So Much Time So Little To Do

The Last Word

2012-01-01T14:47:00.001-08:00

On 2011 goes to Woody Guthrie all the way from 1942

1. Work more and better
2. Work by a schedule
3. Wash teeth if any
4. Shave
5. Take bath
6. Eat good — fruit — vegetables — milk
7. Drink very scant if any
8. Write a song a day
9. Wear clean clothes — look good
10. Shine shoes
11. Change socks
12. Change bed cloths often
13. Read lots good books
14. Listen to radio a lot
15. Learn people better
16. Keep rancho clean
17. Dont get lonesome
18. Stay glad
19. Keep hoping machine running
20. Dream good
21. Bank all extra money
22. Save dough
23. Have company but dont waste time
24. Send Mary and kids money
25. Play and sing good
26. Dance better
27. Help win war — beat fascism
28. Love mama
29. Love papa
30. Love Pete
31. Love everybody
32. Make up your mind
33. Wake up and fight

--
[via Maria Popova on Brain Pickings]

Greetings from the Future

2011-12-31T21:13:00.000-08:00

Via momentofmoore:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The Ballad Of Halo Jones, 2000AD Prog 451 (1986), artist: Ian Gibson

Stop motion cake

2011-12-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

A first effort no less

Santa explained. Finally

2011-12-08T11:47:00.001-08:00

via

Football

2011-12-06T22:00:00.000-08:00

So, after seventeen years of residence in the US, I saw my first live (American) Football game. It was very exciting. And that is all I have to say on the topic, because otherwise when I talk about it I sound like this:

Do the Dishes, Flash

2011-12-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

[Original from Imgur]

A rapid download of the Casual Gaming World [infographic]

2011-11-22T17:10:00.000-08:00

Source: One More Level Flash Games

Anger

2011-11-22T17:00:00.001-08:00

I love Marc Maron:

"You can think for a long time that you are angry for a reason...But if you just do a little more thinking, you're probably just f***ing angry"

-- Marc Maron

Moonshine

2011-11-14T19:38:00.001-08:00

Dreamworks' artists after-dark projects. This is so inspiring.

Moonshine : Artists after dark from alexis wanneroy on Vimeo.

Meetings with Japanese business partners

2011-11-07T20:02:00.001-08:00

are intimidating from the standpoint of personal technology, not to mention sartorial elegance. Dammit I said don't mention it.

The Setup

2011-10-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

The great site The Setup has an interview with William Gibson containing the following quote, which I like very much:

"Neither hardware nor software excite me very much, after whatever brief (and usually painful) novelty has worn off. Good interface design is as transparent as possible, because I don’t want to have to think about it. I just want to write, or do whatever else I’m doing, and not have to think about whatever I’m doing it on"

I'm Telling you. This Is How It Begins

2011-10-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Rescue and reconnaissance indeed. Japan’s Defense Ministry Develops Ball-Shaped Drone.

Parallel Parking

2011-10-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Parallel Parking from the Mighty Yum Yum London.

Yum Yum London's Website.

Don't Break The Chain

2011-10-09T08:30:00.001-07:00

Great post by blogger Brad Isaac from Lifehacker on Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret:

“Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don’t break the chain, you’ll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides "compounding interest”. Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next."

Rest in Peace

2011-10-06T01:56:00.000-07:00

Things I Hate About Games

2011-09-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

In no particular order of loathing..

Cut Scenes
Skip... Skip... Skip...
SkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkipSkip

Boss Fights
I don't remember a boss fight that wasn't an experience in button mashing frustration. Not since Bowser

Collecting
Picking up audio logs, journal entries, diary pages, tape spools or whatever random miscellaneous crap they are using to string together narrative? Boring.. In fact, any narrative device other than actual gameplay? Boring

Side Quests
I am irresistibly compelled to take these on ad infinitum... Until the point that my in-game to-do list is longer and generates more personal stress than my actual real-life to-do list

Hacking Mini Games*
Let me get this straight, in order to access this secure computer network, I need to win a game of Pipe Mania?

(* With the possible exception of the hacking mini games in Sly Cooper for PS2, which are awesome)

My favorite song about a shuttle disaster

2011-09-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

..Columbia in this case.The Commander thinks Aloud by The Long Winters. If you can listen to this and not feel a lump in your throat, you are possibly lacking a human soul. Go immediately and have yourself tested.

360º video capture for the iPhone

2011-09-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

This is pretty cool.

Crying On Airplanes

2011-08-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

This piece from Brett Martin from This American Life is great. Not saying I have had this exact experience. I'm just saying.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Does it make your mascara run?"

Portal: No Escape

2011-08-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

How many of the folks rhapsodizing about the Portal: No Escape movie have actually played the game?

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a technically impressive, generally outstanding short film however (Spoiler); Everything visually, tonally, sonically and cinematically arresting about this piece is lifted directly from the Valve game. Makes me sad when a 5 minute fan film warrants clamorous praise and attention by adequately capturing what was already excellent about an existing work of art in a medium that still struggles to garner the status of filmed entertainment. Still, have to respect the effort.

In memory of HP

2011-08-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs at D8 in June, 2010:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms. Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular. PCs are going to be like trucks, they are still going to be around. However, only one out of x people will need them.”

Out of Scope

2011-08-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

Move over Synergy. Today's Candidate for permanent retirement to the Idiomatic Pantheon / Management-Speak Hall of Fame is "Boil The Ocean"

Awesome News from Lunchtime

2011-07-18T21:22:00.000-07:00

I hate those guys..

2011-07-02T12:50:00.001-07:00

Intelligentsia!, a photo by nickbilton on Flickr.

Unhip Monkeys

2011-06-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

This piece is (1) from the New Scientist and not (despite all appearances to the contrary) The Onion and (2) definitive and irrefutable proof that civilization is in decline and we are all going to hell. The first advertising campaign for non-human primates. Capuchin monkeys to be exact. Don would have kicked Peggy and Pete out of his office before they had completed the first sentence of this pitch. And then there's this:

Olwell says that developing a campaign for non-humans threw up some special challenges. "They do not have language or culture and they have very short attention spans," he says. "We really had to strip out any hip and current thinking and get to the absolute core of what is advertising"

Right, you had to strip out the hip parts so the stupid monkeys could relate; Because if there's one thing worse than soulless advertising execs, it's unhip monkeys.

What a find..

2011-06-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

10 Google Video Documentaries You Have To Watch from NicheGeek.com. The moon landing/UFO conspiracy theory one with David Icke is wacky, creepy and compelling.

Hermann

2011-06-17T07:20:00.001-07:00

Source: ffffound.com via Colum on Pinterest

This is how my head feels right now

2011-06-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

Must be the jet lag

F*ck You. Pay Me.

2011-05-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

I once read a quote from Bono where Jann Wenner asked him what he had learned from the Rolling Stones:

"Taking care of business. It’s not sexy to not know what’s going on. I always respected Mick for that. He made those guys very wealthy and they made him cool. It’s worth remembering"

In a similar vein, I like this musing from Mike Monteiro on the subject of getting paid for your art:

2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from SanFrancisco/CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

Richer=Poorer

2011-05-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

The non-stop-from-day-one issues with son's new PC remind me of my favorite IT comment ever. After lengthy upgrade from MS Office 2003 to Office 2007; "Remember, it's a richer suite of applications so you should expect things to take longer to start up and run quite a bit slower". I hate PC's.

Peanuts

2011-05-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

Love http://peanutweeter.com/

Admirable Principles

2011-05-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Via John Gruber on Daring Fireball: Steve Jobs to Fortune in 2008:

We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.

(Via Horace Dediu.)

Tape Cassette Inserts

2011-04-25T15:33:00.001-07:00

Tape Cassette Inserts, a set by Jubru on Flickr.

Succession Plan

2011-04-11T22:12:00.000-07:00

From Austin Kleon

Uncanny

2011-04-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

Can we declare a moratorium on articles where partially informed individuals expound in a partially informed way about the so called uncanny valley? This thing is the motherlode for lazy, google-educated journalism. I get it, you can use Wikipedia. Go, I dunno, Make Something.

Scared

2011-04-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

Watch this great talk by Merlin Mann from Webstock on the topic of being scared. Stick with it. Uncomfortable viewing at times, but so worth it. Raw, courageous, earnest, succinct and different.

Illustration from the site of the awesome Alex Noriega

Hero

2011-03-28T22:08:00.000-07:00

Frank Oz visited us at work today. A hero to many. Incredibly thrilling.

Fictional Archaeology

2011-03-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

Re-reading a great Blog post by Sizemore about the BBC Mythology Engine Project, where BBC have attempted to catalog and index the Dr. Who universe in a dynamic form, sort of a visual and interactive representation of the stories, timelines, characters and arcs of the world of the Dr. - and it got me thinking about how this transmedia stuff is older than we suppose it to be.

When you watch Blade Runner (if you have a soul) you don't just want to know about Pris and Rachel and Deckard and their stories, you want to know more about just about everything that appears in the frame. I mean *look* at it:

Same goes for Star Wars. Both of these movies were early cinematic experiences for many of our generation. For me - Blade Runner left me in a state of sensory overload, completely agog; reeling and curious, Star Wars had the same impact and also made me want every toy in that universe, me and very other eight year old on the planet for that matter..

Fictional Mythology has become a given for modern story tellers, a requirement. Jesse Alexander is the first person I heard speaking articulately about this topic, and Sizemore (writer Mike Atherton) is also an impassioned proponent. J.J. Abrams is a professor emeritus, Cloverfield goes so far with this that the underlying mythology is denser, more layered and detailed than the movie itself.

As a kid, my favorite comics (and the kind I still love) had *tons* of peripheral information around the scaffolding of the main story-line, which you could ignore it if you chose to, but if you wanted to know about the details of the universe, it was all right there for the taking in the margins. Some great examples here of Comic Book Cartography, nerd heaven. Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mimics this style, in a clever, snarky post-modern way. The idea that the story is what hooks you in, but the potential to explore a deeper world is there for the asking; That the main story is a thin skin, a membrane over a deeper mythology, is not a new thing, but has definitely become more commonplace in mainstream entertainment in recent years. Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica all had a lot more going on under the surface than met they eye, but they managed to pull this off without alienating the mainstream consumer. You can still watch the show and take it at face value.

Can a rich and fascinating world compensate for a weak story? Certainly not - (I think people will quickly forget a universe if there aren't great stories being told within it). But a rich and complex world that has the spine of strong stories running through it is 100% pure grade Crack Cocaine. I love that geeks have taken over the world; Long may they reign.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

Modern cinematic cliché #0001

2011-02-16T01:07:00.000-08:00

While I am over-caffeinated, in the grip of prolonged sleeplessness and over-dosing on in-flight action movies, I thought I should mention; I am so over the shock car-crash shot. It has gotten so whenever I watch a car interior scene where the camera pans to look over the passenger / driver's shoulder (with them looking towards camera) I physically brace for the inevitable looming oncoming vehicle. Can't remember the first time I saw this shot, I think it was in an early X-Files episode. I guess we have the ubiquity of modern compositing software to thank for it, as this would have been a hard shot to pull off pre-digital. Now it feels like it a template. Am open to correction on that, but I don't recall seeing one of these shots pre-1995. Off the top of my head, I have seen this in..

The Bourne Supremacy
Adaptation
Red
Heat
No Country for Old Men

Here is the Adaptation scene:

So, please just stop with that ok?

Ha-Ha. Wait..really?

2011-02-11T08:21:00.000-08:00

Read this: Jesse Schell on the Social Experience in gaming. He has an uncanny ability to make an inherently terrifying prospect seem absurdly comic and maybe even kind of fun:

"Facebook credits will become an international currency as important (or more important?) than the dollar, euro, or yen"

Also love this comment:

"A game is nothing but a problem solving opportunity that you engage in because you feel like it. Mostly things like Foursquare are just games that aren’t much fun yet"

Watch This: Life in a Day

2011-02-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

Trailer for the (overused word alert) "Crowdsourced" Ridley Scott produced Life in a Day

From Wired

Watch This: Jake Shimabukuro plays "Bohemian Rhapsody" [#TED]

2011-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

"If life were only like this.."

2011-01-27T06:35:00.000-08:00

Reasons To Be Cheerful

2011-01-25T22:10:00.000-08:00

Part Three..

A letter from Mr. Murch

2011-01-23T20:58:00.000-08:00

The one and only Walter Murch makes his case against the merit of 3D stereoscopic movies in this letter to Roger Ebert. Can't say I agree on all (or many) points, but no arguing with his filmmaker cred

Thank you internets

2011-01-23T20:48:00.000-08:00

Weaver as Ripley in her role-winning Alien audition

Tom Waits serenades New York

2011-01-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

Tom Waits - Potter's Field from Phil Bebbington on Vimeo.

"I'll start talking from the brim of a thimble full of whiskey
on a train through the Bronx that will take you just as far
as the empty of a bottle to the highway of a scar
that stretched across the blacktop of my cheek like that
and then ducks beneath the brim of a fugitive's hat
and you'll learn why liquor makes a stool pigeon rat on every face
that ever left his shadow down on saint marks place"

"I'm a Republic Commando.."

2011-01-15T21:55:00.000-08:00

Is what this imposing member of the 501st growled at me when I asked him.."so, are you a Dark Trooper?". I felt like such an idiot.. I thought he was going to pop out that little spring loaded dagger and shiv me (a fate I would have richly deserved).

(From the Clone Wars Season 3 premiere)

Traveling To The East

2011-01-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

Fortune cookie from today's lunch bodes well for February's trip:

They had me at "The World is a Vampire"

2011-01-13T21:33:00.000-08:00

Happy to see Isaac back in action.

Read This: The Middle Take

2011-01-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

Clive Thompson on How Tweets and Texts Nurture In-Depth Analysis. A glimmer of hope for the human race that our attention span has not dwindled to an unusable, infinitesimal size

[From Wired.com]

At the tipping point of the year

2010-12-16T07:50:00.001-08:00

Where the ratio of things to get done vs. time remaining inverts itself and I start telling myself, will put that on the list for NEXT year. AKA next month..

Nowhere Near Here

2010-12-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

Watch this. Gorgeous.

Nowhere Near Here from Pahnl on Vimeo.

If life is a catwalk, run like a dog.

'Nowhere Near Here' is a stop motion animation that uses a combination of light with stencils and long exposure photography to tell the story of a dog running around the city at night, doing whatever a dog does. The animation was first exhibited at the The Herbert, in Coventry, on the 7th October 2010.

With well over 300 hours in the making, more than 200 stencils involved and too many cold nights spent outside on my knees getting the shots, I am very happy (and relieved) to finally share this with you. Through the course of shooting 'Nowhere Near Here', I have dealt with curious drunks, a dog almost peeing on the camera (the irony is not lost on me, haha), the endlessly suspicious police and even someone nearly running off with a tripod.

This is street art, this is life and thank you for watching.

...for those of you that may be interested in prints, a selection of film stills from 'Nowhere Near Here' are currently available at http://www.pahnl.co.uk/store.php

Animation by Pahnl

- pahnl.co.uk

--------
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Nowhere Near Here

Alma

2010-12-10T00:02:00.001-08:00

Watch This. Beautiful, genuinely eerie short animated film. Is there anything creepier than dolls?

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The saddest, most evil place in the universe..

2010-12-07T22:17:00.000-08:00

"It's hard to know if anything bad happened here"

2010-11-21T18:05:00.000-08:00

Despite the considerable amount of hyperbole and paranoia in Western reporting on Chinese matters, this story from Ars Technica is baffling:

"In a 300+ page report (PDF) today, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission provided the US Congress with a detailed overview of what's been happening in China—including a curious incident in which 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic suddenly passed through Chinese servers on the way to its destination"

Listen to this

2010-11-20T01:08:00.000-08:00

Joanna Newsom - "The Book of Right-On" (on Later With Jools Holland)

Am I the last to notice the horrendous quality of writing in web journalism?

2010-11-15T08:27:00.000-08:00

Has the immediacy of the medium and the ubiquity of publishing tools caused everyone to lose their minds and their English skills at the same time? For a minute there I thought the problem was isolated to Gaming blogs. Not so. From a mainstream technology blog today: "Facebook has buy the Fb.com domain"

Idoru

2010-11-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

William Gibson's (formerly) imagined future of a synthetic performer comes to virtual life in the form of Hatsune Miku, a holographic jpop star with legions of fans. Now all we need is for Trent Reznor to announce his engagement to her/it and the circle will be complete. Another, more recent article here.

[Original link courtesy of @Variety_DSCohen]

Anton Corbijn NYC Show Profiles Tom Waits (and others)

2010-11-08T20:23:00.000-08:00

The inimitable Mr. Waits

John Cleese on Creativity

2010-11-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

"Each day I want to learn something new, because I am very very old and will be dead soon.."

Singapore: Day One

2010-11-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

Day One in the Singapore Studio at an end. A blur of meetings, familiar faces and (naturally) soup dumplings. Singapore office in its usual weekly Monday lull before the oncoming storm, a temporary state of quiet productivity perpetuated by the fact that the sleeping giant in the US is lagging behind by a full day and still enjoying Sunday; a calm destined to be swept away by an inundation of emails, video conferences, dailies, one-on-ones, check-ins and other assorted trans-pacific clamor that will ensue like clockwork first thing tomorrow. The stillness and focus is a beautiful thing while it lasts. Then again the clamor is beautiful in its own way too.

And now, at last: Sleep.

You can't find the staff you now, it's a NIGHTMARE

2010-10-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Merlin Mann - on Meetings

2010-10-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

As always, a healthy dose of snark from Mr. Mann of 43 Folders.. Still. Wise.

"Broken Meetings (and how you'll fix them)" from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

MERLIN MANN at TWITTER.COM Headquarters, 21 Sep 2010

David Edery: Building the Right Studio Culture

2010-10-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

Watch this. Eminently smart guy David Edery on the topic of how to create a great studio culture.

Ellen Degeneres message about Bullying

2010-10-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

Younger Thinking

2010-09-20T06:13:00.000-07:00

Watch this. Great observations (With thanks to Matt Baume):

Younger Thinking: PechaKucha Night Raleigh Presentation at ideaSpark 2010 from Christopher Sopher on Vimeo.
Thoughts on the myths and realities of youth and their relationship with news media, and some brief thoughts on how to improve both.

Presented at PechaKucha Night Raleigh (pknraleigh.com) at ideaSpark 2010 (sparkcon.com) on September 16, 2010. The PechaKucha format is 20 slides for 20 seconds each, for 6 minutes and 40 seconds total. A really cool way to present and hear ideas.

Chronicles

2010-09-04T17:01:00.001-07:00

Completely hypnotized by Sean Penn reading Bob Dylan's Chronicles autobiography on audiobook during my commute. Actually didn't expect Dylan to write quite so poetically, given his curmudgeonly reputation, but his prose is reminiscent of his lyrical style; surreal, dreamlike, frequently absurd and occasionally possessed of such beauty that you forgive his lapses into hep-cat slang (a fair amount of "far-outs", "daddy-os" and even a few "stone foxes" - A representative quote: "She was cool as pie, hip from head to toe, a Maltese kitten, a solid viper—always hit the nail on the head").

Also, Penn is a great proxy for Dylan's smoky, drawling, tobacco-stained voice.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Farewell again Singapore

2010-08-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

Frantic but productive week in Singapore at an end. Until next time.

Entire week felt somewhat like this:

Best TV intro ever

2010-07-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

This brings back great memories; Blakes 7 - The only good thing about Monday nights in 1978. Thanks YouTube.

Ebert concludes he should have kept his trap shut. Well, that's a start.

2010-07-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

No, I absolutely can't let it go..

In my new blog entry I conclude that I should never have mentioned video games in the first place. http://j.mp/9Lymyrless than a minute ago via webRoger Ebert
ebertchicago

It just seems so..undignified

2010-06-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

When Presidents retweet each other..

RT @whitehouse Welcome to @twitter President Medvedev! RT @KremlinRussia_E: Hello everyone! I'm on Twitter, and this is my first tweet.less than a minute ago via webBarack Obama
BarackObama

McFly!

2010-05-31T23:15:00.000-07:00

HOVERBOARD - NILS GUADAGNIN on Vimeo

HOVERBOARD - NILS GUADAGNIN from nils guadagnin on Vimeo.

"The Hoverboard is a project made by Nils guadagnin, a young french artist. This work is born in 2008 for an exhibition named "Back To the future".
It is a copy of the hoverboard from the movie Back to the Future II. Integrated into the board and the plinth is an electromagnetic system which levitates the board. A laser system stabilises the object in the air.
In the making of this work, this artist was thinking about different ways of presenting sculpture. In fact it's a reflexion on the multiple possibilities of how to give a sculpture full spatial autonomy.
The project have been realised with levitation technology of crealev company. www.crealev.com

more infos : www.nilsguadagnin.com - www.whiteoffice.org"

Following Twits

2010-05-30T23:05:00.001-07:00

Following some celebrities on Twitter is like watching a slow motion car accident. You don't want to look, yet you can't but look. Perez Hilton was a bit like like that for me for a while, until his mean spiritedness became so corrosive to the human spirit I had to unsubscribe. Following Roger Ebert on Twitter (@ebertchicago) is less like watching a car wreck and more like watching an old guy who can't see over the steering wheel slowly ride two wheels of his giant Cadillac up onto the sidewalk. His latest brilliant tweet:

I tried reading a book on an iPad and: It. Just. Isn't. A. Book.less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhoneRoger Ebert
ebertchicago

Memories of Empire

2010-05-21T06:19:00.001-07:00

It was 30 years ago. I was eleven years old. My Mother took me to the Ambassador cinema in the old Rotunda hospital building at the bottom of Parnell Square and we lined up to see Empire Strikes Back. I don't recall much about what went before. I do remember two young chancers sidling up to the middle of the queue of people and trying to casually weasel their way into the line, counting on their fellow Dubliners to demonstrate their traditional conflict aversion and look the other way, so they could cut to the front. No such luck, my Mom confronted them, let them know that she could see very well what they were up to the young pups and sent them packing, much to my utter mortification.

The Empire Strikes Back left an indelible mark on me (Safe to say it was a different experience than when I tried to see Star Wars (Ep IV) on my eighth birthday and ended up seeing The Deep starring Jacqueline Bisset instead, which left a different kind of mark, but that's another story). I recall thinking, as the final act started to unfold and tragedy piled upon tragedy; "wow, things are bad, Han is captured and frozen in carbonite, Luke is mutilated and defeated and just found out his most bitter enemy is his Dad.. How the hell are they going to sort all this out before the end"....."hold on a second, they're not seriously going to end it here, that wouldn't be..they couldn't..holy shit they did"..

I still remember how heavily the ending weighed on me, I felt cheated and thrilled, depressed and exhilarated, sad and deliriously happy all at the same time. Still the no-contest best moviegoing experience of my life and I believe it always will be. Thanks Mom.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Augmented Reality Cookies

2010-05-19T12:05:00.001-07:00

What could be better than a delicious cookie? A delicious cookie that also exists in virtual space, that's what.

Demo of Augmented Reality Cookies from Tellart on Vimeo.

What makes a better fiducial than a delicious cookie?

Merlin Mann - Who moved my brain?

2010-05-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Great talk by Merlin Mann on time and attention.

"Hey California blog-jerk-guy, why don't you come talk to our company and get everybody fixed?"

What is the Cloud?

2010-05-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

I was wondering, to tell the truth:

Via: What is Cloud Computing?

First iPad post

2010-05-02T19:15:00.000-07:00

Nothing to report, glad to be home. Enjoying newest gadget. Ok, time for steak, spuds and salad. More later.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Tamarack Dr,San Rafael,United States

Death by PowerPoint

2010-04-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Article in the NY Times about the use of Powerpoint in the military in Afghanistan. Quote from the article:

The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”

Originally found via a related post on Seth Godin's blog. Godin on Powerpoint:

Here's the problem:

Bullets appear to be precise

They define the scope of the issue, even if they are wrong
They are definitive, even if they aren't

Bullets that are read from the screen go in one ear and out the other
Bullets are used as a defensive measure

see, I told you this in the meeting on 12.3.08

Bullets are unemotional and sterile
The lizard brain causes us to make presentations that are too long so that nothing in particular gets commented on or remembered or criticized
It is harder to interrupt and have a conversation with someone who has a clicker

Ebert continued

2010-04-25T03:04:00.000-07:00

As much as I want to be over Roger Ebert's Video Games Can Never Be Art screed, I confess I regularly peek at the post just to see how the comments are trending and whether he has yet been convinced of the colossal folly of his words. Comment tally is now at 3,337 and rising.

About time

2010-04-25T02:59:00.000-07:00

Blogger just added a very slick new set of templates and a design interface. About time, was just about to jump ship and defect to WordPress.

It's like Art, only better

2010-04-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

Roger Ebert blogged last week on the topic of video games, taking the stance that "Video Games can Never be Art". As of today, barely a week later, this post has close to 2000 comments, ranging from partially coherent diatribes to discourses on the definition of the word "art". From Ebert's blog entry:

I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.

I was disproportionately disappointed to read Ebert's post, mostly because I have generally found myself in agreement with his film criticism. But this..

He repeatedly cites examples such as baseball and chess, suggesting that these games have no need of a spurious validation as art, they are games and are played for the sake of play alone. Where to begin? The most disappointing aspect is that Ebert appears to have a fundamentally flawed understanding of what video games are, or rather can be. Video games are experiences, in the same way as films (even lousy ones) are experiences. The most compellingly realized world I have visited in the past five years wasn't Pandora or Middle Earth, it was Rapture. The best action movie experience I had wasn't Transformers, it was the bridge showdown in Call of Duty IV. Same goes for some of the most interesting and complex characters I have met. For God's sake, Gordon Freeman is one of my favorite characters and he never even speaks. As another colleague said in response to this "if Goodfellas" is art, then why doesn't the storytelling in GTA4 qualify? I was probably just as emotionally invested in playing Nico Bellic as I was in watching Henry Hill".

The second most disappointing aspect is the obvious fact that he has not stooped to actually playing a video game in this entire time. Is he baiting us? I really hope so. If Roger was paying attention and truly keeping an open mind (as opposed to baiting trolls on the internet or trawling for controversy), he might realize that, although we are in the infancy of this medium as an art form, it is indeed an art form and one that has a barely tapped potential for artistic expression; the potential to inhabit fully realized worlds. A potential I dare say in many ways greater than that of the static media of print, sound or the moving image.

Art manipulates us and elicits a response. Here's a hint, Roger; it's like Art, but you can touch it and feel it and it responds to you. It's like Art, but you're in it.

And then Matt Peckham at PC World went and took the words right out of my mouth:

Talking about art ticks most people off, so I'll just say this: If you're going to pontificate about something, then at least have some considered, up-to-date experience of it. Anything less is lazy.

Besides, the last thing you want to tell a gamer is what their medium can't be. Gaming by definition rails against that sort of arbitrary small-mindedness.

The Pale Blue Dot

2010-04-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

Watch and listen:

"Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there was some special significance to this small world, but it's just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture - not our reworking of the Earth's surface, not our machines, not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence - we are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal."

- Carl Sagan

Barefoot dining

2010-04-07T07:24:00.001-07:00

IMG00034-20100407-1946
Originally uploaded by columslevin

Great dinner tonight at Lagnaa restaurant in Little India, lots of great food including some spicy spicy SPICY dishes.

Evening topped off by the restaurant owner and Chef Kaesavan (AKA K7) showing us the kitchen and teaching me to make naan in the 550 degree tandoor oven; scared me half to death..never knew baking naan was such an extreme sport. Great food, great people.

To iPad or not..

2010-04-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

Not falling on one side or the other in the religious conflict over the iPad; Is it the second coming of the iPhone, as espoused by Wired? Or is it the evil spawn of a consumer-hating oligarch as per Cory Doctorow? Probably neither, although more likely closer to the former based on Apple's track record. I can't say I am passionately interested until it has a camera for Skype/iChat. Also, the recent Apple product cycles have left me with buyers remorse too many times to mention, so will wait for version 2.0 or later I think. Mostly because I know that's what Steve would want me to do.

From the latest post on http://www.fakesteve.net/

Hold your iPad. Gaze at it. Pray to it. Let it transform you. And do it soon, because before you know it we are going to release version 2, which will make this one look like a total piece of crap. Peace be upon you.

Clash

2010-04-01T23:19:00.001-07:00

Clash of the Titans had the following things going for it; Several enjoyable scenery-chewing performances, good CG that had the look and feel of old school stop motion and a couple of welcome nods to the original movie. All in all a solid B-movie. I think Mister Harryhausen would approve.

However, saw it in 2D and not sure I would see it again to experience the 3D version

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Epic Win

2010-03-28T15:05:00.000-07:00

Great talk by Jane McGonigal on why gaming is so important not only to our evolution, but our survival as a species. Listen to her win the initially cynical audience over with her radical but inspiring idea. She catalogs four qualities that gamers are virtuosos at, making them "super-empowered hopeful individuals", people who believe they are individually capable of changing the world.

Urgent Optimism
Social Fabric
Blissful Productivity
Epic Meaning

Really great ideas from an inspiring, exuberant speaker.

Zombie Flowchart

2010-03-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

[From GameInformer.com]

I love living in the future

2010-03-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

3D graphics & reality fuse on the fly - University of Oxford

Videogame infographic

2010-03-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

24% console failure in the first year for Xbox360? Yep..

[Source: Online Education.net via Dave Nottingham's blog]

Click to enlarge

Source: Online Education

Gandhi's Neurons

2010-03-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

Isn't it funny how people quote spiritual leaders and historical figures all the time in the context of management with absolutely no sense of irony? I guess people feel it lends a sense of weight to an otherwise (relatively) trivial subject matter. But, really? You're going to quote Sun Tzu, the Dalai Lama or Winston Churchill and then talk about getting your inbox to zero or running an effective meeting? Seriously? Do you really think Desmond Tutu would be honored to be quoted in this context? George Bernard Shaw is spinning in his grave at the thought that his words are quoted by productivity gurus, management experts or (lord preserve us) Life Coaches. Don't you think the Marx Brothers or Adam Sandler might be more appropriate? Maybe you should just shut up.

Ok, Having said that.. Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying "We must be the change we wish to see", which is why I imagine this article is entitled Gandhi's Neurons: The Practice of Empathy. Regardless whether Gandhi would be pleased to see his beliefs and practices applied in this context, this is an interesting scientific article that espouses the theory that empathy is hard-wired into us as human beings.

--
(Originally stumbled across this topic through Guy Kawasaki's blog post)

The Rise of the Rest

2010-03-01T21:04:00.000-08:00

Not new, but interesting collection of statistics nonetheless:
YouTube - Rise of the Rest

Big Bang Theory

2010-02-20T10:46:00.000-08:00

Does anyone still watch TV at the scheduled broadcast time? Part of the reason I had no interest in the Late Night feuds between Jay and Conan recently is that I did not have a dog in the fight. It has been years since I arranged my schedule around the broadcast time of a TV show. I watch an even mix of recorded or online streaming shows and some on DVD's mailed from Netflix. I discover most of my favorite TV on long-haul plane trips, after I have exhausted all the new release movies, watched at least one foreign language flick and sat through the entire Bourne trilogy for the nth time (no it doesn't get old. Ever). That's how I stumbled upon The Big Bang Theory, which I think is a great show, or rather, per this Wired article, has become a great show.

Sheldon explaining Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock - his variation on Rock, Paper, Scissors:

"It's very simple. Scissors cuts paper. Paper covers rock. Rock crushes lizard. Lizard poisons Spock. Spock smashes scissors. Scissors decapitates lizard. Lizard eats paper. Paper disproves Spock. Spock vaporizes rock. And as it always has, rock crushes scissors. "

Humanoid robots to gain advanced social skills

2010-02-17T06:35:00.000-08:00

"It's your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?"

From Wired.co.uk. This is a very slippery slope. Where's our Voigt-Kampf test when we need it?:

A pan-European team of robotics researchers began a project this year that could see humanoid bots interact with groups of people in a realistic, anthropomorphic way, for the first time.

The "Humanoids with auditory and visual abilities in populated spaces" (HUMAVIPS) project has the ambitious goal of making humanoid bots just that bit more human by building algorithms that will enable bots to mimic what psychologists call the "cocktail party effect" -– the human ability to focus attention on just one person in the midst of other people, voices and background noise.

If successful, HUMAVIPS will give future humanoid bots something that existing bots don't possess -– the simple social skills necessary to deal with small groups of people, including the basic intelligence to pick out a group of humans and determine which ones want to interact with it. It could also endow bots with the ability to infer meaning from incoming sense data, which would be a rudimentary step towards truly anthropomorphic robot intelligence.

Posted using ShareThis

Pivot

2010-02-16T06:17:00.000-08:00

Heart pounding Dutch animated short film. Great action sequences:

Pivot from Pivot on Vimeo.

Percy

2010-02-14T19:13:00.000-08:00

There was good and bad about Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

The good:
The performances were decent. Logan Lerman, who plays Percy, is actually pretty solid, as are the other kids. Although most of the adults have "I'm doing this movie because my kid/niece/grandchild has read all the books and told me I had to" written all over their faces.

Steve Coogan, playing Hades as a sort of washed up aging British Rock Star (Rob Halford by way of Spinal Tap), and Rosario Dawson as Persephone were beacons in an ocean of meh.

The bad: The most careful and shameless product placement I have seen in some time, by Apple and Maserati in particular. The iPod logo is so artfully placed in one scene that I wondered if Steve Jobs himself was on set.

The indifferent: The efx work has all the hallmarks of a massively distributed project. Great work interchangeable with stuff so unimaginative and ordinary and occasionally downright lousy that the whole thing just feels.....drab.

What I'm reading

2010-02-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

Currently reading Remix by Lawrence Lessig, which I highly recommend; A really good book about the application of copyright law in the digital age.

For more than a decade, we’ve been waging a war on our kids in the name of the 20th Century’s model of “copyright law.” In this, the last of his books about copyright, Lawrence Lessig maps both a way back to the 19^th century, and to the promise of the 21^st. Our past teaches us about the value in “remix.” We need to relearn the lesson. The present teaches us about the potential in a new “hybrid economy” — one where commercial entities leverage value from sharing economies. That future will benefit both commerce and community. If the lawyers could get out of the way, it could be a future we could celebrate