Predator Mii

Predator Mii, originally uploaded by epredator.

My version of a predator mii complete with sighting spot top left often left out in other mii's

A new sofa, a bit of a departure

130420081148, originally uploaded by epredator.

We just ordered a new Sofa. Oddly these things still take 12 weeks to make even in this day and age.
We have a more brown toned down colour than this vibrant red, but we have never had a leather sofa, nor one that is on legs, usually a more traditional boxed in couch.
The headrests are also more like a car one in that they are removable but on metal stalks.
We also have a chez long as part of the order, though they called it a day bed in the shop :-)
We are not getting all this, the house is not big enough, but some parts in this style to replace the very saggy 10 year old sofa we have now

I am loving this - music mashup and chain of discovery - The Anomalies

Whilst in the rock and roll metaverse meetup in the NY lower east side I got chatting with "Eric Reuters". We had not met in real life. As part of the old fashioned way we swapped cards and then emails.
Eric put me on to this awesome video on youtube. A brilliant mashup of rap over the top of a complete version of the predator movie in 6 minutes. It is both very clever and took a lot of time and effort to do.
I appreciate this on several levels. The first is a while back I ws trying to boil films down to the key scenes for a range of t-shirts called "under the influence" the closest I got to doing this was a montage that I use as a backdrop on twitter.
Secondly is the predator movie :-)
Thirdly, it was from a contact in Second Life and we were meeting in RL in the middle of a party scene of fellow metarati.
Fourth I was berated a little by DJ Astrud Sand for my last.fm music list as there was nothing new on it (partially because I had not been scrobbling much and the fact I had a mix up on accounts so I am vepredator on there. It turns out that this video was created by the members of a new band called The Anomalies.
I popped over to their myspace page and I must say I liked what I heard, so I will scrobble that when I get to my home machine and feedback into the loop of conversation from the lower east side party.
So in one fell swoop this has covered Second Life,real life New York, Last.fm, web2.0, web1.0, UK bands, Predator, mashups,youtube, myspace, itunes, rock and roll parties and serendipity.
That's exciting I think.
Anyway here is the video, listen how the lines rhyme from the rap to the parts of the film and the great line "so he set of a bomb, cos they don't like losing where the predator comes from"


They also have a website in an old fashioned way :-)

Rock-Pig - Very funny this one

I have been mentioning how we have thought of ourselves as all rock and roll as metaverse people, and of course we are :-) and that the Nickelback rockstar song is a tongue in cheek anthem now.
Well Andy's son has gone and gone the guinea pig version. Always good for a laugh and I do like this.

Virtual Worlds 2008 - The after show parties

Ok so conferences are a subtle blend of business and social. The virtual world conferences tend to have quite a large element of social. The medium we are working in, namely metaverses is inherently about connecting people. It is also a growing. but young industry so there are many "movers and shakers" who care passionately about it all.
The first nights party saw many of us wander along to the Electric Sheep Company offices in Manhattan. There was some fantastic buffet food, a very generous bar (featuring Jack Daniels amongst other things) and out back was Rockband set up on the Xbox. I particularly enjoyed getting to play Rockband as we dont have it in the UK yet and I am a Guitar Hero fan. Of course the blend of timezones, late nights and the previously mentioned JD may have affected my musical skills and coordination, but I did really enjoy the gathering. Thanks muchly ESC.



The second evening was a very late one, Ids and I made our way down to the Lit bar in the lower east side to a metaverse meetup arranged by Annie Ok and Jerry Paffendorf. There were a stack of people there who are very active in creating and using Second Life and other metaverse tech. Annie has a particularly good set of pictures in her set here there is also a generic metaverse meetup group here

I did not get to take any video as it was very dark in the Lit bar. However Xantherus has made lots of videos of the Virtual Lower East vLes.com side that she worked on for MTV that was announced live at the conference.
Here is one video with Annie narrating :-)

I mused earlier on the difference between the almost grunge rock and roll chic atmosphere of the East coast metaverse scene versus the more techno cleanliness that seems to exists in the rich silicon valley west coast culture. I then merge that with out UK, Hursley countryside geekdom. It shows that there is somethine for everyone in the metaverse business.

Sifu pointed out at the conference he was expecting more cos-play apart from em that was as he pointed out I sort of do that all the time with my eightbar shirt and leather striped jacket.

Anyway it was good to see everyone, the 2am Macdonalds with Idz after the party really did show NY is the city that never sleeps. Though strangely the next day (Saturday) it was strange to find Macy's not open until 10 am.

Back from NYC

Noisy Scene, originally uploaded by epredator.

Yesterday was flight back from New York. It arrived about 10am UK time into a snowy LHR. We were stacked up for a while whilst the weather did its thing.
This trip has been a vary metaverse full one. Whilst only 7 days it seems like a few months (in a good way as so much has happened)
I think it is also, as evident in this picture, that the US bombards your senses with information, all the information is usually also augmented with stacks of text and warning signs.
So this trip.
1. Hawthorne - A day of meeting the IBM metarati from across many divisions, a real coming together of all the streams with such a stack of common insight not infighting.
2. Somers - CIO IQ team gathering. All the Innovate quick team in a room in Somers, again common understanding and purpose
3. NYC - Another cross IBM gathering (video in the next post) where we took to the streets of New York in a kind of virtual world treasure hunt time travel gig.
4. Virtual Worlds 2008 - 2 very busy days of conference. A massive trade floor to cover, conversations to be had, metarati to gather plus 2 evenings of party. The first at the electric sheep company offices (many thanks to them all) and then in the lower east side Lit bar (thanks Jerry and Annie) for a mateverse meetup.
5. A day dashing around new york city with Ids and Roo chatting and snapping pictures and eating food before heading to the airport.
I have not (except on the overnight plane) had much time to reflect but I know there are some new ideas forming in my head, and yet another perspective on where this all needs to go now.
I am even more convinced the industry is here to stay now.

Tripping America

Roo and I are on a rare "both metaverse evangelists in the same place" trip to the east coast.
Yesterday was a fairly straightforward flight and a very quick entry in the US. We usually dread the queues at immigration but this was very quick and very slick at JFK. I was asked what i do for a living and said "metaverse evangelist". That could have led to a longer conversation, but I boiled it down to virtual worlds.... web stuff.
We had a meeting today in Hawthorne (an IBM research building). It was a mass gathering of many colleagues and people with a lot of coverage in virtual worlds. It was icredible to have a large number of equally enthused evangelists and IBM movers and shakers from all parts of IBM. Our coming together was quite a momentous moment and we sent all day sharing with one another what we were up to, spotting where we crossed over, where we fitted in a strategic and tactical space. It was the most intense and productive meeting, and thats after having done this for 2 years (My SL rez day was a few days ago)
Tomorrow is a more local Innovate Quick team meeting. as we are a widely distributed team in the CIO it is good to put physical presence to metaverse ones.
All this leads up to the next stage of the trip which is back from danbury to NY and the virtual worlds conference.
In the mean time we get to go to Somers tomorrow. So it will be more driving, sat nav and human assisted navigation.
However with the sort of signs and mass of information it sometimes get confusing for us poor brits. I took this today on the way into Hawthorne. This was a small road junction.

Roo also took this whilst I was driving us from the airport up to CT.

I know it makes us seem like we never travel anywhere, but as we turned into this road we both commented on how much this looked like America. Its just a combination of styles and the lorry/truck on the road, the stop sign and the madness of taking what is in fact a wrong turn as neverlost tried to get us to left at the next junction not this one. With the giant arrow though it is not clear !

Internet Approval Form - Byron Report

Internet Approval Form, originally uploaded by epredator.

Today has seen an explosion of reporting of the Byron report on kids access to games and the internet. Coverage ranging from the internet is evil to just say no to censorship.
From what I have read so far here aside from the headline grabbing it all seems straightforward.
Just as in this picture of the consent form I had to do fro predlet 1.0 for school use. Any parent getting this who is not e-nabled should think "hmmm why are they asking me this the kids use the computer all the time seems to keep them happy", and then they can take some action themselves to help guide their kids.
As usual this comes down to awareness and parental responsibility. It is true, without a doubt, that many parents have no idea what their kids can do online. That of course does not mean that they want to do anything online. "I just want to talk to my mates why would I talk to anyone else" as I heard the other day.
The report did make a good point though that children need to push boundaries and grow and develop. As more of them are kept indoors for "safety" in risk averse sociaty they will be more likely to say what the heck and do things online.
As with all the dangers, and good things in the world we have to help our kids understand them for themsleves, which of course means we have to understand them too, not just ban/restrict/deny which tends to be the knee jerk reaction.
The fact this also gets all mixed up with video game content just causes more polarization. As a gamer I know what the likely content of a game is. Though I too have boundaries for the kids. As Predlet 1.0 is getting into the DS she is enjoying driving games, and party games. Many of those are "Safe". Most of my games on the 360 I tend to not play around them, but leave it till nightime or maybe when they are elsewhere in the house. This works fine apart from audio. I was nearly caught out the other day in Rainbow Six vegas 2. The shooting and explosions were all fine, but at some point a radio chatter overlay shouted out a very loud Mother Farquar. I had not really expected that in the dialogue.
So having said I knew what to expect, I was caught out breaching my own social policy. The predlets were making way to much noise elsewhere to pick up on it, but it shows that there are boundaries to shield kids from.
I would hate to see any game featuring any violence get an 18 or 16 certificate when we enter the realm of cartoon, tom and jerry violence.
Equally with the rise of user generated content this gets harder to get the BBFC or any other body to police.
That brings me to the final point I just twittered "I wonder if the mass of internet Nimby's realize they could just access sites and flag content en masse rather than moaning about it?"
When complaining about youtube or any other site that has UGC and suggesting that site does its own policing it ignores the fact that we all can police this stuff. We all get to flag things as innappropriate. So it is our responsibility. Those people who stick to the internet is evil not in my back garden approach need to engage themselves, not wait for government or expect the responsibility to belong to others.
If this report raises awareness, but also tells people, go and look and if you dont like it then take action, rather than sit and wait the state will protect you, then we are in a good place.

w00t I got a cool award

I recently found out that I have been nominated for the IBM CTRE (Corporate Technical Recogition Event). In our terms thats a big deal. For a long while there have been things like the Golden Circle for the sales folk. Outsied IBM I guess it just seems like a jolly. However if all the things i have managed to get done on virtual worlds are indeed recognized through this, then I know that I will be in good company with a few hundred like minded people.
I was looking up where the event is held. Its a bit of a long trek but its in Phoenix. At the Biltmore hotel. There's is quite a long list of celebs and every US president since 1929 that have stayed there.
I am not sure if epredator will appear on the list of celebs in wikipedia :-). However Mrs Epred and I will certainly make the most of the trip for a few days.
Its a little way away yet, and luckily does not clash with our holiday we booked with the predlets.
All in all though I am very stoked to be going to an event like this. Of course like all awards there are lots of other people that should be there too. So in Oscar styleee I will accept this for everyone who has been working to make our journey into virtual worlds successful and thankyou everyone who voted, supported and made this CTRE go through.

I asked for vinegar?

Fish and chip style non brewed condiment. I asked for vinegar?, originally uploaded by epredator.

It must be my day for mad signs and labels. I popped to the local fish and chip shop and stocked up on vinegar as we had run out. When I got home I noticed it had this ridiculous almost made up for comedy show label. "Fish and chip shop style non brewed condiment."
I assume its some mad EU regulation. I will probably go insane if I analyze the words here. I am used to asking for Coke and having to claify in a restaurant that I am happy to accept Pepsi, but imagine "Can I have some vinegar please, yes sir but we only have fish and chip shop style non brewed condiment."
Its almost as bad as the phrase I heard in the US "Its a genuine replica" or in Georgia at the sone mountain "This is the biggest rock monolith in the world second only to Uluru(formerly Ayres Rock)"
Still its a laugh isnt it?

A very odd sign - Fareham council again

A very odd sign, originally uploaded by epredator.

Whilst on a long walk around Warsash pushing a push chair to get some excercise on my day off I went past an old place I used to cycle through. Clearly now you are not allowed to. However I found it a little strange that somehow digging is related to cycling?
Or is this a web2.0 ban. no digg, del.ico.us or facebook? i am pretty sure i not allowed any prim hair in there either.

Shiatsu massage machine

Shiatsu massage machine, originally uploaded by epredator.

After years of being hunched over a computer, trying to adopt an ergonomic pose, combined with the weird stuff that happened a few years ago I have ended up with a right pain in the neck :-)
Having adopted a much better stance now due to some great physio work last year I sometimes get caught by this annoying pressure in the back of the neck. Its very distracting and annoying to say the least.
I remembered seeing one of these machines at work years ago that someone had. I popped to Argos as I was feeling particulalry grotty and bought one. This happens to be a Babyliss one so they have certainly gone mainstream.
It is basically two rotating mechanisms that push and apply pressure as they rotate. This one has an additional cool pad that you chill before laying on your back with your neck between the two mechanical pieces
I have to say that it seems to do the trick, or at least do something. I will check with the physio on Monday and see if he says "tut" to it.
It may be mind over matter, but its got to be better than taking tablets hasnt it?
So 5-10 minutes of this a few times a day plus sitting properly and everything should be fine and dandy :-)

Apple store - Innovation behind bars

Apple store - Innovation behind bars, originally uploaded by epredator.

Having arrived somewhat early to Southampton on a Sunday all the shops in West Quay were still closed. I thought this made an interesting picture because of the mix of chic and old fashioned metal grill. I also noticed that innovation was written on the poster for the Air. I also wondered if the Air was so thin it could actually fit through the gaps in the grill.
I could say something about being locked down and proprietary but that always starts a flame war :-)
I am warming to apples, but cant justify getting one just yet.

Goodbye Grandad

Tiger, originally uploaded by epredator.

Having just come back from the social media media conference where I indicated just how openly I live my life it was sad news that I came home to find my 94 yeard old grandfather had passed away. Family at times like these are obviously a great support, but I felt the need to share outwardly with my twitter colleagues and friends.
"Rest in peace grandad. You lived your live well, fought for freedom in wwii, lived with honour and love of for our family. I will miss you"
I got a huge number of responses from people who I have both frequent and infrequent exchanges with. Some private responses some public. For me personally having built these connections and having had people share both work and personal things I felt it quite deeply that I was able to share this with them.
Its not pointless, frivolous noise, but some of the pointless frivolous noise has been part of the bonding in this connected world. That allows us to feel support and help one another at times when we really need to get more serious.
This picture is one that grandad painted. He had done several oils and lots of water colours.
I suspect that part of my need to create things comes from those genes.
The striking image became part of family life.
Grandad had had a veyr long and varied life and always was calm and collected about everything.
I am in no doubt the experiences in the desert with the eighth army made things at home seem not so troublesome or complicated. On the rare occasions he talked about the war it was clear that it was a very moving and scary thing to have been doing. He was injured quite badly by a mine exploding near him, but being an old soldier he recovered and got on with it.
In later years he had what woudl not be called an industrial accident, in a shoe shop warehouse back of the shop he ran the slefs and ladders collapsed. This knocked him out flat and damaged his back. For year as young child I remember grandad being on 2 sticks and hobbling about. However as he got older he got stronger and whilst he always had a bad back he got back to walking again like you woudl never know.
He spent the last number of years looking after my Nan who is obviously going to be devastated after all these years of marriage,
I remember Grandad with great fondness, the christmas tray game, the frog game, showing him what we could do with computers and digital cameras, skateboards.
He made my a scooter when I was about 4. His shed was a work of art in its own right, it was like the ateam. He would dissapear in there, take all sorts of odds and ends and make things. Even tin foil from sweet wrappers he would keep, but then fashion into something a toy or a garden bird scarer.
Resourceful and creative, and I wish i could be half as relaxed about things.
So goodbye grandad and thankyou for everything. I know you have found an even better place as part of the force now.

Clever lyrics methinks by Kanye West

On the radio this morning Chris Moyles played Kanye West and Estelle. I did not catch all the lyrics but I really liked the line.

"Dressed smart like a London Bloke.Before he speak his suit bespoke."

Toribash - What a game

Roo pointed me at toribash. a very innovative game taking ragdoll kungfoo a step further. It well worth a look. Clever use of physics, the ability to puppet and perform in realtime. Its got style and panache and stacks of blood if you get it right.
He has a round up of some other cool physics demos and games here

Nokia Nanotechnology

This is a very nice video, both in style and in its message aronud how nanotech may change the way we interact with devices in the future.
Nanotech of this sort, like 3d printers is something that may help us blend the virtual worlds with the real world in more than on screen/glass integration as we do at the moment with augmented reality.

Living life publicly - sharing a CV

I recently went through a bit of a CV review, my current CV was quite frankly too long, too detailed and extracted from an internal system. There is a balance between having full details and having a sales document.
I had decided to do the rewrite after a "free" evaluation of it, which pretty much told me all the thing I already felt about it. Professional CV writers are well worth it, but as someone who lives life online and publicly on stage it would be a little strange to outsource my CV.
However, having written something I did ask the world for help in reviewing it.
CV's are normally very personal and close to the chest documents, after all they are used for competitive bids for jobs. However I felt it a good idea to ask not only Mrs Epred but a whole array of other people over on Twitter. The people who I follow on Twitter and who follow me are part of my support network and not purely work contacts. Many of them are of course in the growing metaverse business, so I thought it important to share the creation of the CV with them.
A CV is never finished, never perfect, always too long/too short/wordy/sparse, but I must say that after all the good comments and feedback and taking many of them on board I am quite happy with my CV at the moment.
I also experimented with using the microsoft doc format but without Word. instead plumping for the free open version of lotus symphony. This is still in beta and it appears to differ across NT and Vista in formatting a little. However, it is possible to live without Office.
Of course people googling me or checking my del.icio.us showreel, looking at linkedin recommendations and reading my various blog posts would be the thing I would expect people to do, but it seems we still end up needing to create a point in time post about who we are to help people understand what they need to research further.
The new CV is here in PDF format, I have another with address/postcode etc but this has email address only. Though I am not hard to find :-)
I still have to take up some of the suggestions on machine readable versions.
Anyway, thankyou everyone for your comments and help. I will of course keep evolving it and have some comments that I want to take on board but need to adjust some balance a bit first.

Natural History Museum brochure barcode

Natural History Museum brochure barcode, originally uploaded by epredator.

We bought a guidebook on our half term trip to the natural history museum. I realy liked the attention to detail on the back for the barcode.

A top the tower, having collected a gemstone

A top the tower, having collected a gemstone, originally uploaded by epredator.

Rita and Josh from Dancing Ink Productions are on a Global Quest to meet and talk all things metaverse and virtual world with people all over the place.
Rob and I, (Roo was away at a customer) met them on their way to the isle of wight, fresh from Dohar and Geneva, in Portsmouth.
Whilst we had a very long lunchtime meeting, talking some very deep subjects and futures we ended on a fun note by going up the portsmouth spinnaker tower.
Rita could not resist getting a 'gemstone' from a dispenser on the 2nd viewing platform, all part of gathering things on a global quest :-)
Over lunch Rita wrote loads of things down aswell as pushing some ideas around. Rob, Josh and I were also in full flow.
I doubt the people in the old customs house in gunwharf had much idea of the depth of future we were discussing.
Of course they may have just said "geeks!" and tutted :-)
It was also not wasted on us that as a set of metaverse evangelists we were discussing the future in a venue such as this
"The building constructed in 1790 is a scheduled monument and is believed to be one of first examples of a specifically designed office building. "
Also on the way out up the spinnaker tower as we existed the lift RL imitated Sl as a rather oddly dressed jester/clown was standing waiting for the lift back down. This photo turned out a bit freaky, the n95 was lagging a bit :-)

So good luck on the rest of your trip guys. Enjoy the isle of wight :-)