February « 2009 « messaliberty

about hulor and us

Archive for February, 2009

Smart design in every day life

February 25th, 2009 post by ianc

Working in the web dev world we would like to think we are bleeding edge smart. The AJAX effects, the in-the-cloud data storage, off-site collaboration, RoR, Symphony! But smart design is everywhere, and I love collecting examples outside our field, in every day life and learn from them:

Example 1 – Cup Noodles

Curry - my favourite flavour

You’re probably asking yourself how much smartness can you find on a food which consists of boil water, pour into container, wait 3 minutes and eat? But wait, look at this packaging design detail. (more…)

Tags: cup noodles, design, pizza, smart, structure
Posted in design | No Comments »

If they made ticket vending machines at stations like

February 21st, 2009 post by hiro

Ticket Gate at Osaka by JanneM

Ticket vending machines at stations are really important for our life in Japan. A few days ago I found an interesting blog post called “If they made ticket vending machines at stations like…” I’ve translated it below.

If they made ticket vending machines like…

Nintendo: You can buy a ticket if you trace the path from departure to arrival
Sony: High end machines with their self made CPU (But tickets cost a bit)
Microsoft: Input a departure station, a destination station, departure time, arrival time, which route you prefer, and choose grade of a train then you can buy it
Apple (more…)

Tags: culture, japanese, misc
Posted in culture, misc | 1 Comment »

Next Generation of The User Interface

February 19th, 2009 post by hiro

Siftables by whiteafrican

CUI for keyboards, GUI for mouse devices. What’s next? At the TED presentation, I found a new possibility of the user interface. It’s blocks.

Amazing! Multi touch UI on iPhone and Microsoft Surface are another possibilities but this one seems really interesting. Here are some videos which show you our future. (more…)

Tags: tech, ui
Posted in tech | No Comments »

[Ruby] HOW TO use multiple databases with ActiveRecord

February 16th, 2009 post by ice

Sometimes you need to access multiple databases in one application.
For example, using different application’s database. But usually ActiveRecord is configured to ActiveRecord::Base directly, and so establishes a connection with ActiveRecord::Base, so you can’t use multiple database with AR.

So how to do it?

Just create sub-classes of ActiveRecord::Base. (more…)

Tags: activerecord, programming, ruby, tips
Posted in techtips | 6 Comments »