Wed, July 1, 2009 at 14:52 There's a new gallery up on Gowstuff: Stuff We Made. It's pictures of various projects and artwork made by my family and myself. There's some fun stuff up there--here's some samples:
;)
A knit Hellboy, made by Kat as a Christmas present for me.;)
A wind sound effect machine, made by me for the Leisure Time radio play series.
Tue, June 16, 2009 at 23:52 ;)
Just got back from visiting my sibs in the Bay Area. On Saturday, I dragged them to see the Pampanito, a restored WWII submarine that is docked at San Francisco's Maritime Park as a floating museum.
I was expecting it to be interesting, but I wasn't expecting it to be so awesomely interesting.
Being inside a sub is like being in the guts of some huge machine. Everything is exposed, and everything is mechanical. Sure, there's electric lights and motors, but no electronics as we are used to today. Even the computer used to compute the torpedo launch trajectories is mechanical.
;)
The entire space is not just cramped--room for humans is almost an afterthought. Comfort couldn't be a priority when they were building this thing. And yet, 80 men or more would spend weeks inside.
You can go for the craftsmanship and the ingenuity that went into building this machine, or you can go to say thanks for the men who could live, work, and fight in such cramped, dangerous quarters. But go, and see the one of the final expressions of a lost era in technology.
Fri, May 29, 2009 at 16:13 I love the fact that "Gower Cyborg" is a good search string to find the video of my Seattle6 Ignite presentation. Again, everyone had five minutes to present a 20-slide presentation--with the slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds. It was certainly fun for me, and I hope it was fun and informative for the audience:
Wed, May 20, 2009 at 13:21 My original proposed topic for Ignite Seattle had nothing to do with stainless steel arterial struts. It was going to be "How to Set Up a Machinima Studio for $20 (or Hamlet: Armed and Dangerous)." From my original proposal:
The startling true story of the Hamlet production that defied sanity—staged entirely in StarCraft®: Brood War®, a decade-old computer game.
GASP at how I gleefully embraced the wrong tool for the job—and made it the right tool!
MARVEL at how I cast my own computer as the actor—for every single role!
THRILL at the missteps and hazards I encountered—including a berserk Hamlet going murderously off-script!
In a world where machinima productions are becoming more and more sophisticated, one man dared to turn back the clock—and discovered a cheap way to do it!
I switched topics the week beforehand as part the obligatory pre-event panic.
But it got me to thinking about the action-packed, thrill-a-minute world of Starcraft-based machinima development. So here's the 10-minute original machinima (Act V, scene ii of Hamlet, preceded by a comedy short):
Or you can view just the 1-minute comedy short if you're strapped for time:
Someday I hope to polish my original Ignite presentation draft and post it. Untl then, here's a brief overview for those who wish a tantalizing glimpse of the development process.
Comedy, Games, Science Fiction, Tech Thu, May 14, 2009 at 17:45 I, for one, refuse to believe that Duke Nukem's dead.
Mark my words...
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