Category: General

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is “a non-profit professional society that is committed to advancing the careers and enhancing the lives of game developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community.”

A local (Perth) chapter was started a few months ago and it looks to be a great way for games industry people to meet. The first meeting had quite a good turn-out and the organisers seem to be doing a great job of engaging the industry and getting sponsors involved. There were a number of prizes from sponsors including a new LCD monitor.

Here are the details for the upcoming meeting:

• Description: “This event will feature a wrap-up of the Tokyo Game Show 2006 as well as hand-ons new release Xbox 360 games on the big screen, courtesy of GameTraders.” (taken from the IGDA Perth Chapter website)
• Time/Date: 7:00pm, Monday 23 October 2006
• Location: The Velvet Lounge, Mt Lawley
• Cost: Free entry (pay for your own drinks)

Just a few final thoughts. There were booth babes at the last event to promote the upcoming GO3 Expo. To me it seemed very incongruous for them to be there (as I mention in my my writeup of the event). Negative reactions were vented by others on the PIGMI mailing list with a number of people saying that it would affect their attendance at future events.

I’m sure that the board is aware of the mixed reaction, and I would be surprised to see booth babes at this event. (So if you were opposed, don’t let that stop you!) Make up your own mind, by reading about the previous event. As well as my my writeup, be sure to read the official meeting report (with photos) of the last event. My strong recommendation is for anyone involved in the games industry to attend. We need to work together to get things off the ground!

“Idol” is a very imaginative short animation. I won’t ruin it by telling you what happens, but here are screenshots to give you a feel for the visual style.

There is a .mov download available over at Motionographer.

You ever have one of those days when you wake up disoriented, and for a little while you don’t really know where you are? Sometimes in really bad cases (usually after a long night and a weird dream) you might not even know who you are?

This happened to me around a week ago. I got out of bed and went the wrong direction to leave the room. I hit the vanity and looked forward into what I thought was a long corridor. I reached out, and when I touched glass I realised that it was the mirror. So I woke up a bit at that point. For some reason, the next thing that came into my head was:

Man, this would really suck if I were Medusa…

I mean, if I made it to the mirror not remembering that I was Medusa… well, I could have looked in the mirror and turned to stone. That said, if I were a Medusa I probably wouldn’t have a mirror in my bedroom. Seriously, that would be pretty stupid.

Even without the mirror, being an early-morning-disoriented Gorgon would also suck. Picture this: You wake up wondering what that hissing noise is. Your eyes slowly focus on snakes, lots of snakes right in front of your face! You try to back away slowly, but they follow you wherever you go! (Being stuck to your head and all that…)

Note: For those that don’t know, a vanity is a dressing table (low table with drawers and a mirror).

This is actually a very good point (not just for Colbert):

via Videosift.

Pool was cancelled for this weekend, so I made an on-the-spot decision to play pool tonight to ensure that the weekly quota is met. Fortunately, other people came along (even on such short notice) so that I wouldn’t have to play against myself. We were playing pool at Rosemount Pot Black (North Perth) when some guy from another table walked up to me, got right in my face, jabbed a finger towards me and said:

Don’t look in my direction again, mate.

He then walked back to his table. I and the friend that I was talking to looked at each other with puzzled expressions on our faces. It was just… odd. I hadn’t even noticed the guy before. When I told my other mate, he got pretty upset and made a point of facing the guy, arms crossed and with a firm stare. When he got the next round of drinks he told the woman at the counter that there might be trouble.

After a while, the guy walked back over to the table while I was away and apologised to my two mates. I was on the phone at the time and went back to the table to see what was going on. I initially didn’t know he was apologising and was concerned that he was harrassing my friends. Then he said something like:

Sorry about earlier… I’ve got a lot of stress.

and motioned to shake my hand (which I accepted). I wonder what prompted his about face. I wouldn’t completely rule out a change of heart, but I wonder if it was due to the stare-down, his mates having more sense than him, or him seeing us on the phone a lot (maybe assuming we were calling some of our mates).

I made a few very small changes to the site. I hope everyone likes it. At some point I’ll give the site a bit more of an overhaul to make it a bit less… “deep” (or “angsty” depending on your point of view).

Enjoy Perth is reporting that Al Gore will be visting Perth to discuss his film “An Inconvenient Truth” on Friday 17 November at the Octagon Theatre at UWA. Check out their blog post for more details (including booking information).

Image from TheMovieBox.Net.

I love part 1 of the Gymnopédies by Erik Satie. I just can’t get enough of it. Midis and MP3’s are available on pianomidi.org. These are a bit slower than a lot of the other performances I’ve heard, but still a little fast for my liking. (I like my Gymnopédies performances to have pauses where you almost wonder if the pianist has stopped).

This piece also sounds good on classical guitar, but tends to be played even faster (blech!). I’m not big of performances that integrate a flute or violin, and I haven’t heard an orchestration that I felt didn’t massacre it. Lately, I find myself wanting music to sound much less “musical”. I’ll probably dislike this piece in a few months because it sounds too deliberate and has too much flair. (I already mostly feel that way about parts 2 and 3.)

I used to have very straight har when I was young (primary school age), but sometime around my adolescence it turned into a wild untameable beast (really thick and wavy). Late last year, with my hair getting longer, it was getting much less manageable and I was on the verge of shaving it all off again because it was taking far too much effort to just keep it under control. Then, as a surprise gift, Heidi booked my in for a permanent hair straightening.

Continue reading “Permanent hair straightening”

Dealbook is reporting that Google is buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

There is a fairly considered discussion of the ramifications of the takeover (written when it was only a rumour) over at Seeking Alpha, but I think this quote from the Dealbook article summarises things quite nicely:

One young user, posting under the name xchylerjfk, remarked in an apparently homemade video that Google “are taking over the whole of the Internet” and added that “I like YouTube the way it is.”

Google has recently been very assertive in its expression of commitment to copyright. If Google is ingenuous about this commitment, it would have to remove a lot of content on YouTube or organise a revenue collection agreement with media companies. If Google can get all major media companies on board, they could have an open license (payed for by their directed advertising) for YouTubers to use whatever content they want.

If they can’t do that, it’s going to be an absolute mess picking out offending videos and removing them. Maybe not from a technology standpoint (I have no idea how advanced Google’s video indexing technology is), but definitely from a user standpoint. If videos start getting banned in a seeminlg randomly manner (more so than they are currently on YouTube) people may choose to upload videos elsewhere.

Update: Google press release here.

Update: Just a quick thought. It would be good to be the last major media company to sign up to any sort of licensing deal… they could set their price.

Found via Monkey Bites blog post (Wired).