (something we originally planned to do but could not realize within the given budget and time).

ITNOA will be on until the end of the week, with a closing down party on Friday, the 25th of April (unfortunately I cannot be there on Friday because of two other appointments). It is located in the "Albertinapassage", the underpass under the Ring on the Albertina side of the Opera. ITNOA is also probably the last chance to have a drink at the infamous "Gaudí Bar" there, since the underpass will be closed down shortly after the exhibition. This place somehow always inspires me to get totally wasted every time I am there...

Thanks to Rüdiger Suppin for working on the concept with me and to all ITNOA people who helped entering the project information and crop all the images.

My Teeth

2007-12-19T20:48:00.001+01:00

I guess I really am one lucky guy... After seven years of avoiding it, I went to the dentist last week for a checkup, and guess what — nothing! Not one little hole in my denture to spoil the glory:

I borrowed the X-Ray image for those of you who complain that I don't smile often enough. Thanks to padme for making a contact print and scanning it!

Note that above image is copyright by me and I explicitly disallow any form of copying, reproduction or use other than viewing it on this blog - Although I strongly believe in open source and creative commons, I am not willing to provide data about my body to anyone currently.

My talk at Web2Open this wednesday

2007-11-05T10:52:00.000+01:00

I will be giving a talk at Web2Open in Berlin (a free event attached to the O'Reilly Web2.0 Expo) this Wednesday. The announced title and abstract of the talk are:

Advanced GPolyline usage - performance issues and interactivity

Due to different implementations on different browsers, complex and high resolution Google polylines can lead to surprising results up to non-responsive applications in some cases. I will present the - sometimes surprising - results of our performance measurements, performance improvement strategies and a comparison with an experimental alternative implementation that can be also used for improved interactivity like real-time editing or continuous panning along a line.

But maybe you can best decide whether you are interested by looking at a screencast of the implementation I did for maptales. In the talk, I will provide some details and hints how to implement the shown features for your own applications.

Looking forward to see you at Web2Open!