Pretty interesting. Students at Georgia Tech created a game that maps a 3D view onto whatever the camera in the phone-like device is seeing.
ARhrrrr is an augmented reality shooter for mobile camera-phones. The phone provides a window into a 3d town overrun with zombies. Point the camera at our special game map to mix virtual and real world content. Civilians are trapped in the town, and must escape before the zombies eat them! From your vantage point in a helicopter overhead, you must shoot the zombies to clear the path for the civilians to get out. Watch out though as the zombies will fight back, throwing bloody organs to bring down your copter. Move the phone quickly to dodge them. You can also use Skittles as tangible inputs to the game, placing one on the board and shooting it to trigger an explosion.
They produced a nice video too...
Sweet idea.
A few weeks ago, Hugh MacLeod, whose blog Gaping Void is a never-ending source of inspiration announced that his book Ignore Everybody was available for pre-order on Amazon.
Naturally I went ahead and ordered it.
A few days later he announced on his Crazy, Deranged Fools email list that he'd send a signed copy to the first thousand people who'd pre-ordered the book.
Genius.
Today my signed copy arrived and my other copy will find it's way into the hands of someone else who needs some inspiration. Or a kick in the arse. One of the two.
Anyhow, the book rocks! I started reading it this evening and was very happy to see that chapter seven starts with my favourite piece of Hugh's writing...
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the "creative bug" is just a wee voice telling you, "I'd like my crayons back, please."
It inspired me.
So I went ahead and mashed me up some Hugh to create my own cube grenade. You can find Hugh's original here.
It'll be going up in the office tomorrow.
Thanks Hugh (and I hope you don't mind ;-)
Having thought about my last post for a bit I thought I'd ask you, dear reader, what would you like me to write about?
And at the same time I get to try out the nifty Google Docs Forms thingy. All responses end up in my spreadsheet and won't be shared with anyone (until I write about it, that is).
Let me know!
Why has this blog been so infrequently updated?
Many reasons really, but mostly because I'm hellishly busy at work and probably 80% of the content that I'd post here is now ending up on FriendFeed.
I should probably add the little FriendFeed widget here so you can see what I'm up to over there...
Anyhow, every now and again, long form blog post ideas keep popping into my head, so I've been keeping track of them and hope to find some time to do some serious writing soon.
I promise...
And yes, there will be kid related posts. Did I tell you about the phenomenally smelly poop my daughter produced this evening? I'm so proud.
This afternoon was a fun one. This kids and I headed out to Seattle to check out the dinosaurs at the Burke Museum in Seattle (sadly, no photos allowed... grrr...) and then the the Center for Wooden Boats.
When we got back and the kids were chilling with their mate SpongeBob, I hopped online and had a quick scan of FriendFeed. I notice that Phil, recently back in the UK from SXSW tweeted that Paul Nicholls (aka podcastpaul) was doing his weekly podcast live on UStream.
Interesting side note - Phil and I did a podcast together a fair while ago.
But I digress.
I popped over to UStream and got a really nice welcome in the chat from Paul. We hadn't connected for a couple of years since my podcast habit lapsed and Britcaster went the way of the dodo.
Anyhow, he suggested that I pop onto Skype for a quick live chat on his podcast!
Oddly, I didn't have Skype installed anywhere anymore, but the download and install was quick and painless on the Mac. Handily I also had a USB headset floating around and as quick as a flash I was on a podcast for the first time in over two years!
Sweet! It was a particularly nice moment as Paul's podcast is one of the very few that I listen to regularly.
Time to get podcasting again!
So head over to Paul's site, and check it out!
I was planning on waiting to go and see Watchmen with some friends, but I had a confession to make to them today - I had gone to see the movie at 9pm in Bellevue last night.
It rocked.
Hard.
The reviews have been pretty mixed. But me, a diehard Watchmen fan, enjoyed every minute. The time just flew by.
It was a perfect rendition of a masterpiece comic-book work - the characters (especially Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach) were just as I imagined them 21 years ago when I first read the book.
Anyhow, just go and see it.
Here's a little taste:
Btw, the star of the film (well, according to most of the whispering and tittering that was going on in the theatre) seemed to be Dr. Manhattan's, err, appendage. It seemed like it appeared in almost every scene.
It really does appear that Microsoft has shutdown the ACES game studio and axed the entire staff. A lot of my friends are now looking for something else to do...
Microsoft Flight Simulator is dead.
Redmond, Washington-based ACES Studio, the Microsoft-owned internal group behind the venerable Microsoft Flight Simulator series, has been heavily affected by Microsoft's ongoing job cuts.
Development sources have told Gamasutra that a large portion of the dev house's staff has been let go - with multiple reports indicating that the entire Flight Simulator team has been axed.
It started unfolding earlier today when some collegues mentioned that the Microsoft cuts had started. I went to check out techmeme and noticed that all lot of the action seemed to be focussed around the Entertainment & Devices division. And then, little by little, it all started unfolding on Facebook...
The studio has gone. The products are no more.
I feel a little stunned, but can't imagine what the folks who were working in the studio up until this morning are feeling. There were people on the team that have worked on FlightSim since it's subLOGIC days. Did you know that FlightSim is (or rather was) Microsoft's oldest product, in continual development (for the PC) from 1982 through to today?
The community seems to have noticed and popular sites such as AVSim and Sim Outhouse are waking up to the new reality. Hundreds of thousands of people just had their hobby put on hold.
So what now for Flight Simulation? I guess it's a good day for X-Plane, though I think I'd really like to see FlightGear, an OpenSource flight simulator, ahem, take off...
To follow up on my previous post about my introduction to flash photography, I'm learning...
Strobist info: Single SB-900 full power/85mm, on stand (at kid height) into a soft-silver umbrella camera left. Minor ambient coming from camera way right (err, the kitchen) and camera high-back left (err, the TV).
If there ever was a need for the US Military (or any military for that matter), to step in for "humanitarian reasons", this is it. There are photos from this event that have driven me to tears...
Please, just make it stop.
Both sides are ignoring a UN call for cease-fire.
Enough.
Please.
I hate using a flash. I hate the way it looks. I hate the harshness - the way everything washes. I hate red eye.
Of course, that's because I have no idea how to use a flash properly and as a result I've got pretty good at taking photos in extremely low light conditions.
As I posted before, there's a really cool site, Strobist, that takes all the mysticism out of using a flash and I've been catching up on my reading there.
Time to learn.
Yesterday I ordered a Nikon SB-900, along with a lightweight stand and a shoot-through umbrella. The flash was due to arrive today - we did have two UPS deliveries from Amazon, annoyingly both for my wife ;-)
I guess I'll have to wait until Friday.
I'm really looking forward to working my way through the Strobist "assignments" and improving my photo knowledge toolkit - wish me luck...
Oops.
Nice review - the car even wins over Clarkson ("the volt-head has overtaken the petrol head... yes, it is snowing in hell").
Shame about the car's reliability problems during the review.
Hot on the heals of the Xbox 360 support, Netflix watch instantly is now available on the Tivo.
This works just as well the Xbox 360 integration - some might say better as I don't have to switch the 360 on to use it...
Every night since he was born (except Wednesday, that's Pub Quiz night!), I've put Julian to bed with some reading, songs and a few other rituals.
First we read - usually he chooses the book and then I sing to him. The same songs. The same order. Always.
Then we do the rituals:
- Phony - He gets to look at photos on my iPhone.
- Blowing up - We take turns "blowing each other up" until we we pop like a ballon. it's hard to explain - you have to be there...
- Hugs.
- Love you! G'night!
Recently though, I've been wondering "when will he ask me to stop"? He loves the songs, I love singing them to him, but he's five now. I'm guessing that this bedtime ritual will stop at some point before he goes to college, but I have no idea when.
And that makes me sad.
I am so annoyed. The band that optimized my love of music during college completely and utterly sucked.
A few months ago when I found out that the Sisters were playing in Seattle I was incredibly excited. I blogged about it. My boss even decided to come along with me on my recommendation.
However, upon arriving at the venue this evening, El Corazon, I realized that the band had obviously come down a few rungs - it's one of the smallest venue I've been to, probably with a ~300 capacity.
Anyhow, I was still upbeat.
At around 9pm they came on stage.
I say "around", because I have really no idea. We were in the bar and was expecting some sort of thunderous noise when they came on.
We went into the venue proper, and it was packed with ~300 expectant fans.
All I could see was dry ice. And two silhouettes. I could vaguely make out one guy pretending to play guitar and one guy pretending to be Andrew Eldritch.
Seriously.
They were lip syncing. Just playing the CD and pretending to play along. Eldritch wasn't even competent at lip syncing. It was so obvious.
It was pitiful.
And on top of that, it wasn't even loud. I was having conversations with those around me about how much it sucked and how the band of our youth had just sucked $35 from each of us.
And how they, or rather Eldrich, had just lost us all as fans.
Most people just headed back to the bar where the bartender was on the phone to her boss explaining that they shouldn't pay the band as you'd have a better experience just listening to the CD in your car.
What a way to burn out as a band - sucking your fan base dry and subtracting 300 people from it one gig at a time.
Last night I received the update to the Xbox Dashboard - the eagerly awaited New Xbox Experience.
For those of you that have been living in a cave, along with the update comes the ability to watch Netflix Watch Instantly content - it's streamed directly to the Xbox.
To say I've been looking forward to this would be an understatement! The amount of content available is astounding, and the best bit is that it doesn't cost me a single extra penny as I'm already a subscriber to Xbox Live and Netflix.
Anyhow, last night I couldn't get it activated due to some (widely reported) problem, but it worked flawlessly this evening. The first move we watched?
My stint as a juror lasted just a day.
I arrived way too early (7am for an 8am start), as I'm completely paranoid about Seattle traffic and then headed into the Juror Room. I was the first there and got a prime spot at a desk right next to the WiFi hotspot.
At around 9am, the court clerk gave a quite humourous presentation about what we were in for during the day - apparently involving a lot of waiting around. He said that every now and again they'd call about thirty to forty people to a court room for the selection process for a trial. Most trials there are apparently quite short, he said. Two to three days max.
Anyhow, my waiting around didn't last long.
At 9:15, I was called as number 15 out of 55 people to Judge Heller's court.
So off we went - I got to sit in the Jury box! Cool.
After we all settled down, the Judge explained what was going to happen and the whole voir dire process. He them informed us that the trial (a civil trial) was likely to take about three weeks!
Erk.
He then proceeded to ask the Jurors if this would involve any hardship, where hardship is defined as "you better be having heart surgery next week" - well, he didn't quite say that, but I believe that's what he meant...
Needless to say, I didn't qualify for that exemption, but after the whole Jury selection process finished, it appeared that the defense council didn't like me too much and I was excused.
Maybe I was just a little too loud and opinionated...
It's a pity really, I would actually have liked to have served...
Bright and early in the morning, I'll be off to Seattle for Jury Service at the King County Superior Court.
I've never served on a Jury before - never in the UK and even though I've received requests before in the US, I've never been eligible as I wasn't a US citizen.
But now, of course, as freshly minted US citizen I get to serve!
