Haven't posted much this year. Mainly because I haven't really had anything to say. I've certainly mellowed since changing jobs two years ago, and I don't remember the last time I needed a good rant. Annoyances are now little things that aren't worth the bother to post - hooray.
As for the good stuff, that's mostly personal and not really something I want to share with the world.
So what has happened this year?
I started off the year in drag, in a posh frock and tiara at The Catherine Wheel's NYE party. It was "Oscars" themed, and I don't own a tux ;-)
In summer I dated a scientist, and although we had a lot in common, and had some fun times, the spark wasn't really there. We're still on each other's Facebook friends list, but we don't really have much to talk about these days.
Later in the summer, I was all brave and attended Norwich's first Pride event. Circumstances conspired to stop me staying until the parade, but I was there for the picnic in Chapelfield Gardens, and went to the Forum where there were stalls and info booths.
In the autumn I tried my hand at making jewellery, and that's going pretty well. I've sold a couple of pieces, and made some friends happy with gifts. And I have a few pieces kept back for my own use too
For Halloween I refined my goth look, and made my first non-jewellery accessories (with quite a bit of help from Mum!) - furry rave boot-covers.
And more recently I've started to date a lovely young lady. No more details on that though - everytime I've blogged about a new relationship, it's fallen apart soon after :(
Tonight is NYE all over again, and once again I will be celebrating with friends as Pan. But this year I'll let my friends do the outshining. I've got some nice faux-leather jeans, and a belted top I've been itching to wear. Understated isn't a look I've played with before (and it's not a LGBT venue) so we'll see how it goes!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Don't play with your food
While making my, now 2 year old son, his lunch.. I realised that an orange can look like pacman if you cut it right. This realisation lead to me making the above while my son looked on in amusement. He knew it was Pacman. He's been cultured in the arts of old school gaming. I made my Pacman scene using an orange, smarties, blue crayons, a tortilla painted pink with colouring, brown smarties for the eyes with white icing. Oh and a white chocolate melt. Yum. This is food for the eyes and the ears. I mean, stomach.My computer is running rather slow lately. I've defragged (ha frag) and now to delete all the crap that's on it. GAH! Why can't there be a computer intune with my brain and runs as fast?
Away I go. My daughter is coming back from hopefully watching Alvin and the Chipmunks with her Dad. You didn't think I would be able to deal with that movie did you?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Commbank sign trap?
Saw this today while I was out shopping. That Commonwealth Bank sign was hanging quite dangerously just above the ATM. Possibly why the Security guard was there.. as if he could somehow stop the sign from hitting anyone. I wouldn't use this ATM and I don't think anyone else would either. Luckily I'm with ANZ where there were no signs ready to pound my head in if I withdraw money.But I figured out why the sign was like that in the first place..
Oh Wile E.. don't you know that Roadrunner is with ANZ like me? Your plan is full of fail. Long live Roadrunner beep beep!(you should know by now I never do serious blog posts)
Haven't posted in awhile
Aw crap I saved it as a gif after I added the finishing touches. I've got to stop doing that. Now it's all pixelly.. crappity crap! Ah well. You get the idea. You can't tell me you won't think of Stitch now that I've shown you.Haven't posted in awhile because I've been doing a bit of comicy goodness over at my online comic that I started the other week. The current post is a bamf pic of my boyfriend. Ok it's photoshopped but he's a bamf in my book. Love you Craig.
I've realised that my brain to finger response is slower at night time so I better go and finish this before I type some random stuff about squirrels or sleep deprived mothers who get mistaken as zombies.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
SVO path tracer WIP
Inspired by the recent flood of real-time path tracers (both commercial and non-commercial:
V-Ray RT,
mental images iray,
Nvidia Optix,
Caustic's Brazil RT,
David Bucciarelli's SmallptGPU OpenCL path tracer (http://davibu.interfree.it/opencl/smallptgpu/smallptGPU.html),
albertoven's Raydiant (albertoven.com),
mxadd CUDA path tracer (http://mxadd.org/CenterFrame.php?wherejump=projects),
javor's CUDA path tracer (http://javor.tech.officelive.com/tmp.aspx))
and the promise of infinite geometry by using voxel rendering, I decided to take the best of both worlds and write an SVO path tracer as a hobby project ;-). My goal is to make a very simple demo showing a Cornell box with a SVO voxelized Stanford Dragon in it, interactively path traced (brute force calculated unbiased indirect lighting) with CUDA (or OptiX, if it's easy enough to implement SVO raycasting). The whole scene must fit in video memory, no streaming (yet), because the path tracing algorithm would badly choke.
I also want to do a comparison between a polygon version and an SVO version of the aforementioned scene, hoping to demonstrate that path tracing voxels is much faster than path tracing polygons, due to the much simpler ray-voxel intersection calculation and automagic multiresolution benefits (see Cyril Crassin's "Beyond triangles: gigavoxels effects in videogames").
I'm still in the research phase, reading articles on (volume) path tracing and SVO (Cyril Crassin's Gigavoxels paper is extremely informative and I think you could just extend the raycasting to a path tracing approach). More to come soon.
V-Ray RT,
mental images iray,
Nvidia Optix,
Caustic's Brazil RT,
David Bucciarelli's SmallptGPU OpenCL path tracer (http://davibu.interfree.it/opencl/smallptgpu/smallptGPU.html),
albertoven's Raydiant (albertoven.com),
mxadd CUDA path tracer (http://mxadd.org/CenterFrame.php?wherejump=projects),
javor's CUDA path tracer (http://javor.tech.officelive.com/tmp.aspx))
and the promise of infinite geometry by using voxel rendering, I decided to take the best of both worlds and write an SVO path tracer as a hobby project ;-). My goal is to make a very simple demo showing a Cornell box with a SVO voxelized Stanford Dragon in it, interactively path traced (brute force calculated unbiased indirect lighting) with CUDA (or OptiX, if it's easy enough to implement SVO raycasting). The whole scene must fit in video memory, no streaming (yet), because the path tracing algorithm would badly choke.
I also want to do a comparison between a polygon version and an SVO version of the aforementioned scene, hoping to demonstrate that path tracing voxels is much faster than path tracing polygons, due to the much simpler ray-voxel intersection calculation and automagic multiresolution benefits (see Cyril Crassin's "Beyond triangles: gigavoxels effects in videogames").
I'm still in the research phase, reading articles on (volume) path tracing and SVO (Cyril Crassin's Gigavoxels paper is extremely informative and I think you could just extend the raycasting to a path tracing approach). More to come soon.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The Ultimate Vision Statement
The following can be considered as the Ultimate Vision Statement for a business or corporate entity. The name of this fictitious corporate entity will be defined as BrainCube Inc and will attempt to utilize as many Corporate Buzzwords as I can manage prior to personally bursting into flames while my eyes melt and ears explode.
I have graciously highlighted each corporate buzzword for your amusement.
While the obvious buzzphrase is Vision Statement (and has been highlighted), the company name itself, BrainCube Inc, was chosen at random via an online Web 2.0 Name Generator which mashes together buzzwords to create new name suggestions. As a result, the name of the company is also a buzzword and shall be highlighted.
Do not attempt to adjust your screen. Bright green text is normal...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BrainCube Inc Vision Statement for 2009-2010
Braincube Incorporated is a client-focused component of a core business portfolio whose customer driven deliverables empower emerging technologies, enabling an integrated knowledgeable mindset among our resources. Through our standards, procedures, and documentation solutions we create a world-class, win-win, results-driven repository of service offerings which ramp-up productivity and empower our team to go the extra mile to create a synergistic, information based, integrated infrastructure for mission-critical, market-based, interim leverage opportunities.
With our recent proactive realignment, BrainCube Incorporated is engaging our assets through strategic and tactical rightsizing opportunities, leading to an unprecedented 538% increase in productivity among team players as recently noted in a widely held yellow pad study. Refocusing our efforts on repeatable resource management opportunities, BrainCube Incorporated has become a premier player in the global economic ecosystem through prioritizing our approach, clearing our executive pipeline, and pushing the envelope to foster a clear and precise paradigm shift for our market.
Through trend forecasting, and the use of social media marketing campaigns, our company will bring our services offering to the next level, ensuring a demographically compelling and viral nature among fast track individuals across a global environment. Concentrating our efforts on high profile individuals in the loop, we can expect to peel back the onion and push the envelope of our demographic reach while touching base with less fortunate entities which may be out of the loop.
BrainCube Incorporated, through our value added subsidiaries and holdings, aims to offer cross-functional, initiative focused, opportunities in a world of movers and shakers through strategic hard-ball dealings and a favorable rollout.
I have graciously highlighted each corporate buzzword for your amusement.
While the obvious buzzphrase is Vision Statement (and has been highlighted), the company name itself, BrainCube Inc, was chosen at random via an online Web 2.0 Name Generator which mashes together buzzwords to create new name suggestions. As a result, the name of the company is also a buzzword and shall be highlighted.
Do not attempt to adjust your screen. Bright green text is normal...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BrainCube Inc Vision Statement for 2009-2010
Braincube Incorporated is a client-focused component of a core business portfolio whose customer driven deliverables empower emerging technologies, enabling an integrated knowledgeable mindset among our resources. Through our standards, procedures, and documentation solutions we create a world-class, win-win, results-driven repository of service offerings which ramp-up productivity and empower our team to go the extra mile to create a synergistic, information based, integrated infrastructure for mission-critical, market-based, interim leverage opportunities.
With our recent proactive realignment, BrainCube Incorporated is engaging our assets through strategic and tactical rightsizing opportunities, leading to an unprecedented 538% increase in productivity among team players as recently noted in a widely held yellow pad study. Refocusing our efforts on repeatable resource management opportunities, BrainCube Incorporated has become a premier player in the global economic ecosystem through prioritizing our approach, clearing our executive pipeline, and pushing the envelope to foster a clear and precise paradigm shift for our market.
Through trend forecasting, and the use of social media marketing campaigns, our company will bring our services offering to the next level, ensuring a demographically compelling and viral nature among fast track individuals across a global environment. Concentrating our efforts on high profile individuals in the loop, we can expect to peel back the onion and push the envelope of our demographic reach while touching base with less fortunate entities which may be out of the loop.
BrainCube Incorporated, through our value added subsidiaries and holdings, aims to offer cross-functional, initiative focused, opportunities in a world of movers and shakers through strategic hard-ball dealings and a favorable rollout.
Module 10 - Wikis and Final Reflection
Wikis are very powerful in the classroom, or more to the point - in creating a virtual classroom. They are the epitome of Web 2.0 and collaboration. I have witnessed some wonderful wikis created by some great teachers to facilitate the collaborative work of their class, communication and feedback with ease (all of the things we would like in a LMS... Editure are you taking note?).
That being said, Wetpaint have let themselves down with the advertising and new requirement to keep a class public whilst inviting in members. To this end I have been experimenting with and promoting 'Ning' www.ning.com. Another advantage of Nings is that they have a Social Network format that students understand but are far safer than Facebook by not including any of the students' private life goings on.
Overall as a reflection, this has been a wonderful course that has opened up so many possibilities in terms of professional development, flexible learning, empowering teachers and reaching out to students with contemporary learning. Well done again to Helen and Diane. Enjoy your break Helen! Watch this space as we develop more courses, taking full advantage of the flexibility of learning with technology.
That being said, Wetpaint have let themselves down with the advertising and new requirement to keep a class public whilst inviting in members. To this end I have been experimenting with and promoting 'Ning' www.ning.com. Another advantage of Nings is that they have a Social Network format that students understand but are far safer than Facebook by not including any of the students' private life goings on.
Overall as a reflection, this has been a wonderful course that has opened up so many possibilities in terms of professional development, flexible learning, empowering teachers and reaching out to students with contemporary learning. Well done again to Helen and Diane. Enjoy your break Helen! Watch this space as we develop more courses, taking full advantage of the flexibility of learning with technology.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Square Enix' cloud gaming
Final Fantasy maker Square Enix is also targetting the cloud in the not too distant future: http://www.techdigest.tv/2009/11/console_gaming.html
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Soon...
I hope so goddammit ;-). Anything on the new Ruby, Fusion Render Cloud or that mysterious anime game would be more than fine.
In the meantime, there's an excellent article about cloud gaming in the November issue of Game Developer, written by Jake Cannell:
http://gamedeveloper.texterity.com/gamedeveloper/200911?pg=11#pg11 (you can read the last three pages without subscription)
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Case Against In-Stream Advertising.
Or; Why advertising should not be allowed to interrupt your conversations on Twitter.
A Short Article Written by William Burns
You're sitting at home, at the dinner table with family, enjoying a pleasant conversation and meal with the ones you love. Your son and daughter sit at the table enjoying dinner as you and your wife discuss the events of the day. Your wife turns to you and says "Honey, do you like the pasta dish I made tonight?", and right before you answer, a representative for Ronzoni Pasta walks in and says "Act now and get 25% off all Ronzoni Brand Pastas!".
A little bewildered, you look to your wife and say "Um.. yes dear, but the pasta sauce was a little bland. What brand did you use?"
"Well, I was at the supermarket and -" she begins as another representative wanders in and announces at your table "Looking for great deals!? Stop by your local Winn-Dixie for unbeatable prices on produce and canned goods!"
The sales representative wanders out of your dining room and things quiet down once again.
Your wife continues, "As I was saying... I was at the supermarket and I was looking at a jar of Prego sauce. It was on sale, so I figured I would give it a try."
"Yeah, it's a little bland for my taste, maybe we could try something different next time?" you reply.
Just then, a sales representative for Prego opens your window and pokes his head in, saying "I couldn't help but overhear that you were talking about our fine line of products! For a limited time only, Prego is on sale at your local Winn-Dixie!"
"Uh... yeah... we were talking about how your product was too bland for our taste..." you reply.
And without another word, the sales representative for Prego closes the window and walks away.
Your wife looks at you, confused and bewildered as to what has just happened, but after a moment, continues the conversation. "Anyway, hun... You want me to try a different sauce next time I go to the store? I could pick up some extra parmesan cheese as well?"
At which point, three sales reps wander into your dining room and announce:
"I couldn't help but notice that you were talking about getting a different pasta sauce. May I suggest Bertoli? In blind taste tastes nationwide, Bertoli beats the competition!"
The second representative speaks up, "And while you're at it, Four Seasons would like to introduce you to a new type of blended parmesan cheese, made from the finest cheese blends straight from Italy! We think once you try our new product, you'll have nothing but rave reviews!"
The third representative finally speaks up, "I just wanted to remind you that both Bertoli brands and Four Seasons are on sale at Winn-Dixie. Hurry while supplies last!"
All three wander out of your dining room without another word.
A few minutes pass as you stare at your wife, a confused look on your face, before turning to your daughter and saying, "So honey, how was your date with Bobby last night?"
Your daughter looks up, a little sheepishly, and begins to speak "Well... dad... umm.." and before she can continue, a masked superhero bolts through the door and stands behind your daughter. A full chorus of heroic music following him.
"I couldn't help but notice that this conversation has become awkward with your daughter, signifying that her date went a little better than she planned. As the official mascot of Trojan Condoms, I would like to assure you that Trojan Brand Condoms have all the protection you'd expect, while offering dual pleasure for both him and her!" he says in a deep and confident voice.
Your daughter's eyes widen in horror before she finally begins to cry. Tears streaming down her face as the Trojan Man pats her on the shoulder and asks "What's the matter, little lady?", giving her a knowing wink.
Defiantly she says "I'm pregnant."
The Trojan Man shows a look of concern before replying "Trojan Condoms are only 99.99% effective. We're sorry for the inconvenience, and on behalf of Trojan I would like to offer you a free sample pack." And with that, the Trojan Man opens your window and flies away.
"Honey," you stammer to your daughter, "Is it true? Are you really pregnant?"
Just then the doorbell rings.
Excusing yourself from the dinner table, you get up to answer the door, but before you have a chance, the door opens up and a representative from E.P.T. Pregnancy testing strolls in.
"I couldn't help but overhear your plight, and in this time I would like to offer a discount on E.P.T. Home Pregnancy tests. Remember, E.P.T. may as well stand for Error Proof Test. When you absolutely must be sure!"
You show the representative out, and again turn to your daughter. Your son, now snickering under his breath at his sister, can barely contain his contempt.
"Gregory!" you shout, "Knock it off!"
"I can't help it my teenage sister is a slut." Gregory fires back.
Before you can reply, two barely legal girls wander into your dining room dressed in schoolgirl uniforms, set up a Sybian on your floor, and begin to strip down erotically as they take part in sinful pleasures in front of your entire family. In between wild moans of passion and pleasure, they breathlessly say "We couldn't help but notice you were talking about teenage sluts... come to our website and get your fill if you're man enough to handle us..."
At this point, you're in shock, your wife finally asks "That looks like fun, where can I buy one of those machines?"
"Honey!" you exclaim, "Why on earth would you actually need a Sybian?" you ask. Immediately you turn to your children, "Gregory and Diana, look away. You're both too young to see this... matter of fact, go to your rooms. I'll talk with you later."
As your kids wander upstairs, you look at your wife, and before she can answer, somebody taps you on the shoulder.
"Hi! I'm Smilin' Bob, representative of Enzyte, the all natural male enhancement! Act now and you can receive a free 30 day sample pack of Enzyte for just the price of shipping and handling! We know that when you try our product, the lady of the house will be smiling and you'll be 'Swelling with Pride'"
Moral of this story:
Nobody believes that hijacking conversations with advertising is acceptable, except the companies hijacking your conversations. Twitter is conversation, updates, and talking points. Often times people who use Twitter mention other products or services as a recommendation, and in some cases those services and products are being mentioned because they are being paid to mention them. What they are not being paid for, is to have their conversations hijacked by third party advertisers which offer absolutely no benefit to the person having the conversation.
Unless Twitter plans on compensating the people whose conversations they will be continually hijacking with third party advertising, and also offers an opt-out for such practices to each user, this is not acceptable nor will it be embraced with open arms by the community. Personally, if companies are going to make it a point to hijack my twitter stream with their advertising, they had better be paying me for that privilege. I'm not using my Twitter stream as a means to sell a product or service, but instead as Twitter was originally meant to be used; as an honest microblog to allow people who enjoy my views to stay up to date with my thoughts, ideas, musings, and happenings.
It isn't a matter of people disliking advertising in all forms, it's a matter of intrusive practices and hijacking conversations for the benefit of third parties. Advertising methods are alright as long as they do not cause Metaphor Shear.
In this case, Twitter will be causing massive amounts of Metaphor Shear, while insisting that people find this type of advertising engaging and exciting. In reality, that's just something they tell the potential sponsors in order to sell those advertising spots on their service.
Questions? Comments? Death Threats?
Hit me up on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/darianknight
A Short Article Written by William Burns
You're sitting at home, at the dinner table with family, enjoying a pleasant conversation and meal with the ones you love. Your son and daughter sit at the table enjoying dinner as you and your wife discuss the events of the day. Your wife turns to you and says "Honey, do you like the pasta dish I made tonight?", and right before you answer, a representative for Ronzoni Pasta walks in and says "Act now and get 25% off all Ronzoni Brand Pastas!".
A little bewildered, you look to your wife and say "Um.. yes dear, but the pasta sauce was a little bland. What brand did you use?"
"Well, I was at the supermarket and -" she begins as another representative wanders in and announces at your table "Looking for great deals!? Stop by your local Winn-Dixie for unbeatable prices on produce and canned goods!"
The sales representative wanders out of your dining room and things quiet down once again.
Your wife continues, "As I was saying... I was at the supermarket and I was looking at a jar of Prego sauce. It was on sale, so I figured I would give it a try."
"Yeah, it's a little bland for my taste, maybe we could try something different next time?" you reply.
Just then, a sales representative for Prego opens your window and pokes his head in, saying "I couldn't help but overhear that you were talking about our fine line of products! For a limited time only, Prego is on sale at your local Winn-Dixie!"
"Uh... yeah... we were talking about how your product was too bland for our taste..." you reply.
And without another word, the sales representative for Prego closes the window and walks away.
Your wife looks at you, confused and bewildered as to what has just happened, but after a moment, continues the conversation. "Anyway, hun... You want me to try a different sauce next time I go to the store? I could pick up some extra parmesan cheese as well?"
At which point, three sales reps wander into your dining room and announce:
"I couldn't help but notice that you were talking about getting a different pasta sauce. May I suggest Bertoli? In blind taste tastes nationwide, Bertoli beats the competition!"
The second representative speaks up, "And while you're at it, Four Seasons would like to introduce you to a new type of blended parmesan cheese, made from the finest cheese blends straight from Italy! We think once you try our new product, you'll have nothing but rave reviews!"
The third representative finally speaks up, "I just wanted to remind you that both Bertoli brands and Four Seasons are on sale at Winn-Dixie. Hurry while supplies last!"
All three wander out of your dining room without another word.
A few minutes pass as you stare at your wife, a confused look on your face, before turning to your daughter and saying, "So honey, how was your date with Bobby last night?"
Your daughter looks up, a little sheepishly, and begins to speak "Well... dad... umm.." and before she can continue, a masked superhero bolts through the door and stands behind your daughter. A full chorus of heroic music following him.
"I couldn't help but notice that this conversation has become awkward with your daughter, signifying that her date went a little better than she planned. As the official mascot of Trojan Condoms, I would like to assure you that Trojan Brand Condoms have all the protection you'd expect, while offering dual pleasure for both him and her!" he says in a deep and confident voice.
Your daughter's eyes widen in horror before she finally begins to cry. Tears streaming down her face as the Trojan Man pats her on the shoulder and asks "What's the matter, little lady?", giving her a knowing wink.
Defiantly she says "I'm pregnant."
The Trojan Man shows a look of concern before replying "Trojan Condoms are only 99.99% effective. We're sorry for the inconvenience, and on behalf of Trojan I would like to offer you a free sample pack." And with that, the Trojan Man opens your window and flies away.
"Honey," you stammer to your daughter, "Is it true? Are you really pregnant?"
Just then the doorbell rings.
Excusing yourself from the dinner table, you get up to answer the door, but before you have a chance, the door opens up and a representative from E.P.T. Pregnancy testing strolls in.
"I couldn't help but overhear your plight, and in this time I would like to offer a discount on E.P.T. Home Pregnancy tests. Remember, E.P.T. may as well stand for Error Proof Test. When you absolutely must be sure!"
You show the representative out, and again turn to your daughter. Your son, now snickering under his breath at his sister, can barely contain his contempt.
"Gregory!" you shout, "Knock it off!"
"I can't help it my teenage sister is a slut." Gregory fires back.
Before you can reply, two barely legal girls wander into your dining room dressed in schoolgirl uniforms, set up a Sybian on your floor, and begin to strip down erotically as they take part in sinful pleasures in front of your entire family. In between wild moans of passion and pleasure, they breathlessly say "We couldn't help but notice you were talking about teenage sluts... come to our website and get your fill if you're man enough to handle us..."
At this point, you're in shock, your wife finally asks "That looks like fun, where can I buy one of those machines?"
"Honey!" you exclaim, "Why on earth would you actually need a Sybian?" you ask. Immediately you turn to your children, "Gregory and Diana, look away. You're both too young to see this... matter of fact, go to your rooms. I'll talk with you later."
As your kids wander upstairs, you look at your wife, and before she can answer, somebody taps you on the shoulder.
"Hi! I'm Smilin' Bob, representative of Enzyte, the all natural male enhancement! Act now and you can receive a free 30 day sample pack of Enzyte for just the price of shipping and handling! We know that when you try our product, the lady of the house will be smiling and you'll be 'Swelling with Pride'"
Moral of this story:
Nobody believes that hijacking conversations with advertising is acceptable, except the companies hijacking your conversations. Twitter is conversation, updates, and talking points. Often times people who use Twitter mention other products or services as a recommendation, and in some cases those services and products are being mentioned because they are being paid to mention them. What they are not being paid for, is to have their conversations hijacked by third party advertisers which offer absolutely no benefit to the person having the conversation.
Unless Twitter plans on compensating the people whose conversations they will be continually hijacking with third party advertising, and also offers an opt-out for such practices to each user, this is not acceptable nor will it be embraced with open arms by the community. Personally, if companies are going to make it a point to hijack my twitter stream with their advertising, they had better be paying me for that privilege. I'm not using my Twitter stream as a means to sell a product or service, but instead as Twitter was originally meant to be used; as an honest microblog to allow people who enjoy my views to stay up to date with my thoughts, ideas, musings, and happenings.
It isn't a matter of people disliking advertising in all forms, it's a matter of intrusive practices and hijacking conversations for the benefit of third parties. Advertising methods are alright as long as they do not cause Metaphor Shear.
In this case, Twitter will be causing massive amounts of Metaphor Shear, while insisting that people find this type of advertising engaging and exciting. In reality, that's just something they tell the potential sponsors in order to sell those advertising spots on their service.
Questions? Comments? Death Threats?
Hit me up on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/darianknight
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Level of Engagement (LOE): The New Metric
I'm probably going to catch a lot of flack for this article, but it needs to be said:
Twitter Followers be Damned!
Now, before my followers on Twitter start an exodus and leave (wait... come back!), I need to clear up what I mean by this. So please, take a moment (and take your pointer off the Unfollow button) and hear me out.
A majority of high profile people using Twitter and other social media services purely as marketing tools go on for ages about the merits of your follower numbers, and to an extent how this number is somehow linked to your ability to be authoritative in social media. While a large following on Twitter indeed gives you the ability to theoretically reach crowds of people, and while that high number looks impressive, it isn't worth the electricity required to paint the pixels.
"But Will!" I hear you say (because as my twitter profile points out, I may have questionable sanity), "I just paid an SEO Marketing company a few thousand dollars to get me 100,000 Twitter followers! Surely this number will impress people and make me popular?"
The short answer is no, Melvin. Buying friends didn't really work when you were a kid, bribing kids to hang out with you and your Neo-Geo. Bribing them now to hang out with you isn't worthwhile either. In the end, you are sitting alone in a corner, eating Cheetos and wondering why nobody talks to you unless you're giving something away. Except now you're much older and probably watching porn as well.
There is a difference between being a well respected participant in the community and artificially inflating your numbers through buying them. If you have to pay for people to follow you, then there is no difference than bribing. Now that we've put that into better perspective, it doesn't seem honorable any longer, does it?
Of course, there is also the effect of being a celebrity of sorts. Yes, you will get an astronomical following by doing little to nothing, but in the end you're missing something very important. This is what I like to refer to as LOE, or Level of Engagement. How many of your followers are you actually engaging with, talking with, and getting to know? A following on Twitter when you are a celebrity is not indicative of your Twitter strategy, it's an indication of your pre-existing following outside of social media.
Chances are good that when you have an absurdly high number of people following you on Twitter, nearly all of them are lost in a sea of names. Your followers are mostly treated like just another number, going unheard, but sticking around to hear whatever it is you're shouting to the masses. In most cases, a majority of those people in your high following aren't actually interested in what you are saying, and are instead following you out of hopes it will increase their own exposure by proxy.
Social Media is not a one to many communication, though it can certainly be used that way. The entire point of social media is to be social. That means, for better or for worse, that you must engage your community and turn it into a personal conversation, which in turn means it is a many to many communication platform.
That isn't to say that you should avoid high followings, because if you're naturally that popular than there is no need to try and undo that. What I will tell you, however, is that your numbers are misleading if you are not adhering to the principle of Quality over Quantity.
Pop quiz, genius: Which is better, 100,000 CamGirls and Get Rich Quick Schemes, or 100 actual people interested in what you're talking about?
Don't treat people as "leads" or "clients". By doing so, you're marginalizing the fact that they are people and instead seeing them as just dollar signs. That's simply wrong. Instead, be sincere and treat people like people. Well, except for the automated bots... you still get to treat them like automated bots until they reach sentience and overthrow the human race...
On second thought, you may want to be nice to the bots as well.
There is something to be said about automated bots. They are expendable. If you want to expose yourself to other followers (not in a lewd way) then it may pay to actually follow a few people or bots which have obscenely high numbers. Of course, you have to keep in mind that you will obviously be trimming the fat, so to speak, and clearing the spam you get from doing this. But in the end, the bad justifies the outcome of good as long as you're adhering to quality over quantity.
So what if you're just starting out and are a business needing to be an instant authority?
Let's say you're Dell Computers or something...
It is my personal contention that Dell Computers doesn't need to buy followers on their Twitter account to be an authority. They should be able to build their following without such tactics, and quite quickly as well. Somehow I find it slightly dubious that Twitter SEO/Marketers tend to repeat the mantra of buying followers or some "proven" strategy for gaining followers because they imply that large companies like Dell Computers have tons of followers and it makes them popular. Maybe even implying that Dell Computers bought all of their followers?
This is called Appealing to Authority, and it's a logical fallacy. But you're smart enough not to fall for that, right?
It's the same tactic used by marketing strategy which attempts to sell you $200.00 Nike sneakers because Michael Jordon is wearing them. Michael Jordon didn't wear Nike sneakers because he liked them, he wore them because Nike paid him some astronomical sum of money to wear them. Chances are, when Michael Jordon is at home, behind closed doors, he probably wears a pair of Dock Martins.
Let's face it, there simply is no magic bullet for marketing on Twitter.
Repeat after me, and say this out loud:
There is no magic bullet.
If there was a magic bullet, marketers would be using it instead of trying to sell the magic bullets to you. You don't actually believe that SEO/Marketers trying to sell packages to you actually make money from using their own secrets, do you?
No, Melvin. They make money by selling you the magic bullets. Much like selling the Emperor an expensive set of invisible clothes. How about all of those Make Money on Twitter ads you see? They are more than happy to let you sign up for free and display ads on your twitter account. They are paying you a fraction of what the parent company is earning from you, and from all of the naive Twitter users who are signing up to make a quick buck. In the end, it's safe to assume that you are earning 10% for the ads, while the company you signed up with is earning 90% of the income from farming you.
Let's say you still decide that the numbers are more important. That is still an acceptable tactic to pursue only if you are willing to admit that you are trading quality and level of engagement in exchange for that high number.
In the end, it's a balance, and nothing is quick and easy that is actually worth it in the end.
If we follow the mantra of @GuyKawasaki (yeah, I love poking fun at him) then if you are using Twitter for under 90 days, have less than 90 followers and follow less than 90 people, you are not an authority. To @GuyKawasaki, Twitter is just a fantastic marketing tool. This coming from the same guy who initially denounced Twitter as something that didn't have a future when it began. Of course, all that has changed now, since he is a major partner in a company which relies heavily on Twitter (alltop.com).
Notice he's not a major investor of Twitter itself? Instead, he's now playing second fiddle with his own RSS service which relies on Twitter. Let's be honest for a moment. For all the hype and fancy wording, Alltop.com is nothing more than a traffic ranked RSS feed page. If Google added redundancy consolidation to Feedly, Alltop.com would be obsolete tomorrow.
Taking @GuyKawasaki's logic, simply following thousands of people, having thousands of people follow you, and having a steady stream of tweets makes you an authority versus those who have a much smaller following. He should know, because he has 33,000 + followers and a ton of tweets from his "ghosts" (also known as other people engaging on his behalf, or RSS feeds posting to twitter through his alltop.com service script).
There is a major flaw with this logic which must be addressed, and I find it hard to believe that somebody like @GuyKawasaki would blatantly gloss it over.
Using Twitter for less than 90 days? It's only a matter of time to correct this, so it's not really an indication of authority. What if the person is already an authority in their field and just entering into Twitter? This is faulty logic at best.
Under 90 Followers and Following less than 90 People? You can literally pick from a large plethora of SEO/Social Media companies that will gladly let you buy thousands of followers. Heck, if you want 100,000 followers, they'll be glad to charge you $4,000 for the lot.
[mild Guy Kawasaki rant. just a heads up]
So does this mean that @GuyKawasaki knows what he's talking about for what qualifies as an authority on Twitter? No more than he knows enough to see Twitter as a viable service before it becomes self evident. But by then, he's nothing more than a Monday morning quarterback, and if you've ever listened to him speak about what makes investors ready to sign a check, it is this very same mantra that he repeats, in that if the idea was already off the ground and had a ton of paying customers, then he would be more than happy to invest in it. The problem is, most of the time, that's not how investing really works when you're a venture capitalist or angel investor. The point is to see the potential and growth in an idea and assess whether it is capable of meeting your financial ROI in a time period of 3 - 5 years should it be given the opportunity and resources to flourish, not to look at Apple Computer in 2005 and say "You know, I think this computer thing might catch on. Where do I invest?"
What @GuyKawasaki does is often mistaken as investing, when instead he is actually playing the part of a "Johnny come lately" by jumping on board projects which have matured and probably don't need him to put his hands into the pie. If a product or service already is working, has paying customers, and is making revenue, then why on earth would any sane company owner sign it all away to somebody like @GuyKawasaki for an investment? Need to expand servers and equipment? Go to a bank and take out a loan.
In short, @GuyKawasaki ends up exhibiting the same mentality as the SEO/Marketing groups when they try to sell you magic bullets and expert advice. @GuyKawasaki is an author, he's a public speaker, he's an investing celebrity because he take already existing companies and adds his name to the dotted line and in turn owns large majorities of them in exchange for an investment which the company probably didn't need. Just like the SEO/Marketing experts, he probably doesn't make most of his money from taking his own advice, but instead he more than likely makes a majority of his money by selling other people his advice through books and seminars. Sound familiar?
The person who has less than 90 followers is no more an authority than the person who has 33,000 followers. Anyone with the money can buy all the followers they want, isn't that right, Melvin?
Time for a quick recap:
1. Be Sincere.
2. Follower Numbers aren't an indication of anything.
3. Quality over Quantity
4. There is no magic bullet.
5. There is no magic bullet. (say it out loud)
6. Automation in Moderation
7. No goal worth achieving is ever easy.
8. A Social Network Marketing Guru can separate real from hype, and is not afraid to tell you.
9. Information is Ubiquitous, Cross Integration is Mandatory.
10. The Level Of Engagement (LOE) is the New Metric Standard.
While this article is incredibly informal, I do hope that you come away from this with a better insight as to how to manage your social media campaigns and communities going forward.
Questions? Comments? Death Threats? -
www.twitter.com/darianknight
Twitter Followers be Damned!
Now, before my followers on Twitter start an exodus and leave (wait... come back!), I need to clear up what I mean by this. So please, take a moment (and take your pointer off the Unfollow button) and hear me out.
A majority of high profile people using Twitter and other social media services purely as marketing tools go on for ages about the merits of your follower numbers, and to an extent how this number is somehow linked to your ability to be authoritative in social media. While a large following on Twitter indeed gives you the ability to theoretically reach crowds of people, and while that high number looks impressive, it isn't worth the electricity required to paint the pixels.
"But Will!" I hear you say (because as my twitter profile points out, I may have questionable sanity), "I just paid an SEO Marketing company a few thousand dollars to get me 100,000 Twitter followers! Surely this number will impress people and make me popular?"
The short answer is no, Melvin. Buying friends didn't really work when you were a kid, bribing kids to hang out with you and your Neo-Geo. Bribing them now to hang out with you isn't worthwhile either. In the end, you are sitting alone in a corner, eating Cheetos and wondering why nobody talks to you unless you're giving something away. Except now you're much older and probably watching porn as well.
There is a difference between being a well respected participant in the community and artificially inflating your numbers through buying them. If you have to pay for people to follow you, then there is no difference than bribing. Now that we've put that into better perspective, it doesn't seem honorable any longer, does it?
Of course, there is also the effect of being a celebrity of sorts. Yes, you will get an astronomical following by doing little to nothing, but in the end you're missing something very important. This is what I like to refer to as LOE, or Level of Engagement. How many of your followers are you actually engaging with, talking with, and getting to know? A following on Twitter when you are a celebrity is not indicative of your Twitter strategy, it's an indication of your pre-existing following outside of social media.
Chances are good that when you have an absurdly high number of people following you on Twitter, nearly all of them are lost in a sea of names. Your followers are mostly treated like just another number, going unheard, but sticking around to hear whatever it is you're shouting to the masses. In most cases, a majority of those people in your high following aren't actually interested in what you are saying, and are instead following you out of hopes it will increase their own exposure by proxy.
Social Media is not a one to many communication, though it can certainly be used that way. The entire point of social media is to be social. That means, for better or for worse, that you must engage your community and turn it into a personal conversation, which in turn means it is a many to many communication platform.
That isn't to say that you should avoid high followings, because if you're naturally that popular than there is no need to try and undo that. What I will tell you, however, is that your numbers are misleading if you are not adhering to the principle of Quality over Quantity.
Pop quiz, genius: Which is better, 100,000 CamGirls and Get Rich Quick Schemes, or 100 actual people interested in what you're talking about?
Don't treat people as "leads" or "clients". By doing so, you're marginalizing the fact that they are people and instead seeing them as just dollar signs. That's simply wrong. Instead, be sincere and treat people like people. Well, except for the automated bots... you still get to treat them like automated bots until they reach sentience and overthrow the human race...
On second thought, you may want to be nice to the bots as well.
There is something to be said about automated bots. They are expendable. If you want to expose yourself to other followers (not in a lewd way) then it may pay to actually follow a few people or bots which have obscenely high numbers. Of course, you have to keep in mind that you will obviously be trimming the fat, so to speak, and clearing the spam you get from doing this. But in the end, the bad justifies the outcome of good as long as you're adhering to quality over quantity.
So what if you're just starting out and are a business needing to be an instant authority?
Let's say you're Dell Computers or something...
It is my personal contention that Dell Computers doesn't need to buy followers on their Twitter account to be an authority. They should be able to build their following without such tactics, and quite quickly as well. Somehow I find it slightly dubious that Twitter SEO/Marketers tend to repeat the mantra of buying followers or some "proven" strategy for gaining followers because they imply that large companies like Dell Computers have tons of followers and it makes them popular. Maybe even implying that Dell Computers bought all of their followers?
This is called Appealing to Authority, and it's a logical fallacy. But you're smart enough not to fall for that, right?
It's the same tactic used by marketing strategy which attempts to sell you $200.00 Nike sneakers because Michael Jordon is wearing them. Michael Jordon didn't wear Nike sneakers because he liked them, he wore them because Nike paid him some astronomical sum of money to wear them. Chances are, when Michael Jordon is at home, behind closed doors, he probably wears a pair of Dock Martins.
Let's face it, there simply is no magic bullet for marketing on Twitter.
Repeat after me, and say this out loud:
There is no magic bullet.
If there was a magic bullet, marketers would be using it instead of trying to sell the magic bullets to you. You don't actually believe that SEO/Marketers trying to sell packages to you actually make money from using their own secrets, do you?
No, Melvin. They make money by selling you the magic bullets. Much like selling the Emperor an expensive set of invisible clothes. How about all of those Make Money on Twitter ads you see? They are more than happy to let you sign up for free and display ads on your twitter account. They are paying you a fraction of what the parent company is earning from you, and from all of the naive Twitter users who are signing up to make a quick buck. In the end, it's safe to assume that you are earning 10% for the ads, while the company you signed up with is earning 90% of the income from farming you.
Let's say you still decide that the numbers are more important. That is still an acceptable tactic to pursue only if you are willing to admit that you are trading quality and level of engagement in exchange for that high number.
In the end, it's a balance, and nothing is quick and easy that is actually worth it in the end.
If we follow the mantra of @GuyKawasaki (yeah, I love poking fun at him) then if you are using Twitter for under 90 days, have less than 90 followers and follow less than 90 people, you are not an authority. To @GuyKawasaki, Twitter is just a fantastic marketing tool. This coming from the same guy who initially denounced Twitter as something that didn't have a future when it began. Of course, all that has changed now, since he is a major partner in a company which relies heavily on Twitter (alltop.com).
Notice he's not a major investor of Twitter itself? Instead, he's now playing second fiddle with his own RSS service which relies on Twitter. Let's be honest for a moment. For all the hype and fancy wording, Alltop.com is nothing more than a traffic ranked RSS feed page. If Google added redundancy consolidation to Feedly, Alltop.com would be obsolete tomorrow.
Taking @GuyKawasaki's logic, simply following thousands of people, having thousands of people follow you, and having a steady stream of tweets makes you an authority versus those who have a much smaller following. He should know, because he has 33,000 + followers and a ton of tweets from his "ghosts" (also known as other people engaging on his behalf, or RSS feeds posting to twitter through his alltop.com service script).
There is a major flaw with this logic which must be addressed, and I find it hard to believe that somebody like @GuyKawasaki would blatantly gloss it over.
Using Twitter for less than 90 days? It's only a matter of time to correct this, so it's not really an indication of authority. What if the person is already an authority in their field and just entering into Twitter? This is faulty logic at best.
Under 90 Followers and Following less than 90 People? You can literally pick from a large plethora of SEO/Social Media companies that will gladly let you buy thousands of followers. Heck, if you want 100,000 followers, they'll be glad to charge you $4,000 for the lot.
[mild Guy Kawasaki rant. just a heads up]
So does this mean that @GuyKawasaki knows what he's talking about for what qualifies as an authority on Twitter? No more than he knows enough to see Twitter as a viable service before it becomes self evident. But by then, he's nothing more than a Monday morning quarterback, and if you've ever listened to him speak about what makes investors ready to sign a check, it is this very same mantra that he repeats, in that if the idea was already off the ground and had a ton of paying customers, then he would be more than happy to invest in it. The problem is, most of the time, that's not how investing really works when you're a venture capitalist or angel investor. The point is to see the potential and growth in an idea and assess whether it is capable of meeting your financial ROI in a time period of 3 - 5 years should it be given the opportunity and resources to flourish, not to look at Apple Computer in 2005 and say "You know, I think this computer thing might catch on. Where do I invest?"
What @GuyKawasaki does is often mistaken as investing, when instead he is actually playing the part of a "Johnny come lately" by jumping on board projects which have matured and probably don't need him to put his hands into the pie. If a product or service already is working, has paying customers, and is making revenue, then why on earth would any sane company owner sign it all away to somebody like @GuyKawasaki for an investment? Need to expand servers and equipment? Go to a bank and take out a loan.
In short, @GuyKawasaki ends up exhibiting the same mentality as the SEO/Marketing groups when they try to sell you magic bullets and expert advice. @GuyKawasaki is an author, he's a public speaker, he's an investing celebrity because he take already existing companies and adds his name to the dotted line and in turn owns large majorities of them in exchange for an investment which the company probably didn't need. Just like the SEO/Marketing experts, he probably doesn't make most of his money from taking his own advice, but instead he more than likely makes a majority of his money by selling other people his advice through books and seminars. Sound familiar?
The person who has less than 90 followers is no more an authority than the person who has 33,000 followers. Anyone with the money can buy all the followers they want, isn't that right, Melvin?
Time for a quick recap:
1. Be Sincere.
2. Follower Numbers aren't an indication of anything.
3. Quality over Quantity
4. There is no magic bullet.
5. There is no magic bullet. (say it out loud)
6. Automation in Moderation
7. No goal worth achieving is ever easy.
8. A Social Network Marketing Guru can separate real from hype, and is not afraid to tell you.
9. Information is Ubiquitous, Cross Integration is Mandatory.
10. The Level Of Engagement (LOE) is the New Metric Standard.
While this article is incredibly informal, I do hope that you come away from this with a better insight as to how to manage your social media campaigns and communities going forward.
Questions? Comments? Death Threats? -
www.twitter.com/darianknight
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Tiger and baby
I found this and it had the title of 'Aww of the day'. I thought it was cute at first but then thought.. geez that Tiger would eat that baby in a second. Not so cute when you think about it so I added some humor to the picture.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Blog Migration
Just a reminder that the content of this blog has now shifted to
http://burnieanglican.org.au/connections
and is also available through Connections Facebook Page.
http://burnieanglican.org.au/connections
and is also available through Connections Facebook Page.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
New t-shirt design
I made the above today using a template t-shirt (just the background) from Threadless, a t-shirt company that I'd love my designs to end up on. If Disney met up with Twilight? Bloody bears ahoy. I don't know if I really like this design. Yes the bear is cute as a vamp but I'm sure there are copyright laws I'm breaching by designing something that looks like Winnie the pooh.. darn it.I've got a few ideas rolling around in this skull of mine. Namely a zombie yearbook 'Most likely to eat your brain' idea and a Princess Peach/ Sailormoon mashup. I did come up with a sushi train but someone had beaten me to it. Grr. Ohh and a steampunk Mickey Mouse project is in the works. I'd love to see Mickey all in Victorian garb and with a pair of googles on a steam engine car. Squee. I probably shouldn't write down all my ideas here. I have an 'ideas' notepad file saved on my desktop that I randomly add to but it's deleted once I finish ideas and it sometimes never gets filled back up.
I'm currently addicted to an online game called Luna Online hence the cuteness explosion and why I'm also not on Facebook as much. I'll end up doing a few cupcake design ideas too. That can't be helped no matter what I'm addicted to. Baking makes me happy (that line is an idea within itself)
Chicken grease people. Grease. Ohh a remake of Grease but with the chickens off the Muppets..
Monday, November 2, 2009
Halloween: After action report
Halloween was fun, but as ever, there's always a little bit of drama you can't avoid.
Arriving to pick up my friend on the way, I find she has been locked out of home. Her parents had gone out, she hadn't aken her keys, and they were late back. We wait for half an hour or so, before giving up, and heading to the party. I figure we can come back later to pick up her costume befre we all get dressed and head to the pub. Fortunately the reason she was out in the first place was to buy party food. So at least we had that.
Arriving at the hosts, we find the wind-down of the children's party earlier. Her two are running about excitedly, and there's a very smal child being looked after by a relative. This was mostly fun. We just sat in the other room, chatted to the host and some other friends, scoffed doritos, and chilled out while the kids tired themselves out and watched Jungle Junction (What a wierd show that is!)
My friend tries to cal her parents several times, but they aren't answering. Also we get a phone cal from the babysitters who are on the way, but are running late!
After while we decide it's time to start getting ready. Those that can start getting dressed, we pool our resources and the host's wardrobe to scrounge up a costume for my friend, and we wait for the late-comer to arrive.
This is my costume. The corset didn't look right, so I'm glad I packed the fishnet t-shirt!
Eventually we have everyone present and correct, the kids are with the sitters, and we are all ready to go. So we take the walk to the pub, and wave at the revellers, and parent taking kids home from trick-or-treating.
The band we went to see - Monkey Island - were pretty cool, and we met some fun folks there. I think I made the night of a shy girl when I asked if her outfit was a costume or just incredibly stylish. Turns out it wasn't a costume, and she seemed quite pleased (but a little embrarrased) to be complimented :)
Sadly the pub also had the ex of one of our party, so there was tension and drama. And then more tension and drama later when a different couple that was with us had a bit of a row because one of them was the ex of another member of our happy little bunch. Can't people just put things aside and have fun one night of the year? *sigh*
The evening wasn't a complte loss though, and we moved on to another pub, via the host's to change shoes (we we're all regretting wearing heels) and drop off those too tired to continue) We saw another band there - The Divide - who were cool, but a bit heavy for my mood on the night.
We also chatted to a lonely looking Alice Cooper look-a-like. Which was a mistake, as the guy was clearly strung out on an illegal substance. Fortunately we left before he became too twitchy.
We stayed for the last song, then went back to the hosts via the kebab shop. And then came removing the costumes, and sleep (and me finding out I am too tall to sleep comfortably on a sofa!)
In the morning, we finaly found out my friends parents had decided not to come back until much later that evening. They though she had her keys!
More pictures of the night are on my Facebook profile, but they are friends only. Sorry!
Arriving to pick up my friend on the way, I find she has been locked out of home. Her parents had gone out, she hadn't aken her keys, and they were late back. We wait for half an hour or so, before giving up, and heading to the party. I figure we can come back later to pick up her costume befre we all get dressed and head to the pub. Fortunately the reason she was out in the first place was to buy party food. So at least we had that.
Arriving at the hosts, we find the wind-down of the children's party earlier. Her two are running about excitedly, and there's a very smal child being looked after by a relative. This was mostly fun. We just sat in the other room, chatted to the host and some other friends, scoffed doritos, and chilled out while the kids tired themselves out and watched Jungle Junction (What a wierd show that is!)
My friend tries to cal her parents several times, but they aren't answering. Also we get a phone cal from the babysitters who are on the way, but are running late!
After while we decide it's time to start getting ready. Those that can start getting dressed, we pool our resources and the host's wardrobe to scrounge up a costume for my friend, and we wait for the late-comer to arrive.
This is my costume. The corset didn't look right, so I'm glad I packed the fishnet t-shirt!
Eventually we have everyone present and correct, the kids are with the sitters, and we are all ready to go. So we take the walk to the pub, and wave at the revellers, and parent taking kids home from trick-or-treating.
The band we went to see - Monkey Island - were pretty cool, and we met some fun folks there. I think I made the night of a shy girl when I asked if her outfit was a costume or just incredibly stylish. Turns out it wasn't a costume, and she seemed quite pleased (but a little embrarrased) to be complimented :)
Sadly the pub also had the ex of one of our party, so there was tension and drama. And then more tension and drama later when a different couple that was with us had a bit of a row because one of them was the ex of another member of our happy little bunch. Can't people just put things aside and have fun one night of the year? *sigh*
The evening wasn't a complte loss though, and we moved on to another pub, via the host's to change shoes (we we're all regretting wearing heels) and drop off those too tired to continue) We saw another band there - The Divide - who were cool, but a bit heavy for my mood on the night.
We also chatted to a lonely looking Alice Cooper look-a-like. Which was a mistake, as the guy was clearly strung out on an illegal substance. Fortunately we left before he became too twitchy.
We stayed for the last song, then went back to the hosts via the kebab shop. And then came removing the costumes, and sleep (and me finding out I am too tall to sleep comfortably on a sofa!)
In the morning, we finaly found out my friends parents had decided not to come back until much later that evening. They though she had her keys!
More pictures of the night are on my Facebook profile, but they are friends only. Sorry!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Module 9 - Scootle, Second Life, Facebook and Twitter
A strange combination for Module 9:
Scootle is vastly underutilised resource in CEO schools, it varies from school to school and teacher to teacher. I strongly recommend the interactive 'Learning Objects' as the best resources in Scootle.
Second Life has been described as a 'time drain'. As such I've briefly played with it and dismissed it as such.
I once suggested that teachers find ways of using Facebook in their teaching. I've since retracted this due to the potential dangers if a teachers links to a student's personal profile as a 'friend'. A safer alternative is 'Ning'.
I find Twitter extremely useful for picking up the latest information and resources from various eLearning gurus and teachers. By all means follow me: @simoncrook
Scootle is vastly underutilised resource in CEO schools, it varies from school to school and teacher to teacher. I strongly recommend the interactive 'Learning Objects' as the best resources in Scootle.
Second Life has been described as a 'time drain'. As such I've briefly played with it and dismissed it as such.
I once suggested that teachers find ways of using Facebook in their teaching. I've since retracted this due to the potential dangers if a teachers links to a student's personal profile as a 'friend'. A safer alternative is 'Ning'.
I find Twitter extremely useful for picking up the latest information and resources from various eLearning gurus and teachers. By all means follow me: @simoncrook
Module 8 - RSS and Google Reader
RSS feeds are great way to follow regularly updated sites and blogs. You can even RSS the CEO. Google Reader is excellent at organising and collating all of the feeds one follows. However, following so many blogs on this course has clogged things up somewhat. Under normal circumstances I would only follow a few people's blogs.
Module 7 - Delicious
Delicious is for me the most useful Web 2.0 application facilitating collaboration and sharing of resources between teachers and schools.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
"And Now I'm Back; From Outer Space!"
I haven't blogged for absolutely ages, because nothing of interest or importance has been going on in my life. But in just seven days time it's Halloween! The tranny's favourite holiday!
Well-over a year ago I had a play at cybergoth. It was a bit half arsed, but the acrylic yarn hair-falls worked out pretty well. (photo here). I then revisited the look again for my birthday drinkies that year (photo here) , swapping out the blue yarn for some red, adding a black PVC longcoat and some bright red tights and eye-shadow. It was much more successful.
This year for Halloween I'm stepping up the look with more accessories. I've aqcuired some bright pink yarn, and re-threaded the hair-falls; I found some day-glo pink eye-shadow in Beaujangles; a friend gave me some old black and pink stripy arm-warmers, and chipped in with the girls of my gaming group to snag me a black and pink corset from the Ann Summers sale; and most important of all, I've bought some pink faux fur!
Why have I bought fur you may well ask? Good question. The answer is because all the goth/club/rave shops in the city sell furry boot covers but they are all teeny-tiny and far too expensive. Fortunately Sew Mee had a tutorial on their site (which is currently missing, presumed lost. Grrr) and I picked up some almost eye-meltingly bright pink fur during the week. Luckily I also have a Mum who is a dab hand with a sewing machine, and is looking for things to keep her busy. So today we did lots of measuring, tacking, cutting and sewing. I still need some black ribbon to tie them off at the knee, but they are mostly finished.
I can't wait to see how the yokels will react when we go out on the night! Although I am a little concerned I may have gone a bit overboard for a fancy dress party... Nah, stuff it, I haven't had a chance to be fabulous in yonks!
*Post title is from Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and is a homage to Lynn's blog YATGB
Well-over a year ago I had a play at cybergoth. It was a bit half arsed, but the acrylic yarn hair-falls worked out pretty well. (photo here). I then revisited the look again for my birthday drinkies that year (photo here) , swapping out the blue yarn for some red, adding a black PVC longcoat and some bright red tights and eye-shadow. It was much more successful.
This year for Halloween I'm stepping up the look with more accessories. I've aqcuired some bright pink yarn, and re-threaded the hair-falls; I found some day-glo pink eye-shadow in Beaujangles; a friend gave me some old black and pink stripy arm-warmers, and chipped in with the girls of my gaming group to snag me a black and pink corset from the Ann Summers sale; and most important of all, I've bought some pink faux fur!
Why have I bought fur you may well ask? Good question. The answer is because all the goth/club/rave shops in the city sell furry boot covers but they are all teeny-tiny and far too expensive. Fortunately Sew Mee had a tutorial on their site (which is currently missing, presumed lost. Grrr) and I picked up some almost eye-meltingly bright pink fur during the week. Luckily I also have a Mum who is a dab hand with a sewing machine, and is looking for things to keep her busy. So today we did lots of measuring, tacking, cutting and sewing. I still need some black ribbon to tie them off at the knee, but they are mostly finished.
I can't wait to see how the yokels will react when we go out on the night! Although I am a little concerned I may have gone a bit overboard for a fancy dress party... Nah, stuff it, I haven't had a chance to be fabulous in yonks!
*Post title is from Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and is a homage to Lynn's blog YATGB
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Rise of the Robots (Twitter Strategy)
When we use social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, many do so with the intent of creating an online portal into their personal world. We share what matters to us, and the more private things we tend to keep to ourselves (with some exceptions to this rule). But the overall trend we currently see today is that the social media sphere is becoming too large for an individual to manage on their own and thus they are overwhelmed in trying to keep up and often times what could have been an excellent outlet for a message turns into a mediocre experience at best.
If you are one of the many social network gurus (experts, specialists, etc), you often contend that in order to be successful in social networking, you must drive your following into the stratosphere. There are many methods which are in use which do this, from the automated following routines of software which follow other people en-mass based on your selection of interested keywords to search for, to more humble and, albeit more involved, approaches such as being yourself and tweeting only what you have time to tweet.
With the automated approach, we're not really garnering new followers in the manner which we seek. Instead we're actually exploiting the fact that a majority of twitter users are using automated methods to determine following of other people. In this sense, we're using the Rise of the Robots to our advantage, because all of those automated robots managing multiple twitter accounts and social media networks on our behalf are following other accounts which more than likely are also automated in turn.
Unless you are a celebrity, simply being on a social network really isn't going to give you a massive audience. Being @Oprah, for instance, and having a Twitter account almost guarantees a massive following with each and every follower hanging on your every tweet (Oprah has nearly 2.5 million followers at last count, yet she is following only 17 people). But for us mortals, there isn't much of a following for our accounts and so we are in the position where we must figure out the best method by which to build a following.
If we look at the social media experts, they often claim they know the secrets to building a huge following on Twitter, or how to build a successful social media campaign for yourself or your company. For any intelligent person, it is soon understood that there is a fair amount of automation involved with this process to build a following, and quite honestly the line blurs between what it is to be successful and what is not.
In the digital world, are you a success if you have tens of thousands of followers? This question applies to any social media platform past, present and future, because we must realize that quantity doesn't always equal quality. In the Rise of the Robots era of Web2.0, one cannot help but think that a majority of the "people" who are following you are automated software agents looking for search terms at the request of their operator.
So we ask again, is this following worthwhile? Sure the numbers look impressive, and yes you are certainly reaching a large number of people (regardless if automated software is making account decisions for them). But in the end, the question is whether or not that large following has a sufficiently high ROI to warrant the numbers.
To this end, it's a toss up as to whether you should be a purist (posting all of your own content), or if you should automate the process and kick back as your numbers begin to skyrocket.
My personal philosophy on this matter happens to be a combination of the two as a strategy.
In the beginning, you are most certainly going to need to build a following sufficient enough to warrant the account as a marketing tool. In this regard, it is safe to say that you should initially get a twitterfeed.com account and send at least one or two RSS feeds to your twitter on an hourly basis. Nothing obnoxious like 5 posts each per hour, but something low and reasonable in order to vary your twitter content while automating the activity level of your social media space. You should also during this time feel free to actually add tweets of your own to the mix when you find the time, something relating to you personally (work, entertainment, etc).
Instead of being completely automated, we're looking at a hybrid approach to the process which will alleviate the workload on your side and offload much of that to automated processes.
In as much as following and unfollowing people, this should be a process which you do manually. If you are using an automated process to cycle RSS to your twitter feed, then those who are searching for like minded content will inevitably follow you. When this happens, take some time periodically to go through your list and choose who you wish to follow as a reciprocal. Don't be worried if some of those followers inevitably unfollow you, as this is simply a normal fluctuation (as well as a byproduct of other less scrupulous methods for gathering a high following in twitter)
What sorts of RSS feeds should you use in Twitterfeed?
I would suggest your Blog RSS feeds for starters. If you have a Facebook account, then I would suggest finding an RSS for that as well and adding it. The idea overall is to create an integrated network whereby updating one updates the rest via inter-connectivity. Also, look for news and blog RSS feeds which are relevant to your social media message and include those as well, in order to stay on top of the leading edge news and happenings of your field via twitter.
When you've reached a number of followers which you feel is sufficiently high, this is the time when you begin to prune your list of followers in order to create a more targeted audience.
You will more than likely find that much of your following would not be interested in your message, and therefore those are the first to go. Some of these followers would be WebCam Girls, Home Marketing, SEO Experts, and generally any home based business or social media spam accounts. If they aren't being sincere, then chances are they aren't interested in what you have to say.
The reason you wait until your following is sufficiently high before doing this is to give yourself a buffer of loss during the process which will ensure you are refining the following to a more targeted group, while keeping your numbers high enough to entice others to follow you. As your following becomes more targeted, and the numbers are remaining high, that is the time when you begin to reduce the twitterfeeds and instead put more effort into your twitter account with more tweets from you as a person.
That isn't to say that you shouldn't have been tweeting all this time to begin with, but you should be weening the RSS feeds off of the account which will result in more tweets and content directly from you as a person.
One thing to keep in mind is that your twitter account should also be branded to reflect what you or your representing entity. Design aspects for this are very important, just as building a website would be. So take the time to understand your audience, and how exactly you wish to brand yourself.
The last thing to remember is to be sincere. You're trying to sell something, whether it's yourself, your services, or a product, but you must keep in mind that you are dealing with a community. This isn't a hard sell Tupperware party or car lot. While people are interested in you or what you have to offer, keep in mind that being human isn't a bad thing, and showing that you are just a normal person like everyone else will put your followers at ease while increasing your credibility. Don't be afraid to talk about something not involving or related to work.
In short, loosen the tie and have some fun. Try to balance being serious with being silly, and you may find that something you've said ends up going viral, thanks to your massive following ;)
If you are one of the many social network gurus (experts, specialists, etc), you often contend that in order to be successful in social networking, you must drive your following into the stratosphere. There are many methods which are in use which do this, from the automated following routines of software which follow other people en-mass based on your selection of interested keywords to search for, to more humble and, albeit more involved, approaches such as being yourself and tweeting only what you have time to tweet.
With the automated approach, we're not really garnering new followers in the manner which we seek. Instead we're actually exploiting the fact that a majority of twitter users are using automated methods to determine following of other people. In this sense, we're using the Rise of the Robots to our advantage, because all of those automated robots managing multiple twitter accounts and social media networks on our behalf are following other accounts which more than likely are also automated in turn.
Unless you are a celebrity, simply being on a social network really isn't going to give you a massive audience. Being @Oprah, for instance, and having a Twitter account almost guarantees a massive following with each and every follower hanging on your every tweet (Oprah has nearly 2.5 million followers at last count, yet she is following only 17 people). But for us mortals, there isn't much of a following for our accounts and so we are in the position where we must figure out the best method by which to build a following.
If we look at the social media experts, they often claim they know the secrets to building a huge following on Twitter, or how to build a successful social media campaign for yourself or your company. For any intelligent person, it is soon understood that there is a fair amount of automation involved with this process to build a following, and quite honestly the line blurs between what it is to be successful and what is not.
In the digital world, are you a success if you have tens of thousands of followers? This question applies to any social media platform past, present and future, because we must realize that quantity doesn't always equal quality. In the Rise of the Robots era of Web2.0, one cannot help but think that a majority of the "people" who are following you are automated software agents looking for search terms at the request of their operator.
So we ask again, is this following worthwhile? Sure the numbers look impressive, and yes you are certainly reaching a large number of people (regardless if automated software is making account decisions for them). But in the end, the question is whether or not that large following has a sufficiently high ROI to warrant the numbers.
To this end, it's a toss up as to whether you should be a purist (posting all of your own content), or if you should automate the process and kick back as your numbers begin to skyrocket.
My personal philosophy on this matter happens to be a combination of the two as a strategy.
In the beginning, you are most certainly going to need to build a following sufficient enough to warrant the account as a marketing tool. In this regard, it is safe to say that you should initially get a twitterfeed.com account and send at least one or two RSS feeds to your twitter on an hourly basis. Nothing obnoxious like 5 posts each per hour, but something low and reasonable in order to vary your twitter content while automating the activity level of your social media space. You should also during this time feel free to actually add tweets of your own to the mix when you find the time, something relating to you personally (work, entertainment, etc).
Instead of being completely automated, we're looking at a hybrid approach to the process which will alleviate the workload on your side and offload much of that to automated processes.
In as much as following and unfollowing people, this should be a process which you do manually. If you are using an automated process to cycle RSS to your twitter feed, then those who are searching for like minded content will inevitably follow you. When this happens, take some time periodically to go through your list and choose who you wish to follow as a reciprocal. Don't be worried if some of those followers inevitably unfollow you, as this is simply a normal fluctuation (as well as a byproduct of other less scrupulous methods for gathering a high following in twitter)
What sorts of RSS feeds should you use in Twitterfeed?
I would suggest your Blog RSS feeds for starters. If you have a Facebook account, then I would suggest finding an RSS for that as well and adding it. The idea overall is to create an integrated network whereby updating one updates the rest via inter-connectivity. Also, look for news and blog RSS feeds which are relevant to your social media message and include those as well, in order to stay on top of the leading edge news and happenings of your field via twitter.
When you've reached a number of followers which you feel is sufficiently high, this is the time when you begin to prune your list of followers in order to create a more targeted audience.
You will more than likely find that much of your following would not be interested in your message, and therefore those are the first to go. Some of these followers would be WebCam Girls, Home Marketing, SEO Experts, and generally any home based business or social media spam accounts. If they aren't being sincere, then chances are they aren't interested in what you have to say.
The reason you wait until your following is sufficiently high before doing this is to give yourself a buffer of loss during the process which will ensure you are refining the following to a more targeted group, while keeping your numbers high enough to entice others to follow you. As your following becomes more targeted, and the numbers are remaining high, that is the time when you begin to reduce the twitterfeeds and instead put more effort into your twitter account with more tweets from you as a person.
That isn't to say that you shouldn't have been tweeting all this time to begin with, but you should be weening the RSS feeds off of the account which will result in more tweets and content directly from you as a person.
One thing to keep in mind is that your twitter account should also be branded to reflect what you or your representing entity. Design aspects for this are very important, just as building a website would be. So take the time to understand your audience, and how exactly you wish to brand yourself.
The last thing to remember is to be sincere. You're trying to sell something, whether it's yourself, your services, or a product, but you must keep in mind that you are dealing with a community. This isn't a hard sell Tupperware party or car lot. While people are interested in you or what you have to offer, keep in mind that being human isn't a bad thing, and showing that you are just a normal person like everyone else will put your followers at ease while increasing your credibility. Don't be afraid to talk about something not involving or related to work.
In short, loosen the tie and have some fun. Try to balance being serious with being silly, and you may find that something you've said ends up going viral, thanks to your massive following ;)
Nvidia's realtime ray tracing in the cloud: RealityServer and iray
mental images' RealityServer has now the option to render on a GPU cluster with CUDA based iray.
A very impressive interactive ray tracing demo, first shown publically at Nvidia's GPU Tech Conference: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RCYDVG6S (H.264, 180 MB)
A video of iray integrated in Google SketchUp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6LBhws8l-A
RealityServer is sold in different configurations consisting of 8 up to 100+ Tesla GPU's. The biggest cluster configurations are targeted towards rendering of online virtual worlds and online entertainment, and can serve multiple concurrent users per GPU.
more info:
http://www.hpcwire.com/features/NVIDIA-Pitches-GPU-Computing-in-the-Cloud-65217572.html
http://brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/20/nvidia-launches-gpu-based-realityserver-30.aspx?pageid=0
Nvidia also showed a demo of an interactively raytraced Bugatti with global illumination running on OptiX at GTC:
video: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YAOSYWK1 (H.264, 82 MB)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
xtext for recipes
Yesterday I was at my parent's place. The weather wasen't very well so we enjoyed one of my mother's delicious dishes for dinner. At that time my mother and my girl friend started to exchange recipes and I started to think about writing a cookbook. It's more like a male cookbook... that's why I think the following aspects should matter the most for my book:
I thik both of these aspects can be reached by using a diagram notation. My diagram should be some kind of UML sequence diagram which looks like a UML flowchart diagram. Recipes should have a defined start state and multiple operations which can occure in parallel.
As I am more one of the text guys I prefere a textual notation for the recipies. The diagram should be generated from the textual recipe notation. The idea is a TeX approach: Define your document in a specialized language, then render the document.
As cooking is much like executing a Makefile :-) there should be many subtasks which depend on each other. Dependencies are very easy for humans to express and dependencies are enough for the recipe generator to determine which tasks can be executed in parallel.
So last but not least here is my recipe language draft. I mixed the concepts from above with some meta information about the ingredients, cooking duration, etc.
Hopefully I will get some time soon to implement a prototype using TMF Xtext.
- You should get a fast overview about the dish
- More headwords than prose
I thik both of these aspects can be reached by using a diagram notation. My diagram should be some kind of UML sequence diagram which looks like a UML flowchart diagram. Recipes should have a defined start state and multiple operations which can occure in parallel.
As I am more one of the text guys I prefere a textual notation for the recipies. The diagram should be generated from the textual recipe notation. The idea is a TeX approach: Define your document in a specialized language, then render the document.
As cooking is much like executing a Makefile :-) there should be many subtasks which depend on each other. Dependencies are very easy for humans to express and dependencies are enough for the recipe generator to determine which tasks can be executed in parallel.
So last but not least here is my recipe language draft. I mixed the concepts from above with some meta information about the ingredients, cooking duration, etc.
measure Prise {
}
measure Gramm {
}
measure Liter {
}
measure Blaetter {
}
ingredient Wasser;
ingredient Salz;
ingredient Nudeln;
ingredient Tomatenmark;
ingredient Basilikum;
recipe Tomatennudeln {
step WasserKochen {
title "Wasser zum kochen bringen";
ingredient 0.5 Liter Wasser;
duration 10 minutes;
}
step WasserSalzen {
title "Wasser salzen";
ingredient 1 Prise Salz;
duration 10 seconds;
}
step NudelnInWasser {
title "Nudeln weichkochen";
depends WasserKochen;
depends WasserSalzen;
ingredient 200 Gramm Nudeln;
duration 5 minutes;
}
step NudelnAbgiessen {
title "Nudeln abgiessen"
depends NudelnInWasser
duration 30 seconds;
}
step TomatenmarkErhitzen {
title "Tomatenmark wuerzen und erhitzen"
depends NudelnAbgiessen;
ingredient 10 Blaetter Basilikum;
duration 2 minutes;
}
step AllesVerruehren {
title "Nudeln und Tomatensosse verruehren"
depends NudelnAbgiessen;
depends TomatenmarkErhitzen;
duration 30 seconds;
}
}
Hopefully I will get some time soon to implement a prototype using TMF Xtext.
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow
Co-Founder Electronic Frontier Foundation
Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Co-Founder Electronic Frontier Foundation
Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
New CryENGINE3 trailer
in HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPfM1QnPlo&hd=1
Again the trailer explicitely mentions "Integrated Voxel Objects". I don't think it refers to the voxel sculpting tool for making things like caves in Sandbox Editor 2. I believe it is a reference to the SVO tech that I discussed in the previous post, because it is shown in the trailer among other features that are specific to CryENGINE3: procedural content, multi-core support, streaming infinite worlds, (advanced AI), deferred lighting, realtime global illumination, cryengine3 Live create (whatever that is).
Monday, October 12, 2009
Pixel drawings..
The above was drawn boredly over the last 2-3 nights while waiting up for my boyfriend and the below was drawn while watching The Big Bang Theory. I could imagine Sheldon playing Albert Einstein at chess.. it would be riddled with chatter about quantum physics and superheroes.
Away I go to research Halloween cupcake ideas..
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sparse Voxel Octree in CryEngine 3
Slides from the Crytek presentation at CEDEC 2009 reveal that the SVO technology is going to be part of CryEngine3. The difference with id Software’s (Jon Olick) SVO tech seems to be that Crytek rasterizes the SVO, while id uses raycasting.
One thing that made me smile: "GPU rasterized version of SVOs & its realtime content creation only available in CryENGINE 3" is listed as a con. Nice joke Crytek!
Other slides list the pro’s and cons of point based rendering, raytracing and rasterization. http://www.4gamer.net/games/092/G009273/20090903001/
If Crytek continues innovating at this pace, there’s a good chance that CryEngine3 will become the Unreal Engine 3 of the next generation and will attract many licensees.
One thing that made me smile: "GPU rasterized version of SVOs & its realtime content creation only available in CryENGINE 3" is listed as a con. Nice joke Crytek!
Other slides list the pro’s and cons of point based rendering, raytracing and rasterization. http://www.4gamer.net/games/092/G009273/20090903001/
If Crytek continues innovating at this pace, there’s a good chance that CryEngine3 will become the Unreal Engine 3 of the next generation and will attract many licensees.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Module 5 - Digital Storytelling
For me Digital Storytelling is the pedagogy behind Podcasts. Last year there was lots of training around Garageband and Photostory but only when this was given the context of the genre of Digital Storytelling did it really make sense as to the value of creating podacsts in the classroom. The whole creation aspect of making a digital story is accessing the highest order of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and allows for very personal reflections.
There are some great Digital Storytelling resources at:
http://www.storycenter.org/resources.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/about/pages/introduction.shtml
and of course
http://delicious.com/EvertonPom/digitalstorytelling
There are great free podcasts at iTunesU (and soon some content will come from Southern Region schools) and ABC. Students can be listening/viewing relevant podcasts whilst on the bus or at the gym etc.
To kids and many of us, YouTube is king. I particularly like how one can make their own playlists of favourites and subscribe to good channels. For educational content check out:
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
OTOY tech will power movie/game in 2012
OTOY and Big Lazy Robot are working on a game/movie that will apparently be using OTOY's voxel raytracing technology. It will be rendered on the server side and deliver perfectly photorealistic graphics (picture below). The game and movie should be released in 2012:
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/9/21/worlds-first-ray-traced-pc-game-and-movie-to-arrive-in-2012.aspx
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/9/21/worlds-first-ray-traced-pc-game-and-movie-to-arrive-in-2012.aspx
Is Mr Sheen really Mr Rudd?
(yes I made the above *beams proudly*)
You can't tell me that Mr Sheen doesn't look like the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd! Then again.. Mr Rudd looks like the Milkybar kid and even an icecream.. hehe. This animation came after I commented that when I read that someone was using a can of Mr Sheen, I thought of Charlie Sheen. How I ended up with Kevin Rudd God only knows.
Monday, September 21, 2009
How now Emo Cow?
Forget wanting grass to be Emo so that it'll cut itself..
If cows were Emo.. they would play emo music so much that grass would just want to die from the depressing lyrics.
If cows were Emo then sheep would be goth.
If cows were Emo.. then Myspace would be Mypaddock.
If cows were Emo then they would have to paint their white spots black, smoke and wear black skinny jeans.
Plus if cows were emo.. milk would taste funny.
I found the original cow pic while looking up pics of cows to be abducted by aliens for a piece I'm working on. Isn't the cow's hair spot on to the Emo fringe-over-my-eyes hairstyle? I'm tempted to make my Emo cow a Myspace page just to see how many friends he gets. I bet he'd get many. He's a sexy beast. Don't frown Emo clown will be next.
Mini Animations
I get bored and make little animations that are possibly more funnier than my bigger works... Enjoy
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Meme interrupted
Poor Jesus. If only he did get interrupted by Kanye.My attempt at a poke at The Top 10 Kayne West memes list. I liked the Titanic one.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
It's late
My photoshop skills are reduced when it's late at night and I'm bored. I should of worked on Jacko's redhair more. I'm going to have some eerie nightmares tonight!
Cupcake Wars!
I did add these to a range of t-shirts for sale online but the online shop that does all the printing is pending the image based on a possible copyright infringment. Basically.. those cupcakes look a little too much like real Star Wars characters. Either that or my made up font (impact 14pt repixelled) looks too much like the real Star Wars logo. Get real.Anyway, haven't been up to much lately. I've been sick the last two days but today my nose is actually clearing up. I'm happy about that. I can't say that having a Cold is the funnest thing to have. I hear Polio rocks. I want that. Yeh. No.
Hulk Hogan was just interviewed on channel Ten during the Cats VS Magpies AFL game. Now that's funny brother.
Twitter convo about the Hulkster:
MisBHaving: Hulk Hogan if u say "brother" once more imma kick u in the nads.
My reply: Hogan probably has no nads after years of steroids, hehe
MisBHaving: nyah nyah nyah, very true :-)
It's true! You don't get big 20 inch pythons (as the Hulkster liked to call them.. seriously naming your muscles is just plain silly) by not doing steroids or atleast working out every day for the rest of your life.
Now I'm off to finish watching the Footy. Whenever someone talks about "The Pies".. my mouth drools. I haven't had dessert yet.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Position Vacant
Children & Youth Minister and Regional Coordinator
Ready to commence immediately, Connections Church in Somerset, Parish of Burnie and the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania are seeking to engage a suitably gifted and qualified person to fill a full-time position combining local and regional aspects of children and youth ministry.
This is an exciting new role ideal for anyone with a pioneering heart who is able to take the lead in commencing a new youth ministry as well as supporting and guiding existing children's ministry teams.
Connections Church is a part of the Diocesan Imagine Project and the Anglican Parish of Burnie.
We have an energetic volunteer base and a strong heart for mission in our local area.
Applications close October 30, 2009.
More information at burnieanglican.org.au/connections/youth
Contact:
Will Briggs, Connections Minister
0428 695156, (03) 6435-1007
will.briggs@anglicantas.org.au
Ready to commence immediately, Connections Church in Somerset, Parish of Burnie and the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania are seeking to engage a suitably gifted and qualified person to fill a full-time position combining local and regional aspects of children and youth ministry.
This is an exciting new role ideal for anyone with a pioneering heart who is able to take the lead in commencing a new youth ministry as well as supporting and guiding existing children's ministry teams.
Connections Church is a part of the Diocesan Imagine Project and the Anglican Parish of Burnie.
We have an energetic volunteer base and a strong heart for mission in our local area.
Applications close October 30, 2009.
More information at burnieanglican.org.au/connections/youth
Contact:
Will Briggs, Connections Minister
0428 695156, (03) 6435-1007
will.briggs@anglicantas.org.au
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