I got an email tonight from a marketing group, the account exec for youth marketing. It was to this blog, and presumably because I had written the post about how awesome the minutes to midnight Linkin Park album was. The note was saying "always wanted to live like a rock star?" to which I had to reply I already am :-) Anyway the point is that this is a much more forward thinking way to market and engage with people. In the note I was sent some promo pictures and given the rights to use them on the blog. Now that is how it should be really. Rather than the sometimes overly copyrighted imagery. For me, well it was another reader to my non eightbar.com ramblings, but equally it ties in with the whole declrative living elements. If I tell people what I like, then they will work out it worth to talking to me. This is much better than pure spam, for all concerned. So here are my fellow rock stars and here is the promotional website (ironic that I used to work in a group called blueroom in IBM, the spirit of which lives on to this day.)
My poor 360 has just gone pop. I now have the dreaded ring of lights, in bright red. It looks like a major hardware failure, with all the hassle of sending the box back :-(
Of course it could be it got fed of bejeweled and zuma and just toasted its own insides.
These things come in threes, we lost our phone line last night.
Oh well, my guitar hero antics needed to wait until my Second Life backlog had been dealt with. Some major instabilities and crashes meant I could not do some of the things stacking up.
Fingers crossed on 1.15.1 (I hate version numbers!)
The new Linkin Park album is out and about, Minutes to Midnight. It is very very good. I am a big fan of Linkin Park, that seminal track One Step Closer to the Edge back a few years ago got my attention, and I have been hooked on everythign they have done since. Whilst I may not be the demographic the inner angst riddled teenager never erally left me so many of the lyrics resonate in so many ways. This album has such a divers set of songs, each is distinctivly Linkin Park, but also clearly each memebr of the ensemble is having their say.
Wake is a little instrumental start, and feels like its leading into something
Hands Held high is a distintive rap style track, with a military march style beat.
Bleed it out is a persitent repition of a hook line, with singing passionate power scream that makes Linkin Park so powerful. The rap with blasting vocals mix is classic.
The Little things you give away is quite blur like, acoustic guitar, slow pace, electonica beat. A much more melodic lilting song with an awesome hook. Lyrically intriguing. "there be no mistaking the levvy's are breaking" "All you ever wanted was some to truly look up to you, and six feet under water I do" The whole song is 6:23 long song then brings in more haunting electric guitar. Nearest analogy woudl be november rain, but in a very different style, that comaprison is not that this is derivative in anyway.
Leave Out all the Rest is again a calm start, that works into a much more powerful blast. Still very melodic, no shouting. It sounds like a melancholy epitaph song.
Valentine's day does the classic Park, slow melodic twinkly start, but with a more 80's drum into a very powerful screaming power vocal. If I am making analogies it has a Pearl Jam feel to it.
What I've Done is the current Uk single. Superb feel and drive to his song. A mix of pace, again very clever lyrics, a much more pop based song, but with the chopping electric guitars in as it powers up. "Let go of what I done"
In Pieces, very quiet start, then and much more rolling melody then starts to move to the passion we get used to. The guitar has a reggae feel to it, or something like another 80's sound of latin quarter. This one is more of a grower than instant impact.
No More Sorrow is the most awesome track on the album. It is pure metal. Driving military power chords. Anger, power and fantastic passion. So unlike the other tracks in many respects. "I see pain, I see need. I see liars and thieves, Abuse power with greed. I had hope, I believed. But I'm beginning to think that I've been deceived. You will pay for what you've done"
All rapped up in guitar and rock
Given Up then has some hand claps and jingle bells beat mixed with driving Static X style guitar. The register is much lower, and has some of that extra metal low screech that might be called death metal.With a very long, A VERY LONG aaaggghhhhhh that if he held that for real he deserves a medal.
In between then messes with the hears again. A much more male singer and guitar semi hippy style. Like Jack Johnson or any of teh glut of male singers. It has a haunting cello. "The things I want to say to you get lost before they come The only thing that's worse than one is none". It sounds californian. I do actually like it, the contrast to the previous songs is incredible and shows the diverse talents of this crew.
Shadow of the Day is a regular song in many ways, it makes you feel good. It reminds me a lot of U2. It makes to a nice subtle end to the album.
All in all this rocks. get it The also have a good youtube channel
I got back to the office today after talk to some guys in bedfont to find a parcel there. It is my framed first page of my first patent issue. We do a lot of patents at work. Usually its the filing of the patent that is the important (getting paid, getting points) part. Once in the system the company may well use it, or abandon in in all sorts of ways. This one however managed to get through and is a real genuine patent. W00t! It was a great idea around representing what people are doing in a real space or community. It was very web2.0 but the original file was back in 2002. Though the idea started in 2000. It was also a joint one with Rob Lawrence, who used to be our creative director which makes it extra cool.
So mrs epredator and I had a night out at Kutis in Wickham. A new branch of a posh indian restaurant. Greeted at the door by a gentleman in full ceremonial dress and whisked into a very purple environment. The food was awesome, and some very different recipes aswell as the standard fayre. Anyway, we were only out for a couple of hours but it was a great celebration of 12 years married. It was a good time to take stock and consider the future. I still have no idea what that is, but I am sure some doors are now open that we did not consiuder before. Of course I could just stil lbe believing my own hype, but what the heck :-)
It is great to be able get an extra, dare I say augmented reality, set of feeds and ways to consume things that interest you. Of course we could ask why we have to use so many devices to mash these things together?
The cards for perplexcity have an intrigue even for the youngest player. Of course I dont think she will be solving any silvers in the near future, but the future looks promising :-)
I tried to blog this from the phone via shozu but it did not work, so doing this via flickr instead :-) Double dragon on xbox live ! Awesome and had to take priority over the forza demo. Kicking it old skool :-)
I am stressed! Much of my current stressed state of mine will have been caused in my head by the bizzare way work has turned out. The whole metaverse thing is really taking off and the more people that see me do my thing and see me enthuse, the more people who want my time, success is a great thing :-) As I am ranting.....
We have ordered a car from Honda, from Alan Day in Portsmouth. They have been completely ignoring calls and not returning them for weeks. I had to go down than with baby in tow today just to be face to face with them. The salesman even tried lying to me there and then. Appaling customer service. "Oh we didnt want to call back as the news was not good as the date had slipped" WHAT !!!! Selling cars and dealing with car customers IS their business. Secondly wandering around trying to get hold of a Nokia USB charger for the n95. It does not charge from teh USB data cable, that is ratehr silly. Equally 10 mobile phone shops full of accessories and "experts" had no idea why I would want to charge my phone from my computer. Still Amazon have one so there is a bright point to finish on.
Way back in January 2006 I blogged on eightbar about perplexcity, then here. Recently we have bumped into the mindcandy guys at various events and it is great that season two is on its way, or even started depending on where the rabbit hole is. So now its off to do some cards and get the brain cells going. I seem to have got some competition from fellow eightbars too.
This evening we walked down a road for 15 minutes to one of the predlets pre-school, for a parents evening. Just out of interest I sparked up the n95 to hunt for wireless networks whilst walking. I was expecting 1 or two but there were about 20. They were (apart from 1 secure) a mixture of netgear, belkin, sky and bt hubs. Firstly, this was surprising that ther were this many, secondly we were walking a fair way from the front of the houses all set back in their gardens. It is a pity that we can all use the networks in a open way, but still it seems that wireless is really catching on even in a sleepy coastal village.
The Winchester tower of light near the cathedral still worked. Its a light sculpture that you are able to SMS a message to and things happen. A night out with Babbage Linden led to this structure. So here you see, albeit in the dark the SMS to sculpture, which was live web cast just for a laugh. Babbage got a response SMS from the system about the sculpture 2002/2003
It would appear that streaming live video is the weapon of choice for all us web 2.0+ crew. Having recently got a Nokia 95, as I had the urge to move from a drab work account to a shiny new all singing all dancing t-mobile one, I have been playing with all the bits and pieces. So, I now have sat nav in the car as the n95 is gps and map enabled. I have hooked up to Flickr to post images, and this blog to post comments. I have posted to youtube a video that the phone mixed itself (is low quality as its an MMS message "muvee". This was through ShoZu thanks to peder for twittering that to me :-) Tonight I signed up to Comvu and now have the ability to stream video from the phone to a streaming server for the viewing publics pleasure. There has been a lot of this going on on ustream.tv but this allows me to hit the streaming servers in a way suited to mobiles. Of course the neat thing is the n95 will use a WiFi network, such as one at home to do the streaming and not bust the fair use policy. The video and photos can also be geotagged using the GPS device builtin. Its all easily available commercial stuff. Not overly robust, things do crash sometimes but its way easier than is used to be! Its all very cool and interesting and just a little bit mad :-)
I finally got around to signing up on IMVU. Its chat with avatars, it looks really nice. I have not experimented with the whole room ownership/design thing yet
I got prompted (thanks Sandy) into looking at Activeworlds again. A good few years ago when I was trying to some investment in a company called SmartVR activeworlds was out there. A few of us dabbled but at the time, the infrastructure and machines to access it just were not up to it. Activeworlds are still there and looking pretty good. epredator is already in there and wandering about, and soon eightbar will have some sort of presence. It was broadway that caught my eyes and ears. A few more people in there with me and, well its a metaverse so we can do metaversal things
I have been really enjoying blasting through guitar hero ii. As a not very good but enthusiastic guitar player this gave me quite a buzz. Its not the same, but it is. However the really trange part was that admist all the ozzy, pearl jam, stone temple pilots (and the excellant swwet child of mine by G'n'R) this awesom game served up "Rock this Town" but the stray cats. So... the serendipity and connections continue extending this post rockabilly history So my favourite group of my formative years, rediscovered because of a memory sparked by the movements of babbage to Brighton and now blasting out of my Xbox360 in a game not unlike my favourite of all time "Quest for fame" - WOW. I have twittered and flickred and now blogged. If you have a 360, and like music. BUY THIS! My fingers now hurt pressing the button, I have that guitar RSI going too.
There seems to be so much going on, much of it metaversal. Several trips to London both presenting at unusual venues such as under the influence and going to the Open Rights Group meeting. More than ever though, and as an opposite to the view that online virtual worlds make you introverted this has been about meeting people. Hanging with Ren Reynolds, Eric Rice, Roo, Kosso of podcast and bloghud and meeting new people like Justin from the music group Redzone. Having been doing lots of SL I was convinced (by ren) to go back to There.com and give it a longer go. Not least because There were opposite the IBM stand I spent a few days on at Virtual Worlds 2007
I ended up buying a very cool buggy and razzed around, after a very odd conversation about metrosexuality with a There resident concerned about how his trousers looked.
Twitter has taken up a fair amount of time and SMS usage too. Its facsinting the way that is binding people across many platforms and giving a feeling of connectedness.
I am also trying to document the history of IBM and eightbar in Second life and virtual worlds. Partly for fun and partly for when people ask, "so what did you do then? and why? and when?" before it all fades into metaverse rock and roll obscurity.
Still did the whole ego trip thing on jyte (blame roo for getting me on that)
Millionsofus have a photo competition for hammer and coop powered by mini. This morning I noticed a 'photograph a villain' competition and happened to have this costume from haloween. I decided to stand in my timeless prototype camp fire and let the flames zoom up over me on my land I rent from Jessica Qin on Austin. So my extra land has been very useful. I also love snapzilla
My recent trip to New York for Virtual Worlds 2007 was very much a work trip. However it was also social. I got to meet some really famous (in my metaversal circles) people. Many of whom I have already met in blogs and in Second Life and alike. However it was a great ego boost, albeit a tongue in cheek one, to be treated and respected as one of this group that I aspire to. Several people actually told me I was a rock and roll star. Well I will take that one and feel good about it :-) I just twittered "Starting to believe own hype :-) just need the metaverse equivalent of a multi mill$ recording contract any offers ? :-)" Anyway, it was my SL rez day the last day of the conference and it was a great meet up all day and then later in the pub. My bag got a little guiness on it, via another famous avatar. I am also convinced that Frodo Baggins wandered past in the bar we were in, of course it may have been the fumes from Ren Reynolds White Russian (the drink of a philosopher)
Okay so the delivery of my Game 3.0 machine having been ordered in a Web 2.0 way was not delivered very smoothly. Parcel Force Worldwide seemed to have hired some new drivers who were unable to find our house. So I ended up with a mad dash to the depot (down the road) and caught them despite being out of hours. Anyway, that done, and having no games (as they were coming by snail mail ) I nipped to Argos and got a couple more. So what is it like? Well it does look like a george foreman lean min fat grilling machine. It also DOES NOT COME WITH ANY HD CABLES AT ALL. How mad is that, I had my HD cable on the way for HDMI but figured I would have atleast had a component cable for the massive amount of money I was spending. So I plugged it all on on old fashioned scart and sparked it up. Machines being connected now means that developers can get lazy and it spent a little while (once my wireless WEP key was entered using the on screen keyboard) updating itself. I also tried to associate my playstation europe login that has my PSP registered as an existing login for the ps3 online network, but it turns out thats a 'different' system so I ended up re-registering to get online as epredator. So I was at this point mildy annoyed, but still looking forward to some actual games.
Virtua Tennis 3 was first, and off to 'wimbledon' even though the name is not use. This has always been a fantastic game and the PS3 new version made for some great entertainment and I am very pleased with it. It may not be much better than the 360 version in reality but what the heck.
Virtua Fighter 5. This is awesome, I have always lover VF. It was the first proper 3d fighting game in the arcades and I still remember the moment I saw it running as a blocky low polygon game. despite loving it my wife elemming still manages to beat the c*ap out of me on it as I think too much and she button mashes. Eventually I will win over as I get the buttons and timing in my fingers but for now she is house champ.
I then downloaded some demos/freebies.
Formula 1 - Erm.... Wow. It looks awesome, TV like. I still had a quick go with automatic braking on so that messed it up a bit experience wise. But loved the look, I love F1. Just a pity as per usual it last years season.
Gran Turismo HD - One track, free game. Bloody awesome. It is pure GT. The replays nearly made me wet myself. Online ranking for timed laps is the basic structure. Blows all the other real car racing games away even as a mini HD demo.
The next day my HDMI cable and my two launch games arrived.
HDMI cable, HD (only 1080i on our TV but you cant have everything
Resistance Fall of Man. 3d shooter, not as good as I had expected a bit linear. The physics and AI might be great, and the depth of the graphics etc. May take a bit to get into. Its not call of duty or Halo.
Then....... Motorstorm. Blooming heck this is AWESOME. The HD intro, I was not sure which bits were real or rendered. The game, off road racing, dirt, deforming sand particles on the track. Tilting controller as you restle with the ruts and bumps in bikes, lorries, rally cars with a stonking soundtrack. The star of the show for me. Pure run, awesome Audio and Visuals.
Of course this was a quick set of dips into PS3, life intervenes and I am off to NY this week.
Other things that surprised and delighted me.
1. Sticking photos on the hardrive with an SD card and then using the 'photo album' slide show. This is a 3d animation of your photos as if they were paper and thrown onto a desk as the days scroll by. It is beautiful and engaging.
2. PSP remote. You pair your PSP with the PS3 and the PS3 is then put in remote mode. The PSP (where ever you are in range) will get a rendering of the PS3 screen. Some games will also work apparently. However, it means you can browse the photos as in 1 above, but on your PSP, with the ps3 doing all the rendering. Not sure I explained that but its very good.
There are some youtubes people have done. Does not do teh HD justice :-) but imagine this whilst tilting your PS3 controller.
Some footage of the photo album browser too
PSP remote play video too
Finally I woudl really have liked to have had Home ( the virtual world doodah) there for launch. Its one of teh reasons I felt I should get a PS3 both as a gamer and metaverse evangelist. Just gogin to have to wait until Autumn, I should have realized! Damn release dates and schedules. Also really looking forward to Little Big Planet, but I am happy to let them get that right!
I recently twittered that I found 1,650 references in a goolge seacrh to continuous partial attention. So I thought I would do something to save having read all of those entries in a CPA/Web2.0 type way as a joke. I created a yahoo pipe which takes a search of yahoo for CPA and then pumps that into content analysis which then pumps that into Flickr to find photos that represent the content analysis of the CPA entries. What does it mean? I have no idea!
I managed to miss a lot of comic relief this year, though I did record it on sky+. Giving money to red nose day is essential as a n organization is does fantastic work AND provides great entertainment. So seeing this fantastic sketch up on youtube, does that mean that people are going to watch and not donate? Does it mean that DVD fund raising sales will lower later? I dont think so, I think that it is great that many more people will get to see these fantastic bits of comedy and get made aware or comic relief.
Youtube does it again. My favourite song of all time Stray Cat Strut
I ended up looking for this due to a chain of events again.
I was helping find some music to calm baby Sam. So my itunes was being shuffled through. I then realized when I read a twitter about Jim Purbrick being in Brighton that I did not have Rumble in brighton on itunes. All my stray cats is on vinyl. I was a rockabilly when everyone was doing punk. So I hit the shop to find Rumble on Brighton and bumped into a superb Brian Setzer Orchestra best of live album. Including a cool version of the strut. So I downloaded it.
Meanwhile I had thrown together a video of Sophie's favourite game grape escape
Was uploading to youtube and thought, oooh stray cats I wonder, surely they wont be on there. Sure enough they were.
So now I am thinking I need a new avatar to sport the massive hair setzer style that I used to have when I was a kid growing up as a rockabilly rebel.
I managed to get all fired up by the PS3 keynote and in the midst of all that my new work laptop arrived. So I now have to do all teh installs and moves of data etc, play with Second Life on it generally give it a work out. However, GRAW2 for teh 360 has just come through the door and that needs a good session on it. All that I am supposed to be helping build the mega power that is eightbar in Eve online. Starting to look like there is too much to do :-)
I have been looking at some of my old gadgets, getting a bit retro to help Sophie learn some stuff. The PC is an obvious vehicle, but this little gizmo I used to find fascinating and I have never seen one anywhere else. Of course now I just googled it and it still exists. Now I neeed to see if we can get some more cards for it.
Here we have teh updated Mickey Mouse all CGI paused on a Sky + PVR whilst at the same time enjoying the original B&W mickey on Youtube on a wireless laptop. All to show my dad what this mad world is now all about.
I tried to drive to Warwick on Wednesday. Got 50 of teh 120 miles and the a34 got shut. We did not move much for 3 hours. This amusingly dirty lorry was near me. It made me laugh. The other picture on Flickr after it is so I have the timestamp for the fact we had not moved very much at all.
I have been sucked into twitter and now tumblr. It is hard to know where to post what. Its very exciting to have to find some sort of filter or meta voice to go across all these. With all teh other things, and places to be. The world certainly is not shrinking !
My new machine, the dual core, dual SLI gfx cards and 2 Gb is actually very good. I am pleased with it. Though I cant say I have gone WOW at Vista. Yes its nice, but the first time I put my machine into sleep mode I got a Blue Screen of Death. Maybe it knows who I work for. So I am busy gettgin all the bits I need where I need them, recovering my itunes, setting up the media centre to talk to the 360 etc. It all takes too much time. I got lots looking for outlook express, but it is now Windows Mail. Seemed to work teh same though not very good at getting my imported stuff from my old machine. Its great when a windows product does not recognize a windows file extension. Still, it seems to work, its very fast and most of all both the first look and old school versions of Second Life seem to be working. VERY FAST ! I can now run FRAPS and go all machinima rather than my previous youtube movie which was a video camera pointed at the screen.
Given my 3 year old desktop at home melted I bought a new Mesh computer. Firstly I had the very helpful barclaycard fraud detection squad stop the transaction phone my work voicemail (despite the message saying I am not here) which then took 1 hour to sort out with them and with Mesh. I had planned to work at home tommorrow, specifically to be in for the delivery of the new machine (more critical now as my work machine is on the way out). They phoned me at 6 pm today to say "sorry there has been a slight delay". The slight delay is actually 7 days! Apparently the defualt excuse is that "we are waiting on the hard drive from the supplier". A bit odd that, not an uncommon part. So having rearranged meetinegs etc I am now left with having to move stuff next week. I have no machine, and they already have the money. I picked Mesh because I bough my in-laws a machine a while back and I was impressed, but thinking back that was a week over too. Could it be part of the business? Take the money, delay a week must be some profit in that? Anyway, noit sure if that will inform anyones buying decision. I am sure the machine will be lovely next week, I get less of a clash playing crackdown as that's on its way too now. Anyway up to you, customer service atleast they told me. hmmmm not great. Mesh *UPDATE This I actually good, but could have been tricky. My machine has now been delivered only one day late. i.e. It came on friday (today). This is fantastic news, and I am lucky Jan was in. So Mesh are back in my good books, but they did set my expectations in a strange way :-)
I finally overtook aidy in gamerpoints on Xbox Live yesterday. Whilst playing, of all things in this HD interconnected hi tech gaming world paperboy. I am not sure Aidy realized that we were in competition, and its not that hard to rack up some achievments. However, as gamers we just play. We seem to have a similar set of games and turnover in getting new games too. He also seems to be slightly better than this aging gamer so I love a challenge. I also rebranded my blades and gamer pic with battlestar graphics. Why, well I can and I like battlestar.
The first two cards are an image of the state of play. 5364 plays 5359
The second are the 'live' cards that will change over time so you will be able to see how much I have been beaten up for this post :-)
We have got the Brits on TV tonight, live awards show. Firstly its great as it finally has come of age, gone live and suitably edgy. Russell Brand is a hoot and insane. They just had Brand introduce Steven Tyler and Sophie Ellis Bextor (never would have thought I would ever see that) to introduce an award that the Killers got. What was great was to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers perform. I have been a fan since the first time I saw and heard give it away on MTV. I am so glad they have become such a mega band as people used to say 'who?', the same used to happen with Green Day. The other weirdness is that I have to admit I really like the Take That song that the reformed boy band did. Patience as a song is crafted and performed so well that it is impossible to ignore. It seems like it could have been pushed out in any genre and work.
Now I have to say that I never thought with my rock, blues and rap portfolio that I would ever post a youtube link of take that! I alway sused to make a rule I woudl not buy a CD (yes old skool) if it did not have a parental advisory sticker on it. But music is music. And what do you know they just one the first live brit vote for the best single.
I was getting a little creeped out by the new guinness TV adverts. However, whilst watching the one in the middle of electra glide in blue on Film4 I bothered to follow the URL. This website and the advert are as per usuall with guiness pure genius. It reminds me of the I like monday video (must be a b3ta.com (viewer discretion a must)) Also there was a dnacing cow/cheesse online video maker back in the 99/2k era which I seem to have lost. Still whilst looking for the odd cow rock video I found let them sing it for you again
My paternity leave finished and I was back in the swing of things today. Thats not to say I have not been stil lin touch, both read and writing blogs, popping into Second Life and keeping tabs on all things metaversal of course. For me everything it a continuum, a set of threads interwoven through many parts of life. Stopping cuts these threads. Twenty, or even ten years ago these threads would not have really existed in most people lifes. For me though they do now, they are enabled and enhanced by much of the technology and by a willingness to use it. Now its not to everyones taste, but for me it works. Seeing these patterns, keeping them going is a skill and not everyone can do it, measure it or even accept it, but the world takes all sorts :-)
I was scanning my blog feeds and ended up on wonderland about a battlestar game I then realized, after some hunting down that this blogger.com - its google its easy place doesnt do trackbacks! What a pain! So I am guessing I will have to look at moving. Trackbacks, both serious and comedy, are far too important to miss out. Anyway the post was about battlestar and games and here is the game I have from back in the day
Just before christmas my work laptop decided it had looked at the mean time to failure and it needed to blow up. It got fixed of course but it was a bit of a pain. Now my home desktop has joined it. It is a bit old, but I usually get a decent one to last for a good few years. The laptop failure was fairly consistent, the desktop though.... Sometimes it powers up, sometimes it does not. Sometimes it packs in half way through doing stuff. None of the diagnostics or apps I have seem to think its a disk problem. The fact even the bios startup does not always happen makes it look like something nasty and hardware related. So it looks like I now have a new one on the way, assuming the credit card fraud detection has not annoyed the supplier. This also means I enter the world of Vista, so I guess it had to happen at some time. That reminds me, I am veyr annoyed at msoft using "WoW" for vista as thats nicking Wow from world of warcraft. Deliberate? I also had the pleasure of taking my car in for some new tyres. One on each corner was needed, oh and the brakes on the front were toasted too, so an expensive day. Still, its all my own fault, using these things so much.
As a delightful counterpoint to Benidorm there is a superb programme on " the alchemists of sound" devoted to the bbc radionphonics workshop on right now. I have a special affinity to this group of explorative sound engineers and composers. When I was a kid I was brought up on Dr Who and lots of mad science programmes. When I got to filling in a career/personality survey when I was 8 yeard old it suggested I join the radiophonics workshop. Now I have messed with editing tapes, and cine film so appreciate the benfits of digital composition and the art of the analogue. Roo has made some tunes but I wont expose the world to my my stop start and splice tape remixes though vince clarke got one of my c=64 creations in a competition I even wrote an academic piece on music concrete(say in a french accent) back in the day. I also spent a good few years with a reel to reel as a kid. Which is why I love computers so much. There is art in the digitial and in the them of Dr Who! Who is not moved by that !
I have just watched the second episode of the cringe worthy Bendidorm. Anyone who has been to any of the places we have caused to be ruined will cringe and laugh at brits abroad. It is a genius bit of writing, but hits the cringe nerve just like "the office" does. The set of characters, an aging set of swingers with no moral compass, the posh couple who have booked by mistake, the gay couple disgusted by the manners and style, the family with a brat boy, pregant 16 year old and annoying mother in-law and Johnnyt Vegas with his mum as a pub quiz champion. Genius.
I had to give it a go again. This time the real epredator. Not as instantly interesting as Second Life. However the more fixed nature of it may be a good model for more baked environments.
For a while now a few of us have been, and still are writing on eightbar. Many of the emerging tech founders of eightbar have now either started, or restarted blogs of their own. It is not a rock and roll split. but merely our needs to express some of our own interests and ideas. A communal blog you have to consider your fellow contributors. Eightbar has also been a victim of its own success in all things metaverse and Second Life. So we have to consider what impact any article may have on a wider audience. Daz had his blog for ages, Roo has become more prolific recently and the latest to join the fray is Rob. This is worrying competition as Rob often excels in everything he tries. Daz used to try and compile a list of things that Rob can't do and that was very short. So far from a beatles/the who/guns and roses/take that/busted (delete for applicable era) band split we are in fact spreading our experiences and giving ourselves a bit of breathing space. Well I think so anyway.
I am not sure how the Colts have managed to come back from the the first seconds kick return in the superbowl, but repsect to them. Prince did a very good set at half time. Purple rain was very good as it is chucking it down with driving rain. They have 47 HD cameras, so we are getting to see all the rain drops close up and personal. ***Update I managed to miss the last few minutes of the superbowl, due to an overwhelming desire to sleep. However, good on the Colts for their 29-17 victory. I am sure my congrats will mean a lot to them :-) I am still not sure how they managed to get back from the crushing first few seconds.
The coverage is off an running to 176 countries for the Superbowl (for me on Sky HD.) I am always struck by some cultural differences and some TV madness. We have Cirque de Soleil doing the pre game show. Probably a little bit too soft I would have thought, more like an Olympics. Still Janet Jackson, mind you that was mid game ? Billy Joel sand away at the national anthem. It was good as he seemed to just sing it. Very often there seems to be lots of over interpretation and changes put into the song. Some thing that tends not to happen with other national anthems. There was an amazingly well times fly over of jets just as the song finished, very impressive. Then there is the coin toss. It is a massive ritual with lots of statistical analysis afterwards. A quote from Kevin on Sky "At the end of the toss one team has the ball one team does not"! In this case Chicago won the toss, made my ex Dolphins star player Dan Marino. So I am sitting here and now am eating my own words. Chicago (Hester) just recieved the kick, and most amazingly the ball was run the entire length of the field to score ! The 8th kick return for score a touchdown in Superbowl history and the first ever on a starting kickoff! I need to stop typing and start watching. Go Bears :-)
Roo and Rachel came around today to meet Sam. Roo had been off on a work trip to NY and was no doubt jet lagged. It was good to see them both. Sophie really enjoyed her present a "make a phot album" kit that she got straight into. Sam has a really cure cuddly lamb and I have my techno pack from the work trip, including a very cool Samsung yp-t9 MP3/Video player for some work testing in the near future. We both noted the irony of some recent converstations
I am looking forward to watching the NFL superbowl tonight. I finally get to watch it in HD, thanks to sky sports and my christmas present of an HD box:-) I have always had an interest in American Football since way before it got coverage on Channel 4. It used to have highlights of the superbowl on World of Sport with Dickie Davies, usually with the Steelers or the Cowboys back in those days. I got to play it at an american school in Norfolk one afternoon when I was about 12. I did not think I was overly aggressive but someone managed to break their fingers on me. The only pro game I have seen was the New England Patriots a few years ago in an opener against Arizona Cardinals. It was a superb sporting experience even if they stopped you buying too much beer. I was not too sure who to support in this case but I am swung by people I know and where they live
I left the 360 downloading a few game demos and got a just to play them just now. I have to say that Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 looks and plays very well. The first GRAW (a.k.a.Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 3: Advanced Warfighter) was very good apart from the very annoying "loose your squad have to do it on your own -- in the dark" mission which annoyed me. However the best demo from today, and the one that is a definite purchase is Crackdown.
Images from the fansite kit very Web2.0 to release the artwork for people to explore themselves. This feels like a real step forward for the free roaming GTA-alike. GTA is about vehicles and has added being on foot. It has been a very good franchise and will remain a top favourite as I even enjoyed the original 2d top down old school versions. It does however, currently atleast, stick with being 'real'. It does have a great spirit and feel. Feel, spirit and attitude in a game is a hard one to quantify. Any experience has to make it into your fingers, your brain and your heart to be effective. All types of games and simulators have a formula but formulas can still have spirit. Rocky is just a boxing film, Star Wars just a space battling good versus evil yarn etc. Your character in Crackdown not only drives and shoots but gradually gains strength and the ability to leap and climb some very tall buildings. It gives it a flavour of parkour. The free roaming with guns and cars, the semi super hero feel to it all make it compelling. Very Spider man or predator flavour in that respect. It has much from an RPG with a huge area to explore and the more you play the better you get. The online experience looks like it has a more MMO element to it with Co-op. For a demo to be able to stand up to this free roaming nature and to not get lost of wonder what to do next is an achievement. Sometimes I would rather just get the full game rather than get dissapointed by a bad demo of a really great game. In this case though its going to be a must purchase. Off to order it now.
Several times at home I have now seen the very funny star wars shortened, usually the reduced shakespeare company perfom the bard, but here they do Lucas. Its on youtube in 2 parts and very funny! Part 1 and Part 2 The screaming video response by ajaxsempahor is also worth watching as its one of the very talented crew who do the reduced series.
The previous post led me to have a quick look around youtube. This one surprised me a bit. 1 its very well done, 2) No way would batman be that good :-)
Whilst updating my myspace profile because Colin had decided that was where he wanted to hang out I found this awesome predator video I have not really been 'doing' myspace or bebo for that matter. Preferring instead the direct interactions of Second Life and the professional links of linkedin Also at work we have our bluepages+1 which acts as a page with all the blog and social bookmarks plus tags and ratings. Its a bit of a lepa for many people to use these, but clearly they have a place in a non centralized self organizing web 2.0+1 type of way.
When Sam was born I had restarted this blog. I blog regulalry internally at work and get to see some indication of the readership. Numbers are not everything, but I do like this world map of all the people who came to see Sam's first news. Its from google analytics, which I must say is very impressive.
We just got back from registering Sam's birth. The registrar asked my occupation so I said Metaverse Evangelist. Jan's was Finance and Planning manaager, though we nearly had a mistype on the record as Fnance and Plumbing manager. So its now on the birth certificate and official. For the stats people a short description came out as Online Virtual Worlds. It felt like a start to the Jedi religion swamping census forms and becoming official. The registrar made a comment "that will give them something to think about!"
Everyone went to bed very well last night. So I did a quick Second Life update, read and listened to the Reuters article with Mitch Kapor and then dived into Eve-online for a relaxing hour or so. It was that or viva pinata on the xbox 360, but I wanted to save that as Sophie is enjoying it.
Anway the eightbar corporation has now been created in Eve. I may have been a little bit premature as I ended up renting a very cheap office for us and the corp has 1 member so far!
Its based over at the Unel IX Chemal Tech Factory in the Sing Laison region (apparently).
I had a conversation recently about pinky and the brain with a fellow eightbar in Second Life activist sparked by the a common appreciation of Black Adder and Monty Python
The cartoon's famous tagline is: "Come Pinky, we must prepare for tomorrow night" "Gee, Brain, what are we doing tomorrow night?" "The same thing we do every night Pinky — Try to take over the world!" which is something I used to play on my desktop theme back when I started on web project in 1997.
I managed to get around to setting up & domain for sam and a blog. I also pointed sophies url to a new blog. See right hand panel. Http://sophieellenhughes.com and http://samueltobyhughes.com A bit light on content but it does mean that this blog will get back to normal. I am still amazed that we can register a domain and set up stuff in an instant but have to go to all sorts of lengths to register sam to the state. Including writing a cheque for three pounds, driving to a tiny office where only the mother need be present and then wait for the certificate of birth in the post. Still I guess that is what happens when you are a techie sitting blogging from a phone whilst your daughter runs around the playshack adventure playground, you sort of expect it all to be this easy.
I will be giving him his own blog very soon but for now here is Sophie, Mum and baby Sam. Thankyou everyone for the kind comments and support, we are all very grateful and happy. Time to go off the grid for a few days :-)
We just got back from the mid-wife and she has initiated the paperwork/carrier pidgeon/smoke message to the various arms of the NHS to get ready for a potential induction. We are not likely to need that (he writes in a weird reverse psychology mind magic type way). It is set for Monday at 6pm. Its supposed to be Sunday but they are fully booked. I guess lots of people are clenching in the cold weather.
Jan is back playing Zuma on the 360. The music is an infuriating jungle aztec drum with some ping noises as the balls fly. You now the sort of thing you get in these puzzle games.
I have a theory that when he shows up, unlike some babies who need to hear the neighbours theme, or whatever their mum watched on TV to soothe them he is going to need Zuma playing. I dont think popcap have it on itunes, I must go and look though. The mid-wife though says everything is all ready to go and things are happening just frustratingly slow for all concerned.
Jan has an appointment with the midwife this afternoon. I think she is going to try and entice "baby linden" out with the promise of sweets or some xbox live achievment points. Things are still happening, regular(ish). It is hard not to get complacent and forget that the mad dash could happen at any moment. Nearest geek analogy
A while back I managed to get the ARG perplex city.com card the thirteenth labour. I had not been back to it in a while, but clearly it has not been solved. I spent a week solid trying to work it out and got quite annoyed. I had not been back to it, but in wanting to let people know about Jan's labour I went back and had a look. So I have still not solved the 13th labour and Jan is still in early labour. We are still at home, things are happening every 15 minutes or so, they started early this morning. Yesterday it was 20 minutes but started at lunchtime.
Blackadder has so much quotable stuff. My second favourite one just turned up on late night TV. This on whilst not voiced as its too long as a one liner makes me chuckle when I come across any mad planning
Melchett: You look surprised, Blackadder.
Edmund: I certainly am, sir. I didn't realise we had any battle plans.
Melchett: Well, of course we have! How else do you think the battles are directed?
Edmund: Our battles are directed, sir?
Melchett: Well, of course they are, Blackadder -- directed according to the Grand Plan.
Edmund: Would that be the plan to continue with total slaughter until every- one's dead except Field Marshal Haig, Lady Haig and their tortoise, Alan?
Melchett: Great Scott! (stands) Even you know it! Guard! Guard! Bolt all the doors; hammer large pieces of crooked wood against all the windows! This security leak is far worse than we'd imagined!
We have spent the evening rating and timing various contraction like movements. The need to do something, timing them writing them down is really a replacement for not being able to help a lot. Something is certainly happening but Jan has gone to bed now having sat up waiting for it all to start properly. So once again I guess I will sparking up Eve( No long missions though.) and a bit of work in Second Life, Snapzilla/Flickr etc whilst I am on standby. I certainly cant risk going to sleep too early! So apologies to family and friends out there. At the time of writing its not likely to be today and I have given up predicting anything. I almost did not bother writing this post, but I know if I dont some people will assume we are all systems go for the baby.
Last night things slowed down again. Though it is the most promising flase alarm yet. I have had to tell so many people that I am about to be out on paternity that I am worried people are going to start not believing me. However Jan is definitely pregnant, lovely and radiant. Come on "baby linden" lets see you soon the world is waiting :-)
Things must be happening, we have the notebook out taking the timings. If you have seen coupling on the TV then you will get a kick out of that. We seem to be on regular 30 minute twinges. They, whoever they are, say 5-10 minutes and its time to go to the hospital. Tommorrow is my Mum's birthday so she hopes baby Linden arrives tomorrow as a birthday present.
The midwife just came to the house. Without too much detail, dilation has started, though not full labour. Jan has an appointment on wednesday that the midwife thinks it is unlikely we will have to go to. fingers crossed. I am work at home, but not do things that I cant drop in an instant.
I managed to get to the notebook stage to write down what went where. But as you will see from the amount of flickr photos I have transferred in concerning all things metaverse. Still here...... So I have managed to get up April 4th to July 7th done so far. 279 out of 862 so I have a way to go! The photos form a large part, or maybe total part of the book I need to write about innovation, politics, using web2.0 and finding likeminded people.
I was busy pushing my 900+ Second Life snapzilla shots over to flickr as a historical record of 2006. I had to stop that and I was busy helping Andy with his mega yacht in Second Life on Hursley, when Jan said. oooooh that was a longer contraction. So we could be on for tonight. Of course we have had false alarms the last few days, but he must be wanting to get out. I was joking with Jan that I needed to make sure I had some skills training on Eve, that take a long while. So, thats what I am doing now.
It has been a day of trying to distract ourselves. Sophie was off with her Nanny and Grandad today. That left Jan and I to go for a walk, though not a very long one. Biggest alarm was Sophie falling out of bed, a big thump just now upstairs. So it meant the rest of the day spent trying to wait. Jan spent time on here favourite game of all time. Zuma. So yes I have to own up any achievements on the Z game are not mine on the 360. I spent an ridiculous amount of time on Eve. I actually managed to get somewhere. A long way to go, but it is a great, not too stressful way to spend the time. It does not need a heads down focus all the time. Though I do think I need to spark up Rainbow Six:Vegas and do something a bit more focussed.
We have had a few predlet false alarms. The egg is still being sat on though. The latest was 3/4 hours worth at 5am. Jan was not phased by it and did not bother to try and wake me up. However its progress. It will obviously have to happen eventually! Many things in life are plannable, start dates, exams, meetings, weekends etc. Organic things like this though are just that in their timing. I have been filling time with both lots of work around Second Life (obviously) at all times of the day and night and with Eve online. Eve, and most MMO's and RPG's are great becuase you can spend a lot of time travelling and not really doing much. Tinkering, upgrading approach as mission/quest etc. This is great for relaxation though you can throw yourself into things. The more I play Eve-online the more I am enhancing my set of anecdotes as to why Second Life worked when it did for me. Second Life has no levelling up. if you want to go and meet people it is purely social skills and time that you spend to get to know whats going on. Sure you spend a large amount of time attending things, or learning to build things but it dos not require you to have spent several weeks training skills to allow you to do a certain thing. I need to write a proper piece on this with some more analysis of the quantifiable differences, but I have skills to train and a new ship to buy. So come on baby Linden, save me from this addiction.
Ok, so I have only just completed the training missions, and scratched the surface, but Eve Online does look very nice. Of course only having space and effectively nice background, not massive amounts of terrain to shift it does have a good chance to look great. Just as homeworld did way back. Now, do I spend ages playing this again tonight? If so when do I get to watch sky one Battlestar Galactica in HD? What about my 360? acheivement points to chase to catch up with a few people like Aidy Last count I have 5090 and he has 5339. I had nearly caught him, damn that viva pinata he got the other day.
So it looks like eve online is going to get me in its grip. It is of course completely different to anything in SL. Whilst its social, the role play and level up aspects cant be ignored. I blame Roo for this one who in turn blames Mark Wallace, whom we got know through Second Life so wheels within virtual wheels. As someone who hits games mostly on the Xbox 360 now and in shortish bursts, occasionally dipping bakc into old ones, but chasing the latest fix it wil be interesting to see if the Upstairs PC nature of this can fit into the life with 2 kids when the baby arrives.
Well after a long while blogging over on eightbar.com I had forgotten to keep this blog going. Lots has been happening the past year of so. At work I have been recreated as epredator potato on secondlife.com. We have seen a massive rise in popularity across the board, but we now have 1400 collegues and an emerging business unit all operating in the non game 3d MMO. I will do a round up of some of the press links, as I have been very busy telling the world about what this new thing is all about, but that is for eightbar :-) However here is something neat Well its just a few minutes on the television with Paul Mason of newsnight. Its available to watch here first it the article marked virtual death The piece is aiming at delving deeper into who we are online. There are actually more frames of my 3d print than of me, but thats not a bad thing. So we get the real Hursley build and Yossarians virtual one on the telebox. So from about 7mins 20 to 9mins 15 you get to see some other IBM virtual stars and lots of shots of the real fabjectory printed version of the virtual me.
Closer to home, and more importantly we are days or possibly hours away from a baby brother for Sophie. Baby Linden as he is nicknamed is due on wednesday so I am sure I will use this blog to let you all see him. This is a shot from October 06 though.
Friday, March 18, 2005
March 14th back to work. Part time for a few weeks to get back into the swing of it and not wear myself out. Feeling not too bad, but the scar tissue inside still tightens up and causes the syptoms, and my eyes are gradually adjusting back to close up work. Doc says another 6 weeks before worth considering visiting the optician.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Now recovering at home. Well Monday saw a visit to the hospital, the consultant seemed happy with the 2 hour operation. There was a bit more in my head to remove that he originally thought, but he has got what he needed out of there. Starting to lose the jet lag caused by the general. My nose feels quite swollen inside but you would not know to look at me. I hope it has fixed everything, if not it needed doing anyway. Just 1 more week recovering and its back to the grindstone.
Monday, February 07, 2005
28th Feb is the date for my op
I have now seen the consultant again, and he has booked me in for 28/2 a general anaesthetic and overnight in hospital with 2 weeks recovery.
It seems a long way off, but atleast its the home straight.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Some things are now in place.
18/1/05 is the CT scan.
31/1/05 is the follow up with the ENT specialist.
At that point the decision on surgery and I guess dates and timings etc can be made.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Christmas was fun, lots of food and enjoyment, thouh with the thought of the 10/1 specialist appointment and a flaring up of the dizzyness and head pressure there was a bit of a cloud over the whole thing.
Anwyay, 10/1 came and the doc gave us the good news that the MRI did not show anything really serious, and I do have a brain after all.
However, he has now asked for a CT scan, as it looks like I have a cyst in my sinus cavity that is causing all the bother. The CT scan lets him see the detail that the MRI is not designed to show. Then it looks like the plan is to go in and drain and cut away as needed. Its a delicate op but it by no means as bad as I thought. So in my mind its good news, though I still have all the same symptoms and cant drive, play xbox, use VDU's for very long, read, run around alot etc......
But it feels like this is the home stretch and a few weeks down teh line I will have a reset button pressed in my head and away we go.
In the picture below from the MRI you can see the sinus cavities, my right is on the left if that makes sense. The bad side top left (my right side) is filled with white, the 'good side' (top right) is an empty cavity filled with black, as it should be.
Anyway, just waiting on the a CT appointment, then 1 week later a return to the specialist, then I guess a date is set for the op if it proves to be what is needed
