Code Owl

Iron Manual Inspires Future Innovative Scientists

2009-06-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

Great Article continuing the design element theme of popular science fiction over at IEEE.org:

"Last year, a young engineer e-mailed Brown to tell him that reading The Iron Manual at age 9 not only prompted him to pursue engineering but later sparked ideas for two graduate research projects involving remote-controlled robotics. 'I never got any messages like that!” says Brown. ”I sent him a background drawing I did for an Iron Man poster as thanks.'"

Brain Eating Text Adventures

2009-06-05T05:58:00.000-07:00

Great article on io9.com on Text Adventures. Though it doesn't mention my favorite (and an obvious brain-eating candidate), Suspended. I still have dreams about the feelies.

Silas at the Beach

2009-05-27T03:43:00.000-07:00

Hidden City Card Game

2009-05-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

Just received the finished version of the Hidden City card game I worked on a little for Lime Projects. Philly residents should definitely check out the arts festival running this summer which takes place in the city's lesser known landmarks. Very cool idea!

How to finish my screenplay

2009-05-08T07:27:00.001-07:00

"by the end there's wasn't anything I could do but write or think about writing."

How I did it: Snuck in time when the baby was napping or everyone was out running errands or at the airport. Took long walks. Avoided reading. Listened when things were going wrong. I've never tried to write something commercial and this long before. Not that I have any delusions about it getting made, but it was nice to try to adhere to something more formulaic.

Lessons & tips: Tape record yourself. Get to the middle, then write the end. then the climax, lastly the climax set up,

Resources: Final Draft, Dramatica, A few very trusted readers.

It took me 6 months.

It made me Very psyched.

See more progress on: finish my screenplay

Tartaros Revisited

2009-05-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

I made a movie to show at my dad's 60th birthday party. It's much better with this youtube mod.

Fantasy, Reality, Ears

2009-05-06T04:52:00.000-07:00

More on how fiction and fantasy become real: This time it's a body modification to create real life Elf Ears.

Design Fiction

2009-03-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

Near Future Laboratory has posted a wonderful essay on how science fiction and fact interplay to form our reality. A topic of much interest for me.

Somewhat Scary Ringtone

2009-03-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

For your iphone pleasures:

Murderers Among Us Ringtone.

The (New) Original AM

2009-03-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

I had to rebuild the only track I finished from the Private Devil'd Reel in Logic.

The Original AM

Scrum, Done and Dreams

2009-03-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

I've recently come under attack by a wave of efficiency systems. At work they are adopting the much hyped Scrum agile development method, everywhere I seem to visit on the Web (perhaps whilst procrastinating myself) I've come across this Cult of Done manifesto. And most importantly I had a very compelling dream in which the Goddess Athena cursed out a foppish, well-to-do version of myself for a betrayal by slacking - all whilst I watched in horror from the vantage point of my own butler.

All of which caused a sudden rise of Post-It note usage.

While nothing pleases me more than being able to check off a to do list. I have say there is something that really bothers me about all this, even though I'm getting so much done in a day. The whole thing really plays into some bi-polar tenancies I fall into through out the creative process - or at least used to when I was younger. I can remember filling whole notebooks with writing, recording half an album in one night only to find myself tossing it the trash the next day.

What all these systems are missing, for me, is the idea of nurture. Maybe it's only something I can only see clearly now after becoming a father but I personally can't simply go, as the Done manifesto, from "not knowing" to "action" and expect to get anything but crap and misery. And the idea that there is "no editing stage" - look I get it what they are trying to do and I'm not taking it literally - but you've got to be kidding me. Editing, speaking about that phase of work - any work, for me shows a commitment to the material, a commitment to yourself, it takes a maturity to see good in something you've done no matter how weak and needy it is and not simply abandon it - to have the strength to lay it to rest.

There have been so many occasions I've followed methods like this only to deeply regret not giving the material a chance, to be patient with it.

Besides everything about doing anything is an editing stage until we somehow go from neural transmitter to high fidelity reality authoring machine. And then of course it's a question of which neural transmitter do you prioritize with the inevitable and infinite conflicts that surround the process of manifesting any thought to anything tangible whether that is a sentence or an air craft carrier.

Yes, that's the point our more agile, productive friends would say. Don't think too much. Do. And if you don't like it, throw it away and do more. You don't know what the future will hold so why plan for it until it's here.

Just do it? Git r done?

Sorry. This just doesn't work for me - I guess I'm getting older, but this just smacks of a juvenile recklessness, over simplification and an affront to foresight.

Private Devil'd Reel - Musical Recovery

2009-02-14T09:39:00.001-08:00

Sooo.... A few years back I decided I wanted to make a fully experimental record that I would be able to write, meditate, space out, drool to. I nick-named the project "Private Devil'd Reel" and then that got me thinking about all the Private Press records I had collected over the years and wouldn't be great to combine samples from them with the music? Oh and wouldn't it be great if I recorded everyday for twenty-four days and tried to hypnotize myself prior to each session?

You can see where this is going...

Long story short, this, along with a lack of response (Kevin Fay lovingly excluded) on the last Your Team Ring record, and with Pro-Tools taking six months to fix every time Apple upgraded their OS left me completely at a loss as to what I should be trying to make or who I was making it for etc. So I just stopped doing anything musical.

I've finally, after wrapping a brutal series of freelance projects, have had some time this week to get back to music. I've been digging through 2 DVDs worth of material from the Private Devil'd Reel. I found a treasure trove of loops made from the sessions with names like "diads of our lives," "S Street Triangulation," "roy wouldn't," and "the ten year chord" - it's like finding an old beloved toy from childhood you thought you lost forever.

I've got one piece up and running, something I think was an improv between myself and Nick VanBrunt.

Download Summer's Leaving.

In addition to trying to recover this, I've been working on my first song for my new recording project "Earthly Frames." It's kind of a strange psyched out/dubbed country waltz type thing filled with loops and noise.

Silas Gets Haircut

2009-02-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

Scott McCloud at TED

2009-02-06T05:33:00.000-08:00

Homespun Superheroes

2009-02-02T04:52:00.000-08:00

Discovery ID has launched a new game I worked on called Homespun Superheroes. It's a combination of mini-games with a goofy RPG wrapper. It's got some great art work in it by Susan Crawford.

Silas in the Studio

2009-02-01T06:40:00.001-08:00

Flaming Fire Breaks Up, Becomes Running Club?

2009-01-27T14:20:00.001-08:00

All things must come to an end, especially rock bands. But as per usual, former Perhaps Transparent artists, Flaming Fire, have found a way to both confound, complicate and transcend this process. Check out there amazing break up notice in Vice Magazine which manages to bring up Heidegger, G-Force, and Strikeforce Morituri.

Extenze

2009-01-15T06:32:00.000-08:00

I took note of this article from the UC Santa Cruz Web site, as mirrors the some of the writing project I'm involved with right now called Floaters.

"The system uses noninvasive surface electromyography (EMG), in which surface electrodes placed on the skin detect neural activity in individual muscles or muscle groups. The system takes advantage of a natural physiological time delay between the neural activation of a muscle and the actual movement generated by contraction of the muscle. During that time delay, a computer algorithm can analyze and process the EMG signals, which are then fed into computer models of the muscular system along with additional information regarding joint position and velocity."

Open World Gaming

2009-01-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

I love this call to action article over at Escapist about open world or pervasive gaming. It laments the lack of more gaming experiences using GPS based game mechanics. I had a few thoughts on the subject:

1) The game systems could benefit from a local player vs. player/global team vs. team structure.
2) There needs to be user defined locations as "bases" of play.
3) Yet these bases need to be predefined or agreed in advance to avoid creepy, unsafe situations.
4) The game system should acknowledge and balance passive location based play and planned events. Weekday and weekend schedules work nicely here.
5) Avoid literal interpretations of fantasy role-play at all costs if you want the game to really be pervasive rather than LARPy.
6) Feelies are fun.
7) I would personally prefer a game that didn't feel anything like a Flash Mob type experience. It's too directed for me to enjoy.

Interesting Essay on Games a Propaganda

2009-01-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

{Please note, I'm catching up on my posting. Forgive the ye olde-ness of some the next few posts.}

There's an interesting essay on video games as propaganda at News Games. I get a bit lost in the rawness of his expression, but I think the author is attempting to compare the escapist cinema of the depression, for example he references Bugsby Berkeley and the sort of militaristic wish fulfillment of some FPS style games.

ideo games don't necessarily do this. If we sought an escape from violence and terrorism, then we wouldn't have so many video games on the market focusing on just these two issues. Rather, many video games seek to provide catharsis for the mental ills that plague us all. We don't see games about Iraq, but there are plenty of games that attempt to deal with the same "forces of evil" that fearmongering pundits fill our heads with through metaphor or displacement.

I don't really buy the argument that these types of games actually directly invoke violence in the player, but perhaps one can make a case that there is something to the active vs. passive wish fulfillment of the media. But rather I see the first person dissonance of player vs. player character as more of an opportunity to correct and question militaristic acts. Such as this wonderful piece on torture in World of Warcraft:

Now while this means that WotLK is not yet torture for me, there is some torture involved. Specifically, this quest. Basically, you have to take some kind of cow poke and zap a prisoner until he talks.

I'm not at all happy with this. I was expecting for there to be some way to tell the guy who gave you the quest that no, actually I don't want to torture a prisoner, but there didn't seem to be any way to do that. Worse, the quest is part of a chain you need to complete to gain access to the Nexus, which is the first instance you encounter (if you start on the west of the continent, as I did). So, either you play along and zap the guy, or you don't get to go to the Nexus.

It seems this collision of game mechanics and first person dissonance actually did more to raise the issue of torture for the player. Hell, seems to work more than 24....

Goodbye Google Notebook

2009-01-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it was nice while it lasted. It seems we will be losing Google Notebook. I guess it serves me right as I have come to rely on it for content organizing and research. I'm going to try to transfer all my links - things are about to become a bit more random I'm afraid.

Alternate History Lament

2009-01-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

New America Foundation's TA Frank has a great spoof of the Bush years via an alternate history in which Al Gore was elected in The Guardian. In this world Gore avoids disasters but comes off as a paranoid worrier. I can relate.

Outerscope 1

2008-12-05T16:24:00.001-08:00

I have been trying to figure out what this kinder trauma that's been haunting my memories for years now. And now I know. Outerscope 1 from Vegetable Soup. Enjoy:

The Atheist Christmas Sign

2008-12-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

This recent article on hanging of a Atheist "holiday" placard pretty much sums up the argument I have with a large portion of my Atheist friends. The sign reads:

"At this season The Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven, no hell. There is only the natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hears and enslaves minds"

I don't believe in any of those things as being literally or physically true, of course. But the notion that "myth" hardens hearts and enslaves minds is just, well, unscientific. So we can't learn anything about human psychology or anthropology from religion or mythology of a person or culture? Aren't those words (symbols of symbols), "devil," "angel," "heaven" ... "god" compressed seeds of insight into our ancestors, their philosophies, our own psychology and our future evolution? To study them is not the same thing as believing in them and to ignore and dismiss them surely leads to "harden hearts" and "enslaved minds" as well.

The Article ends on a somewhat telling note:

"When people ask us, 'Why are you hateful? Why are you putting up something critical of people's holidays? -- we respond that we kind of feel that the Christian message is the hate message," he said. "On that Nativity scene, there is this threat of internal violence if we don't submit to that master. Hate speech goes both ways."

"Threat of internal violence,"?!? Like magical waterboarding? Sounds like this particular Atheist, Dan Barker-a former evangelical preacher, still has demons of his own.

Dennett's talk at TED while rebuking Rick Warren does a much better job than I can sum up in this post:

Watching the Election from Abroad

2008-11-06T22:02:00.000-08:00

_{(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)}

Over the past eight years I’ve traveled a lot. I even lived outside the country for a year. For every stamp and sticker in my passport comes the memory of a conversation where I’ve had to utter a “We’re not all like that,” or a “That’s not really how the U.S. is… not where I live.” It’s only fitting that during this past election I was, yet again, away from the country on business. I watched with disbelief, with dear friends, as Barack Obama not only won the election but also redefined, to some extent, the electoral map including, including the very near and dear state of Virginia, whose historic divide from my now home state of Maryland and the union still haunts the entire region.

I did not sleep at all the entire night and the joy of the moment propelled me through the next day. Not only had the US elected its first minority president, but a man of peace, eloquence and intellect.

I found myself, throughout the day tearing up. I never quite realized home heavily the weight of the Bush years’ fear mongering, cruelty, deceit, incompetence and vehement anti-intellectualism pressed down every aspect of my life until now. And though I know I’m bound to be disappointed as President Obama makes decisions that move him from the iconic ideal to a compromised reality, I can’t help but feel a great curse has been lifted.

In the taxi on the way to the airport, a familiar conversation began. “You’re from America?” the driver asked.

“Yes.” I said.

A silence followed.

In the place where the driver usually begins to gently chide me about the war, torture, and being stupid and in the place where I try to apologize and say, “We’re not all like that,” was a wonderful quiet.

As I looked through the fog and darkness of the Scandinavian morning I finally spoke, “Yes, and I’m ready to come home.”