Synthesis Studios

Earlier this week, Raffi was wondering what NTP would do with tonight’s leap second. This morning, curiosity got the best of me and I found a good explanation from the German time-keeper maker Meinberg. Basically, NTP will just pass the fact that there is a leap second along to the OS, and it’s up to the OS to decide how to handle it. The really interesting bits come from how the OS then handles it, since most applications can’t handle 23:59:60. If you are really interested, the Meinberg explanation has some great graphs of an NTP client skewing Window’s clock to account for the second.

The really interesting bits come from how the OS then handles it, since most applications can’t handle 23:59:60.

I personally think an easier way to take care of this problem would be for everyone to grab the heaviest object they can find and run east. If Newton knew what he was talking about, we could speed the rotation of the earth and wouldn’t have to bother with leap seconds (then again, that would only be about 8.7×10e-14 of the earth’s mass, and does anyone know how the earth’s population is distributed compared to latitude?)

Many people don’t realize just how important the channel on which they run their wireless network is. Changing the channel can make all the difference for spotty performance; you might be trying to talk over someone. Imagine trying to have a conversation in a crowded room — when the person you are talking to misses a word, you have to repeat yourself. Your computer can have the same problem. I noticed this sitting even at my desk in Porter Square. Eight of the fifteen networks I can see are on channel 6! Every time one of these tries to communicate, it’s going to block the others.

Imagine trying to have a conversation in a crowded room — when the person you are talking to misses a word, you have to repeat yourself. Your computer can have the same problem.

So how do you pick the best channel? Most consumer grade routes, your DLinks and Linksi (is that plural?) will pick channel 6 right out of the box. Channel 6 is right in the center of the bandwidth available for 802.11g, so most WiFi antennae are tuned for it. If you don’t feel like scanning the area to see what’s around you can pick something slightly off of 6. Moving just one number is not always enough to help, as the way the protocol is structured channels within 10 MHz of each other may overlap. This means you’re best off going with something less than 4 or greater than 8.

You might be wondering why this matters. This November (hopefully) the IEEE 802.11n standard will be finalized and we should start to see a lot more devices using it. The added bandwidth and range will be nice, but it is going to amplify this problem. Not only can this reach further, but it has the capability to use two different channels for more bandwidth. Luckily for those of us who want to skirt this problem, all 802.11n transmissions have to be wrapped in an 802.11b header. Because of this we’ll still be able to see and avoid them with our current cards.

If you’re having trouble with your wireless network, it might be worth your time to check out iStumbler, a great tool for seeing what radios are around you. And if you like colorful graphs as much as I do, you’ll be happy to see they have a dashboard plugin to show you what’s in the air.

We’re really happy to announce that David Mellis is heading over to Denmark to join the faculty of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. He will be sorely missed around the office, but for all the reasons to move on, we can’t think of a better one — we’re thoroughly elated for him.

For sometime now, I’ve come to know and rely on the occupant of the first desk’s thoughts and guidance. Since David has joined our team, he has really helped me and Synthesis solidify our relationship with interaction and UX design for both projects we take on for clients, and for those that are our own. I will gladly credit portions of Synthesis’s design strategies for managing innovation, technology, and UX design to David’s presence in the studios.

David embodies the natural curiosity that every practitioner at Synthesis has.

He constantly asks, in his quiet way, what everybody is up to, loves to hear about all the projects (especially the ones he isn’t directly involved in) and isn’t afraid to throw his thoughts into the fray to either add to the conversation, or mix it up when he feels it could go a different way. We’ve learned a lot from him on how to step back and look at the larger picture of a project — not just on how to get a better picture of what we’re building, but also to get a better picture as to how we’re building it: Are we asking the right questions? What’s our role and relationship with the people who are going to be using the project? How do we make sure we’re “right” and not just from a technical perspective, but whether this project is going to resonate in people’s heads? David has been known to ask and challenge us all with the hard questions, but then stick around to help answer them too.

Synthesis is a close-knit family. When one of us leaves, it, or moves on, we all take a second to step back. David: Godspeed, and good luck. We’ll miss you, and come back and visit when you’re in town.

At Synthesis, Wednesday is recess day! Each week, we spend an hour acting slightly more like children than usual and partake in the time-honored post-lunch activity of recess. Depending on the weather and average laziness level of the office, we either head out to a field with a random assortment of sports equipment or stay in and play video games.

Well, that’s the theory at least. It’s actually a lot harder task than you would expect to tear the engineers from their coding.
But, when successful, here is a sampling of the games we have in our recess arsenal:

JEREMYBALL
JeremyBall is a playground game that calls for fast running, quick reflexes, shrewd strategy, and, sometimes, a protractor. Much as the wise Calvin devised Calvinball, our very own Jeremy has created a ridiculous namesake sport. He came up with an initial set of parameters and they have organically grown more and more complicated over the past year. Michael, our intrepid intern from last year, actually spent a while writing down the rules on our internal wiki. Given the length of his documentation, I will spare the gory details of the game play here.

However, to get a basic idea of what the game is all about - imagine baseball, but instead of a baseball, you have both a Frisbee and Nerf football; instead of bases, you have character-themed dodgeballs; instead of organized plays, you have a flurry of projectiles and haphazard running. Can you picture it?

HORSE/ROUND-THE-WORLD
These are really just the standard schoolyard games made more interesting by the fact that none of us are very good at getting a basket. It’s actually probably for the best that we don’t play in an actual schoolyard since small children would almost certainly put us to shame.

FOAM BASEBALL ATTACKS
Every once in a while you will hear a crash and scramble of footsteps… followed by a scream. That’s when you go back to work, knowing that it was just someone throwing a foam baseball at someone else’s head.

Though, technically not a recess game since it’s played at any time, this is a well-loved pastime in the office. I don’t know where the foam baseball originally came from but I do know that it is wise to remember who the last person was to have it. Flinching is not an unusual automatic reaction to coworker visits.

ROCK BAND
When the weather is crummy, we stay inside and bring our rock band (the Synthesuckers) on tour. We belt out the words to songs we’ve never heard before, get shin splints from the drum pedal, and save fallen comrades when a song is tough. Unfortunately, I think we haven’t played since a particularly painful experience repeatedly trying to beat the ten minute epic “Green Grass & High Tides”. The memory of that trauma should subside soon, I hope…

NINJA TENNIS
Before Rock Band arrived and became the star of the Synthesis video game lineup, the indoor-recess (ahem, Wiicess) game of choice was Wii Sports. More specifically, it was 4 player Wii Tennis played with 2 people. Controlling one player with each hand, Tucker and Jeremy championed the introduction of this utterly confusing game to the office.