Star Trek’s elegant Okudagrams

Michael Okuda is a graphic designer responsible for the gorgeous interfaces you see in Star Trek films.

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Being a Trekkie since I was watching the series in Iran as a child and later an avid fan of the Next Generation, my design sensibilities have been shaped subconsciously by Okuda:

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I am a User Experience designer and create interfaces every day but Michael Okuda keeps creeping back to the simplest flow chart I make!

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The whole beauty of Star Trek bridge was thanks to these otherworldly interfaces we have been exposed to; Jean-Luc Picard added the spice. 😉

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You would see commander Ryker interact with LCARS (Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) more often than Picard:

Riker star trek okudagram michele roohani

 

Here is the holodeck interface where you can choose between scuba diving or a conversation with Einstein:

holodeck michele roohani

 

Okudagrams  came in different colors and shapes but always intriguing and in the time when you couldn’t stop the film to absorbe the image, I was always pissed at not getting enough of these ephemeral beauties!

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Here is another one:

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and the good doctor in front of the DNA comparison scan:

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Long before Tom Cruise bedazzled us in Minority Report and the impractical but exquisite 3D interfaces he reacted with, Star Trek introduced us to what could be done and now is being done and used by millions:

They even had an LCARS mobile!

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All of these images are not from Okuda of course; many have been created as an homage to ST and Okuda by fans.

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U.S.S. Enterprise in all its glory:

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Okuda designed logos for a number of NASA missions and programs including the STS-125 mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA has always been  more of a fan of Star Trek than Star Wars!

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So Okuda received the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal.

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Again different variations  of Tricorder or the  multifunction hand-held device used for sensor scanning, data anlysis and recording data. A smartphone!

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Even the old generation of Star Trek had its own Okudagrams:

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I like this one about the shuttles:

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The next one even has a Facebook and Twitter button! 😉

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Can’t get enough of these:

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I am looking forward to reading “Make it so, Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction”. I learned about the book listening to UXpod with Chris Noessel.

Two Queens, one King and the holy Trinity College by the river Cam

University of Cambridge, England, is one of the oldest universities in the world (800 years old) and is made up of 31 colleges. A college is where students live, eat and socialize. It is also the place where students receive small group teaching sessions, known as supervisions. This post will be about the grandest and most magnificent of these colleges: Trinity College.

I had the best guide to take me around several of these colleges but for this post, Trinity it is. It was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 as part of the University of Cambridge, combining two older colleges that existed since 1317 and 1324:

This is the clock gate with a statue of one of the older colleges founders, Edward III (and yes it did take me 20 minutes to walk 20 feet!)

“Pugne pro patria” or fight for your country he’s preaching with a beer belly and three crowns in his hand.  Edward III quartered the Royal Arms of England (the three lions) with the ancient arms of France, the fleurs-de-lis on a blue field, to signal his claim to the French throne.

The iron-work of the gates in the Nevile’s court leading to the “backs” is very impressive (I found a funny criticism of the gates in an old book—they were built for a total sum of 4 pounds in 1691):

I love this little feather stuck on these ornaments:

Trinity has many notable alumni but for me its most distinguished is Isaac Newton; this is where he measured the speed of sound (you can still clap your hands and hear the echo):

He is now standing in the college’s chapel:

For the ones who don’t want to decipher the words above, here is William Wordsworth’ poem (1850):

“Near me hung Trinity’s loquacious clock,
Who never let the quarters, night or day,
Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice.
Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”

Newton is surrounded by bright minds in the chapel and even A Man for all Seasons. I am almost sure that the second gentleman from the left is Sir Thomas More:


Of course you should first get in the chapel to see all of that!


The most beautiful sight is the Wren library—off limit to cameras—which has exquisite classical proportions and maximizes space and light having bookcases below window level. It has Newton’s own copy of the first edition of Principia Mathematica, with hand written notes for the second edition.

Trinity College undergraduate gowns are dark blue, as opposed to the black favored by most other Cambridge colleges:

Unlike any other Cambridge college the porters—aka grass police—always wear black bowler hats; they make sure that as with many other Cambridge colleges, the grassed courtyards are generally out of bounds for everyone except the Fellows or me who was accompanied by a Fellow.

And this is their headquarter:

If you get lucky to be invited to a High Table in the Great Hall, you will have a formal dinner with very interesting Fellows but if you are very lucky, like me, you will sit between the most senior Fellows, Anil Seal and Béla Bollobás!

This is what  you are going to eat and drink (we were lucky enough to inherit a great Sauternes left over from the previous night’s big dinner); I was warned not to pass the serving platters to the person sitting by me and always wait for the waiter to do it!

And of course row after row of tea cups…

The great court is even more breathtaking at night where the college bathes in soft lights and the sound of the central fountain:

Just imagine going to sleep (like the other students of the college) with the sound of this old spring:

If you are a visiting scholar, you may stay in the college,

right beside the Master’s Lodge—in this case Sir Martin Rees:

I so wanted to peek through Sir Rees’ house but the best I could do was to take a furtive picture and be happy with his TED talks...

One place I could visit was the neighboring guest house in this blue hour,

and delight at the “green teas” you could have in the morning by the window…

Last but not least on my list is the river Cam and its romantic bridges made even more beautiful by the Punts (flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow):

It couldn’t get greener, wetter, fresher than this hazy beautiful morning spent visiting the Cambridge colleges:

And this punter, oblivious to the fine rain, enjoys the shallow and gravelly river, from one Cam bridge to the next:

After the first couple of colleges you either need a coffee at Caffé Nero accompanied by great fudge from fudge kitchen,

or something stronger: a carajillo just like Mitra D. likes it!

To be continued…

Paul Erdos, the wandering dervish

It’s 1999 and I am reading in a special issue of Time magazine about the geniuses of the second millennium: Einstein, Einstein, Einstein and finally a short article about this “mad looking” guy and W O W…I discovered a wandering dervish, a nomadic mathematician: Paul Erdos!

Both his parents were high school mathematics teachers. Erdos (pronounced AIR-dosh) was as generous as he was brilliant with his ideas—never hoarding them and always sharing them with whoever was ready to give him a place to stay and work with him on the joyous and collaborative activity of mathematics: he would show up at their doorstep and say:” My Mind is Open!”


And this is how the myth of the Erdos Number or the “collaborative distance” between an author and Erdos was created: Erdos himself is assigned Erdos number 0. Mathematicians who have written papers with Erdos (511 by 2007) receive Erdos number 1. Writing a paper with someone having Erdos Number 1 earns the author Erdos Number 2, etc…
I made this image of the name of the 8,162 people with the Erdos Number of 2:

Addicted to coffee and amphetamines he was most of the time, super alert, achingly lucid. He wrote papers with more than 500 people, the optimum” intellectual promiscuity”…

Finding  that “property is nuisance,” Erdos had no home, no car, no checks to write and no income taxes to pay; a mathematical pilgrim with no home and no job: the real wandering dervish who founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is the foundation of computer science. “In the years before the Internet, there was Paul Erdos.”

To check out the funny side of the ‘collaborative distance” visit xkcd.com:

Here are some funny quotes by Erdos:

“Finally I’m becoming stupider no more…”

“God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.”

“There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is that he forgets to zip up. The third sign is that he forgets to zip down.”

To see Erdos tell a funny joke go here

To see parts of N is a number, a documentary about him by George Paul Csicsery, go here

Today is my blog’s third anniversary!

How Enrico Fermi killed all the Aliens

An expression that can mean anything means nothing; when you want to please everybody, you please nobody.

fermi paradox aliens michele roohani extraterrestrial ET

Enrico Fermi, the great Italian physicist, killed all the aliens in 1950 by asking this simple/innocent question: “if extra-terrestrials exist, where are they?” This question has become the Fermi Paradox.

Even though I am a science fiction fan I do agree with the skeptics that, Houston, we have a problem:

a) the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) program to detect radio transmissions from other civilizations has been a failure.

b) the question of the Great Silence remains unsolved; if life is common, why don’t we detect their radio transmissions?

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (July 20, 1969).

25th anniversary of first moon landing stamps michele roohani stamp collection

I remember the thrill of hearing about it on a hot summer day in Iran; the moon has not looked the same since!

Unlike my father, I am a lousy philatelist (postage stamp collector) but I was able to find the above page I bought in 1994—on the 25th anniversary of “the big step”—among my loose leaves.

andre demir stamps michele roohani

The Drake Equation—an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way with which we might come into contact— is still fascinating to me but I see its light getting dimmer with every “silent year”…

N = R* × fp × nE × fl × fi × fc × L

This once serious equation looks more and more like this cartoon from this very funny site:

the drake equation cartoon michele roohani

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the moon, Google is offering Internet users a virtual trip to the moon.

I empathize with Fermi’s passion for clarity. I am simply unable to let things be foggy. The Drake equation is literally meaningless because “an expression that can mean anything means nothing.”

Related and Suggested Posts and Resources:

Carl Sagan explaining the Drake Equation.

Google earth lands on the moon.

Other Life not likely to be intelligent.

The new Drake Equation by Susan Blackmore.

The SETI Institute.


The batman, the ratman and some other sordid adventures…

I saw the new Batman movie yesterday and I liked it a lot. Heath Ledger was great and knowing he’s passed away makes the role even more frightening…

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The fact that this latest batman is not cracking jokes like George Clooney’s gay version—with Robin—makes it easier to imagine a darker villain for the story. Christopher Nolan (of the Memento fame) has done a great job in these two last movies about the comic book franchise.

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Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer were good as the dark prince but Christian Bale remains the best of the crop and Clooney the absolute worst. He should really stick to his Cary Grant roles. Take a look at the different batmen here.

What I have always liked about Batman is that he’s not a super-hero with funny super powers like the Spiderman, the creepy  Superman or that idiot Hulk! I liked the Iron man for the same reason. The engineer in me cringes every time I have to watch a scientifically impossible film. Even though I am a serious Trekkie, I have never been a fan of the Star Wars. The whole mythology and mentor/princess/father/son bit turns me off. Dune has the same effect on me…

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You don’t want to hear about my childhood crush on Mister Spock so I am going back to my ratman.  Last week I had to ask a rat-man to secure my house from an epidemic of rats in Brentwood/Bel Air area…Bats are not rodents by the way and are genetically closer to us humans.

“Fascinating is a word I use for the unexpected. In this case, I should think interesting would suffice.” Spock

Live long and prosper.

vulcan salute michele roohani

Beautiful naked bodies

I saw these naked bodies last week in the science museum. I’ve been trying to see this exhibition for a long time. Gunther von Hagens‘ lifetime work is awe inspiring to say the least.

Gunther von Hagens lovers closeup michele roohani

It’s all about real human bodies preserved through Plastination. It takes more than 1500 hours of work to transform a corps into a plastinate – the near perfect representation of a once living human body. It’s interesting to see  how each body has it own unique features, even on the inside.

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We usually forget that beneath even the most beautiful bodys’ skin lies a skeleton, muscles, several feet of intestines and lots of other goodies!

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This whole experience reminded me of a great rainy day last year when I visited the small Dupuytren museum in the school of medicine in Paris. Just look at the skull of this man hit by a rifle stick in 1807 – he died after two days.

Dupuytren skull michele roohani

And if you are (unlike me) into mythology, you may enjoy seeing a real Kyklōps (cyclops). After being exposed to all of the above, I listened today to my favorite podcast about the history of Brain.

Dupuytren cyclops michele roohani

I am not all flowers and poetry after all, am I?

To see more of the beautiful Joey House go to my post sex, sex, sex here.

added on September 15th 2009:

I have thousands of visitors to this post; can somebody please let me know, who/what is sending you here aside the hunt for beautiful naked bodies?

Fast cars for dummies

The Bugatti Veyron is the most expensive car in the world and it is street legal. The price varies between $1,200,000 to $1,500,000 (by the time I finish this post the falling dollar will make this European made car even more expensive). With a maximum speed of more than 400 km per hour, the Veyron is unmatched in the super sports category and offers a total of 1,001 hp; it is the fastest accelerating car reaching 0-60 in 2.5 seconds.

bugatti expensive car micheleroohani

I took the above picture in Berlin a couple of years ago (the only one in this post I actually took) and decided to do some “soft” research about the subject to share with friends who can be as clueless about this as I am – try not to roll your eyes every time I am stating the obvious. Fasten your seat belts and get ready for testosterone galore:

Stock Car: a souped up version of a factory car that is only allowed to reach top speeds of approximately 187 mph (301 km/h) – the most prominent championship in stock car racing is the NASCAR championship. The 700 horsepower engines of these cars have been altered from their original factory design.

stock car Jacom Stephens

Daytona 500 is one of the most watched events on American television and the most important race in the NASCAR series – it is a 200-lap, 500 mile (805 km) race held annually in Daytona Beach, Florida. Even I have heard of Dale Earnhardt (both father and son)…

Formula One car: a single-seat, open cockpit, open wheel race car with substantial front and rear wings and engine positioned behind the driver. It’s made out of composites of carbon fiber, light but extremely strong. By regulation the cars use rear wheel drive and can handle 900 horsepower (in comparison my car has around 250 hp). The top speed of these cars is around 230 mph (370 km/h).

formula one mark evans

Formula One race, is the highest class of open wheeled auto racing . The “formula” in the name is a set of rules which all participants and cars must meet. The F1 world championship season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix. The big name in this category is Michael Schumacher and his Ferrari. The Indy Racing League is essentially the American version of F1.

Pit Stop: “in motorsports, a pit stop is where a racing vehicle stops in the pits during a race for refuelling, new tires, repairs, mechanical adjustments, a driver change, or any combination of the above” but what is interesting and not so obvious to the non-initiated, is that pit stop work is carried out by up to twenty mechanics (pit crew) and that pit strategy is one of the most important features of the race.

So, this wasn’t that bad, was it? The next step for me would be to actually watch a car race on tv and witness the thunder of roaring engines beating their chests…

Coming to life with an iPod

I love my iPod! It’s ancient but I don’t want to get a new one yet; I have to admit that having a portable music library has not been my primary concern but the podcasts…oh the podcasts…

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Many of my friends have asked about subscribing to podcasts with an iPod (or any other MP3) – this is how I listen to my news from around the world – it’s like TiVo-ing your favorite radio shows; you have to install itunes and take it from there:

1) if you don’t already have itunes download it for free at http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
2) install it
3) go to itune store/podcast http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html
4)search for shows you like halfway through the screen:

podcast, ipod, searching teaching

And the rest is pretty easy. Here are some of the things I listen to: NPR morning news, scientific american , slate magazine, 2000 ans d’histoire, in our time with melvyn bragg, Radio Lab, NYT’s Frank Rich/Maureen Dowd , etc… I do download a “medley” of different stuff and I hardly listen to music on my ipod but that’s just me – the beauty of it all is that I can listen to what I want when I want and with a little gadget (iTrip), it even plays on my car radio.

ipod classical music itunes podcast jazz

Five minutes in the morning to download the podcasts from my computer and this can carry me through Life‘s rush-hour…Happiness is a lot of small/little things.

Carbon Footprint, global swarming

I feel kind of stressed out about this whole carbon footprint calculations. Just took a quiz with them and i am not proud of the result! I am not much of a carnivore but now i have to worry about that “once in a while” steak. A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Reading the Deep Economy, has been revelatory to say the least. I also suggest Bill Mckibben’s article in the NY review of books.

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I just listened to the Slate podcast called global swarming and i have to admit that i agree with the idea. On a more cheerful note Alice Waters should cook for all of us…