Solving Design Inc.

UGH! Complex UI Costs Money!

Jug — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:15:04 +0000

So this supervillain we know always wants us to create these really detailed complex user interfaces with count downs and all this. You know the kind. You see them in the movies all the time. Supervillains always have to be so dramatic about everything. What pisses us off about building these things is this:

This is going to cost him a fortune when we could easily put together a very simple text based counter.
He plans to destroy several major cities (including Ampart, Alaska?) if he doesn’t get all this money by a certain time (our NDA doesn’t let us tell you when). This means we might not get our money.
He always has us build it in a way that a superhero can actually tap in and disable it at the last second. Not smart because you know what happens every time? The superhero taps in and disables it. Every freaking time.
He always needs it done yesterday. Seriously. Plan ahead.

Anyway, villains almost never win so we never want to take these on, but they always do somehow pay for the design work.

Dealing With More Bones and Malware

Jug — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:58:07 +0000

We were hired by a gentleman to create malware that could be delivered on a bone to, as he put it “Ef up the FBI computer system. Dood and Connie Kary worked on this one. Now this is quite the coincidence. If you remember our article on using programming to create a program that could scan bones and instantly determine how someone was killed, you can understand our excitement to work on this project because our client needed us to interface directly with the scanner we already built. It was actually pretty simple. He just needed us to bypass the FBI firewalls by creating malware that could be delivered on bones, not using microchips, but by using a fractal pattern. This only caused a bit of a roughness on the bone. Anyway the malware kills the fans of the computers it infects. It made the most sense to do this by changing the fans normal turn on time of 75 degrees to 750 degrees. You can see how this makes perfect sense.

To Break the Fourth Wall:
Seriously. Seriously. Let’s be serious. So there were probably several writers, producers, SMEs, a director, assistance, actors, a lot of tech people and probably 20+ additional people working on this scene. Were they all thinking to themselves how ridiculous this was? Perhaps they didn’t even know what the final would look like. Either way, wow. Just wow. Terribly dumb.

The Cobra White House Banners

Jug — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:10:41 +0000

What a day! Dood and I were working on this project for Cobra. They called us just like a day ago, needing these huge banners to hang down between the columns at the White House. We brainstormed a bit. They really wanted their logo to look like giant snake eyes on the White House. The Cobra Commander’s brother in-law’s son (Who is always “soooo good with computers”) was for some reason put in charge of this project. Great. He had no idea how big they needed these banners and acted like “we should know”. Oh yeah, the White House has us develop banners all the time.

We asked for their logo, but of course their designer was on vacation or he was killed or something. They said he was “away” because Cobra Commander is a “reflective ass”. Anyway they sent us this graphic to use for their logo… to be put on two HUGE banners:

Hey guess what? – That won’t work. Ever. We needed a vector logo and Pantone colors. The thing about supervillians is that they always need things rush. Hurry! Hurry! Ugh! If you want it fast then at least be ready with f*ing Pantone colors!

The other thing about supervillians is their NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) limit us from even talking about the work until it is made public. BUT, many times their goals are to destroy the world. Who am I going to tell after the world is destroyed? Anyway, I am ranting.

Dood and intern 7 did a nice job after some Illustrator magic. Pic is on top.

Dood Goes 15 Days Without Conflict

Jug — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:01:32 +0000

Dood is really good at forgetting to save his work. He will work eight hours straight in Photoshop and then head out for the day – all without saving his work. Now, you can guess how often Photoshop or Flash or whatever program we are using crashes. It turns out that they seem to crash right before Dood was planning on saving his work. So, when there is a crash and he (we) lose a lot of work, we end up with all these conflicts because, ya know, we have to make changes to things and we, ya know, can’t because the file doesn’t exist or is corrupt! Well, I am proud to say that Dood has gone 15 days without any conflicts. The blue screen of death has nothing on Dood. I think we are all going to go to Zolly’s for some delicious burgers.

It’s not that I like it or I don’t, it’s that it’s bad.

Dood — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:01:08 +0000

Yo, this is Dood. So like this dude asked Jug what he thought of his new design for this project and Jug didn’t want to hurt the guys feelings so he says,

“It’s not that I like it or I don’t, it’s that it’s bad.”

So basically, he didn’t tell the guy what he thought, he just made it a fact that his work is bad. The dude just sat there for a second. Ha. The dude’s work sucked though. Dood out!

Using Programming

Jug — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 05:16:28 +0000

So, I think you guys all know that some of our monies comes in from these projects we are always helping the FBI with. About a year ago we had to develop a system that would let the FBI scan a few bones and then figure out exactly how someone was murdered. Well, we figured it out. We had to use computers to do it. What’s our secret? Programming. We used programming. The way it works, if you don’t mind me going into detail, is that the system scans the bones and then, using the programming I mentioned, figures out how the person was killed. The program can even determine if a gunshot was used when there was no bullet.

Because having text pop up is a bit high on the boring scale, we also have the computer create a visual representation of the murder. Connie Karry did a nice job getting this all to work using programming. Programming sure is great stuff!

To Break the Fourth Wall:
Whoever wrote this episode of bones is either a computer idiot, a computer genius on their last day working for the show, or it was suggested by the network execs as being a “great idea”.