Nuggetty Goodness

Properly-built design system components are awesome.

2021-07-07T06:10:53Z

Unfortunately, most UI-kits are not awesome, and so I end up having to roll my own - like this text input component.

Glad to be back to using Adobe XD after just about 2 years of Sketch-Hell.

So for months now, I've been wondering...

2021-06-09T07:48:18Z

...why does my microwave have an icon of a farting cat with a clock for a face?

Is it because cats lick their bowls really clean? Oh well, I like cats.

Today, it dawns on me what the "proper" interpretation of the icon is.

Free COVID-19 customer logbook for small businesses

2020-10-28T10:18:38Z

I made a very very very basic Airtable template for a COVID-19 customer logbook for small businesses.

Like many Victorians, I watch our Victorian Premier's (Dan Andrews) press conference near every day.

At one of the press conferences a couple of days ago, one of the reporters kept talking about "QR codes" for small businesses, as if QR codes are magical things that will somehow record everything when a customer scans em.

After that press conference, I was complaining to my partner, Does the reporter even know what a QR code does? If it doesn't redirect to a database, with form, etc, what's the point? How will a small shop set this up?

Then I realised, Hey, I happen to know this no-code tool... (Airtable)......and this kinda happened.

The bulk of the work was writing the instructions in a way that normal people can understand and follow.

https://airtable.com/universe/expzohzqb7PE07lhl/covid-19-logbook

"Click the link we sent in your email to log-in" turns every log-in into "reset your password". :|

2020-10-16T06:16:41Z

That old chestnut again: Should designers code? No... and yes. ;)

2020-10-13T05:25:34Z

Some ponderings as I learn the wonders of CSS-grid, fluid typography, and all the shiny new toys kids these days have.

Gosh, CSS has gotten so much nicer since the days when we had to haul water to the top of the hill both ways barefoot in the snow.

No, designers shouldn't code
I don't think designers need to be able to write production quality code. It stands to reason that I have a vested interest in this "no", as I haven't committed production code in over a decade. Plus, production quality code, especially at an enterprise-level, is a completely different beast from building a small static website. When it comes to enterprise code, scalability, maintainability, extensibility are all very important - and I prefer to leave them to the experts (my developers).

Yes, designers should code
Ideally, designers should have some familiarity with, and understanding of the basic "materials" used to build the digital products they design. Additionally, the "materials" will vary, even across digital products. Just because I can write js and css certainly does not mean I know the "materials" for native Windows, Mac, Android, or Linux.

With that as the caveat - being able to code just enough to know my materials is a very big plus. I did a basic Vue course fairly recently. Nothing fancy, just a single page app. However, what I learnt from that course gave me a much better idea of how Vue (and React, and Angular) work at a very high level, and how that can translate into implementation. It also made it collaborating with front-end web developers easier, as we had some degree of shared knowledge.

I've also been experimenting with the "new" (not so new, I know) CSS toys all the kids have these days. What's really cool about this is that unlike the Vue course, what I'm learning about CSS is changing the way I think and design - and think about design. These learnings change the bounds of what I know are possible.

For example, I have been reading about fluid typography on the web for a couple of years now - and before I started poking around the code, it's been a very abstract sort of interest. E.g. "Nice and interesting abstract concept, I should try to design for that when I have the opportunity". Now that I've poked around the code, and gotten a basic understanding of how things work, this has changed to a much more real and practical, "ZOMG now that I actually know how that bit of code holds together, I can actually set a typographic scale that way, and see it work. And I can see how I could make it work in so many places. Waoohh!"

Here's my supernoob code-pen, which I'm modifying on the fly as I learn more about css-grid and fluid typography.
All the noob inline comments, every noob inline comments!

See the Pen Flying Red Horse - CSS-Grid Experiments by JC (@nuggettyone) on CodePen.

Litmus test for this question: Does this company value customer research?

2020-10-04T00:14:57Z

Do the employees who do customer research use qualitative analysis tools that are paid for by the company?

Design systems, systems thinking, and the "curse of the gifted"

2020-09-30T03:48:58Z

A friend of mine calls it "the curse of the gifted" -- a tendency to lean on your native ability too much, because you've always been rewarded for doing that and self-discipline would take actual work.

You are a brilliant implementor, more able than me and possibly (I say this after consideration, and in all seriousness) the best one in the Unix tradition since Ken Thompson himself. As a consequence, you suffer the curse of the gifted programmer -- you lean on your ability so much that you've never learned to value certain kinds of coding self-discipline and design craftsmanship that lesser mortals must develop in order to handle the kind of problem complexity you eat for breakfast.

But you make some of your more senior colleagues nervous. See, we've seen the curse of the gifted before. Some of us were those kids in college. We learned the hard way that the bill always comes due -- the scale of the problems always increases to a point where your native talent alone doesn't cut it any more. The smarter you are, the longer it takes to hit that crunch point -- and the harder the adjustment when you finally do. And we can see that you, poor damn genius that you are, are cruising for a serious bruising.

As Linux grows, there will come a time when your raw talent is not enough. What happens then will depend on how much discipline about coding and release practices and fastidiousness about clean design you developed before you needed it, back when your talent was sufficient to let you get away without.

http://lwn.net/2000/0824/a/esr-sharing.php3

How Linus Torvalds works (as written in this post) is how I cook. ;) I don't measure, I eyeball everything. I do things until they "look right" and then I stop.

I would never ever ever do that fast, loose, play-it-by-eye-and-natural-talent with a design system, because I have learned that it just doesn't scale. In fact, I design... design systems specifically to avoid or mitigate the "curse of the gifted".

At the end of the day, a design system that isn't easy enough to use by all involved in the SDLC, so much so that it becomes the default pit of success that teams fall into together... is a failed design system. Or one that is currently failing, at any rate. Failures can be remedied, so there is that.

I see a disturbing tendency to approach design systems (especially for enterprise) with far too much reliance on 'the curse of the gifted'. This is especially evident when every piece of a design system is designed on an ad-hoc basis, with no regard to how it fits into everything else. If the designer's eye is good enough, they can skate by on the curse of the gifted - until they cannot, anymore. And their teams? God help their teams.

When it comes to design systems - I want the opposite of skating by on talent. I want to help build design systems that enable delivery teams to fall into the pit of success together. The kinds of systems that improve collaboration for everyone, because of a clear, shared understanding of what it is we want to do, and what we have on hand to do it. Design systems where the default is usually the right choice, where guesswork is kept to a minimum... and yet where necessary changes can be made on the fly with the minimum of cost, or drama. And while I'm describing my ideal pony, I want to be able to stay and see such a system grow and evolve over time.

Right now, I'm still looking for that pony. Maybe I'll get lucky. ;)

Things to consider when defining default animation timings and easings for user interfaces

2019-08-19T04:31:20Z

I meant to rewrite this nicely a long time ago, never got down to re-writing it. And yet... it seems like it could help people. So here's the original braindump version.

Default timing for animations == 200ms. Default easing == Ease In-Out

This is the simplest way to achieve what we want, in terms of animation.

What we are doing here can be considered "semantic" animation, as it is the animations that "explain" to the user why and how the map is being displayed to them. The equivalent is a book opening, or a page turning.

If possible, make the timings and the animation types customisable, with defaults.

Why 200ms?
Because when it comes to things we interact with mostly visually, 200ms is the amount of time it takes the human brain to register that something has come into view, or changed. At 200ms, UI animation feels almost instant.

Now, we could get pickier, and make it 300-400ms for XS, SM, and 200ms for MD, L, XL, because the distance travelled by the animated objects also influences how fast they feel. However, this lies in the realm of "fancy extras". They are nice, but if we start doing that, then to be consistent, we need to do it EVERYWHERE.

So 200ms. ;) For everything.

Please note that this is a visual thing. If you are writing with a stylus, and the lag is 200ms (or you're gaming! ;) ) 200ms, is way way way too slow. When writing with a digital stylus, or drawing with a mouse, the latency has to be as close to 0 as possible. Even 100ms feels laggy when you draw with a stylus or a mouse.

Why Ease In-Out?
Easing makes animations look more natural, by visually mimicking the laws of physics.

We're using Ease In-Out as the default, as it mimics physics, AND is less confusing for most people who aren't professional animators.

But whyyyyy! ;) Ok here's why...

If we wanted to be picky, when something animates INTO view, we should use Ease-Out. Ease-Out is when something moves fast at first, and then slows down. This mimics physics in the real world, where stuff loses momentum as it moves, due to friction. So it starts fast (because as it's animating into our view, it's already moving), and as it runs out of energy, it slows down.

Likewise, when something animates OUT OF view, we should use Ease-In. Ease-In is when something moves slowly at first, and then speeds up. Again, this mimics physics in the real world, where it takes time for stuff to build up momentum, and then it goes faster as it collects enough energy to overcome friction. So it starts slow (because it's charging up, while still being in our view), and then the animation speeds up as the item leaves our view.

^And yes, for stuff that comes INTO view, it's better to use Ease-OUT, for stuff that LEAVES our view, it's better to use Ease-IN. Yes. It's horribly confusing.

Ease In-Out to the rescue! ;) Our :X compromised best of both worlds. It's not really... but it's the least confusing to remember.

Ease In-Out is when something moves quickly at first, slows down... then speeds back up. In UI terms, this is a nice compromise if we don't wanna be fancy, because as humans, we're lazy about how we perceive things.

When we use Ease In-Out for something that animates INTO view, the human-goldfish mind has most likely already stopped paying attention before the last "fast" in the fast-slow-fast sequence. So to the human-goldfish, most of the time it'll look like an Ease-Out.

When we use Ease-In-Out for something that animates OUT of view, the human-goldfish mind (you see where this is going) takes a while to notice what's going on. ;) So it likely doesn't notice the first "fast" in the fast-slow-fast sequence.

Some samples, using 200ms and (naughty naughty, ALL ease-in).
Each click as shown is triggering a new 200ms animation to the next keyframe.

The whole UX vs UI thing is like a crazy argument about whether the sugar in a cake is really part of the cake, or not.

2019-05-14T01:39:31Z

Black Desert Online - Enhancing %

2019-01-19T12:35:59Z

Green ship gear

+1 attempt failstacks

0 == 66.67%

+2 attempt failstacks

0 == 44.44%
2 == 53.33%

+3 attempt failstacks

0 == 29.63%
2 == 35.56%

Black Desert Online - Amity sequences

2018-06-29T10:41:49Z

These are what I used to get to 1000 amity with each of these NPCs. Not saying it's the best, just what I used. ;)

Best used in conjunction with this list of amity knowledge NPCs. Note that some of the ones I list are traders, and not amity knowledge NPCs.

Also related - knowledge locator.

I blame Marvel Heroes 2017 sniff for my BDO toons...

2018-04-05T12:31:00Z

Figma review in one sentence!

2017-11-08T08:05:05Z

I don't know how people can make tools for interaction designers, and not allow them to do any interactions except clicks!

Cradle mountain plants!

2017-08-12T13:02:47Z

So many pretty mushrooms and frosty things at Cradle Mountain lodge, Tasmania! :D

Gloriously lazy lemon blueberry egg white food processor cookies!

2016-10-08T14:04:02Z

Yes! These cookies contain food processor! :P

Everything except adding the blueberries and shaping the cookies into balls is done in a food processor. You prolly want a sturdy food processor though, my last puny one died in horror at the thought of having to make a whole lemon tart.

Why egg whites? Because we had some left over and I wanted to get rid of them.

Why brown sugar? To make up for the lack of egg yolk.

Why not just cream the cookies? I was curious to see whether this 'reverse creaming' method works for cookies too. It works great for scones, cupcackles, and pie crusts after all. And also because washing the food processor is less work than beating in flour or folding it in with a spoon, and for me, the lazier a recipe, the better. Plus, this requires no planning (no leaving the butter out), and no guess-nuking to soften the butter. Lastly, I hate creaming butter, the sugar always tries to escape, and I get bored standing there with the hand mixer...

Chewy inside, crispy outside lemon cookie!
400g cake flour
100g salted butter (room temp)
150g white sugar
50g dark brown sugar
60g egg white
Zest from 1 lemon
Juice from half a lemon (50ml~)
Some dried blueberries (fresh ones will leak horribly)
Vanilla essence

Throw butter, sugars, cake flour into food processor
Pulse until breadcrumby
Add lemon zest
Pulse some more
Add vanilla essence and lemon juice to whirring food processor
Pulse until dough looks right - sort of like plasticine
Mix in blueberries
Plop in fridge for about an hour
Preheat oven to 150-60C
Make (large) truffle-sized balls, try to get at least one blueberry per cookie
Plop balls about 2 inches apart on cookie sheet
Bake for 20~ minutes, until edges are slightly brown

Mechanism design and the invisible influence of culture and power

2016-10-06T22:52:07Z

From a rather interesting article from mckinsey.com - Leadership and behaviour: Mastering the mechanics of reason and emotion.

Eric Maskin: Mechanism design recognizes the fact that there’s often a tension between what is good for the individual, that is, an individual’s objectives, and what is good for society—society’s objectives. And the point of mechanism design is to modify or create institutions that help bring those conflicting objectives into line, even when critical information about the situation is missing.

An example that I like to use is the problem of cutting a cake. A cake is to be divided between two children, Bob and Alice. Bob and Alice’s objectives are each to get as much cake as possible. But you, as the parent—as “society”—are interested in making sure that the division is fair, that Bob thinks his piece is at least as big as Alice’s, and Alice thinks her piece is at least as big as Bob’s. Is there a mechanism, a procedure, you can use that will result in a fair division, even when you have no information about how the children themselves see the cake?

Well, it turns out that there’s a very simple and well-known mechanism to solve this problem, called the “divide and choose” procedure. You let one of the children, say, Bob, do the cutting, but then allow the other, Alice, to choose which piece she takes for herself. The reason why this works is that it exploits Bob’s objective to get as much cake as possible. When he’s cutting the cake, he will make sure that, from his point of view, the two pieces are exactly equal because he knows that if they’re not, Alice will take the bigger one. The mechanism is an example of how you can reconcile two seemingly conflicting objectives even when you have no idea what the participants themselves consider to be equal pieces.

The bit I quoted above really struck me as either lazy thinking, or unintentional blindness.

It bugs me that Eric Maskin uses children in a room with cake to generalise about human behaviour, without specifying important stuff.

Such as:
Where are the children from?
What are their cultural norms?
What is their relationship to each other?
Will their actions have any repercussions beyond getting less cake?

Happily ignoring all those things, Maskin goes on to apply this concept to management and organisations. Which means that power differentials and politics are also ignored, along with what I previously listed about cultural norms and relationships. It also focuses on an extremely short-term goal.

If the cultural norm is to appear generous...
...then Bob will cut an obviously smaller piece, which lets Alice choose the bigger piece if she wishes to. She may not, she may also wish to appear gracious, and take the smaller piece. But regardless of what happens, it's doubtful to me that the cake would be divided equally.

If Bob has more power - maybe he has the ability to beat Alice up without being scolded for it, even if he doesn't actually want to
...then Bob will cut whatever he thinks is fair, and count on Alice's fear of him, and understanding of the difference in power, to control which piece she takes. Which means that if Bob cuts an obviously smaller piece, he'll get a nice big piece. And if he cuts an even portion, then he'll get to feel good about himself. And in both cases, Alice's 'choice' isn't really a free choice.

Srsly Nugget? It's just cake!
You could argue that Maskin stated that 'Bob and Alice's objectives are each to get as much cake as possible', but it's pretty obvious that cake is a metaphor for money (or resources).

The fact is, in the real world, choices are rarely so clear and simple. There are always trade-offs. Of course every worker wants to 'get as much cake as possible'. ;) But maybe some workers will take less cake now, if it means a more reliable supply of cake in the future. (I.e. a foreign worker on a temporary visa will likely settle for less 'cake' until they're able to get a permanent visa.)

Humans are complicated. It's never just cake. ;)

Green tea white chocolate & dark chocolate truffle bar things

2016-09-27T23:25:20Z

Dark chocolate base is exactly the same as the hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things, except without hazelnut essence.

I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate (too sweet for me), but a work human really likes these - he took this photo - so I'm plopping the green tea white chocolate part here.

Ingredients

50ml sweetened condensed milk (aka 1 part)
100g white chocolate (aka 2 parts)
Broken into squares it comes in. I'm too lazy to do more than that.
some matcha (about a teaspoon)
You can get a cheap matcha from an Asian grocery ($5 or so for a small tin). Just make sure it's actually matcha, from Japan, or it will likely be waaaaay too bitter.
T_T I thought I could be a cheapo-nug and get a 500g bag of green tea powder from Taiwan. Don't do it!!! That stuff is foul.
Don't use ceremonial matcha (the stuff the ninja ladies in Lustbader books do tea ceremonies with) - other than being very expensive, IMO it's a waste. You lose the umamis and delicate flavours once the white chocolate steamrolls over them.

Crafting

Dump white chocolate in a bowl.
Shove bowl in microwave, melt at half power for 15s.
Stir.
Repeat Step 2 and 3 until there are just a few nubs of unmelted white chocolate left.
Should be about 3 - 5 minutes or so of heating in total. Do NOT just set the microwave to half power for 3 minutes and nuke. You need to do the irritating nuke and stir because white chocolate burns very very easily. If you just nuke without stirring, it will burn, and there's no saving it. Well, you could pretend you wanted to 'caramelise' it. XD You can also do all this on a water bath if you want. ;)
Stir until the unmelted white chocolate goes away.
Plop in condensed milk, stir stir stir till incorporated.
It will look a bit greasy, don't worry about it. :)
Assuming you've also made the dark chocolate bottom, pour that into some kind of (parchment-paper-lined) pan, make pathetic attempt at forming some sort of 'slab'.
Plop the green tea white chocolate blob on top, and make a further sad attempt at slabbing it evenly.
Decorate in a suitably 'artisanal' fashion.
Put gently in fridge (no need to cover unless your fridge has stinky things).
Ignore for at least 4 hours.
Remoof from fridge, cut into squares.
Eat all the leavings that are ~_o 'unfit for presentation'.

Ceremonial matcha
I realised I was doing too much matcha-ranting in the ingredients section, so I moved that here...

This matcha is one of my favourite ceremonial matchas, and is great value for money for drinking.

O-cha are great, and buying from them is cheaper (shipping included) than buying matcha locally in Australia. And the quality is amazing.

If you're curious about matcha brewed usucha or koicha style, then I'd advise getting some overpriced and expensive Australian stuff (T2, kenkotea, etc), and only then getting stuff from O-cha. Then you'll really be able to compare a good matcha with a terrible (or badly stored) one. ;)

Chocolate mousse with green tea biscuit moss, icing flowers, and fairies!

2016-09-25T08:10:02Z

So cute! Also super simple, and not as fiddly as it looks.

The only thing we actually made was the mousse.

Would have been prettier with fresh, edible flowers. But a lot more perishable, so I didn't use them. Also, I was too lazy to go the market to get those...

Ingredients
Coles icing sugar flowers - I wanted the roses, but the Coles I went to didn't have them. :(
Coles 100s & 1000s aka fairies - not the shiny silver fairies, the cute pastel fairies! Also known as dragees.
Green tea & adzuki bean biscuit, crushed - can't find pics because I can't remember the name. ;>.> The important thing is that the biscuit must be green tea, not the filling. Or else it will probably not be green enough to be moss. Or you can make your own green tea biscuits and crush them.
Chocolate mousse (eggless) - but not fatless! Ooh fat. I love fat.

Chocolate Mousse Crafting Ingredients
100g 70% cocoa chocolate
200ml sweetened condensed milk
300ml double cream <-- yes, fat, fat cream!
Some dutch processed cocoa powder (non-dutch will work also)

Chocolate Mousse Crafting Process

Melt chocolate in microwave, or icky double boiler. Don't burn it. :P
Add sweetened condensed milk to chocolate.
Stir till it's more or less all the same
Add cocoa powder.
Stir some more, again until more or less all the same.
Plop in all the double cream.
Stir some more, again until more or less all the same. Zzzz.
Beatbeat with hand mixer till stiff peaks. This happens FAST. Probably in a minute, tops.

Tiny Fairy Garden Mousse Pot Assembly

Plop chocolate mousse into ziplock bag.
Cut off corner of bag.
Pipe into cups.
Stop at around 2/3 full. It will look like the cutest little turd. That is fine, because next we...
Flatten the mousse so it doesn't look quite so turdlike.
It doesn't have to be perfectly flat. Flat like churned, soft mud is fine. After all, no one is going to be able to see it.
~~Dump~~ carefully sprinkle crushed biscuit until you have an evenish layer.
It's ok if you can still see a bit of mousse. Just not a lot of it.
Bang each pot (carefully!) against your work surface a few times to settle everything.
Sprinkle 100s & 1000s of fairies.
Ok maybe a few less.
Place icing sugar flowers.
Refrigerate!
Or eat. You can eat them at this point. Or take photos of them. Then eat them.

The most effective user interfaces aren't invisible. They're sneaky.

2016-07-29T04:01:44Z

The 'best' user interfaces (UIs) are invisible.

Catchy statement, right? After all, UIs like those are the ones you don't notice, cause you're busy getting stuff done.

Except that it isn't true.

The most effective UIs are the ones that make it easy, and even pleasurable for you to do what THEY want you to do.

And what a UI wants you to do may not be what you want to do. (I'll leave the question of 'best for whom' aside for now.)

For example...

Casino UI
Ahh, hello human, I want you to stay with me, and spend money continuously, for as long as possible, so that my owners can profit from you. :D

Human
I want to win! Winning makes me feel great! I'm sure my next big win is just around the corner!
This is rather different from you, the human, saying, I want to stay in this place and spend money continuously, for as long as possible.

Online Shopping UI (E.g. Fashion)
Hi there human, I want you to desire everything I have on offer, and spend as much money as possible, so I'm gonna make buying as easy as possible. As far as I'm concerned, you can't buy too much! :D

Human
I wanna look good to other humans! And I don't wanna be ripped off while I... ooh shiny! I need this! And this! And this! Ooh and this!

Clinical UI (E.g. Doctor)
Hey doc, I want you to accurately record all the relevant information about your patients, so that your patients can get the best care you're able to provide. :D

Human
I want to make sure that I get everything down accurately, so that my colleagues and I are able to help our patients achieve the best outcomes possible.

Usability is ethically neutral - UI design isn't

There's an assumption that UIs that are user-friendly, and 'delightful' have our best interests at heart. From the examples above, this obviously isn't always true. It may not even often be true.

Casino UI is a great example of conflict between what we want, and what the UI wants us to do. We appear to be travelling on the same 'journey', but at the end of the day, the relationship is parasitical at best, and adversarial at worst.

Online Shopping UI has a less toxic relationship with us, as users. At least the UI isn't expressly designed to exploit our human weaknesses for profit. As a merchant's proxy, the UI very reasonably wants to make its goods attractive to us, and make it easy for us to buy stuff.

Clinical UI is what we tend to assume we're getting, even when that trust is unwarranted. It embodies the classic concept of 'best UI'. What Clinical UI wants us to do works hand in hand with what we want to achieve for our patients.

But even if the usability of all three UIs is the same, the ethical contrast between the three UI designs couldn't be more different.

When it comes to usability, it's important to remember that there's no moral value attached to how easy something is to use. Moral value comes into existence when ease-of-use and pleasure is harnessed to directing specific behaviours.

When we look at it that way, it's pretty easy to say: Casino UI is evil, Online Shopping is neutral, and Clinical UI is good.

UX and UI design are essentially the design of systems, products, and interfaces that encourage, reinforce, and reward specific user behaviours.

Whether the outcomes of these specific behaviours are beneficial or harmful to us - as users - is highly dependent on why the product was created in the first place.

So the next time someone tells you that all you do as a designer is 'make pretty buttons', tell them that the pretty buttons are just a small, unthreatening part of designing reward systems for sneaky mind control. ;)

Edible fairy garden! (aka rose, pistachio, peach, matcha, silver sugarballs dark chocolate truffle bar thing)

2016-05-14T08:11:37Z

Pristine Fairy Habitat

This edible fairy garden (EAT ALL THE FAIRIES!) >.> uses exactly the same base as the Hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things.

Except that this time round, for pretties and flavourings we haz:
- rose essence
- vanilla essence
- rose petals (from dried rosebuds for rose tea - some steamed to rehydrate them, some straight off the dry buds)
- freeze-dried peach slice, chopped
- silver sugar ball things (I think they're called 'dragees'. Or maybe 'fairies'. ~_o )
- cheap matcha (nothing you'd want to make koicha, or even usucha with - good enough to cook is good enough)

Am very pleased a nugget at how the blend of flavours turned out. If you like Turkish delight chocolates, this is just the thing, with the peaches adding interesting 'high' notes, and the pistachios adding nice texture. :X The matcha just adds fairy moss.

Blurry Chunks of Sundered Fairy Habitat

Alas, all my pics of the sliced squares turned out blurry. T_T That's what I get for taking pics after sundown!

(If you're in Melbourne, don't bother with T2 matcha. It's bad. You're better off going to any random asian grocery and buying a 50g tin of matcha for $5~. Just make sure it's from Japan, and not a mainland chinese imitation. You'll be getting the same amount of quality, or lack thereof, for a tenth of the T2 price.)

Hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things

2016-05-08T00:52:14Z

Being the soul of restraint, it's SO unusual for me to go completely mad, and throw in the kitchen sink. Of course it is. Ahem.

1) Hmm wanna make truffles but too lazy to roll balls. Okok let's make truffle bars.
2) Drat, no Nutella, was planning to use that. Ooh but look, hazelnut essence. Ok!
3) Pistachio looks so pretty in choccies, let's throw some in.
4) Hey I have those freeze dried strawberries, and pink is pretty with green. Chop some of those and put them on top!
5) Oo yellow is pretty with pink and I just happen to have dried osmanthus flowers...

And so we have these Hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things.

They are amazing. I don't really like chocolate, I just love how it looks. But in the process of 'squaring' the bars, I've eaten more chocolate than I have in the past 6 months, lol!

Best of all, they're super easy to make (well the base is), and you can throw as many 'pretties' as you like in / on top.

Ingredients
200ml sweetened condensed milk (aka 2 parts)
200g good 70% cocoa dark chocolate (aka 2 parts) (broken into squares it comes in. I'm too lazy to do more than that.)
25g~ honey
25g~ butter (salted, unsalted, doesn't matter. I used salted cause lazy.)
some vanilla essence
some hazelnut essence
some freeze-dried strawberries (chopped)
some osmanthus flowers
some pistachios (whole)

Crafting
1) Dump chocolate, honey, butter in a bowl.
2) Shove bowl in microwave, melt until melted. Until the chocolate and stuff is melted. Not the bowl. If the bowl has melted, you've gone too far. Safest to stop when there are a few lumps of chocolate left, and finish it by stirring it all into a homogenous gloop.
3) Throw in essences, stir stir stir till incorporated.
4) Plop in condensed milk, stir stir stir till incorporated.
5) Mix in pistachios .
6) Pour into some kind of (parchment-paper-lined) pan, make pathetic attempt at forming some sort of 'slab'.
7) Decorate with freeze-dried strawberry pieces and osmanthus flowers in a suitably 'artisanal' fashion.
8) Tos...put gently in fridge (no need to cover unless your fridge has stinky things).
9) Ignore for at least 4 hours.
10) Remoof from fridge, cut into squares.
11) Eat all the leavings that are ~_o 'unfit for presentation'.

Notes
If you want to mess with the ratio of condensed milk to chocolate, more milk will give you softer trufflepieces, more chocolate will give you harder ones (duh right). This ratio gives you pretty much perfect 'fancy truffle' texture. Not too squishy, not too hard, just right.

Necromantic Breast Preservation Society

2016-03-27T04:15:05Z

As I was waddling along in Elder Scrolls Online, slaying skeletons left and right, something occurred to me...

I would like to posit the existence of some kind of multiversal Necromantic Breast Preservation society.

It is the only ~_o reason I can think of that across so many alternate game universes, female skeletons continue to retain their breast tissue.

Especially since, as squishy fat deposits, the breasts should be among the first things to go.

I believe that these necromancers may simply regard whatever additional preservation rituals are needed as 'breast practices'.

= = = = = = (>'-')>

Flourless peanut butter choc chip cookies from Kirbie's Cravings

2016-03-27T04:04:01Z

These flourless peanut butter chocolate chip cookies from Kirbie's Cravings are really quite nice! And very lazy. That's important. :X

I don't care if stuff is flourless, eggless, butterless, whateverless one way or the other, but I do care if there is less stuff I have to do. ;)

These are one-bowl, no creaming, no softening butter, etc. Basically just dump and stir. Perfect!

I didn't change the recipe at all (unusual for me), though ofc I didn't really measure stuff, I just eyeballed it...

Only things I did change were the baking times (and I think) the portion sizes.

I tend to like my cookies to be 1 teaspoon or so, rather than the 1 tablespoon that a lot of recipes seem to like.

I also reduced the baking time, because at 11m, the first batch was waaaaay overdone. Still edible, but with edges beginning to burn.

I don't think it's a problem with the original recipe though, which is great.

I think it may be that:
- my new oven runs hot
- I'm baking on parchment paper on a black cookie sheet
- my cookies are smaller

With those things in mind 8m 15s at 175C turned out perfect cookies for me! :) Yey!

Also, if you tend to think more in ratios like me, the ingredient ratio is roughly:
- 4 parts peanut butter
- 4 parts dark brown sugar
- 1 part egg
- some choc chips
- some baking powder

Three Little Pigs - A NuggeTwine Retelling.

2016-03-19T01:30:24Z

Soooo I discovered Twine. Or re-discovered, I should say, since the last time I looked at it a long time ago, it didn't look like it would survive.

It now seems to be thriving!

And so, of course, I made a story. About pigs. 3 little ones.

Oh, I had high hopes and whattits initially, but when I sat down to write, somehow what fell out the most fluently was Three Little Pigs.

._. Go figure.

Play my epic retelling of Three Little Pigs here!

Awesome flourless fudge cookies from ihearteating.

2016-03-13T06:28:20Z

From here:
http://www.ihearteating.com/2012/06/03/flourless-fudge-cookies/

Really nice cookies, and super lazy! Crispy on the outside, fudgy on the inside, and almost no work. :X

I did change her recipe slightly, to make it less sweet. Plus I added orange essence. And less vanilla essence.

My tweaked version

2 c. powdered sugar
3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3 large egg whites
Some vanilla extract
Some orange essence
Some gold powdered sugar for sprinklies
Bake 7m 30s at just under 180C

Technique-wise, it's exactly the same as what Kate posted! Yep, no need to beat those egg whites! WOOHOO! :X

I'm not a big chocolate fan but I like these a lot. ^_^

Ponderings: Intelligence as a bonus stat & talents as base stats.

2016-02-11T22:38:04Z

Sooo, there's an awfully interesting post, 'The Parable of the Talents' by Scott Alexander over at Slate Star Codex. It's about the relationship between intelligence and talent, as well as hard work.

He comes to a reasonable conclusion I agree with, that is:

The Jews also talk about how God judges you for your gifts. Rabbi Zusya once said that when he died, he wasn’t worried that God would ask him “Why weren’t you Moses?” or “Why weren’t you Solomon?” But he did worry that God might ask “Why weren’t you Rabbi Zusya?”

And this is part of why it’s important for me to believe in innate ability, and especially differences in innate ability. If everything comes down to hard work and positive attitude, then God has every right to ask me “Why weren’t you Srinivasa Ramanujan?” or “Why weren’t you Elon Musk?”

If everyone is legitimately a different person with a different brain and different talents and abilities, then all God gets to ask me is whether or not I was Scott Alexander.

This seems like a gratifyingly low bar.

However, what he doesn't seem to address is a viewpoint he puts forward at the start:

I’m sorry to leave self a self absorbed comment, but reading this really upset me and I just need to get this off my chest…How is a person supposed to stay sane in a culture that prizes intelligence above everything else – especially if, as Scott suggests, Human Intelligence Really Is the Key to the Future – when they themselves are not particularly intelligent and, apparently, have no potential to ever become intelligent? Right now I basically feel like pond scum.

I hear these kinds of responses every so often, so I should probably learn to expect them. I never do. They seem to me precisely backwards.

It seems to a nugget that in modern, industrialised societies, we tend to view intelligence as the base stat, and talent as the bonus.

This, in turn, directly leads to The Sads in the quoted viewpoint, because then - logically - what you're capable of is defined first by intelligence, THEN by talent. Which, of course, means that if you are 'not particularly intelligent', it's DOOM... 'I'll NEVER be anything much. I'm pond scum!' :(

But the more a nugget thinks about this (and a nugget thunk a lot about it while swimming today...), the more convinced a nugget is that it's a flip.

(For any non-gamers who read this and find it incomprehensible, I'm sorry! I tend to think in game design terms...)

Talent is the base stat. Intelligence is the bonus.

Talent: Base Stat
There's no cap on how many talents you can take. You can roll on as many talents as you like... but the roll you get is the roll you're stuck with. Meaning if you chose to roll on a talent, and you got a negative roll for that talent, then you're stuck with it. If you didn't choose, then you get a nice base of 0. You might also get a really high roll though, if you're lucky!

There is, of course, no guarantee that the talent you're rolling on is in the current build of the game. It's therefore entirely - if tragically - possible that your character is talented at stuff that hasn't been invented yet. (Talented pilot, planes not invented yet... alas!)

Equally tragically, your character might be very talented at stuff that's become obsolete. :( Sadly, it seems we don't know much / anything about the game we're about to play when we're at the Character Creation stage...

Intelligence: Bonus Stat
You get just one roll for this, and again, the roll can be negative or positive. How good you are at something initially, and how fast you get better at it are modified by intelligence.

Hard Work & Practice: Buffs with Diminishing Returns
If you're starting with a negative roll for Talent, and a positive or high roll for Int, then the hole you're trying to dig yourself out of is moderated by high Int. You still gotta apply a lot more of the Hard Work & Practice buff though, and you'll hit diminishing returns sooner than someone who isn't starting in a hole in the first place! And all other non-Talent factors are equal, you'll still never be as good as someone who started with a positive or high Talent roll.

Environmental Factors: Buffs and Debuffs
An environment that provides opportunities to improve and practice a Talent is a buff. An environment that is low on, or actively removes such opportunities is a debuff.

POOF!

The character creation process now accounts for both the Cleopatra VIIs, and the idiot savants!

And also, it means you aren't doomed just because you have a low bonus roll. (>'-')> <('-'<)

Similar to what Scott Alexander posted... but different. ^_^

UX Rant: Oversimplification and overgeneralisation... plus supportive technology!

2016-01-17T23:16:34Z

This post annoyed me so much that I actually left a comment!

<.< A nugget rarely comments on design blogs, for some reason...

It's a nice, ranty comment, so I've reproduced it here, for my Rant Museum! ^_^

This article kind of annoyed me, possibly because it’s too general, hyperbolic, and somewhat preachy.

It’s all well and good to say:
We will design processes, not screens.
We will design systems, not individual pieces.
We will design less “using,” and more getting results.

But…
How do you propose we ‘design processes’, WITHOUT designing the screens, assuming that the medium is digital, on a screen?

How do you propose we ‘design systems’, WITHOUT designing the individual pieces?

How do you design ‘more getting results’ without LOOKING at the ‘using’ process?

It’s all very well to say, users just want things to magically happen!

Sure they do.

But only in very narrow fields, or very very wide budgets and fields (self driving cars, container automation, subway train scheduling) can you implement something that allows that kind of responsibility-free magic, while absolving users of responsibility.

In many fields, we still REQUIRE the user to go through the process, interact with the product, perform myriad actions, because the onus of responsibility and decision must lie upon them. Because the interactions aren’t simple, and may cause harm. (I currently work in enterprise healthcare software.)

For me, as a designer, what I’d love to see more of (and to work on more of) is the ‘supportive’ system. A good example of this is computer-aided Chess Grandmasters. Where the sum of the two is superior to either one alone, even if the goal is still ‘winning’.

Computer-assisted healthcare professionals, with the goal being better patient care and outcomes. Now that’s something I want to see happen, but it’s still going to involve work on the part of the user, as well as the computer (the supportive system). And that’s the way it should be.

DISC personality test AKA look into this mirror, and I'll sell your image back to you for as high a price as I can extract

2015-11-27T06:28:42Z

Nugget's summary of DISC personality test

Tell me what you think you're like!
Gosh, I think you're just like that! Just like... what you said you thought you were like.
Let me pad that with vague, feel-good statements, worthy of any fortune teller.
Look, I'll even throw in charts that, if you cross-compare with colleagues, are all obviously from a fixed set of variables, but designed to look as if they're customised for you, just you, special little snowflake, you.
Now that you've told me what you think you're like, and I've mirrored that back at you...
Rate the accuracy of the test! WOW! It's ACCURATE isn't it? HOW UNCANNY.

As you can tell, I'm somewhat unimpressed. I am, though, impressed by how attractively and plausibly dressed up it was.

The one I took today was truly a triumph of marketing.

Here's someone who says it much more nicely than me. ;)

A very tiny dog (13x13px)

2015-11-26T02:20:30Z

Project Comet, everything a UX designer needs, because - evidently - all a UX designer does is design and prototype websites and mobile apps

2015-11-10T23:36:36Z