Recently I’ve been exploring Neo4j, a graph database that makes it easy to see the connections between things. It’s a great way to visualise Twitter data, for example. Yesterday I went to see the McOnie Company’s Jekyll & Hyde at the Old Vic. I had the pleasure of reviewing the McOnie Company’s original show Drunk … Continue reading
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Adventures in coding-land
I dreamed about a canvas painted in thick smears of black, spread so thickly the strokes seemed to move, roiling over and around each other giving depth and heft to the obscurity. Smudges of color which never quite resolved into shapes blossomed and faded on the surface, giving the impression of sinister figures shrouded in … Continue reading
Raineth Every Day
“I like being in the car when there’s a storm outside,” said Curmudgeonly Former Housemate (CFH). “It’s like being inside a turtle shell.” And what a storm there was. Outside pedestrians huddled miserably under covered awnings and in the mouth of a shopping arcade, wind lashing the rain into their faces from a prematurely dark … Continue reading
On Imaginary Things
San Francisco always seems imaginary to me. Unlike many of my friends I’ve never felt the urge to move here because it would be like asking to live in a daydream: beautiful and otherworldly but insubstantial. But then, the digital worlds that we build of which Silicon Valley is the spiritual home are no more … Continue reading
Paperweight
Smooth, dark and perfectly square with beveled edges, the unexpected small chunk of marble peered out of my mailbox. No address, no label, no packaging, no explanation. Just a two-inch square cube of marble. It’s moments like these, when confronted with a hitherto unimagined circumstance, that I am reminded how ripe the world is with … Continue reading
La Serenissima: Quiet interludes
Tragically I didn’t win this summer’s scholarship competition on World Nomads, but here’s the entry I submitted: A Serene Interlude in Venice When I am in Venice it seems as though such a tiny string of islands couldn’t possibly be sufficient to hold the volume of people threading their way through the narrow streets and … Continue reading
Research at the Art Hackathon
Earlier this year I got involved with a project that some friends were running in London to promote creative partnerships between artists and technologists. The Art Hackathon team wanted some help conducting research on their initiative, particularly on the experiential side of how participants thought about their participation in the event. We wanted to get … Continue reading
Plotting Citymapper’s Global Routes (for Libertine)
Libertine recently published my article on Citymapper: The journey planner app makes navigating big cities easy – but how would it fare in places with less defined transportation systems? I’ve long been an admirer of Citymapper‘s easy-to-use, stylish public transportation app for getting around London. Recently, the app seamlessly transitioned me from London to San … Continue reading
Empathy Tech: Solving Problems Through Perspective (for Libertine)
Libertine recently published my article on empathy tech: Lurking behind every technical product is a problem; a problem designers are attempting to solve through engineering. This fundamental principle has brought us everything from plastic cups that fit snugly in the water cooler dispenser to the lines of code that automatically sync your flight confirmation email with … Continue reading
Diary of an Expat Lady: Winter Edition
A few years ago I discovered E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady and various sequels. With its whimsical epistolary style underscored by deeper ruminations on feminist social themes of the 1930s and 40s, Delafield’s writing is a clear forebear to Bridget Jones’s Diary and similar works. Her influence is also the reason that … Continue reading
In a Merry Hour: Caitlin E McDonald 