file reference

Katamari Damacy 2 screens

first screenshots of Katamari Damacy 2 are here

link from waxy

falling

http://www.saunalahti.fi/arimaij/blackdudefalling.swf

sweet nokia plugins

Nokia made some VST plugins that turn any music stream emulate a ringtone. ha. going to try this out. brb.

internal

tech schedule for break, 2nd semester

Download file

jacked from PDA

HEY!

here's a file that I recorded last night (~2 minutes) of me walking around near zemekis with my little PDA and having it play me some songs. The points where each file played was picked rather randomly, for testing purposes, so the length, etc., of how long it takes to walk from place to place, etc. is totally off. This is just to get an idea of the experience, how the music sounds out of the pda, etc. Warning: I recorded through the line in of my laptop using Audiocorder OSX, and that process is actually adding a lot of the noise. While the current files are 8Bit Mono at 32khz, they actually end up sounding much better with headphones and minus the line noise (surprise).

here's the file:

FILE [.mp3]

whistler's delight

so this is well done.

One of these whistles is killing me trying to figure out what it is... it's about half-way through, right before the AIR whistle from Talkie Walkie. Please help me out!

(although maybe a little variation in the drum beat? would it kill you DJ Riko? Jeez...)

phone version

after a week or so I've got a basic port of my thesis to the phone.

Flow is as follows:

See some sort of code in the environment, get phone number from a sticker or flier or something... --> call the phone number --> get instructions --> enter the code --> hit webserver to check date, time and retrieve appropriate music file --> stream that music file --> loop if necessary --> allow user to interrupt with another code they see as they are walking around listening --> awesomely generic fade out sound --> awesomely spectacular fade-in sound --> hit php server, etc., get new file from the new code they just entered --> play that file --> loop this process.

the image is an example of a possible tag, although part of me wants to integrate all that into the environment. giving people the phone number is the tricky part. getting people to make a damn phone call these days is even trickier.

bastards.

just some strollin'

Ok, so this is pretty promo happy. But basically the video is just a vehicle for me to throw up a montage of some sci-folk fragments.

click on image to view. I think it's about 2.5 MB

(excuse the potentially illegible text...)

sheets of paper on the web

Sci-Folk

I think that the term Sci-Folk accurately describes my project location33. I was all proud of myself for thinking of that term, but unfortunately (and perhaps predictably) there was some dude in San Diego that had dubbed his music sci-folk. Crap.

In other news, today was a wonderful day of hacking. I finally fixed a bug in my code so now adding the PDA map interface to my project should be a relative snap. These presentations coming up monday and we're supposed to be like, 75% done with the technical aspect and 50% done with the content. I feel like with the amount of man hours from both myself and my wonderful engineer Leslie, the tech part should probably have been done by now. But basically at this point, I think 75% is accurate. The GPS and sound stuff is all working, the visual interface is ready to be plopped in, and the thing now is just going to be to plug away at the wireless component, getting all that stuff worked out. But I feel good about it.

Ok, ramble mode off.

*wicked* bad headphone items

Stumbled upon this today on we-make-money-not-art where our mobile presentation/projectCAR was blogged yesterday.

I really like the strange rethinking of the headphone. We tend to think about designing/redesigning the hardware of portable audio players while ignoring / accepting the design of headphones without much question. I think that Michelle's projects are more closely related to the initial fears that Sony and others had when designing the walkman -- that the idea of social listening would go away. There are a bunch of other images starting at this link.

The acoustic earphone is nice also.

val kilmer

val kilmer is apparently the subject of a tagging/street meme in toronto. or, as it turns out, viral marketing scheme by a band called "val kilmer tagging caper." I'm guessing that the name for the band came directly from the idea of littering toronto with val kilmer (which, taken literally, is a terrible idea).

This is exactly the type of thing that more mobile-platform projects need to do, and that more companies should be doing with mobile stuff. not specifically the street meme thing of plastering an area with a singular, unified image (in this case: val kilmer), but something that people can interact with. something mysterious and viral. In a few years, the virtual layer will begin to manifest itself in the physical layer in just such a fashion. So while we have this idea that virtual spaces are somehow innately fake, or non-physical, they have very real manifestations of themselves in the environment.

hopefully they'll look a little different than val kilmer.

Check the links:

pictures

"solution"

man and robots

So, my location33 is primarily based in the realm of music, but I'm trying to compile visuals for it as well, partly for presentation/promotion, but also to further develop the space. So I've harassed by friend into doing some concept art for the man, and his robot counterpart. I like the way he made these sketches the same scale, so they can be easily composited. After all, you may turn into a robot in the future, but the robot might still end up looking a little bit like you, right? Movies tell me yes.

Also, I like the way the brain emerges from the robot head. Sort of like Krang, but you have to give Krang props for being a brain that lives in a robot's torso. Viva Krang!

ms3d

Argh. My favorite all time game: metal slug, which for those of you who don't know is the best side-scroller ever (yes, ever), with beautiful sprite-based animation and cartoony-contra style graphics, is coming to the PS2 as a 3D game. Some bullshit company picked up the license from SNK, looks like, and now they are doing stupid things with it. Here is a link some screenshots from gamespot...

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/metalslug/screenindex.html

I must say, that these screens don't look nearly as bad as I anticipated, as at least they keep the general look/feel of the 2d game, esp. the metal slug itself, as well as the troopers, and marco (who I call joe america). But something still feels wrong. The world feels empty, whereas the 2d felt packed with life! I'm getting so excited I must go play ms3 right now (after this post).

Anyway, have a look. and I will fight you if you have anything bad to say about metal slug - unless it is about how lame the 3D version is going to be.

WUG

Julian pointed me in the direction of the SoCal Wireless User Group yesterday.

The SOCALWUG is here to be a local resource for those interested in wireless computer technology, wireless professionals, businesses and individuals looking for information on wireless.

I especially like the project by Mike Outmesguine that is creating a 1 mile bluetooth link. (why? because he can. or: why not?)

Going to try and get in with these guys and figure out who is responsible for green-lighting (been in hollywood too long...) the culver-city wifi thing, then try and pitch my project to whoever that is in order to maybe mobilize some support behind a possible event in the spring.

MEETINGS HELD AT AN IHOP MEETING ROOM!