Worms music video by Sil Van Der Woerd January 18, 2008
Posted by mwj as 3d, art. 3 comments.
Microprofessions December 20, 2007
Posted by mwj as business, crowd sourcing, games, second life, virtual worlds, web3.0. 1 comment so far.Double Happiness is seeking Second Lifers to work in our telematic textile factory on Eyebeam Island from January 17-27 for 3-hour shifts. We offer a competitive salary of 200 Lindens per hour plus land bonuses. No experience necessary. Positions include laser cutters, dye vat operators, jaquard loom weavers, quality control and supervisors.
— from Double Happiness Manufacturing
Nodes and Web 3.0 October 21, 2007
Posted by mwj as 3d, art, crowd sourcing, virtual worlds, web3.0. 2 comments.Last week at the Masters of Digital Media we were paid a visit by the creators of Houdini, a high end 3d animation suite. I haven’t used much in the way of 3d tools (like Maya, 3D Studio Max or Blender), but I am getting more interested in the subject. This is mostly because I believe that Web 3.0 will consist of traversable 3d space, like the Metaverse from Snow Crash.
Houdini is the most expensive 3d animation software out there, but the big selling point is that it allows users to solve visual problems in a procedural way. This sort of proceduralism works like so: first, you take a standard primitive object, like a basic pyramid or a sphere. Then you select an effect, say the colour red, and apply it to the sphere. After this, perhaps you take a certain bumpy texture and apply it, or a certain set of commands that morph the sphere into a different shape.
Each of these effects are called nodes, and the beauty of them is that they can be re-applied to a different shape to generate a different object. Or we can follow the advice of one of the crew from Houdini, and think of proceduralism as cooking. If we think of this style of creation as making a soup, the object that you apply everything to is like the stock or base, and each node you add is a different ingredient.
Added flickr to extension.mwj October 17, 2007
Posted by mwj as flickr, photography, website. 2 comments.I’ve now added a Flickr widget to the site that displays the last four photos from my Flickr photostream. The Masters of Digital Media gave us all small cameras to shoot the world with, so this is me doing my part to make sure that I’m generating lots of photos. I’m also going to be adding screenshots from the various worlds that we are using in our classes, as well as project photos and perhaps even some screenshots from our final products.
I’m in the newspaper October 16, 2007
Posted by mwj as education, electronic arts, games, news, scholarship. 3 comments.So I got a scholarship from Electronic Arts for the Masters of Digital Media that I’m taking right now, and it has generated a little bit of press. I got my BA in Langley (and spent the last 5 years there) so the story has run twice, once in the Langley Advance and once in the Langley Times. Both of those are cached here, but you can see the online version on the canada.com network.
4 changes I’d make to Second Life October 14, 2007
Posted by mwj as environment, games, media, second life, technology, virtual worlds, web2.0, web3.0, world of warcraft. 5 comments.I’ve been out of the blogosphere for far too long, so I’m just going to jump into it and not make any apologies. I’ve been spending more and more of my time on Second Life lately, at the University Project that Sun has set up for the Masters of Digital Media.
Second Life is a great big open playground, where you can build a lot of different things and add scripts that make them do a lot of different things. Anything that citizens make in Second Life belongs to them, and they can resell their items at any price using Linden dollars which can be exchanged for real money. But you know all that already.
What I’m interested is where Second Life falls short in its claim to be heralding in a new paradigm for cyberspace. In particular, there are at least four areas that need significant work before virtual worlds like Second Life can be part of Web 3.0.
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NYTimes on Theodicy August 21, 2007
Posted by mwj as games, mind, philosophy, technology. 5 comments.It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude.
– NYTimes, Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch
Married June 22, 2007
Posted by mwj as europe, identity, wedding. 2 comments.I never did find my identity (see previous post), but I did get a new set of papers to convince myself I’m me. Among them: a BC driver’s license, an international student card and a marriage certificate.
The day went by in a blur, and now we’re hitched and traveling the globe. I’m sure Facebook will provide all the details about June 16, but if you want to keep up to date with our honeymoon travels, please visit our (post) wedding blog and keep on checking back as we update it with pictures and stories from around Europe.
lost May 22, 2007
Posted by mwj as identity, poetry, self. 2 comments.Yesterday I lost my wallet at a bottle depot. After canceling my money cards, I began the task of ensuring that somebody else doesn’t pretend to be Matthew W. Jenkins. This involves calling credit bureaus, contacting vital statistics, and trying to get a new driver’s license.
The experience has been particularly traumatic because I am getting married in less than 25 days and we leave for Europe right after the wedding.
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What then is education? I had thought it was the curriculum the individual ran through in order to catch up with himself; and anyone who does not want to go through this curriculum will be little helped by being born into the most enlightened age.
– Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling