Victorian All-in-One PC | The Steampunk Workshop
Geeky awesomeness from the Steampunk Workshop.
What a Week to be a Geek! A Trove of Atari 2600 Goodness
Back when the box art had little to do with the way computer games looked, you got used to the cognitive disconnect between the two media. My brain still hasn’t fully processed Infocom Diskgate, when I come across a trove of Atari 2600 cartridges that resemble games I played, but the boxes seem… different. Here’s…
Who Doth Inhabit the Primary
Just watch it. You’ll get it.
Bonus: What’s With the Remix Disrespect?
So I’m sitting at Julie’s place, right, having some rather delicious cherry M&Ms (which my momma could alphabetize in her belly!), when she pops up this blog by Dennis Jerz wherein I spy this quote, in response to Jeff Rice: So students who can only remix don’t get practice thinking critically about culture — and…
Retro Sabotage – True Self
Retro Sabotage remixes Pac-Man. Lots more where that came from. Via MetaFilter.
Emergent Puzzle Solutions
Interactive fiction author Emily Short offers a thoughtful analysis of the function of designing puzzles that permit the player to come up with original solutions. She refers to her game Metamorphoses, which includes a complex physical world model that includes such concepts as size, shape, weight, etc. For instance, you can beat down a door…
Reindeer in the Snow II — Blender3D
The new clip improves on last night’s version, I’ve added blinking eyes, improved the nose glowing effect, and moved one of the legs a bit. Update: Here’s the file if you’d like to use it. Reindeer.blend
Reindeer in the Snow — Blender3D
I’ve been using Blender3D for about two years now. Here’s a little Christmas animation I whipped up. That’s supposed to be sparkly glowy things coming from his shiny nose, but it looks more like a puff of breath. I’m pleased with the head motions. I’ve got the eyes rigged up so they can blink and…
Dear friends of Scratch,
I just got this e-mail. Scratch is an amazing tool designed to teach programming to kids. My nine-year-old loves it. I’m planning to use Scratch in my “New Media Projects” class next fall. Because of your interest in Scratch, we thought you would like to know about the Scratch@MIT conference that we are hosting next…
Frotzophone
Adam Parrish: The Frotzophone is an interface for making music with interactive fiction. The topography simulated in the game is used to generate sound, as is the player’s path through the game. A Frotzophone “performance” looks just like playing a text adventure; but in addition to playing a game, you’re also playing music. Here’s a…
Promising Crystal Space with Documentation Clear as Mud
While my daughter was (supposed to be) napping this afternoon, I downloaded Crystal Space, an open-source tool for creating 3D games. I made lightening-fast progress in the first couple of hours, but after that I was quickly lost. Maybe my expectations were unrealistic. Over the last year or so, I have experimented with Half-Life 2…
Gioia to graduates: 'Trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones'
Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, spoke at Stanford last June: Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure–humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who…
Google testing "My World" for launch later this year
ArsTechnica: Rumors of Google’s plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again over the weekend. The company could now be collaborating with Arizona State University to test the 3D social network, which may be tied into Google’s current applications of Google Earth and Google Maps. I…
Pimp My Bookcart Contest Winners
We thought our “Pimp my Book Cart” contest was a funny idea that would spawn a dozen or so entries. But it seemed to spark something, and we started hearing from folks all over the country. It even spawned a “Pimp my Book Trolley” contest Down Under in Australia (we’re judging that one too). Still,…
The Nagy Magical-Movable-Type Pixello-Dynamotronic Computational Engine
When the steam train roared into history, hissing smoke and howling into the night, it was an awesome beast, adorned in the finest woods, ivory, gold, and intricate inlays, like some Serpent King on a sacred tapestry. The automobiles of the 20’s to 60’s, each was a work of art. The television and radio affected…
Fort Bend school trustees put off video game appeal
A Chinese student was transferred from his high school to an “alternative education center” (?) after his parents found he had designed a Counterstrike mod with maps based on his school. Two parents learned of the map he made from their kids, and they informed his parents, who in turn reported him to the Fort…
Children's Book Illustration by Nick Towers
My ultimate aim is to illustrate children’s books with images like the ones on this site. To this end, I am trying to find ways to make good-looking 3D images quickly–images that have all the magic of the illustrations I loved as a child. —Nick Towers —Children’s Book Illustration by Nick Towers For a year…
You Can Never Have Too Many Cabinets (Half-LIfe 2 Mod)
You Can Never Have Too Many Cabinets (Half-LIfe 2 Mod) (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) (Although that is probably too many ovens.) The kids are in bed, my wife is watching TV, and I’ve got a few hours to fiddle with Hammer on a Saturday Night (well, it’s a bit past midnight now, actually). Soon I’ll go up…
Hammer Dream
Hammer Dream (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) This morning, I heard my daughter stirring in the next room, and I fell back asleep, knowing I only had a few minutes before I had to start getting her ready for preschool. In those few minutes, I had a dream. I was showing my daughter a hammer. It had a…
Designing Cabinets in Blender3D — Experiments
I designed these simple 3D cabinets in Blender3D, with the idea that I would use this model, which is mostly right angles and cubes with a woodgrain texture and a marble texture, as a simple test when I try bringing custom models into Hammer. Classes start in about three weeks, and I’ll start going back…