KEWLing: Croquet - the virtual world

At times I wish that technology would just sit still for a minute - I'm just catching up to Second Life and its possibilities when along comes this video for Croquet (an open source virtual world system) that seems to do a dozen things that SL is missing.

(Mainly the ability to browse the internet from inside the game but also a few other things)

Seriously,watch the video, it's so worth the five minutes.

Watching: the world clock

The PC sent me a link to this site (http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf) which offers a little perspective on the world.

If you click on the Now button, you can see (statistically at least) a whole bunch of the crap things that are happening in the world (but at least, presumably, not to you)

Watch those barrels of oil flow - nice to see at least that more bicycles are being made than cars.

Baking: Choc-chip cornflake bikkies

Had a good day in the kitchen yesterday after helping the PC move in on Saturday - a good solid clean and organise of the cupboards and all the pots and pans and assorted plastic containers. (Oh yes, the fun never stops in the Flanders house).

One of the things we came across was a bag of slightly old choc-bits (but really, does chocolate every really go off?) and so in saying that they were fine I pretty well set myself up to prove it and the great bikkie challenge was on.



They turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Thanks for the recipe PC and the advice. (Beating butter and sugar together is more complex than you'd think :)


250g Butter
1 cups caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
As many choc bits as you want (I put in about 150g)
2 cups self raising flour
5 and 1/2 cups cornflakes

Beat the butter and sugar together
Add the vanilla essence and eggs and beat until fluffy

Add the flour and mix it in well with your hands
Add the choc bits and cornflakes (don't crush up the cornflakes too much)

Bake on a greased tray at 180C for 20 mins.

This made about 25 biscuits (some might call them cookies)

Watching: Radiohead meets Eraserhead mashup

This is a bit of a no-brainer for me - OK Computer is still one of my favourite all time albums and David Lynch's Eraserhead is still my favourite bizarrely surreal film.

Jsmash has done a pretty nice job cutting this clip together - I like the tiny jumpcuts in particular. If you haven't seen Eraserhead, check it out - just don't go in expecting the story to make sense, treat it more like an abstract painting and just let yourself experience the feelings it provokes.



Here's a short clip from the film to give you some idea of what to expect - if you're overly squeamish you might give it a miss. I remember reading somewhere that Lynch came up with the idea for the film when he was feeling anxious about the upcoming birth of his first child.



(Oh and if you're a Twin Peaks fan, you might have noticed that Henry is played by Jack Nance, who played Pete Martell in the show)

Playing: Tunes for Lost Highway

There are a few personal faves in here but I made an effort to find a few artists that I've been meaning to investigate more fully so hopefully it's a good mix.

No place to fall (Townes Van Zandt) Lisa Miller Car tape 3:19
Helpless Nick Cave The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young 4:32
After the Gold Rush The Flaming Lips The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young 4:14
It's Just That Simple Wilco A.M. 3:46
Harry Was A Bad Bugger Tex, Don & Charlie All Is Forgiven 5:19
Salty candy Adam Green Friends of mine 1:39
Woke up this morning Alabama 3 Last train to Mashville 4:03
Chelsea Morning Joni Mitchell Hits 2:31
Blue Spanish Sky Chris Isaak Wild At Heart 3:59
Step In Step Out Weddings Parties Anything They Were Better Live (Disc 2) 4:29
Brown Bessy The Fuelers Hot Dang 2:20
Dirty Water Randall Blair And The Wedded Bliss Tattoos And Taillights 4:46
What If Lucinda Williams West 5:41
Make it Count Barb Waters & Kim Salmon Rosa Duets 3:35
A Fond Farewell Elliott Smith From A Basement On The Hill 3:58
Sweet Jane Cowboy Junkies The trinity sessions 3:35
Hold On, Hold On Neko Case Fox Confessor Brings The Flood 2:46
Our Sunshine Paul Kelly With Uncle Bill Smoke 4:22
Little Animals Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 5:14
New Day Of The Dead Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 5:17

Seeing: The Beasts of Bourbon - ANU Bar Canberra

Confounded study (and nerdiness) kept me from seeing much (or any) of the support acts - Roland S Howard and Magic Dirt - but I saw the Beasts of Bourbon play one of the most chaotic, shambolic and yet utterly ROCK shows I've ever seen last night.

From the small part of the set that I heard, Magic Dirt were tight and loud - and it appears fortunately that they're moving away from their much poppier sounds of the last few years.

But the show was all about the Beasts - (check out my thoughts on their new album here)

Tex Perkins, even off his tits as he appeared to be, positively exuded charisma - and this in the face of spitting on stage, regularly dropping the mic (not in a clumsy way necessarily, just not caring), breaking off midsong to banter with the band and spectacularly falling backwards off stage (like a scuba diver entering the water) halfway through the final song. For all of this, my friend Jo, veteran of rock shows, left the venue feeling even more gooey about the man than ever before.

So how did he pull this off? A combination of rock theatricality, good naturedness and just being generally piss-funny as well as bursts of rock'n'roll brilliance from the band. There was a sense that at any moment that whole stage could just totter into complete chaos, only to come back from the brink at the last moment - as a show it was compelling.

The hand gestures and showmanship, the running gags about how "tight" the band was and the seeming fascination with doing that tip the mic stand with your foot and bring it back (which the man is clearly a guru at) kind of brings to mind the Drunken Master kung-fu style.

I guess the ultimate measure of how good a show was is that I bought two tshirts - which I don't think I've ever done at a gig before.

(and all this with them not even playing Chase the Dragon - which members of the crowd had called out for all night. My thoughts at the time were - look guys, it's their big number, it'll have to be the final encore song, just relax - but then it never came. I was left with a feeling like the end of the final episode of The Sopranos - is it brilliance or is it wrong. Brilliance came out trumps)

Wondering: Are lolcats infiltrating the Herald Sun

I noticed this image on the homepage of the Herald Sun (Murdoch's Melbourne tabloid) last night and was struck by the similarity of the font to that in lolcat images. Maybe it's a new genre - polcats?

LOLing: Workplace Ad Parody (hmatkin)

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of the mashup - remixing or re-editing one existing media product to give it a new (often funnier or more accurate) spin.

This YouTube clip by hmatkin is a fantastic example. Our conservative government radically changed industrial relations laws recently to move workers away from collectively negotiated agreements to individual contracts - and they've spent tens of millions of dollars trying to sell this to an increasingly unhappy public.



There are a lot of things I like about this ad - it's brazen and funny, it's just as political as the supposedly apolitical tax-payer funded version and in spite of some slightly rough editing it makes the point very well.

One of the things it made me think about is the way the government ads use post-it notes to convey their message. The way I see post-it notes, they're very temporary things, generally whipped up very quickly with little thought and they're easy to change. If I had the time, I'd explore this - something along the lines of "Your rights - guaranteed by post-it note" - this isn't exactly it, but you get the gist.

Alas, I has uni work to press on with.

Here are a couple more hmatkin clips.

Marvelling: Happy reading Art Bear

There's often something slightly sugary, kitsch or poppy about the elements of "Western" culture that you find crossing over to Asian culture - this was the label of the water bottle that came when I stopped in at the Senior Crocodile Thai cafe in Sydney last week.

It's a little hard to read (the phone-cam doesn't like low light so much) but it says "happy reading art bear, I hope you will enjoy reading my stories". I like it - it went well with the young kidult vibe of the place, which included the ubiquitous "beckoning cat" statues that seem to be popping up all over the place and the wall to wall concert footage of who I think were the Pussycat Dolls.

Actually, I've just read up on the beckoning cat or maneki neko - which I'd initially called the waving kitty and it's much more than just the latest kitsch cartoon character based trend - it's a traditional good luck/come-in-and-do-business thing apparently.



Makes me realise that I'm getting on a little (just about to leave the cherished 18 - 35 demographic) but that's ok.

One other interesting thing I've discovered while writing this is that if you can hold your drink well in Japan, you might be referred to as hidari-kiki (left handed). Given that left handedness often has negative connotations in most languages - sinister, gauche etc - this is interesting.

(Maneko image borrowed from elissadariel on Flickr)

Playing: Songs for Sunset

Young folks Peter Bjorn And John Writers block 4:39
Aurora Midnight Juggernaughts Dystopia 5:51
Thanks Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 3:15
Words And Dreams Fred Smith Bagarap Empires 2:57
Street Spirit (Fade Out) Radiohead The Chillout Sessions 2 (Disc 1) 4:12
I'm A Cuckoo Belle & Sebastian Dear Catastrophe Waitress 5:26
Off The Grid The Beastie Boys The Mix-Up 4:36
Weeds The Negotiators Apples and Oranges 3:59
Pink bullets The Shins Chutes too narrow 3:53
Dirty Water Randall Blair And The Wedded Bliss Tattoos And Taillights 4:46
Solar Flare Endorphin Embrace 3:52
Red Tan The Raveonettes Pretty In Black 3:48
In Front of Me Tzu Smiling At Strangers 3:37
Midnight Snack You Say Party! We Say Die! Hit The Floor! 4:03
Nude School Painters And Dockers Used And Recommended By 3:34
Appliance, Compliance Youth Group Urban & Eastern 3:35
The Brotherhood Of Al Wazah Radio Birdman Zeno Beach 5:30
My Baby's Man Vanlustbäder The People Versus Vanlustbader 1:40
The KKK took my baby away Ramones Anthology 2 2:31
Single Cable Love Of Diagrams Mosaic 2:36

ZOMG!ing - Making machinima in Second Life

Yes, I realise that I'm a little behind the times here but I'm catching up. For the last two days I've been up in Sydney at The Virtual Story - Machinima and Virtual Worlds seminar/workshop put on by LAMP(Laboratory of Advanced Media Production) at the AFTRS (Australian Film TV and Radio school).

Suffice to say it's been extraordinarily cool and my head is still swimming with the information and ideas that I've been exposed to.

In case you're wondering, machinima is the art of creating animation using computer games. It's possible to capture the action on the screen (controlled by one or more players), add your own vocals and other sounds and export it as a finished video.

Red Vs Blue, based on the Halo series of games, is one of the most well known examples.



The beauty of machinima is that it allows anyone with a basic understanding of games and movie making to create their own films, free of the restraints of budget and the limitations of reality (gravity etc).

There's way too much to cover right now but if you have an interest in a particular game, the odds are pretty good that you can toddle over to YouTube (or your video sharing site of choice) and run a quick search for machinima + that game and find something interesting. (You might find something shiteful as well but that's the chance you take)

We spent a fair chunk of time working in Second Life(SL), a massive online virtual world community and the possibilities of this place are still rocking my world. I've had a brief look around there before but got a little overwhelmed by the controls - having a bit of face to face support made a big difference.

One of the main speakers was an amazing guy, Gary Wisniewski, who runs a Second Life tv station called Second Life Cable Network. They stream multicam shoots of events and regular programmes in the game - everything from Ice Hockey matches and Giant Snail races to concerts, movie launches (e.g Transformers and Bruce Willis launching Die Hard 4.0) and educational conferences. I had a chance to talk to this guy for a few hours at the airport on the way back (in the Qantas club lounge - thanks for that champ) and the things people are doing in this world are astounding me.

I even worked on a short SL machinima with a cool girl from Canberra - who funnily enough is friends with the woman I work next to. (This is a very Canberra thing - if you bump into someone new, the odds are fair that they'll know someone that you do)

I couldn't fit all of the shots that we did onto my 2GB thumbdrive (time for an upgrade) but here are a couple of them - featuring my avatar Figjam Tomorrow and her (and her partner's) Ford Frederiksson.



This is a rough cut of part of Episode 2 of Quest for Mokador - a machinima I'm making in Second Life with the highly talented Katie H. The guy (Figjam) is a noob who's trying to get the attention of the peacefully meditating Ford to ask her about the mythical SL land of Mokador. It isn't until he bends over and shouts that he gets her attention.
(Figjam still has a thing or two to learn about in-world manners)

There's no sound but the live voicing we did during the screening was pretty funny - stay tuned for that one.

A few lessons to learn - don't leave the cursor on the movie while you are capturing. :)

This was cut together in Windows Movie Maker in about 10 minutes.

I'll bang on a little more about this later I'm sure.

Attending: the virtual story machinima seminar

Pretty interesting so far. More info soon.

Making: the second lamest first person shooter ever

Previously on Couch Media: Making the lamest first person shooter ever




Well I've returned to the game making software again for another uni project - this time I'm creating a slightly more open environment that gives the player a few more choices. It's all about finding out what services and knowledge people can access from my team, Flexible Learning Solutions.

This is all for my subject Instructional Strategies and Authoring and it's about creating a democratic learning environment - one where the learner can control what they learn, what form this takes and what order they access the material.

If you're super keen to find out more you can read the full design statement over on my edublog.

I'm using FPS Creator again because it's package I'm most familiar with- it occurs to me that I could (and possibly should) try to move over to Second Life or similar 3D gamespace (such as Multiverse or Croquet) but I like that I don't have to create any 3D objects in FPSC, so I'll stick with that for now. (Although I am going to need to get some created failry soon for this game - lucky we have a hot shot 3D modeller on the team and this is work related and all. Have I mentioned how much I love my job sometimes :)

Anyway, I'll keep you posted - I could probably stand to tighten up the video a little, there are a few irrelevant parts but overall it's on track.

Here are a couple of screenshots as well that illustrate what it might look like when I've colour coded the room. (This is done to make navigation a little easier and to more closely like learning/multimedia resources with particular topics)

Wearing: Silence is golden, tape is silver tshirt

Growing up in a shiftworker house, where quiet time during the day is a must, I'm a quiet person. I've also always been a relatively curious person I think, with a broad interest in a lot of things that go on around me and a desire to understand the hows and whys behind them.

It's for this reason that it's my personal conviction that many people talk too much and don't listen anywhere near enough. (When I say listen, I mean genuinely listen as well, not just plan what you are going to say next while you wait for the other person to stop talking)

So here's my crackpot theory #56 - our ears/mouth ratio should reflect the listening/talking that we do. In a conversation between 2 people then, you spend a 1/3 of the time speaking and 2/3s of the time listening. Obviously this means that 1/3 of this time would be in silence where you can both reflect on what you've both been saying - what it means, how they feel about it, how you feel about it, why you said it and whether the other person wanted to hear it in the first place.

Then again, sometimes I just get like this when I've been earbashed by someone when all I wanted to do was read the paper in peace. :)

Anyway, this is why I like the tshirt that the PC got me a while back - while it might seem to have a slightly sinister tinge to it, I think there's a lot to be said for quiet reflection and just stfu'ing.

(I'm not sure how this applies to blogging though)

Watching: Most innovative use of a guitar

Ok, so it might seem as though I've gone Justin Sandercoe crazy but this really is a very clever and cool clip. Our Justin has been holding a "most innovative uses of a guitar" competition and this surely has to be the winner.



I like the quality of the animation, the stylistic nod to The Big Lebowski, the music and the particularly nice focus pull from the ball to the bowler.

WTFing: Compulsory employee microchipping is now illegal

I read the other day that California has passed a law that

would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a good thing to ban - what I want to know is how society gets to a point where business might think that effectively branding employees might be considered an acceptable practice. Given that these rfid microchips could be used to track workers wherever they go, it's a horrendous proposition.

I'm also impressed by the fact that

Nine senators opposed the measure, including Bob Margett (R-Arcadia), who said it is premature to legislate technology that has not yet proved to be a problem. "It sounded like it was a solution looking for a problem," Margett said. "It didn't seem like it was necessary."

Of course, I wouldn't be expecting any similar kind of protection under Workchoices II if Howard wins the next election.

(Thanks to one of the commenters on the riot-act for this nugget)

Watching: Adam & Joe's Quizzlestick

Some of you may know that I've got a bit of a thing for quiz/game shows so you'll probably understand why I enjoyed this clip so much

Watching: Justin Sandercoe Guitar Lessons

I'm a bit crap at practising guitar - I've been playing on and off for around 20 years and there are probably only 4 and a bit tunes that I'm any good at.

(Greensleeves, some two finger classical piece, House of the Rising Sun, 12 bar blues and most of Heart of Gold)

I'm pretty happy to have found Justin Sandercoe's collection of how-to videos as they seem both useful and achievable. (And he has more than 60 up online so far - with supplementary printed notes)

This one I like in particular because it's a series of finger exercises you can use to increase speed, accuracy and strength of note-hitting.



Legend. Thanks.

Exploring: My Bookcase(Part 2)

Previously on Exploring: My Bookcase - Part 1 :)

This might not seem to meet the "book" requirement of bookcase but hey, it's the 21st century, it's all media.

You can see part of my Things to do folder just creeping into the shot on the left - I must say that I haven't cracked it open in the time since I mentioned it in the first post of this series - let's see if it gets a look before I reach the bottom right corner of the bookcase. (But don't hold your breath)



The first video is a copy of an slightly obscure film by Alex Proyas, director of I, Robot, Dark City, Garage Days and The Crow. It's called Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds.

I posted a review of this on IMDB a few years back (which I'd totally forgotten about until I was looking around for info - it was only when I got to the end of it that I realised that it was me :)

This film has some of the most beautiful imagery and haunting music ever. (Not to overstate it or anything) A three hander set in a post apocalyptic Oz outback (but one which is wildly more fantastical than Mad Max), Spirits of the Air tells the story of Smith, a stranger on the run who happens upon Felix and Betty, far into the desert.



All around them are amazing images of cars buried into the ground like totems, huge flags blowing madly in the desert wind and their house itself is of the old oz pioneer style but decorated everywhere with crucifixes. Felix is an inventor obsessed with flight and making a glider, an obsession which has already left him in a wheel chair. Betty is one of the truly great film characters, just an absolute tripper - I can't describe her but the performance is a delight.



This is not a fast film, it is not action packed but is intense - the imagery and art direction are beautiful, the writing is distinct and very Australian but still universal, the soundtrack is haunting (a lot of windsound montages with a simple tune used to great effect) and the performances are both real and surreal.

Until you see this film (and for those who have enjoyed the increasingly brilliant work of Alex Proyas, you really should) you won't know what you are missing.

(By the way, to the @$#%ing mongrel who stole my Japanese import copy of the soundtrack on CD may you be locked in a room with Betty for a very long time)

Being the slightly obscure fillum, it's been a bit of task finding any video clips - there's apparently a clip on Alex Proyas' Mystery Clock website but it doesn't seem to be working.




Next along the shelf is a video about the art of one of my all time favourite directors, David Lynch. (This is actually the dvd cover but you get the gist)

I couldn't find any clips for this either but here's something from his video-art-music thing Industrial Symphony. (I'll bang on about David Lynch a little more later)





Next up we have a video which is labelled Quince. Quince is kind of tropical fruit and it was also the nickname of a guy I once shared a house with. The tape has my appearance on the quiz/game show The Weakest Link. (which I've since digitised and put onto DVD).

Finally you can see a somewhat florid small picture frame - this came from my friend Mick's wedding - a somewhat interesting affair in a fairly full on Christian way - quite a few references to the wife being obedient to the husband and so on that seemed a little archaic but hey, if they're both happy with that then good on them I suppose. (Given that Mick and his family were expelled from the Exclusive Brethren when he was a kid, I guess it could have been a whole lot weirder)

Playing: songs for Monday Sunset

Got some tasty ear-candy for you this week - featuring three tracks from the awesome new Beasts of Bourbon album, new stuff from Beck, Love of Diagrams, I Heart Hiroshima and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment condensed into less than 3 minutes.

I Want You Bob Dylan Blonde On Blonde 3:09
Timebomb Beck Timebomb 2:49
Baby I'm Burnin' Dolly Parton The Very Best Of 2:37
Heart Of Gold Johnny Cash Unearthed 2 3:01
Master And Slave Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 4:51
The Beast I Came To Be Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 2:14
New Day Of The Dead Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 5:17
Valerie The Zutons Tired of Hangin' Around 3:56
The Great Escape We Are Scientists With Love And Squalor 3:18
Kooks David Bowie Hunky Dory 2:53
Better Go Home Now Dirty Three Dirty Three 3:42
Surgery I Heart Hiroshima Tuff Teef 2:44
What Was I Supposed To Do? Love Of Diagrams Mosaic 2:57
Herculean The Good, The Bad And The Queen The Good, The Bad And The Queen 3:59
Same Frente! The Kids Who Kill For Sugar: Popboomerang Records 5th Birthday Sampler 2:49
Happiness' Border Youth Group Urban & Eastern 3:11
Mr Circle Fred Smith Bagarap Empires 3:47
Hot Rich Girls Dropped In A Grange (Gwen Stefani vs. Snoop Dogg vs. ZZ Top) Torero Best of Bootie 2005 4:28
Dirty Water Randall Blair And The Wedded Bliss Tattoos And Taillights 4:46
Heavenly Pop Hit The Chills Submarine Bells 3:28
Raskolnikov Soursob Bob Living In The Long Grass 2:57
I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor Sugababes Q: Best Of 86/06 2:44
Calypso Spiderbait Ivy And The Big Apples 1:51
My Baby's Man Vanlustbäder The People Versus Vanlustbader 1:40