No really! (This may not end well.)
And the manufacturer's name really is "Cyberdyne."
Category: Technology
The Changing Economics of Animation
Longtime readers of the blog know that I have interests in technology and economics and in how the former is impacting the latter.
One of the ways it is doing so is changing the world of entertainment. In times past, as it has been said, freedom of the press belonged to those who owned a press–presses being expensive things that most people didn't have. But with the Internet, everyone can have the equivalent of a press if they want it, and the blogosphere is radically changing things.
So are electronic publishing and print-on-demand services.
Something similar is happening in the world of film. Now ordinary folks can make films on the cheap and distribute them in ways that would never have been possible before. Like the fan-produced film I blogged last year, The Hunt For Gollum.
New technology is also affecting the world of animation. Not only is traditional animation being impacted by computer generated animation at the studio level, it's also being impacted as the level of ordinary folks, with people using machinima to produce series like Red vs. Blue.
Machinima (a Japanese-esque variation on the word "machine") commonly involves taking the cgi-producing graphics engine of a video game and re-purposing it to serve as the cgi-engine for the user's own videos. In other words, you're hijacking a game's graphics capabilities to make your own movies.
The premier example of this is the afore-mentioned Red vs. Blue, which is often hilarious but which also often involves bad language (so be warned).
Machinima typically involves using a technology in a way other than what it was designed for, but that's not the only way technology is impacting animation by ordinary people.
"So what does all this have to do with Kara Thrace?" you are asking.
Well, we are now at the dawn of text-to-animation services, such as those offered by XtraNormal.Com, where their slogan is, "If you can type, you can make movies."
With their service, you type in a script, with stage directions that their software can make sense of, and it produces a short CGI movie that you can upload to YouTube or whatever.
I've been tempted to try it myself, but . . . y'know . . . stuff.
And the technology is still at a primitive stage. . . . So Far. (Expect this to change radically and rapidly. Y'know, within our lifetimes type stuff.)
This hasn't stopped YouTube user HighlandsTechno (or people connected to him) from using the service to produce a series of Galactica-related videos.
Some of these involve people from their web board (wherever it is), who ask questions of Ron Moore in the wake of the Galactica finale (which makes this a surprise bonus post on the finale, yay!)
For some reason (not quite sure why, but not trying too hard to guess, either), Ron Moore is depicted in these videos as a clown. Go figure.
(BTW, "Ron"'s responses aren't authentic, either. They're what the creators suppose his responses might be–commedically.)
One video is by ChamallaExtract/Mo, who asks "Ron" some questions regarding Kara Thrace.
I find myself much in agreement with him. Like him, I don't need a technical explanation of how everything that happened with her, but I would like a little more clarity regarding what happened.
Specifically: I don't mind her suddenly disappearing after her angelic nature had been revealed (angels do things like that), but when did she actually become an angel?
Was it when her ship blew up over the gas giant? If so, why did we find her body (which should have been blown into itty-bitty pieces) on Old Earth? Was it when she returned from the dead and met Lee in the season 3 finale? Had she always been angel, the whole time we knew the character? Was she an angel appearing in the form of a pigeon to Lee in the series finale flashbacks? What about her apparent human (Colonial marine) mother and apparent angelic (struggling musician) father?
And how shocking is it that Baltar would find Kara's blood on her dog tags when Kara herself provided those dog tags to Baltar? What does that prove?
I'm not looking for full, detailed explanations but for . . . something Moore.
Anyway, here's the video:
Also, there are similar videos telling the story of the making of the series.They also include adolescent jokes and bad language so, y'know, viewer beware.
And that's how animation is changing.
Amazing how far we've come technologically, and how far we haven't.
What are your thoughts?
There Isn’t Anything You Can’t Do With Duct Tape
Here's an interesting little home-made device.
Mind you, it's nowhere near as cool as a gasoline-powered alarm clock, but it'll do nicely.
An English man made it with a camera he got off eBay, a weather balloon, a GPS tracker, some fiberglass insulation, and–yes–duct tape.
ABC News reports:
He buys weather balloons from a supplier in the United States. . . . He uses an off-the-shelf GPS locator, which gets signals from U.S. satellites, so he can track the balloon on Google maps. He bought a Canon pocket digital camera (a model discontinued in 2008) and attached a circuit board so that it would take pictures every five minutes.
The balloon rises, carried randomly by the wind, until it bursts. The camera then parachutes to the ground in its housing. Harrison put his phone number and a printed label on the outside: "Harmless Scientific Experiment."
BTW, the picture is one of his. Yorkshire from 20 miles up.
3-D Tooth Tech
Recently I was having some dental work done (some crowns put on), and I was very intrigued by the technology that they were using–so intrigued that I decided to make a mini-documentary about the process. Basically, they were using desktop manufacturing (not quite 3-D printing, but something close) to make me a new crown on the spot, using computer assisted design.
Because I can't splice videos from my iPhone (and because of YouTube's length limit), there are two videos. The first shows how the crown is physiclaly manufactured (actually, the end of the process) and the second showing how the new tooth is designed on the computer.
Check them out.
(And don't worry. There is no drilling or anything like that in the documentary. The focus is exclusively on the tech.)
(BTW, sorry if the sound is low on your system. I'm still figuring out the best way to do this. At least this time I remembered to get the aspect ratio right!)
(Not Sarek–Spock's father–or Surak–Vulcan's major philospher. But given C-3P0 and Chewbacca, we're in that loose territory.)
BTW, I want to give a very special thank you to Dr. Adam Raschke, who was an excellent documentary partner. He was very articulate and informative, and without him I couldn't have produced this kind of documentary, which was totally unscripted (making up our words as we went along), unedited (no cuts, no splices, no rearrangements), and unrehearsed (no re-takes, no walk-throughs).
Kudos to him!
Christmas Trees Unsafe – Faith Inconvenient
Hey, Tim Jones here again. This is from my blog Old World Swine;
I link THIS STORY
(Reuters) – about the removal of Christmas trees due to the risk of
fire – only because it reminded me of an incident that took place when
I was a newly minted Catholic and Parish Council member.
During one council meeting I noted that some parishioners had asked
me to ask if we couldn’t have some votive candles in the church. The
priest made some remarks about the fire hazard, and said he wasn’t sure
about insurance and liability, and stuff. He suggested electric
candles. The meeting moved on, as I silently resolved not to press the
issue lest we actually wind up with prayer candles that turned on and
off and reminded me of a tacky chandelier at my aunt’s house.
Father then read a letter from our Bishop, directing all parishes to
begin working toward perpetual Eucharistic Adoration as soon as
possible.
If there is a word the opposite of "enthusiasm", it was written all
over our priest’s face. Once again, he noted all the problems that
would have to be overcome… security, scheduling… well, that was
about it, but the upshot was that it was going to be a pain in the tush
and the Bishop’s letter was going to be ignored. That was it.
I must have made some sort of grunt of perplexitude, because I
remember Father explaining to me again what a gigantic logistical
headache perpetual Adoration would be, and ending with the clincher
that "This parish is just not that devotionally-minded".
Had I been older, and a more grizzled and seasoned Catholic, I might
have asked the question that popped into my head, "…and you are okay
with that? As the spiritual father of the parish, the complete lack of
interest in classic Catholic devotions doesn’t bother you just a teensy bit?". I guess I didn’t ask because I knew the answer.
This also got me to thinking about another question that has
bothered me from time to time, about why we don’t hear from the ambo
more encouragement for Catholics to make use of the sacrament of
Confession. It seems like it is always scheduled at dawn-thirty on
Saturday mornings, and I can count on one hand the number of times I
have heard even the mildest endorsement of it in a homily. Forgive me
if I have entertained the idea that some priests might not push
Confession because they really don’t want to make more work for
themselves.
It must be a dreary job, in a sense, listening to the same old sins
week in and week out, and some that must grieve any sensible person.
There is no one else in the parish who can do it. My Dad was a cop for
a number of years, and I think the constant exposure to the underbelly
of the human family took its toll on him over the years, though he
never talked about it. Cops are basically the guys who follow after the
parade with a shovel.
I would like to have some input from priests or others who might be
able to answer the question. Are some priests, perhaps, partly
motivated to keep mum on the dearth of confessing Catholics by a desire
not to further clutter their already busy schedules? Just asking.
iTunes, You Just Got Some Serious Competition
Amazon.com has just launched its new mp3 download service, which offers DRM-free music for download.
EXCERPTS:
Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched its
much-anticipated digital music store Tuesday with nearly 2.3 million
songs, none of them protected against copying.The
store, Amazon MP3, lets shoppers buy and download individual songs or
entire albums. The tracks can be copied to multiple computers, burned
onto CDs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices,
including Apple Inc.’s iPod and Microsoft Corp.’s Zune.Songs cost 89 cents to 99 cents each and albums sell for $5.99 to $9.99.
Major
music labels Universal Music Group and EMI Music have signed on to sell
their tracks on Amazon, as have thousands of independent labels. The
company said several smaller labels are selling their music without
copy protection for the first time on the Amazon store, including
Rounder Records and Trojan Records.
The thing that is different about this venture, compared to other similar ones, is that Amazon has the corporate muscle ot give iTunes a run for its money–or rather, a run for our money. Even if it doesn’t have as big a catalog as iTunes right now, it more than its competitors has the potential to get there and even surpass the selection on iTunes.
So naturally Amazon’s stock went up.
Shares of Amazon rose 89 cents to $93.48 Tuesday.
In other words, the price of a song.
This is, of course, good news for all of us, as it is likely to lead to lead to more DRM-free media in the future.
Now they just need to let me put mp3 songs and albums with previews in my aStore.
One More Step into the Future of TV
NBC to begin free downloads of programs.
As you’d expect for this kind of thing, there are commercials that can’t be easily skipped and (somewhat less expectedly) the files expire after a week.
Nevertheless, the industry continues to experiment with online delivery.
Paid, non-commercial, non-expiring is where it’s at as far as I’m concerned, but I understand free and commercial as one avenue to be explored.
iPhone Adventures #Somethingorother
So how cool is this?
Saturday night I’m on my way to square dancing, but I’m going to a place I don’t normally go, and I’m having trouble finding it.
Turns out I want to be at the United Methodist church hall in La Mesa, but I’m headed toward the United Methodist church in Lemon Grove. (Easy to get confused. You just turn left on Spring Street instead of right.)
But I don’t know that at the time!
So I get there and I realize I’m at the wrong place. It’s all dark. So I pull over and pull out my iPhone and start Googling where I’m supposed to be.
I find a web page for the (round dance) club that normally dances at the Lemon Grove church, and it has a contact name and phone number for a member of the club.
NOW HERE COMES THE COOL PART!
I notice that the contact person’s phone number is hyperlinked in the browser window, so I tap the hyperlink to see what happens (tapping is the equivalent of clicking a hyperlink on the iPhone’s touchscreen).
A dialog box pops up and asks me if I want to call the number I just tapped.
I tap "Yes" (or whatever), and a couple of seconds later I’m talking to a member of the Lemon Grove club, who explains where I really want to be, and I’m on my way. (Back to Spring Street; turn right this time.)
So how cool is that?
The phone number was not specially coded with html. It was the phone that recognized it as a phone number on a web page and gave me corresponding tap-to-call functionality.
WOO-HOO!
An Itch For Information (A Cure For The Curious)
Things change when you have a live Internet connection in your pocket.
Most smart phones access a crippled version of the Internet, but the iPhone accesses the real deal–and it changes things when you’ve got an Internet connection as close as your cell phone.
I began to experience this the first night I had my iPhone. I had done a blog post from the phone itself and then gone square dancing, and at a couple of points in the evening we were between tips (a tip is a pair of square dance songs–usually one done as a patter call and one as a singing call) and I didn’t happen to be talking to anybody at the moment and I thought, "I’ll check the blog and see if anybody has commented," so I did.
I haven’t done that since, but I have used the phone to clean up nasty comment spam when I wasn’t at my laptop.
Yesterday I was in church and a spot on my back started itching, and I thought, "I bet Wikipedia has an article on itching and what function it plays for us. I mean, I know it involves the chemical histamine–and for some time I’ve wanted to know what useful function histamine plays, anyway, since I’m always having to take anti-histamines for allergies and such. What good is histamine anyway?" But, well, I was at Mass, and I didn’t want to pull up Wikipedia and start reading it during Mass, so I didn’t.
Afterwards I went to Wal-Mart to get some keys duplicated, and then I had to stand in the ultra-long Sunday afternoon line to check out, and I thought, "Hey! It wouldn’t be sacreligious to check Wikipedia here, while I’m killing time in an otherwise boring checkout line!" So I pulled out the iPhone and spent the rest of my time in line reading about itching and what it does for us (encourages us to scratch off parasites that might be clinging to us).
Then while square dancing on Sunday night my partner liked one particular song and wanted to know who did it (the song "I’m Gonna Be [500 Miles]), so I looked it up on the Internet to see who did it (the Proclaimers).
So . . . it’s just kinda different when you’ve got a live Internet connection in your pocket.
BTW, I’ve got requests from folks to give periodic updates on what the iPhone is like, so that’s what this is.
Oh, and . . .
New Phone
I’ve been needing a new phone for a while. My old phone had been dying on me for some time and behaving more and more erratically. I’ve spent the last few months trying to just get by until my renewal date came up and also a couple of new phone models that I was interested in came out.
Last time when I bought a phone (a cell phone, that is–I only have a landline in case of emergencies, so I use my cell as my primary phone), I decided to get one that would play mp3s so I could listen to them, for example, while waiting in the chiropractor’s office. I got one that Verizon said would do this–as well as browse the web and other cool things–but BOY was I disappointed!
It turned out that the phone had minimal mp3 capability–none of which was even documented. I mean, it was so primitive that it had no way whatsoever to pause the mp3. If you had to stop for any reason then you just had to start the mp3 over again (NOT good with audio books!). I also never used its web features because Verizon wanted to charge me an arm and a leg for them (their rate is twice their competitors’), and the connection would have been really slow and the encoding would have prevented me from viewing many sites–including my own blog!
I really felt like Verizon had sold me a bill of goods, but I decided to bide my time and wait for the technology to mature and get a full-featured smart phone the next time.
The question was: What phone to get?
Globe-trotter Steve Ray has a Treo that he swears by, and I know others who really like their Treos, and for a time I was planning on getting one of those. However, I decided to also investigate something else: an iPhone.
I researched them thoroughly, waited for them to come out, read the reviews,and carefully weighed the pros and cons. In the end, I decided to take the risk, and today I got one.
I’m pleased to say that so far I am extraordinarily happy with it.
Other smart phones may have features it doesn’t (yet) have, but the user interface (the main feature I bought it for) is extremely intuitive, and the overall package is wicked awsome. The potential problems I was concerned about also have been non-issues. The virtual keyboard works well, and AT&T has ramped up the speed of its EDGE network so that it’s comparable to other 3G networks, and I haven’t noticed any problem with pages loading too slow.
So–at least as of this moment–I’m pleased as punch.
I’m also blogging from it–right now. That’s how easy to use it is. I’ve only had the thing activated and usable for an hour or so, I haven’t read its instruction manual, and I’m using it to compose sizable blog posts.