When your IPod Just Isn't Enough...

Event shows computers that act like a second skin

Terragen

Now that I've finished my recent assignment here's anther link.

Terragen is a free photorealistic landscape rendering program that allows you to create images like these.

You can create image sequences of flyby's using a second free piece of software that's designed to work with Terragen. It's called Camera Path Editor.

Moreover, using a stereoscopic add on, this user created a 3D flyover of Mt St Helens.
Click
When viewing, watch the video crosseyed so the pictures overlap, similar to those fractal 3D images that were so popular a few years ago.

Eminem's new video

Here's me throwing my hat into the political ring.

You can view Eminem's new pro-vote, anti-Bush video "Mosh" here.

I will admit to being a bit of an Eminem fan, and not much of a George Dubya fan, but besides all that the video is worth watching for the animation.

Link courtesy of DailyKos.com

TI Brings Live Digital TV to Cell Phone

The future of television is coming faster than we think.
From NEAsia Online,

"Texas Instruments (TI) announced development of what is claimed to be the wireless industry's first digital TV on a single chip for cell phones, which will capture broadcast signals and allow cell phone users to watch live broadcasts."

Full article

Link courtesy of SmartMobs.

The wit and wisdom of Grinner Hester

I hope grinner doesn't mind, but I HAVE to archive these posts. They are truly great for anyone interested in video editing.
Grinner's a great, highly experienced guy who's happy to share his knowledge. Just don't ask him about "The Osbournes."
;-)

GrinnerHester.com

From Wrigley Video Productions Forum ---

Articles:

10 Steps to Getting and Keeping a Client.

The Revolving Revolution.

The Art of Editing.

The Salary Thang.

Jugglin'.

Individual Posts

How Much Salary?

Not Enough Work?

Leaving Beer in the Fridge Overnight.

Owning Your Own Business.

Just Clay!

Lord of the Freakin' Edit!

Anyone Else Get This?

Time to Play (1)

Time to Play (2)

For a Good Time...

I'll update and add more as he writes 'em.
(update) Grinner's gone and joined the darkside. His new blog can be found here. Nothing there at the moment, but that will change I'm sure.(/update)

The Computer for the 21st Century

Mak Weiser of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) wrote this article over ten years ago, and while it might seem dated it's an interesting look at the push towards ubiquitous computing, i.e. lots of small computing devices spread through a house all communicating with each other rather than one or two large ones in a single room.

If nothing else it's interesting to see what's already been accomplished and what's still to come.

The Computer for the 21st Century

Thanks to Chris for the heads up on the link.

Learning to Blog

Well this has definitely been a learning experience. Between setting up the blog, sitemeters, "On this Day" links and now RSS feeds I'm definitely getting a lot out of the "Blog" experience.
Now if I could only come up with some decent content.

Once I've finished my last two assignments for the year I'll get stuck into it. One due this Friday, the other due the next Friday. In the mean time, it's working in Flash while listening to old "Tea Party" and "Jeff Buckley" albums.

"Why Macs Suck!"

For those that have never seen it.
Click

Please note, this is not meant as a personal indictment on Macintosh computers. I just think the clip is hilarious, especially the last line.

PRESENCE-RESEARCH.ORG

The first of the Uni-related links.

(Tele-)Presence is the "subjective experience of 'being there' in mediated environments such as virtual reality, simulators, cinema, television, etc."

It's fascinating stuff, especially in the field of designing for interactivity and immersion.

PRESENCE-RESEARCH.ORG

In particular, Lombard & Ditton's "At The Heart Of It All - The Concept of Presence" is worth a read.

Based on this stuff, one of my assignments this semester involved creating a purpose built room for enhancing presence in Horror based Role Playing Games.

The Crusade Against Evolution

From Wired magazine's October issue. A discussion on the uptake of "Intelligent Design" in American schools as a "competitor", or at least alternate theory to Evolution. I find the idea of ID a little lacking in logic, although George Gilder's comments at the end hold some interesting thought.

"In a world of science that still falls short of a rigorous theory of human consciousness or of the big bang, intelligent design theory begins by recognizing that everywhere in nature, information is hierarchical and precedes its embodiment."

It's just the "People are really complicated, too complicated for us to completely understand and we seem to be able to see an underlying logic to it all, so obviously we were designed by a higher power" conclusion I have problems with.

The Crusade Against Evolution

In fact, for all things incredibly cool in the world of technology - Wired.com

Time for a bit of Star Wars

At some point I intend to put up a bunch of links to Star Wars fanfilm related topics. Until then, here's a Flash based parody.
Baa Baa Imperial Sheep courtesy of High as a Koit.

Also, for the prop makers out there,
Film fans make lifesized Millenium Falcon in backyard
courtesy of Milk and Cookies.com.

Simple Touch-ups

Just added the "On This Day" hack courtesy of New Links and a visitor counter courtesy of Sitemeter.
The contractual obligations are now out of the way.

Ray Shaw Computer Newsletters

Brisbane based Ray Shaw puts out a monthly newsletter on the state of computers and personal computing. His evaluations are insightful and interesting, especially his comments on Windows and Microsoft.

This month's newsletter has an interesting write-up on installing XP Service Pack 2 and Microsoft's new upcoming OS, MCE (Media Centre Edition) 2005.

One thing of note for digital home and amateur video producers.

What is DRM?

DRM (Digital Rights Management or Dirty Rotten Mongrels to some) will be an ever increasing pain. MCE supports all sorts of copyright protection features including stopping the recording of a TV broadcast if the TV station tags them as copyright. It seems that whilst you can record TV and movies to DVD you may not be able to play them back on any other MCE PCs or devices if DRM is activated. It also applies to music. It wont affect home movies unless you put a copyright music track in the background.

Green Screen debate

One of the things I think I'll be spending a lot of bandwidth on is linking to other sites I find interesting. I've got two whole semesters worth of New media stuff to get through, but to start here's a great discussion on the relative merits of green vs blue when it comes to chroma key compositing, first from the Digital Video Fuel forums.

KingLeonard's Crusade and the Search for Arcane Knowledge tm

Leading on from that is the further discussion at Wrigley Video forums (a great community and place to learn editing, especially Adobe Premiere).

kingLeonard's Crusade 2: The "Myth" of the Digital Greenscreen

Rocky's Birthday

My boy Rocky Murray turns 21 today. For those that aren't familiar with Rocky's work check out his video clips of daring do at Internet Stuntman.
Best of luck mate, enjoy your big day and try not to break anything.

Doonesbury, Politics and the Internet

From an article I wrote for the Queensland University of Technology Post Graduate Blog, the Many Hands Project.

U.S. cartoonist Garry Trudeau has been making waves last week with his daily Doonesbury cartoon strip. Labelled the Honest Voices Reading List he's been linking to blogs, forums and articles from supposedly Conservative voices in the lead up to the U.S. elections.

First up Monday was a Guest Commentary by son of the former Republican President Dwight Eissenhower.

With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

The site received so many hits it crashed.

Tuesday was an email from a Journalist of the conservative Wall Street Journal talking about the situation in Iraq.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote.

Wednesday: A former Reagan administrative official makes his statement about Bush.
Click

Thursday: A Republican legislator makes this statement to his constituents before retiring at this election.
Click

Friday: The Lone Star Iconoclast, Bush's home town newpaper, who endorsed him in 2000, writes this editorial.
Click

(Interesting follow up to this article. Click

...several hundred people in or near Crawford, Texas, canceled their subscriptions after the editorial ran. But a few locals started subscriptions, and many other people from throughout the country signed up for mail subscriptions... But as much as the Iconoclast welcomes out-of-town readers... local advertisers prefer local readers who can patronize their businesses.

Actually, many local businesses pulled their advertising either to protest the paper's editorial or because of pressure from other businesses or residents. Different advertisers... including ones congratulating the Iconoclast on its courage... have arrived to pick up the slack, at least temporarily. Some of the new ads are running on the Iconoclast's Web site, which is now being read by thousands of people from all over.

A defeat for small town community or a victory for an international communication medium?)

Saturday: A piece from conservative columnist George Will in the Washington Post.
Click

Then again, Trudeau isn't a stranger to using his strip and the internet for political purposes. Last year he arranged a FlashMob for then Democrat hopeful Howard dean via his strip. (Unfortunately the permalink to the archive has run out.) The event actually took place when supporters picked it up and ran with it.

It's an interesting use of various technologies to get a political point across. Doonesbury is published in approximately 1400 newspapers around the world, not to mention its daily internet subscriptions. If nothing else it's another interesting means of using humour to sell a serious political message.

A Beginning

It's late, I'm tired and yet somehow I stumbled across this place and thought to myself "Hey! Why not create a blog!" It seemed the thing to do.

I can't guarantee anything of interest, but hey, I don't expect anyone to drop by and read it anyway. If you have wandered in by mistake, feel free to drop me a line. The email address is around here somewhere I'm sure.

Pax