Category: Legacy

Posted on by lhl

Fear to Fear

Ok, here’s my RIAA story. It’s a 23MiB SV3 QT, 5:47. It’s probably a bit too dark on PCs (at least it is on mine, but well, I’m too lazy to recrunch)

Things I’ll probably never get around to doing:

  • adding a few frames for the eyes to stop after the first computer text pan
  • zooming in more on the 3 steps
  • crush blacks in all the hallway/chase scenes
  • add white strip to the gun stabilization
  • move center of image to better frame ryan and andrew at the end
  • get Jenny’s last name

Effects:

  • Redoing keyhole effect
  • Stabilizing elevator, chase scenes
  • de/regrain consistently
Posted on by lhl
Posted on by lhl
  • It’s 6:19. Do You Know Where You Are? – The research notebook of a beleaguered hack
  • Tatsuya Saito’s blog
  • Web Design Practices – a site devoted to helping designers understand what design practices are currently in use on the Web.and aims to gather research about the usability of commonly-employed design practices
  • 456 Berea Street is a regularly updated weblog focused on web standards, accessibility, usability and other things related to web development and web design.
  • unraveled – Joshua Kaufman’s blog; HCI, etc
  • Interactive Narratives blog
  • Small Initiatives
  • SD WIFI options
  • UCDARnet – University of California Digital Arts Research Network
  • Meta-Game Group – An interdisciplinary, intercampus research group devoted to computer games and game culture
  • UCLA Design|Media Arts
  • Protecting Privacy with Translucent Databases
  • Translucent databases revisited
  • Interview With Michael Arias – Michael Arias works for the Softimage special projects team and talks about creating The Animatrix movies, the industry and the fusion of 2D & 3D techniques.
  • Behind the Matrix – New Prime-Time Series Is Based on Real-Life Secret Document; I don’t watch TV. Is this any good?
  • “Kill Bill Vol. 1” – The Script Vs. The Film – comparison of the actual film to the script floating around online
  • pornocombo [swf] – nice
  • College Student pokes at holes in TSA initiative – unfortunately, I have a feeling this guy is going to get the reaming of his life

    Southwest Airlines maintenance workers found small plastic bags containing box cutters and other items in lavatory compartments on planes in New Orleans and Houston. Notes in the bags “indicated the items were intended to challenge Transportation Security Administration checkpoint security procedures,” according to a statement from Southwest Airlines.

    Each note also included precise information about where and when the items were placed on board the aircraft, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. That information has not been made public, so it’s unclear how long the items were aboard the planes.

  • Bruce Schneier on What He Knows Best
  • Changing the Game: How to Save the World by Taking Back Control of Our Data

    If you work, pay taxes or have a library card, you are vulnerable and
    for all the recent lip service paid by government to privacy issues,
    nobody at all is going to jail as a result of violating these new laws.
    They are effectively unenforceable. And so we say things are different,
    but they aren’t, and the best we can hope for is not to be hit by an
    economic airliner or F-15.

    If you haven’t lost at least $15,000 to fraud, it simply won’t be
    investigated at all. How many families can afford to lose $15,000? If
    you steal less than $15,000, you’ll never be caught, and if you steal
    more than $15,000, you probably won’t be caught, either.

    In the middle of this, we find the trinity of banks, government, and
    credit bureaus who betray us on our behalf. The banks and their
    bank-like sister companies are the airliners in our big economic sky.
    They use a modified version of the Big Sky Theory that says as long as
    theft is kept to five percent or less, it is tolerable. That’s what
    insurance is for. They play the odds to achieve this, which is where
    the credit bureaus come in. They are the oddsmakers. This system works
    for us, too, because it enables us to get a mortgage without ever
    meeting a banker, it increases liquidity and makes easy credit
    available for nearly all of us. But the system works against us if we
    are among the five percent who are victims because our time, our
    reputations, and a certain amount of our money will never be
    recovered.

  • Benchmarking the Scalability of BSD and Linux (mirror of benchmarks) – very interesting
  • JungleScan.com – a free service that scans products on Amazon.com to record their sales randking over time; discussion (via Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools -can’t read regularly or would go nuts from gadget lust)
  • Bob Log III – Boob Scotch [rm] – music video, exactly what it sounds like, from mefi shortlist discussion
  • Max Payne 2 gamerankings
  • Time Warner Corporate Identity – media materials, usage guide, etc.

All browser windows cleared except for current reading

Posted on by lhl

Getting serious on interactive media:

Next step: spending less time on useless classes?

Posted on by lhl

Following up on the Diebold links, found an interesting article on sfindymedia: LOCAL PEACE GROUP INFILTRATED BY GOVERNMENT AGENT:

According the California Constitution, law enforcement does not have the right to investigate and infiltrate groups unless they have a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. If local law enforcement and the JTTF was using Kilner to investigate Peace Fresno, one has to ask – what else are they up to? Do they have agents imbedded in other community groups? Are they watching what people say at Churches and Mosques? Because of the Patriot Act, does law enforcement now believe they have the right to monitor what you do and say in your home? In your bedroom?

There have been several meetings between law enforcement and groups concerned about civil liberties, in the wake of September 11, 2001. One such meeting was held with Lt. Pat Farmer of the Fresno Police Department. Lt. Farmer told this group of community activists that there is nothing to prevent the police or JTTF members from investigating and interrogating community members. He suggested that the person being investigated might not even know he was talking to a police officer. “If the person doesn’t want to talk with us, they don’t have to,” Farmer said. At an earlier meeting, immediately after 9-11, an FBI agent told a group, of mostly immigrant rights activists, that anyone helping a group identified as a “terrorist group” by the United States government would be investigated as a potential terrorist. That was interpreted to mean that if you are working, for example, to support the Zapatistas in Chiapas, you might be investigated as a supporter of international terrorism. This FBI agent said that every agent in this area was now focusing on stopping the terrorist threat.

Posted on by lhl

Diebold Issues Cease and Desist to Indymedia. from the boards, harriet nyborg:

Any technology introduced to improve the act of voting cannot make the act of counting less transparent or democracy suffers.

It is apparent that Diebold’s systems (not to mention Diebold’s paranoia for secrecy) render the act of counting less accountable and less transparent. Ergo, democracy suffers.

If used in a close election – where exit polling and other secondary measurements are unable to confirm the results of the counting – the wrong person might actually get elected President of the United States of America.

With no sense of responsibility to the coutry at large, this illegitimate President might launch a series of Napoleonic wars to to compensate for his own feelings of inadequacy.

I digress into fantasy… the little blue ones I washed down with all those adult beverages must be kicking in.

Posted on by lhl

Have lived through another week. Will be throwing up one the short I did for class this week after I finish doing some extra post that I didn’t get around to during the week (technically, I don’t think I’m supposed to do that, so just be sure not to tell anyone).

Also, tonight, stopped by Perry Hoberman‘s class (for second year students), where Casey Raes, co-creator of Processing gave a great talk on computation/programming and art (found text of a similar talk given at ArsElectronica – if you go to the site directly [no referer], you’ll find the text, possibly illicitly obtained [exciting] to pretty much the whole conference online), and also a intro/demo to the Processing API + IDE. Quite fun. He showed a lot of stuff that was done at the MIT Media Lab aesthetics + computation group (defunct, now the Physical Language Workshop), including some great works by Golan Levin.

I’ve been pretty (ok, extremely) disappointed by the CNTV Interactive Media program so far (specifically wrt to the lack of any INTERACTIVE MEDIA classes during the first year). Well, there was that bad crit studies ‘survey of interactive media’ class that I took over the summer. Perry’s class is what that survey class should be. (more general thoughts about the IM program later)

Also, Casey made an interesting point, referencing an Alan Kay quote on literacy (related Alan Kay fun: interview about the Dynabook):

The ability to “read” a medium means you can access materials and tools created by others. The ability to “write” in a medium means you can generate materials and tools for others. You must have both to be literate. In print writing, the tools you generate are rhetorical; they demonstrate and convince. In computer writing, the tools you generate are processes; they simulate and decide.

Casey’s view, and I think he’s correct in this, is that if you can’t be ‘software literate’, then you cannot be literate in interactive media. Even any non-superficial discourse, or the rare non-programmatic interactive media project requires a level of literacy/understanding. It’s just part of the field.

About half (if not more) of my fellow classmates have little-to-no programming experience. Which is fine, and something that can be picked up, but I feel really bad for them, because they are not being taught anything related to that during the first year (the program has no IM lab classes in the first year!; not there seems to be a ‘programming for artists’ class offered at all in any case). During the second year, they’re going to have to have a thesis project ready. How are they expected to do that when they’re not being even being given a look at what’s out there during the first year (their CTCS505 class is apparently significantly more useless than mine, and I didn’t think all that much of what I took at the end of the summer), and when those that need to pick up the basic language/tools needed to create/understand work in the field aren’t being offered any classes (or even time) to do so? What are they paying their $25,000 a year for again?

This isn’t meant to be my IM division rantfest, but I do have to mention that we visited UCI’s new Arts Computation Engineering program, which is just getting started as well, and also under heavy construction. It seems from the flexibility of the program gotten from checking out the place and speaking with Bill Tomlinson, as well as from the focus of the curriculum, that they get it, and that in comparison, the CNTV school … well, doesn’t. Note to TPTB: yes, perhaps the CNTV school’s goal is focused on creating (and of course translating) compelling content and experiences in interactive media, but understanding the language of film won’t do jackshit for that goal if you can’t talk im first.

OK, end 4AM rant/bitchfest. I don’t know where this leaves me. Unlike most of my other classmates, I’m not taking a huge financial hit here, just paying in sleep, all my free time, and opportunity costs. But am I wasting my time here, or does it get better?