Superficial Intelligence

About eight months ago I decided I wanted to start a blog and actually keep it alive. So far, I've been able to manage that. In less than eight months, I have published 100 posts. And I'm very excited about it. So excited in fact that I decided to celebrate with a review of some of my favorite posts, a new comic strip, and a totally new design. I have been working on this design for a while and I'm happy with the end result. Let me know what you think!

In these eight months, I have been trying to define what this blog is actually about. Why is it called Superficial Intelligence? I don't think I'm there yet, since I am still at the beginning of this growth process, but it's starting to come into focus. And I think the new subtitle is a part of this. I have recollected some of my favorite posts and some which I believe are representative of what this blog is about (whatever that may be). Here are my 10 picks (in chronological order):

Leaving Cuba
A.I. Comic Strip - Search
My Experience as an Intern at IBM
Never Eat More Than One Fortune Cookie
Quiz Kong Paper Prototype
Vending Machines and User Interfaces
Celebrating Six Months
Old Drawings: Dinosaurs
Old Drawings: Copying Other Drawings
On Which Side of the Sidewalk Do You Walk?

Finally, here is a long due new Superficial Intelligence comic strip. Enjoy! (Click on the picture to view a larger image)

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog! Let's hope these first 100 posts are just the beginning. Thanks!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 01:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Some web cartoonists have been experimenting with just that. Using video streaming services, they let you watch as they draw the following day's comic strip. I've already seen two artists trying this out: Scott Kurtz, from PvP, and Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade. I think what they are doing is simply awesome. Watching a real pro doing all the computer drawing and editing is really useful for aspiring artists such as me. If you're interested, check out their live streams at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/htmw for PvP and http://www.ustream.tv/channel/penny-arcade-tv for Penny Arcade. Of course, they probably won't be drawing at the time you click on the link, but you can still watch some of their recordings. You can also stay tuned to their respective blogs for announcements of drawing schedules. Be sure to give it a try!

As an aside, this is my 99th post. I've got some surprises coming up in my next post, so stay tuned!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 01:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Twitter has been around for a while now. I have been reluctant to join for a long time. I didn't really see the value of it. But this week, I decided to give it a chance. I will try it out for a few weeks and see how it turns out. There are few reasons for giving it a try.
First, one of my reasons for blogging is to create a social presence. It is in my interest to become an active collaborator and contributor in the web community. For this, I think it is necessary that I establish a social presence. That people can recognize me. It's an important step to building credibility in this particular community.
Second, Twitter seems to be used by many of the authors of blogs I read daily. Even webcomic artists use it. Twitter provides a better way to get a gist of how they think and what it takes to be an influencial person like them in this community.
Third, I just want to see what all the fuss is about. Twitter has become very popular and there must be a reason for that. I may not know what it is exactly, but that is exactly what I intend to find out.
If you're interested in what I have to write in Twitter, check out my Twitter RSS feed at: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/14465965.rss
What are your thoughts on Twitter?

Posted by Fernando Torre at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I couldn't resist the horrible pun in the title. I am just too excited with my early birthday gift. My wife gave me a Zune mp3 player. Now, why not an iPod? The thing is that I specifically asked for a non-iPod mp3 player. I'm still not completely sure why I prefer a Zune to an iPod, but here are some possibilities:

- Everyone has an iPod. It's too common. And when people get stuff just because everyone else has it, then it just makes me want to get it less. I guess growing up in the non-popular crowd does that to you. (There are some exceptions of course, such as food).

- For some reason, I don't like the wheel thingy used for navigation in the iPods. I am happy with clicking up, down, left, and right.

- Some people don't get Zunes just because they love to hate Microsoft. And of course, Microsoft is made for just that. But still, no matter how much we love to hate it, we must admit that many of their products are actually good and that they've made some very neat advances in the field.

- Apple is an awesome company, but for some reason I've never considered myself an Apple guy. That would probably change if I got an iPhone, but meanwhile, I'll just keep being a non-Apple guy.

Regardless of the mixed reviews the Zune has received, I have found it to be a fine piece of hardware. Some features are nonintuitive the first time you use it, but become quite easy to use afterwards. I am happy with my new toy and expect to catch up with WebbAlert, now that I can watch it on the go!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One of the cool projects I'm working on this semester is the one for an HCI class I'm taking. For my project, I decided to research interactions using Wiimotes. Together with two classmates, we are investigating the differences between using one Wiimote at a time versus using two Wiimotes at a time. This is analogous to using one hand at a time vs. using two hands in our daily lives. There are some obvious advantages to using two hands. But for different types of tasks, we believe this difference is not the same. There are tasks that really benefit from having the two hands, but there are other tasks where having an extra hand may not add much (drawing, for example). That is why we have set to investigate these differences further.

Next week we hope to be having our user tests. Let's see what comes out of this!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today was a very interesting day for me. The instructor for the class that I am a T.A. (Teaching Assistant) for is out of town this week and left me in charge of giving the class lectures. I have spoken to large groups of people many times before, but actually giving a college lecture is still quite a different experience.

I had no problem with the material, since it is an area that I know well and really enjoy. The class is called "Introduction to Internet Programming" and today we were discussing basic Javascript, which I am using for my HCI class project. I had no problem with the class size either. Less than 15 students attended. I even did ok with timing too. I managed to produce almost 40 minutes of lecture time (it is a 50-minute class).

In fact, the students may have not even noticed anything wrong with the class. But for me, it just felt weird. The reason for this is because I still don't feel that I belong at the other side of the podium. I still see myself too much as a student. I sometimes even forget that I am already an engineer! (That's the problem with going straight to graduate school.) What I need to do is internalize the fact that I am an engineer, that I am a professional in my field already. Only then will I feel that I am qualified to be on the other side of the podium.

I have two more classes to go, so I hope that by the end of the week my mindset has changed! It wouldn't hurt if the students actually learn something too.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Have you ever noticed how people in the U.S. tend to walk on the right side of the sidewalk? Just as if they were driving (which you have to do on the right side of the road in the U.S.), people tend to use the right side of the sidewalk. Doing so helps somewhat in avoiding collisions. But, exactly why does this happen? Under what conditions? Is it really statistically significant or are my observations just not accurate enough? This would make for some interesting research.

Doing a quick search on Google Scholar, the most similar research paper I found was one from 1975 where they studied how people tended to avoid certain types of people as they walked. The paper, which is "Beauty is Power: The Use of Space on the Sidewalk" by James Dabbs and Neil Stokes, found that walkers deviated from their path to stay farther away from a male than a female, farther from two people than one person, and farther from a beautiful woman than an unattractive one. Their theory was that beauty, number, and sex were aspects of power which served to dominate various amounts of space.

So, in their case, users adapted what they understood as power to their walking habits, most probably not even being aware of such actions. As for walking on the right side of the sidewalk, what motivates this behavior? Is it because we are used to driving on the right side of the road? I believe this is the reason. When people don't have a set of rules for a setting, they apply the most similar ones they know. In the case of walking, the most similar situation to moving and avoiding collisions for which people have any rules is driving. Therefore, they apply their rule of using the right side to avoid collisions to walking.

Many more research questions can be asked about this. Does the pattern change when the number of people changes? Do different types of people exhibit different behaviors (such as left-handed people)? Does this behavior change in countries where people drive on the left side of the road? And, moving to the area that I like more, does this have any design implications for programmers? I know that question may seem like a long shot, but if it is true that when lacking a set of rules people use the most applicable ones in their repertoire, then we can use this knowledge to predict or at least study better the actions of users on unfamiliar interfaces. Whatever the results and the implications of the study, I think it would be very cool if someone dug into this topic.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was going to post yesterday night, but there was no internet connection at my house. I felt almost useless, since most of my schoolwork also requires the internet. Anyway, this is the last post of this week of old drawings, which I hope you have enjoyed. Today I'll just show some miscellaneous drawings (and some that I just forgot to post in previous posts). Here we go.

This one is one of my favorite cartoons that I've made up. It's a lizard-like creature that subsequently appeared in many of my drawings (sometimes hidden in the background). His name is Jeraim, a variation of a name which I got from random searching in the Bible. The Bible is actually a fun place to look for strange names for your characters (not always for your children!).

Here is Jeraim in color next to a self-portrait. When this was drawn (in middle school), corduroy pants and Hawaiian shirts were in fashion.

You may remember from the comic strip drawings that I used to draw cartoons of my ninth-grade classmates. Here is one drawing with all of them in a skate park.

Going back to my anime-inspired era during middle school, here is a funny drawing. It has Pikachu doing some sort of Kamehameha thing, similar to Dragonball Z.

I showed a picture featuring "The Blue Flame" before, but here he is in color. Notice how even his hair is on fire.

As a Final Fantasy fan, I can't avoid drawing characters from this series. Here are the ladies from FF7.

This next two drawings are a bit more recent (less than two years ago). This first one is a cartoon representation of my Speed Team while I worked as an intern at IBM. They were a really cool bunch!

Finally, drawn during the same internship, as a suggestion from one of my teammates, here is XML Guy! For those of you who are programmers, notice his body tag in his chest (complete with surrounding arm brackets) and his extensible cape.

Well, that's it for this week. Someday I hope to show even older drawings from when I was in elementary school, which I have at my parents' house. I also hope to keep drawing some new ones, including the comic strips, which I have neglected this semester. But for now, I simply hope you have enjoyed this drawing week's posts.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Something I used to do a lot during middle school, which I believe helped me train my observation skills, was copy other drawings. When I say copy, I don't mean tracing. I would have the drawing I wanted to reproduce next to my blank piece of paper and try to draw it as exact as possible, sometimes scaling it a little. These drawings are some of my favorites, because the quality is much better than that which I can produce by myself. All of these drawings were done when I was in middle school:

I drew these rain forest animals from a How-to-draw book:

This car was from a video game magazine, probably from a Gran Turismo review:

From that same magazine, I drew this ninja, though I can't remember from which game it was. The original drawing was about two inches wide.

This one was from a Xenogears Strategy Guide. I never got to finish the coloring.

This last one is my favorite.I started inking it, but decided to ink a copy instead because I was afraid to ruin it. Although I'm not a Mortal Kombat fan, this drawing of Sub-Zero is just too awesome:

Although copying other drawings always results in high-quality drawings for me, I think I don't do them often because I prefer to work on my own creative skills. Someday, hopefully, I will be able to produce similar drawings all by myself.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I have always been a fan of dinosaurs. Jurassic Park used to be one of my favorite movies as a kid. And many of my earliest drawings are of dinosaurs. They are always fun and relatively easy to draw (no hair!). Here are some fairly recent depictions of dinosaurs.

I drew this one sometime during high school:

This one is also a classroom doodle during high school:

I drew these "ready to fight" guys during class too:

This is another of those few drawings that I have colored. Drawing all the scales on the dinosaurs and getting the colors for the lava right were really time-consuming.

This last one is a very recent one, drawn as a classroom doodle about a month ago.

As a bonus, here is a drawing that Lidia requested in the comments of my last post. It is another one of those single-panel comic strips I drew in high school. The title reads "The classroom before a test".

Posted by Fernando Torre at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One aspect of drawing I have always liked is being able to tell a story. Ever since I was a little kid, I would draw stories (with my limited English vocabulary I would come up with names for characters such as Mr. Monkey and Mr.Squirrel). The stories were never really planned, so most of them took crazy turns or simply never got finished. Unfortunately, the older drawings are at my parent's house in Puerto Rico, so I will show ones from middle school and later. You may notice that the drawing quality is much lower. I would usually sacrifice quality for speed when drawing comic strips. If I tried too hard to make it look perfect, I would get discouraged before finishing the first page.

This first image is the first piece and chapter of a comic strip I drew during middle school featuring every one of the guys in my class (except for two that I was just never satisfied with how I drew them). This one lasted for about 6 pages. Bear in mind that the text is in Spanish.

In high school, I had to live at the during the week and had four roommates. I made up a comic strip while I was there where my roommates and I escaped from the school and some faculty members went after us. The chase took us through the mountains, to an underground secret base, and even to outer space. Once again, I made the story up as I drew, often not knowing myself what would happen next. Other students enjoyed reading my comic strip notebook and would especially enjoy seeing the faculty in action (always a reason for laughter). The first pages had horrible quality, but as people started asking for more, my drawings improved a little bit. Here is one early scene of "Room #4 Comics" (Cuarto Cuatro Comics, in Spanish, named after our bedroom's number), where we see our first confrontation with a teacher:

This scene has us in an elevator in an underground secret base:

Here is the faculty in a battle pose:

And this is where we escape to outer space (you may recognize the spaceship from a previous post):

The comic strip went on to have around 50 pages and nine chapters before the school year ended. I tried to continue on subsequent years, but I had lost the momentum I had gained with the original one. And the fact that half of my roommates had graduated and didn't bug me to read it everyday helped too.

I did, however, draw some single panel cartoons that next year of high school. I would post these weekly at the library's entrance. Here is an example. The residential teacher is making sure that no one is in other rooms after bedtime, which was a very common event at that school:

In college, I did not draw as many comic strips as I did in high school, but managed to squeeze one in every once in a while. Here is half of one I did as part of a handout for a school organization:

I hope you have been able to see at least some improvement over time. The ones I have drawn for this blog were pretty simple, but hopefully not too bad. I'll try my skills again for my 100th post which is coming up soon!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 01:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There came a time during middle school where most of my drawing inspiration came from anime. I started practicing drawing full-figured women with anime-style eyes and strong, bulky men (inspired by Dragonball Z, which I would watch every afternoon). All of these drawings, except the last one, were drawn during middle school.

Typical example of many of my drawings.

A lady character (one of few colored drawings).

Sword dude.

A trio of heroes I made up. They were (from left to right) the Blue Flame, the Green Flame, and the Yellow Flame. I often had trouble drawing faces, so sometimes, as in this drawing, I would just draw the bodies.

An unfinished drawing containing some of the characters that inspired my drawing style during my middle school era.

This one is from my first year of college. In all those years, my anime-drawing skills didn't really improve much.

Although this style of drawing is fun, it's still a bit too realistic (and consequently, harder to draw) for me. I always wanted to reach the level of superhero comic book artists, but that really takes a ton of practice. I think I enjoy more drawing comic strip style cartoons anyway.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am happy to say that this blog has reached two milestones today. It has received its 100th comment. Thank you, Lidia! Also, as of right now, it has received exactly 2000 visits! The blog has been steadily growing at a nice rate. It took more than four months to get the first 1000 visits. Now, a little less than three months later, it has received another 1000 visits. The last month alone has seen almost 450 visits. Thanks to all of you for reading!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I tend to enjoy drawing cartoons more than I do drawing realistic objects. Still, it really helps to try to do just that every once in a while. My attempts still don't look realistic enough, but they were not too bad. Here are a few (click on them to see a bigger picture):

My parents' house (I think I drew this in middle school and while at school from memory)

An office chair

A tree at my high school (I ended up drawing a cartoon anyway)

This last one I think is pretty cool. I built a lego submarine-type ship that I was really proud of. It didn't last too long, but I managed to capture it in a drawing from almost every angle before it got destroyed (probably by one of my younger sisters). I think I drew this in middle school.

Lego Ship

You may have noticed that none of these "realistic" drawings include humans or animals. That's because those are way too hard to draw. It's one of the reasons I prefer to draw cartoons. And it's why most of the rest of the drawings that I will be showing this week will be cartoonish.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today I begin a week in this blog where I will go through some of my old drawings, mostly drawn from middle school to the first years of college. Drawing has been an important part of my life, although lately I have not had time to pursue this talent as much as I would like. I have always enjoyed the fact that I can put into visual form almost anything that pops up in my imagination. This creative side of me is probably what got me to transfer in college from Electrical Engineering to Computer Engineering, where I can put my imagination to better use.

I'll start the week with some pieces of art drawn in one of the best environments for drawing: the classroom. I have done a great deal of drawing during boring classes. And quite often these doodles actually turn out to be pretty good. Here are some that I like (from my high school and early college era):

Ant with Apple

Band (incomplete)

Sleeping (a self-portrait)

Surprised Student (the sort of thing that you come up with during class)

Doodle in the midst of boring Circuit stuff

More doodles

A cool Jamaican/Reggae dude

I hope you enjoyed today's drawings. Stay tuned for more throughout the week!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As the Internet becomes a more integral part of our culture, it is interesting to see many of our offline customs translate to the online world. Every year it seems online pranks on April 1st keep rising. And the best pranksters tend to be the biggest companies. Here are a few examples of today's funniest online practical jokes:

Google offering search one day in advance
All YouTube featured videos redirecting to Rick Roll (this video)
Virgle project to colonize Mars
Gmail Custom Time
BBC migrating penguins video
Psychics confirm global warming
A great list of fake products by ThinkGeek

Happy April Fools Day!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)