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Kazam El Magic***
Kaz is my new hero.
Today he claimed that i hadnt kicked a footy ball for years and yet he managed to get off an absolutely perfect kick. Now what do i mean by perfect kick? Let me explain…
It was a nice warm day. The light breeze rushed through our hair and had our shirts flapping. The perfect recipe for having a good time kicking a footy around at Victoria Park. Such a good day, that there was a fella laying down sun baking next to a pole in the middle of the park.
So Harrison, Ali, George and myself were just passing time by kicking the ball around.
A very ridiculously bad kick by George saw the ball somehow bounce into my hands. I paused and looked across the park. Bouncing the ball acouple of times as i decided who i was going to kick it to. Harrison, Ali or George?
As i scanned across the park i noticed a familiar face by a tree.
“KAAAAAZZZZ!!!!” I yelled out.
Kaz looked over to me, the distant figure yelling out his name.
I bounced the ball a few times, got into position and booted the ball into his direction. Of course my kick was very inaccurate which i will blame on the wind. Yes i will thank the breeze for providing me an excuse.
Kaz got up and lightly jogged over to where the ball had come to a rest.
He picked up the ball and tried to warn me about what was about to happen.
“I haven’t kicked a ball in years” Kaz said.
He released the ball from his hand and with one swift motion of his leg the ball had become airborne.
My initial reaction was “Ok not too bad” as the ball began to travel in my general direction. When suddenly the wind began to have its effect on the balls path. The more and more the ball curved away from me the more i began thinking to myself “This is going to be awfully close to that guy who is laying by that pole sun baking”.
What i should have done at this point was yell out “HEY!!! Man sun baking by the pole! Take guard!!!” but all that my mouth could do was pull a huge grin in anticipation for what i knew was going to happen.
*TING* Went the pole as it was firmly struck by the ball AND *SMAAAACCCKKK*. The ball had bounced off the pole and hit the poor sun baking fella right on the forehead!
I remained in a very confused state. Should i appear apologetic for what had just happened or should i burst out laughing?!
My body was doing a very good job of trying to urge me to take the second option. However as the “sun baking man” stood up angrily and took out his ipod headphones from his ears i managed to somehow hold all of my laughing in for a moment and try to appear semi-apologetic on Kaz’s behalf.
He began to slowly walk over towards me in a very angry way. He appeared as though he wanted to “punch on” as Ali described it. He obviously though that I was the one who kicked the ball.
I quickly put on my apologetic act and said that i was sorry.
“Was that necessary?!?!” The angry guy said.
Once again i said that i was sorry. However on the inside my answer to his question was “No it wasn’t necessary. However you getting hit in the face by Kaz’s kick did make my day that little bit more amusing”
He managed the cool down and walk back to where he was sun baking.
I tried to walk away but all that i managed to be able to do was fall on the floor and burst out laughing quietly.
The thought of what his experience would have been was just too hilarious. The guy was sun baking so his eyes were closed so he couldn’t see the ball coming. The *TING* sound created by the connection between the ball and the pole would have shocked him into opening his eyes only to see a ball zooming right into his face!
So his experience would have been something like this.
*Blackness*
MMMmmm its such a beautiful day. I am laying here in victoria park sun baking and listening to my favourite songs on my iPod.
*Blackness*
MMMmmm its so peaceful here.
*TING*!!!!!!
*opens eyes*
!!!!!!!!!! OH FUCK !!!!!!!
*SMACK* !!!!!
So i would like to give a toast to Kaz for an absolutely flawless kick which could never be repeated. It should go in the guiness records.
He has now earned the nickname “Kazam El Magic***”
Need more blogs
Ok Jeerish is blogging constantly and its making me feel that my overall count of 4 blogs isnt enough. Im going to set my blog as my browser home page so that i remind myself to blog more often.
There are some things that i have to consider.
There is a fundamental interactive design problem of making a multi-way conversation with a shared map work seemlessy. There are other issues such as logistical problems that need to be thought about, however these are all very small extras. The fundamentals of the way the communication works will be what makes or breaks this application.
So for now i am going to have to forget about some of the small logistical problems and focus on the actual interactive design problem.
Scenario
Its a Friday night and i am bored alone at home.
I take out my iPhone and take a look at which of my friends are currently “active”. I make a multiway phone call with some selected friends who are active. We decide to go to the city somewhere. Where in the city though? What places will be buzzing tonight?
We use the application to pan accross a map of the city. The map displays publically avaliable events, their details and some statistics. As we pan through the city we see that the bar that we intended on going to only has 120 people publically registered through the system. We scrap that idea and continue to pan across until we come across Havana which displays 300 publically registered users, 4 of which are freinds from our contacts list.
We decide to register for Havana.
Later that night, the night wears off and Havana begins to die down. We use our iPhones to see which other of our friends had registered at events in the city that night. We find that several of our friends had decided to go to a club just down the street. We call up that group and decide to meet up for a late night meal and chat when we finish at the club.
Almighty Kaz
Spoke to Kaz today in the lab about my idea and he was able to share some good ideas. He brought up the idea that for the application to be successful it has to be able to provide something which is much supperior to the old fashion way of organising a weekend out or organising a party. If the program doesnt make things very easy for the user then the novelty of the program will wear off and people will stop using it.
Ok so the way i usually plan my weekend is that im home alone and totally bored on a friday after uni, i call up some of my friends and see who wants to do something. So to be able to create a program that is very useful i need to figure out what the problems are with organising my night out in this ‘old fashioned’ way. So with the problems identified i will be able to start designing properly.
Ill think more about the problems in the old fashioned way of planning and post it on the next blog entry
Ideas
Ok so i have a basic idea of what my application is going to be about.
Its going to be based on that ’smart-mob’.
Basically I want to create an application which allows people to register what they are going to get up to on the weekend. I dont want to say anything about the specifics just yet. The fundamental idea is to have a map of Sydney with events labeled on the map. You are able to see who has registered that they are going to go to this event and you can register yourself for the event.
A friends list would be useful so that you can track where your friends are going to be.
Here is a quick example.
Martha would open the application on her iphone (her phone looks like an ipod anyways), she would scroll across the map of Sydney and register herself for Saturday night Havana.
Later in the week i would be deciding where to go on Saturday night. I would be panning around my map of Sydney looking at the published events. I would see from the user interface somehow that somebody from my friend’s list has registered that they are going to Havana on Saturday night, so i would register myself as well.
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