Stay away from that trapdoor

I really like stop motion animation. As a kid it fascinated me as we only really had cine camera to work with and trying to do frame by frame creations had something special about the effort and the magical results.
When the stop motion is combined with brilliant characters, and a fantastic voice such as Willy Rushton you get the awesome Trapdoor, now on Joost.
Oh Globbits!

Democracy 2.0 full of WIN!

As you will have seen the government climbed down (though should never have climbed up in the first place)on the whole transparency of their expenses.
Well done all for rallying!

Great Obama quote

In his speech today as he moved from president elect to president Obama he used the line "If you unclench your fist we will offer the hand of friendship". It was aimed at the dictators of the world, and those who rule with fear. It can of course be applied to a number of situations where people bluster and posture with apparent power.
I like the line, I like the visual. Good luck to him.
The full text is here on his blog

What MP's want to hide their expenses from us?

Nows the time for a bit of government 2.0 action. It seems that for some strange reason our public servants in the commons, our voted in ministers of parliament seem to be heading for hiding their expenses from us all?
You can read more about this here on http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/17/6-days-to-stop-mps-concealing-their-expenses/

"Ministers are about to conceal MPs’ expenses, even though the public has just paid £1m to get them all ready for publication, and even though the tax man expects citizens to do what MPs don’t have to. They buried the news on the day of the Heathrow runway announcement. This is heading in the diametric wrong direction from government openness."

Whats great too is the ease with which you can write to your MP on the matter (or any other) http://foiorder2009.writetothem.com/ has been set up, postcode locates your MP then fill in the form. Its suits us digital natives, and blends with the house of commons procedures.

So get on with it! If you are bothered that is.

"Dear Mark Hoban,

I am writing to ask that you vote against the draft Freedom of
Information (Parliament) Order 2009 this Thursday and sign Jo Swinson's
Early Day motion with regard to ensuring that MP's expenses are
released and open to public scrutiny.
I regard an open parliament and process as key to our democracy.

I find it strange that other public officials have to account for their
expenses but that MP's are pushing not to.

I do hope you will support transparency, the world is changing and
closed systems are no longer valid in government nor in business.

TheyWorkForYou has taken a keen interest in this issue and will be
displaying the voting records.

Yours sincerely,
Ian Hughes
"

Midnight Club LA - Over customized error on my part

Midnight Club LA, originally uploaded by epredator.

Playing Midnight Club LA on the 360 I got a muscle car unlocked. Though there is little reason other than fun (it is a game after all) to customize the cars appearence I did.
The problem was I think I went a little over the top with the bonnet air intake. I.e. the stake of chrome sticking out of the bonnet.
I tend to do driving games from the drivers point of view. That led to this

I could not see a thing turning into corners as the large bit of fancy chrome and low ride height meant the usual spot to see the apex was cover up but a vibrating shuddering bit of insanity customization :)
Still it was good for a laugh, but I had to remove it to get any chance of not totally the car in the street races.

Wii Family Ski

Wii Family Ski, originally uploaded by epredator.

The predlets took to helping one another with the Wii balance board and Wii family ski. It was great to see them pick it up and just get on with it.

Cloning me in OpenSim

Cloning me in OpenSim, originally uploaded by epredator.

There are times when there are just not enough of one person. I seem to have ended up with the start of an organic 3d print/rapid fabrication demo of cloning on an OpenSim in a galaxy far far away.
Watch this space.

Moo.com Stickers

Moo.com Stickers, originally uploaded by epredator.

My new batch of Moo.com stickers arrived this morning. Whilst I may not be going to quite as many conferences this year, I tend to augment any id badge I am given with an epredator sticker. My previous set had QR codes too, but this time I decided to use a couple of other shots. One is my epredator Mii and the other is a Bio shot in Second Life at Wimbledon. The main sticker on the right is the same with an SL, RL and 3d Printed me. I like to show a good range :)

Marmite and Metaverse: a theory

I am willing to be proven wrong on this but.

This is after Josh of DancingInk Productions put this photo of marmite on Flickr, both Reuben of Millions of us and Virtual Greats and myself of eigthbar both commented on liking Marmite.
A small sample I agree, but could it be true?
*Of course a type in the Claim /whole/who but too ahrd to change it, you know what I mean.

Times are tough - Duck

IMG_3117, originally uploaded by epredator.

I had a rather interesting google alert ping up on epredator this morning. Usually its all virtual world stuff, press articles, comments, twitters etc, but this time it was a very nice photo credit for this image.
It was an article about starting a mini farm business in your back garden. Thats not so bizarre as I have been talking about all sorts of startups recently, and people kicking the trend with passionate small projects that also have a positive impact on the community. So props to the blog for doing this.

Ok I dont like this! Civil Liberty does not mean hacking my machines

I saw a tweet about this time article linked from the open rights group reference. I tend to avoid too much political comment, but seriously do we really think that its a good idea to just have police hacking out our computers without a warrant.
I am no legal eadle but I am a libertarian. Yes a complex issue but.... its a slippery slope, along with id cards, genetic databases of kids etc. We have seen enought sci-fi that has come true technology wise, so it is the same with over control with machines checking up on us.
I dont think I will be putting foil on my head just yet, but will the control freaks please calm down, its actually more risky to apply this technology, to gather this information. At the drop of a memory stick its all in the "real wrong" hands.

new epredator xbox avatar

new epredator xbox avatar, originally uploaded by epredator.

i cant have green spikey hair but i can get close to a predator av, sort of :)

New Years Eve Cookfest, Rockfest, Eurofest

New Years Eve Starter, originally uploaded by epredator.

I tired a few more recipes for our new years eve party. Both ones that I had not done before.
The starter was from a Gordon Ramsay book and featured a flattened puf pastry base, a pureed onion relish (slow cooked onions and some single cream blitzed down) then topped with artichoke hearts, blanched asparagus, tomato, red oinion a vinegrette and the special extra quails eggs (cooked for 2 min 10 to provide a slighlty runny centre to a hard boiled egg). I had never cooked quails eggs before and they proved to be trickier to peel, even when rolled to crack them, I got the hang of it finding the layer under the shell was the secret, catch that and the shell fell away, I only broke one being a little rough :)
The main course was this

A very fancy fish cake, fancy in that it had ginder and lime steamed salmon, mixed with chillies, coriander, anchoivy essence and breadcrumbs. Dipped in flour, beaten egg, more bread crumb coating and lightly fried. It was on a bed of new potato creme fraiche, lemon and mint mash. I was supposed to make it perfectly round, but was more keen to eat it. I also cooked the same salmon cakes for the predlets and their guests but without the chillis.
I think it all worked well. I enjoyed making it, and everyone seemed to like it :)
We had a lovely home made raspberry pavlova that our guests brought.
The rest of the evening involved the odd tipple, 4 player guitar hero world tour (Yay for the killers Human, linkin park , for what i've done and metallica cyanide).
We then moved on to singstar on the ps3. In particular the Abba expansion disc.
We finished the last song and saw Jools Holland seeing in the new year, the extra leap second helped in that turning all the AV kit to the right thing right after the some ended left us with 5 seconds :)
Then it was back for more Singstar. Its fair to say Emma shows us all up as she is the only one who can actually sing.
/me elemming and predlets waves at Emma and Gary and the kids. A great night and hope for a great 2009 for all.

Padded cell?

Padded cell?, originally uploaded by epredator.

In preparing for our guests on new years eve I decided to test out the stack of single and double airbeds we have once and for all. So the spare room is now a natural selection experiment in deflation, or a padded cell. The predlets could not resist bouncing around in there. I managed to escape but cant help feeling a full padded room mught be a good diversionin the near future :)

***Update the results of the overnight test. 3 single beds 2 very flat, 1 nearly (would be with someone sleeping on it, 2 large doubles all fine and a-ok. I thought you needed to know :)

wii family ski

wii family ski, originally uploaded by epredator.

I finally got a wii fit, having missed the release due to some other cool xbox games at the time. Then they wer in short supply, but elemming and the predlets got me on for xmas this year. Wii fit itself is very good, though it said I was old and fat. However the other games I got family ski and shaun white snowboardingmake calf aching good use of the board. It rell is a great piece of kit.
So here I am on my xmas skiing holiday. Who knew us alien hunters could carve turns too?

Guitar Hero, rockband and quest for fame - Rock and Roll!

Why blog about things? Well a while back I blogged about both guitar hero and rockband and how much I enjoyed and remembered the original that I played way back called quest for fame with Aerosmith in it on the PC.
Not that post just sort of sat around, but when Hiawatha Bray was doing a piece for the Boston Globe he googled quest for fame and found me as a fan.
So we had a chat about it, its a tiny quote, on page 2 but I can now say I am in an ariticle with the father of all guitar hero games (in my eyes) Mike Fritz and also the father of blues Mr B.B King.
I first mentioned it on eightbar back in early 2007 then relinked to the flow of things here
It was a little confusing when I was contacted as it was not clear initially if it was my Companies involvment or my personal oppinion that was needed. Once we cleared that up, it was just me enthusing (as per usual) then we were good to talk :)
I am glad this has got picked up QFF needs its recognition in the timeline.
Lets Rock!

Christmas Xbox style

Christmas Xbox style, originally uploaded by epredator.

The new 360 dashboard has a cute snowglobe that randomly adds friend in with you. It also, if you wait a while, sees all the friends do a stadium wave. Nice touch.

PS3 home - I want green hair!

PS3 home, originally uploaded by epredator.

Why the heck can I not have green hair in PS3 home or 360. Very odd, feel discriminated against!

Commiserations to Mike Golding sailing Ecover

Its not often I do yachting news on this blog!
I heard today from predlet 1.0 that Mike Golding's Ecover yacht mast had broken when he was leading in the Vendee Globe round the world yacht race. Mrs epred a.k.a elemming knows Mike's wife.
As there was a school connection they all got given this cardboard make-a-yacht so we made it tonight to commiserate.
Before

after

Traffic Lights, obey?

This story struck me as some sort of variant on a fable, or observation on the wider picture in life. I often refer to things being fractal ideas. The amount of detail in the minutia is the same as the amount of detail in the "big picture" and you have to be able to flow between the two to make sensible judgements, not just focus on one element. Other call it system thinking.
Today I arrived at a set of temporary traffic lights, with some unattended roadworks on a back road. The idea was they created one way traffic and alternated between each direction. A good idea given one side of the road was a giant hole. However, the traffic lights had got stuck, they were on red both directions. This of course leads to two queues of traffic. In reality though it leads to 2 cars facing each other each making a decision about what to do next, the rest of the people are just bystanders as a moral dilema occurs. The rule is, you dont shoot through a red light. Its clear, its obvious, its even measurable. We can even automate the catching of people who shoot red lights with cameras and sensors. There was no such policing in this case. So just how long do we all sit there before someone realizes the instrumentation for the rule is broken?
Clearly shooting the red light is wrong, getting out and turning the lights off, fixing them etc. is tampering, doing a u-turn to avoid the lights is a possibility, or just sit....wait....hope it sorts itself out.
I would love to have a psychological profile of people done in these minor situations. The go for it driver, decides enough it enough, and then a few more follow them through. Or the driver in the queue who realizes they cant wait for the one at the front to come to the right conclusion and incents the one on from to move, lights flashing or just overtaking the laggard and leading the way anyway.
Of course there is a counter argument, if they all shoot the light then no one gets anywhere. That I guess it what happens when leaders clash and wars start.
In the end of course sense prevailed and a flow of self organized sorting out occured, small groups led by one leader go, then someone falters, and the next group is led forth from the other direction.
It feels like this is how innovation happens. People generally follow, there is a way to do things, but each person will have a limit, a point at which they can say nope, we need to do it this way.
That is of course how wars stop too.
As a mental excercise what do you do in the stand off traffic light dilemma?