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very cool concept from the City of Montreal...completely open to everyone

Friday

hanging with my buddy thuan!

waiting for Stevie wonder

at Montreal jazz fest...just saw wynton too..nice

heading out

going to dinner for my father-in-law's birthday.

All Hail Fallout 3!

I was very fortunate to find a sleek Playstation 3 under the Christmas tree this year. My wife's generosity is unbounded; considering we have only one TV and I have a compulsive nature - once plugged in, I can sit oblivious to everything else for hours on end. Proof in point: once back home from the holidays, I managed to play Fallout 3 for over 10 hours. I finally conceded my frazzled state and slip into bed at about 4am: heart palpitations kept me wide awake for another 30 minutes.

For those uninitiated, Fallout 3 is one of the most awarded video games of 2008. IGN awarded Fallout 3 ....
 
....tops in 08. High praise indeed. Developed by Bethesda Game Studios over a number of years, the final version was released in October of 2008 to huge fanfare. Considered a combination of both the FPS (first person shooter), and the "Survival" genre, Fallout propels you into the future; a future where the cold war of the late fifties actually grew warm, and humanity survived tucked away in bomb shelters. The adventure begins as you venture out of the safety of Vault 101, and begin exploring Capital Wasteland (Washington DC).

For those not fate of heart, I would highly recommend this game: be prepared to spend some time.

When art imitates life....yet again

You know when you come full circle, and cyberspace tends to love that feeling of completing the journey in record time. Consider this: Back in the early nineties, Alex Seropias, and Jason Jones start a small video game development company called Bungie (mostly for the Mac). Fast forward ten years, and the same small company gets picked up by Microsoft, and we have the birth of the first Halo game re-purposed for the Xbox video game console. 20 million copies later, a trilogy of Halo games, and many more spin-offs, we now have the Halo soundtrack released a few days back.

Didn't we used to produce video games as the last tier of consumer consumption related to a cultural phenom? Consider this: Book gets written, becomes instant classic. Movie script is written, produced, and consumed by a mass market; soundtrack is released. Given sufficient time, DVD is also released, usually in time for some shopping holiday. Lastly, a video game version is produced given some semblance of reasonable fortitude with the book's subject matter.

Ranting aside, I'm keen to blog about the soundtrack. I've just received my copy today, and will be giving it a listen over the next couple of days....expect a post on my comments in a few.

Virtual Telepathy

So the keen minds at the University of Manchester have devised a virtual environment for the sole purposed of discovering if humans have telepathic capability. Participants don a virtual headset much like this:

They then navigate into a completely virtual world environment where they are shown specific objects: phone, table, chair, etc... They are presented these objects and are asked to focus their mental energy (if they have such excess) on the object. Another voleenter equally geared up, is then asked to try and pick the chosen item.

It doesn't seem that impressive, and one wonders why they need to go through the trouble of doing this experiment in a virtual environment; besides spending gouvernment grant money. The logic is sound however: by eliminating any visual cues, the data cannot be compromised.

No idea if they came up with any interesting data, but I'm inclined to bet not....must be fun work however...

Sex and Second Life

This is interesting: Wife catches husband having virtual carnal bliss (2nd offense) with home wrecker in Second Life - calls in lawyers. First offense was with a virtual whore, but fences mended with the promise that he would not stray off-world again....the man's not much of a heartbreaking threat in the real world, an unemployed 40 year old geek, so I'm assuming it's a given he hasn't been pinched otherwise:

Well, the wife catches him again, but this time, it's with a real (somewhat real...non pro anyhow) virtual woman named Modesty McDonnell.

Yes, that's our hero on the right with his svelte mistress .

Husband and wife split (they met originally on Second Life as well), and this virtual alias Dave Barmy, and nubile new fling, get married on set, with plans to do the real-deal once his divorce comes through.

All kidding aside, I've spent enough time in Second Life to understand how easily it is for someone to unmask and show their true personality. Like the novelist Pirandello's reference to the many masks we wear in our daily lives, Second Life allows you to shed most of these self restrictions. It doesn't matter if you're fat, thin, ugly, beautiful, lumpy, bumpy, normal, or obtuse. You can make your avatar, pretty much anything you want. Dave Barmy is a pretty good looking man in comparison to the organic version.

So the question comes to mind, is cheating on Second Life really cheating? I go to, as I always do in these circumstances, to my wife to ask her how she would react to finding me humping an avatar in cyberspace. Her first reaction was to demand if I was being serious, and if people actually did this; or if this was one of my many school boy fantasy/pranks. When I explained the technical aspects on how this was accomplished, she came back with some very sane understanding: it's a question of intimacy. The actually arcade like action of performing the sex act in a virtual world isn't much different than the pursuing your favorite adult site. Sharing intimacy with a stranger is the real problem. This would be the same online as it would be face-to-face, or over the phone. Makes sense....game over gentlemen.

Just for fun, here is a pic of the original Second Life prostitute:

Pretty hot, but ultimately not what's going to make your partner rage unless they have some tight control issues. Get talking to a three toed wart hog on Second Life, and sharing intimate details....different story :)

360Voice - Autoblogging your Xbox Gaming

I came across this community site: 360voice. They offer something really cool to hardcore Xbox360 gamers:

360voice is a leading online community for the Xbox 360 with a twist. Using unique technology, the data from your Xbox Live gamercard is transformed from a snapshot into a rich history of your gaming, told in blog format from the perspective of your Xbox. This allows for conversations around specific daily achievements and events like gamer score increases and your most played games. In addition to the blog content, users can interact by leaving comments, compete in gamer score challenges, and gather badges for various site and cross-game accomplishments.

They boost about 145k member keys, totalying 1,780,398,839 gamescore (many pro-gamers)

I love this concept: Your game playing turns into a automated blog post that your community of players can read, and keep up to date with your gaming interests; how you did; what  you're into that day. You can connect with other community members with similar gaming interests and challenge each other.

The site is run by Trapper Markelz (ChangeAgent), Stephen Sopp (Fatty Chubs) and David Larrabee (Squidpunch). For fun, listen to their latest podcast...these guys know their stuff.

Wii Hacks - The Virtual Whiteboard

Today, I came across something very cool, and practical at the same measure: Carnegie Mellon University Ph.d. Johnny Lee, constructed an interesting Wii remote hack that can turn any surface into an interactive whiteboard; greatly reducing the costs for universities and small businesses who may not have the budget to drop a whack of cash on the Mimio, or the Promethean Activboard. A simple 3way hookup between your pc, projector, Wii via bluethooth, and download Lee's program - you're good to go.

A great demo can be found on Youtube, where Lee explains how to set up the Wii remote, and shows some further tricks and tips: hell, he even gives a cursory look on how to turn a Bic pen into a light pen....Holy Macgyver Batman!

At over 2 million hits on his video, Johnny has also touched on a further phenominan in the viral aspects that Youtube can generate for someone with a cool ideal. I did a quick test on Google as well for query=virtual whiteboard hack, and you'll find many blogs and sites profiling Johnny's cool Wii hack. Unfortunately, no links directly to his site: Dr. Lee's expertise being in computer-human interaction, and clearly not search engine optimization.

I'm dying to give this a try myself. I'll follow-up this post with some details on the experiance, and some screenshots at a later time.