Where's Waldo.. combined with Wall - E. The only thing I could come up with.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
NW Tasmania's Abused Generation
The local paper recently carried it on the front page - a report on the conviction of a man who was a youth group leader in a Burnie church in the 1970's for abusing a young girl in his youth group. Those who are associated with the Anglican church will know of our own sorry history with a former rector of Burnie currently in jail for abusive actions towards members of his youth group in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
I recently heard of another situation - a man in his late thirties who was active in his NW church at a younger age but left after a person with pastoral authority abused a member of the youth group.
The stories abound and cross every form of denomination. In each case the victims belonged to the so-called "Generation X" - the current parents of children, the generation to which I belong, the generation that is so absent from the church and amongst whom gospel ministry is so hard and fraught with opposition and apathy. Considering the history, in such a small connected community, should we be surprised?
The facts about, and the existence of, these situations are only recently being made clear in many cases. And with that comes, for myself at least, a heavier burden for my generation.
When we were "little ones" we were damaged by those who wore the name of Christ but did the work of the enemy. They will have their millstone. But where does that leave us who currently stand under that banner which for us stands for life but for many others is now a sinister symbol?
We are recognising at Connections the immediacy of the imperative to evangelise - to gospel people, to share the good news of life in Jesus. And our heart is for this same Gen-X.
And while we don't yet know what that might look like in terms of programs or strategies or events. We must now realise that such a task of speaking life where there is none, light where it has been snuffed out, is a spiritual task of eternal substance. Without spiritual, substantial grounding our efforts will be useless, counter productive, perhaps even re-abusive.
This widespread painful story must drive us to prayer, to intercession and to travail. It must call us to cry out for collective mercy for the church that has so betrayed the name of God. It must make us yearn for a sanctification that we would so be able to model Christ that this particular gate of hell will be well and truly overcome with love and grace and life-giving trust in a loving Lord. The tears of Christ are a call to spiritual warfare that has healing at its end. And we must answer that call.
And it is a particular call to the members of that self-same "Gen X" - a number of whom have grown into leadership in the Body of Christ. We must be the wounded-healers and the speakers of truth - making no excuses, dealing with reality, patient, gentle, wise, vulnerable because we can rest in God. We must run towards purity so that we are without blame. We must drink deeply of God's Word so that our words are words of life. And we must be God-reliant, and bold.
Please pray for us and the generations of the North West of Tasmania.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Work in progress
My Pop use to have this.. or was it the Dogs playing Pool painting.. up in his Pool room. I just updated it to something I'd want hanging in my house..
Monday, July 13, 2009
Micesy!
I have mice in my house.. thought these ideas might deter them and they'll pack up and leave.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
"But you cannot make her think"
The Venus Flytrap now has three, or possibly four buds. It's still in its protective terrarium, because the buds are still tiny, but I have managed to photograph them.
Behold:
If you want a larger, more detailed picture, the Flickr version is here
Today's title courtsey of Dorothy Parker. When challenged to make an epigram on the subject of "horticulture", she replied, "You can lead a whore to culture, but you cannot make her think!"
Behold:
If you want a larger, more detailed picture, the Flickr version is here
Today's title courtsey of Dorothy Parker. When challenged to make an epigram on the subject of "horticulture", she replied, "You can lead a whore to culture, but you cannot make her think!"
Friday, July 10, 2009
GigaVoxels at Siggraph
Cyril Crassin will be giving a talk at Siggraph 2009 on the subject of voxel raycasting and he has published a new short paper:
Beyond Triangles: Gigavoxels Effects in Video Games
Some screens of raycasted voxel scenes with the GigaVoxel technique here
I also found an interesting blog (via Timothy Farrar's blog) called EnterTheSingularity, which features a very interesting and in-depth post about the "perceived" latency of cloud gaming services:
http://enterthesingularity.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
The author (Jake Cannell, programmer on Mercenaries 2) has been thinking through the idea of cloud games quite well.
Beyond Triangles: Gigavoxels Effects in Video Games
Some screens of raycasted voxel scenes with the GigaVoxel technique here
I also found an interesting blog (via Timothy Farrar's blog) called EnterTheSingularity, which features a very interesting and in-depth post about the "perceived" latency of cloud gaming services:
http://enterthesingularity.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
The author (Jake Cannell, programmer on Mercenaries 2) has been thinking through the idea of cloud games quite well.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Prayer Points - July 2009 (Back on Deck)
Gill and I and family are back from holiday and starting to get back into our stride. Please excuse the absence between posts. There are some things coming up that I will reflect on here in this blog including the results of our Natural Church Development survey, the (re)creation of small groups, the stimulation of evangelism, Pioneer Ordained Ministry, the importance of action-reflection, and the formation of an updated Mission Action Plan. Hold me to it - I will blog!
Herewith latest prayer notes:
Dear Prayer Partners,
Thankyou for continuing to pray. You may have noticed an absence of correspondence in June. Gill and I and the children went on holidays during that time, catching up with people and touring parts of the mainland.
Please pray:
1) For Gill and I and the children as we settle back into the rhythm of life and the next season of ministry.
2) We have recently identified priorities for the church. They are, unsurprisingly, evangelism and small group ministry. With regard to evangelism, please pray for a reinvigoration of people's heart for God, a thirst for the gospel, and a ready-willing-and-able-ness to share the hope that is in them. With regard to small groups, please pray for us as we begin to approach and train some of the untapped potential leaders in our midst. Pray for those who are already putting their hands up.
3) Please pray for the local church community that has been rocked by sexual misconduct situation involving a youth leader (this time in another denomination) a number of years ago. This is yet another example in the Burnie region of abuse towards members of "Generation X" in their child and teen years - it makes ministry with that generation (the current parents of children) difficult and tenuous. Please pray for a breakthrough.
4) Please pray for one of our families who have been with us for a number of years (from when we were very small) who are now leaving us to take up missionary work in Asia. They are in the midst of packing and making arrangements. Help us to support them well and send them off with our blessing.
5) Ongoing prayer for this year is required for the amalgamation of our local schools. Please pray that the right arrangements are made, the right buildings are built, and the right people get the right jobs to make the new school community a great champion for our local children and local community. This is a key aspect of seeing Somerset advanced as a community.
God bless,
Will.
Herewith latest prayer notes:
Dear Prayer Partners,
Thankyou for continuing to pray. You may have noticed an absence of correspondence in June. Gill and I and the children went on holidays during that time, catching up with people and touring parts of the mainland.
Please pray:
1) For Gill and I and the children as we settle back into the rhythm of life and the next season of ministry.
2) We have recently identified priorities for the church. They are, unsurprisingly, evangelism and small group ministry. With regard to evangelism, please pray for a reinvigoration of people's heart for God, a thirst for the gospel, and a ready-willing-and-able-ness to share the hope that is in them. With regard to small groups, please pray for us as we begin to approach and train some of the untapped potential leaders in our midst. Pray for those who are already putting their hands up.
3) Please pray for the local church community that has been rocked by sexual misconduct situation involving a youth leader (this time in another denomination) a number of years ago. This is yet another example in the Burnie region of abuse towards members of "Generation X" in their child and teen years - it makes ministry with that generation (the current parents of children) difficult and tenuous. Please pray for a breakthrough.
4) Please pray for one of our families who have been with us for a number of years (from when we were very small) who are now leaving us to take up missionary work in Asia. They are in the midst of packing and making arrangements. Help us to support them well and send them off with our blessing.
5) Ongoing prayer for this year is required for the amalgamation of our local schools. Please pray that the right arrangements are made, the right buildings are built, and the right people get the right jobs to make the new school community a great champion for our local children and local community. This is a key aspect of seeing Somerset advanced as a community.
God bless,
Will.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
We Can't Drive 55
Over the holiday, optimizations were applied to our exclusive forums reducing the original load times of 30 - 45 seconds down to an average of 6 seconds or less. Also with these optimizations have come another theme in testing for lower bandwidth users, named Galactic Underground, which is slimmer and trimmer than our default.
Andromeda Underground forums have also been given their own domain address as part of a future enhancement program still under way. From this point forward, you can access our forums using the following dedicated domain address:
http://www.andromedaunderground.com
In Other News
Progress is being made with the distributed database system for Andromeda3D, albeit a slow progress. One of the major setbacks for progress with our project is that it does not have adequate resources to continue at a full-time pace. This overall has slowed our progress but has not halted it, as we refuse to stop working on it.
As it stands, Andromeda3D is a work in progress under the constraints of inadequate resources, funding and time; but we see these deficiencies not as impossible things to overcome, but instead something to make us try even harder.
We may not have millions of dollars and an army of programmers like others in this industry, but we have the one thing the rest of the industry does not and it is the most important thing of all:
Intelligence.
Not to say that others in this industry are dumb, but it takes a failure of common sense to assume you can build a Metaverse from a centralized system. That mentality only works for the first 1 million people if you are lucky, and god forbid they all want to show up to an event.
No, centralized systems are lucky to handle a few hundred simultaneous users, but are more likely to begin dying with 50 simultaneous users per area. If you are a company looking to have a virtual world for a conference where the expo center in real life would expect 10,000 or more people, then if you see 1/10th of that in your virtual environment version you are incredibly lucky.
The point of a Metaverse is to be a better option than physical attendance, and even with the hundreds of so-called options, none of them can come close to that expectation.
So much for tens of millions of dollars being thrown at these companies to make a better Metaverse, eh?
The money and resources, as far as we can see, are being given to the people who are better at talking than doing. LindenLabs is a good example of this, in that their evangelist Mr Rosedale can talk a smooth talk, enough to convince investors to hand over millions of dollars to build his SecondLife, but it is a system built so poorly that it consistently fails and requires a high end computer system for the most basic of graphics, let alone something better.
A good idea with a silver tongue to talk investors into writing the checks. Horribly implemented, and now being held together by duct tape.
We won't even start about Avatar Blue Mars. It looks good, requires high end hardware to use, and is functionally useless. But it's the "shiny graphics" that seemed to convince investors to throw millions of dollars at them.
Due to the track history of investment groups versus the "products" they invested heavily in for this metaverse industry (if you even want to call it that), we're under the impression that what matters most to investors isn't if it will actually work, but whether it looks flashy enough. Nobody is actually doing their homework and asking important questions beforehand, such as "How many people can simultaneously be in a given area?".
Secondlife: 40
I'm sure IBM or Cisco can spit out a case study where under certain conditions they have managed 300 people simultaneous at an event, but those numbers are the exception and not the rule. Ask any sim owner how many people showed up to a location before people began lagging and crashing, and the number is usually around 20 - 40 users.
Clearly this is not the bandwagon to be on, but there is so much hype that investors and companies with common sense seem to throw all of that out of the window to jump on board.
So the real question is, have investment groups finally learned their lesson when evaluating the base ideas for a new Metaverse before pouring millions of dollars into it, or are they still about as competent as a cat only interested in chasing the shiny laser dot on the carpet?
From our first hand experience such far, they're still blinded by the looks while disregarding the fundamental foundations. We'll be more than happy to talk with an investment group that would like to prove to us otherwise, but so far we've heard little more than incompetence over the past ten years.
This is why we'll continue building Andromeda3D regardless if it is being backed. It's something that simply needs to be done the right way whether or not the people with the resources approve of it.
Andromeda Underground forums have also been given their own domain address as part of a future enhancement program still under way. From this point forward, you can access our forums using the following dedicated domain address:
http://www.andromedaunderground.com
In Other News
Progress is being made with the distributed database system for Andromeda3D, albeit a slow progress. One of the major setbacks for progress with our project is that it does not have adequate resources to continue at a full-time pace. This overall has slowed our progress but has not halted it, as we refuse to stop working on it.
As it stands, Andromeda3D is a work in progress under the constraints of inadequate resources, funding and time; but we see these deficiencies not as impossible things to overcome, but instead something to make us try even harder.
We may not have millions of dollars and an army of programmers like others in this industry, but we have the one thing the rest of the industry does not and it is the most important thing of all:
Intelligence.
Not to say that others in this industry are dumb, but it takes a failure of common sense to assume you can build a Metaverse from a centralized system. That mentality only works for the first 1 million people if you are lucky, and god forbid they all want to show up to an event.
No, centralized systems are lucky to handle a few hundred simultaneous users, but are more likely to begin dying with 50 simultaneous users per area. If you are a company looking to have a virtual world for a conference where the expo center in real life would expect 10,000 or more people, then if you see 1/10th of that in your virtual environment version you are incredibly lucky.
The point of a Metaverse is to be a better option than physical attendance, and even with the hundreds of so-called options, none of them can come close to that expectation.
So much for tens of millions of dollars being thrown at these companies to make a better Metaverse, eh?
The money and resources, as far as we can see, are being given to the people who are better at talking than doing. LindenLabs is a good example of this, in that their evangelist Mr Rosedale can talk a smooth talk, enough to convince investors to hand over millions of dollars to build his SecondLife, but it is a system built so poorly that it consistently fails and requires a high end computer system for the most basic of graphics, let alone something better.
A good idea with a silver tongue to talk investors into writing the checks. Horribly implemented, and now being held together by duct tape.
We won't even start about Avatar Blue Mars. It looks good, requires high end hardware to use, and is functionally useless. But it's the "shiny graphics" that seemed to convince investors to throw millions of dollars at them.
Due to the track history of investment groups versus the "products" they invested heavily in for this metaverse industry (if you even want to call it that), we're under the impression that what matters most to investors isn't if it will actually work, but whether it looks flashy enough. Nobody is actually doing their homework and asking important questions beforehand, such as "How many people can simultaneously be in a given area?".
Secondlife: 40
I'm sure IBM or Cisco can spit out a case study where under certain conditions they have managed 300 people simultaneous at an event, but those numbers are the exception and not the rule. Ask any sim owner how many people showed up to a location before people began lagging and crashing, and the number is usually around 20 - 40 users.
Clearly this is not the bandwagon to be on, but there is so much hype that investors and companies with common sense seem to throw all of that out of the window to jump on board.
So the real question is, have investment groups finally learned their lesson when evaluating the base ideas for a new Metaverse before pouring millions of dollars into it, or are they still about as competent as a cat only interested in chasing the shiny laser dot on the carpet?
From our first hand experience such far, they're still blinded by the looks while disregarding the fundamental foundations. We'll be more than happy to talk with an investment group that would like to prove to us otherwise, but so far we've heard little more than incompetence over the past ten years.
This is why we'll continue building Andromeda3D regardless if it is being backed. It's something that simply needs to be done the right way whether or not the people with the resources approve of it.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Strawberry Shortcake Little Pony
After seeing custom My Little Ponies around the net... I came up with this
On Complexity...
There is something to be said about the absolute complexity of building a virtual worlds environment platform from scratch. You never really understand where the process will take you until you begin down different paths, but as long as you understand the guiding factors in your ultimate decisions, you will always drift forward with a clear understanding of every element.
One of these complexity issues happens to be our biggest concern while designing and implementing Andromeda3D, in that we are actively seeking a solution to a problem which no other virtual worlds environment company has dared, let alone even acknowledges in this industry.
Of course, we're speaking about the glass ceiling issue with simultaneous users within a virtual environment.
I personally don't care how much funding you have, how many programmers are coding away diligently, or how great your hype machine is. If you refuse to acknowledge the elephant in the room, you are doomed to failure. It isn't a matter of if, but when, as you one day realize the system you built is constantly failing under the weight of the popularity you've created for it, and there is nothing you can do short of tearing out the entire system and starting again. But since you are unable to rip the carpet out from your now paying customer population, we have no choice but to continually apply duct tape to your collapsing system as it slowly spirals into its grave.
Virtual worlds for business is an excellent idea, but not one which is fully matured. As it stands, the technologies on offer today do not meet the demands of a full scale event and are nothing more than a trivial side show compared to packed convention centers housing 50,000 people.
This is what we're working on solving. We like to ask the unthinkable question; "What if all 50,000 people could attend a virtual location with little to no detrimental effects?"
We're calling the elephant in the room out of hiding, acknowledging it exists, and taking steps to solve the issue that hundreds of millions of dollars and some of the brightest minds on this planet refused to acknowledge. We're doing this because we hate leaving people out of the loop, or telling them "We're sorry, this simulator is full.. come back later"
That is unacceptable, and we're doing everything in our power to make it right.
One of these complexity issues happens to be our biggest concern while designing and implementing Andromeda3D, in that we are actively seeking a solution to a problem which no other virtual worlds environment company has dared, let alone even acknowledges in this industry.
Of course, we're speaking about the glass ceiling issue with simultaneous users within a virtual environment.
I personally don't care how much funding you have, how many programmers are coding away diligently, or how great your hype machine is. If you refuse to acknowledge the elephant in the room, you are doomed to failure. It isn't a matter of if, but when, as you one day realize the system you built is constantly failing under the weight of the popularity you've created for it, and there is nothing you can do short of tearing out the entire system and starting again. But since you are unable to rip the carpet out from your now paying customer population, we have no choice but to continually apply duct tape to your collapsing system as it slowly spirals into its grave.
Virtual worlds for business is an excellent idea, but not one which is fully matured. As it stands, the technologies on offer today do not meet the demands of a full scale event and are nothing more than a trivial side show compared to packed convention centers housing 50,000 people.
This is what we're working on solving. We like to ask the unthinkable question; "What if all 50,000 people could attend a virtual location with little to no detrimental effects?"
We're calling the elephant in the room out of hiding, acknowledging it exists, and taking steps to solve the issue that hundreds of millions of dollars and some of the brightest minds on this planet refused to acknowledge. We're doing this because we hate leaving people out of the loop, or telling them "We're sorry, this simulator is full.. come back later"
That is unacceptable, and we're doing everything in our power to make it right.
Gaikai, another cloud gaming service
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6212860.html
http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/07/01/gaikai-demos-how-to-serve-games-over-the-internet/
http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/07/01/gaikai-demos-how-to-serve-games-over-the-internet/
Perry said the games can run on less than a megabit a second of Internet bandwidth. Most DSL connections offer around three megabits a second, coming downstream into the home. In the demo, Perry said, the server was about 800 miles away, which results in a round trip (ping rate) of 21 milliseconds. That’s a split second and not really noticeable. For a server much closer, the ping rate is about 10 milliseconds. While both OnLive and Otoy used custom servers with graphics chips, Perry said his service can run across low-end custom servers.
Perry contends the ping rate is fast enough to play most games. He showed racing games such as Mario 64 and other games such as World of Warcraft and Eve Online, all playing without downloaded software. He also showed how he could use Adobe Photoshop across the server.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 does cloud computing
Naughty Dog gave a live chat yesterday in which they mentioned cloud computing as an engine feature.
Excerpt from the live chat:
Source: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/06/30/uncharted-2-live-chat-with-naughty-dog
Excerpt from the live chat:
2:37 | [Comment From Pound_lb003] What crazy technical terms can you throw at us, that the ND Engine 2.0 boasts? |
2:38 | [Comment From wsowen02] How varied are the environments this time? |
2:40 | [Comment From Luke] You told us the snow is going to be the best snow we ever saw. We got some footage of that snow in trailers, but can you tell us more, of how this snow is going to work? By the way, you're an awesome company Naughty Dog. |
2:40 | Evan Wells: Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, deferred rendering, cloud computing, paralax mapping, high dynamic range tonemapping, per object motion blur, cascade shadows, sub surface scattering simulation... |
Source: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/06/30/uncharted-2-live-chat-with-naughty-dog
Seeing the term “cloud computing” among all these other high-end features, shows that it has reached a similar drool-inducing status. I wonder what exactly is being computed in the cloud and if it is similar to what OTOY is doing. Probably wishful thinking, but maybe there is a link with PS Cloud, as Naughty Dog has also contributed a great deal to the Playstation EDGE tools (together with Jon Olick). Naughty Dog is the best game developer on consoles in my opinion (especially in the fields of graphics, animation and cinematic storytelling) so it wouldn't suprise me if they are the first console developer to jump on the cloud computing train.
update: Interesting info about PS Cloud:
http://playstationlifestyle.net/2009/06/29/sony-drumming-up-a-digital-storm-with-playstationcloudcom/
update: Interesting info about PS Cloud:
http://playstationlifestyle.net/2009/06/29/sony-drumming-up-a-digital-storm-with-playstationcloudcom/
Ever since the trademark filing of PS Cloud, speculation has been buzzing. The trademark covers “entertainment services, namely, providing an on-line video game that users may access through the internet”
We have found more evidence of PlayStation Cloud being accessible “through the internet”…
While doing some research, I performed a who is lookup of the domain playstationcloud.com. The results of my query showed that SCEA San Diego Studios is the owner of the domain.
SCEA San Diego recently mentioned while speaking to Gamasutra that they would be “exclusively” working on PSN game development. This goes against all speculation so far pegging PlayStation Cloud as a social networking service. Of course Sony San Diego could very well be developing a service or application, for the PSN with PlayStation Cloud.
Whatever PS Cloud is, it seems as though it’s going to be coming from Sony’s San Diego Studio.
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