From the "Oh of Course" Department

When watching the Disney short "Donald in Mathmagic Land" (Youtube link) on my computer just now, there's a part where the narrator is showing a rifle-brandishing Donald about Pythagoras and starts to talk about the golden ratio, and shows examples of it that can be found in a pentagram and then shows the golden ratio as a rectangle, and it finally occurred to me..



That my iMac's screen was built to exactly this proportion. Yeah I'm slow.

It's interesting to visualize a typical desktop layout over top of the divisions of the golden ratio, though. Web browser or word processor on the left, email program on the bottom right, instant messenger window in the top right and contact list tucked in to the left of it. Very close to what my screen typically looks like.

PS watch that cartoon, it's very good and has some neat visualizations in it.

Labels: Cartoons, Disney, Geometry, HCI, Mathematics, UI Design