Just Minecraft: September 2009

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.

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

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

Waiting...

... for the new Ruby demo.

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

New web site, new blog address

As foreshadowed, we have refurbished the church web site so that it includes the content of this blog as well as new content from the life in and around Connections Church.

The website is here: http://www.burnieanglican.org.au/connections

If you have subscribed to the feed of this blog and which to continue to receive content via subscription you may want to subscribe here: http://burnieanglican.org.au/connections/?feed=rss2

The new web site is based on the wordpress system which allows blog articles to be categorised. You can view different content categories:

News: General news, photos, commentary about Connections and related activities.
Teaching: Content such as links to sermon audio and other related content.
Prayer Points: Regular prayer letters, also released on our Connections Prayer email list.
Discussion: Articles, thoughts and other material regarding church planting, fresh expressions and the nature and characteristics of church life. Dialogue and comments welcome.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Migration

We are in the process of migrating this blog to our own website.
Details very soon. In the meantime Comments have been closed on this blog.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Service in Setting up

We have a bunch of dedicated servant-hearted folk who come in on Saturday nights to setup the hall. This includes our musos who then spend time praying and worshipping together as a small group in their own right. These people are gifts to our community.