Sabih Mir's Barbarian Blog

TBG Boston; An Outing

sabih@barbariangroup.com(Sabih Mir) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:07:51 -0400

The Boston office has become the middle child of the TBG Family, despite being the founding office and the start of the company. We’re a pretty tight group but do find ourselves engrossed in our work during the day, so from time to time we like to kick off our shoes and head out for a night on the town.

Or in this case, a night on the Fort. Fort Point Channel!

(Here we are crossing the bridge towards Fort Point.)

We arrived at the chosen place. Turns out the bar’s logo was designed in part by our very own creative director and all around swell dude Mike Ma.

A good time, had by all.

Sadly, this also marked my last official outing as a Barbarian. I’ve had a blast during my tenure here and had the opportunity to work on some great work with a bunch of fantastic people. Thanks for the memories TBG! Farewell.

When past work comes back in awesome ways

sabih@barbariangroup.com(Sabih Mir) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:35:51 -0400

So our dear friend and former colleague Mike Rubenstein just alerted me to the fact that in the new (awesome) Batman video game (Batman: Arkham Asylum) the website that is mentioned for the Asylum is modeled after Boston and Harvard’s very own Mclean Hospital website, which we did back in 2005.

See for yourself:

That’s just too awesome not to share!

Information Saturation

sabih@barbariangroup.com(Sabih Mir) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:27:51 -0400

There’s simply too much stuff in the world.

Basically, that’s what I’ve surmised. Even before The Internet became the most convenient and preferred method of information delivery I remember realizing, as a young boy, the amount of information that existed in the world. And I was scared then.

Now with every passing second the tubes that connect The Internet grow ever longer. You can pretty much get some kind of information about anything you can imagine. This is obvious. And with this incredible access comes an easy way to seek out anything that is of interest to you. Where before you had to go to the music store to find out which cool new band had debuted (or read the liner notes of your favorite album to get all the bands that were thanked), now you just search. And search. Newest games? Check. Obscure limited edition books? Check. Sneakers? Check.

The Internet has basically made me a Jack of All Interests. I like a bunch of things and can try and keep track of them but because I can so easily find out about new things I rarely dive really deep into any single one of them.

And with all the interests I have comes the problem of tracking all this stuff. What an ordeal. There are lots of webapps that help you keep track of your life, but then you have to keep track of those!

But now I feel like I’m complaining, and this is sounding like some spoiled 1st world problem post so I’ll stop.

Timeless Design, or Getting It Right the First Time

sabih@barbariangroup.com(Sabih Mir) — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:51:59 -0400

I came across a really interesting article on Ministry of Type (via kottke.org) about the UI that was developed for the Xerox Star computer way back in 1981.

In it, Aegir (what a rad name) discusses the minute details that designers of the interface needed to account for when creating the graphics. Because of the limitations of the black & white display device used in the Star, the icons they created needed to account for the dithered hash pattern they used to create a gray colored background. He goes on to detail why it’s not only good but essentially necessary for all designers to know the limitations of the device/situation they are designing for. And I 100% concur.

He also discusses how with some updated graphics, the desktop UI model pioneered by the Star would essentially be the same as any of our modern operating systems UIs. And that got me thinking about timeless design, or the situation where you find a great solution to design problem. Is this it? Is the desktop model the best we can do? 1981. That’s nearly 30 years ago! And as much as people have complained about the desktop metaphor as a user interface a part of me knows those designers at Xerox PARC came up with a rather elegant solution to the problem of interfacing with and manipulating virtual files.

So, to my point for this post: is there such a thing as getting it right the first time? In our consumer culture it seems to me that we are constantly going back to the drawing board, revising, iterating, re-developing things we use all the time to make them more efficient, sexier, better. But if you look around you can also see examples of models that haven’t really changed since their inception – only been revised. The desktop UI. The car. The mouse. The camera. There are numerous examples.

I think though, it’s a testament to human ingenuity that we keep at it, despite how many times we might arrive at the same conclusion. Because sometimes a new idea does come up, and in that instance, we have innovation.

Crappy quality and 4:3 videos no more?

sabih@barbariangroup.com(Sabih Mir) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:59:30 -0500

For too long Youtube has been a bastion for crappy quality and 4:3 screen ratio videos; I’m glad they’re finally giving us a better experience (though tricking your browser to trick Youtube to display the widescreen, “HD” video is somewhat klunky).

But man, watching stuff in widescreen AND higher quality is just so nice. Glad to see the other video sites are forcing Youtube’s hand.

EDIT!
So it looks like Youtube implemented this across the board, so everyone know has access to widescreen vids and you no longer need to do the hack I described above. But apparently you can force a higher res version of the video you’re watching (if available) by adding “&fmt=22” (sans quotes) at the end of your movie url.