OGLE: Virtual World Mashups
OGLE (OpenGL Extractor) is a cool new tool from
Eyebeam's OpenLab. It basically allows users to grab 3D geometry from an application. At first, this may sound ho-hum, but the examples given on the project page point to some pretty interesting uses:
- Making physical models of game characters
- Mashing up virtual worlds like Second Life and Google Earth
- Extracting and modifying Google Earth data sets
Clearly, OGLE shows off the potential for blurring the boundaries of the many virtual worlds (not to mention the boundary between virtual and real). This makes me happy. They've already released their tools, but I can't wait for them to release their plug-in for converting models to Google Earth's KML format.
Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer.
Steelers in the Superbowl!
A short digression from my usual ponderings... Living in Pittsburgh, I'm rather excited about the
Steelers' recent victory over Denver, securing Pittsburgh a place in the Superbowl. Plus, the city is going nuts, which is pretty fun.
From Sunday night's spontaneous street party on Carson St.
Art for Catching Criminals?
BoingBoing pointed to
this story about a caracaturist helping capture a burglar with his drawing and recall abilities. It makes me wonder if the perceptual tricks of caracature made the drawing easier to use when identifying the burglar. I notice a lot of police sketches look sort-of like they're supposed to, whereas a lot of caracatures are spot-on. Does the simplification of features in a caracature make it easier to use as an identifier? See Scott McCloud.
Dick Hardt's Powerpoint Fu is Strong
This video of Dick Hardt's Identity 2.0 presentation has been sitting on my desktop for some time. During a flurry of clean-up recently (gotta make room for those World of Warcraft patches), I came across it and watched it. The subject is interesting, but I found the style and format of the presentation even more impressive. Go check it out and get schooled in ppt fu.
The Year 2005 in Cities
Following folks such as
Jason Della Rocca and
Jason Kotke, here's my list of cities for 2005:
Pittsburgh, PA*
Mountain View, CA
San Francisco, CA*
Philadelphia, PA*
Chicago, IL*
Houston, TX
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Deer Isle, ME*
Hallowell, ME*
Rochester, NY*
Minneapolis, MN
Boston, MA
Seattle, WA
Rules (from Kotke): "One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days."
Game Parody (including Asterix!!!)
Joystiq points to
an article on MTV.com about a recent Asterix & Obelix game that parodies many other videogames. The game sounds fun and funny. Plus, I have such a fond memory of Asterix & Obelix comics from my youth (I even still have my collection). It's too bad this will probably be a Europe-only release.
New Year's Resolution: Create More
Though I'm not really into New Year's resolutions, I did pause to reflect on my life as the year turned from 2005 to 2006. For an artist, I really don't create as much as I should. I spend large amounts of time consuming the creations of others: movies, games, websites, music, etc. I enjoy partaking in the creations of others, but I haven't been responding with enough creations of my own. I'm a bit imbalanced in that regard.
Following from that, my New Year's resolution is to create more. That means more sculpting, more writing, more designing, more implementing, more drawing, more building, more game-making, and so on.
To remind myself of this, I've make some new desktop images for my laptop:
Hopefully, this will remind me to periodically live up to my resolution.
