Mr. ReBrick visited Kura Tawhiti

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Feb 2, 2014 in LEGO | 0 comments

Mr. ReBrick, during his visit to LUG 4/2 visited the Kura Tawhiti rocks today. Some scenes of the 2005 movie “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” were shot on this location. Mr. ReBrick took all his climbing gear with him and had a fantastic time.

He also took a interactive panorama of the location, so that you can get an impression of its beauty:

Here is the location of Castle Hill rocks on Google Maps:

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Mr. ReBrick visited the Castle Hill Cave

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Feb 2, 2014 in LEGO | 0 comments

Mr. ReBrick was on a big adventure tour through Canterbury, the home of LUG 4/2. He visited the amazing Castle Hill Cave. Thank god he remembered to bring all his safety gear.

At the entrance of the cave, Mr. ReBrick posed for an interactive panorama created with my LEGO Panorama Maker. Here is the resulting panorama:

And for all the non Kiwis, here is the location of this amazing Cave. It takes one hour to walk through it.

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The Press reports on our colour study

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Dec 31, 2013 in Featured, Uncategorized | 0 comments

The Press reports today on our study Semi-Automatic Color Analysis For Brand Logos. The article focuses on the national flag section of our paper. According to The Press, I am the acting director of the HIT Lab NZ! Oh well, at least they spelled my name correctly.

“Semi-automatic color analysis for brand logos” study featured on Radio New Zealand

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Dec 19, 2013 in Press | 0 comments

Adrian Clark and me have developed a software tool that can semi-automatically analyse colour in large sets of graphics. We told Alison Ballance from Radio New Zealand, how the tool, which could help designers choose the best colour for a brand logo, was tested in an analysis of flags of the world.

Honda CB77 Superhawk LEGO MOC

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Nov 21, 2013 in LEGO | 0 comments

This is a model of the famous Honda CB77 Superhawk on which Robert Pirsig rode across the USA with his son Chris back in the 60′. Their journey has been captured in the global bestselling book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“. Robert Pirsig’s philosophy of the Metaphysics of Quality is the basis of most of my LEGO models and this motorcycle is a tribute to Pirsig’s mind changing ideas. You can see more photos of the model at my flickr set.

You can make this model become an official LEGO set by voting for it over at LEGO Cuusoo. Here is a poster of the model:

Interaction Records – A New Approach To Publishing Your Work

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Oct 23, 2013 in Culture | 0 comments

We introduce a new academic journal: Interaction Records. This journal will focus on Human Computer Interaction and all its related disciplines. Papers submitted to Interaction Records must have been rejected by other publication channels at least three times. Articles will be published together with the original reviews and a response from the authors. This Open Peer Commentary approach will provide a public window into the peer-review process. It will show the “interaction records” between the authors and the reviewers.

Submission can now be made at http://www.interaction-records.org

Interaction Records embraces the Open Access Policy. All papers will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

CHI, a community of procrastinators?

Posted by Christoph Bartneck on Oct 9, 2013 in Culture, Event | 0 comments

I just visited the Precision Conference website for SIGCHI and it shows the number of logins for the last couple of days. It is amazing how dramatically it spiked on the day of the submission deadline. The CHI community seems to be filled with deadline junkies. For a community that is interested in improving the human experience, we cannot be proud of ourselves.