SketchUp + SliceModeler + SVG Outline = laserable-ish

Who can resist playing with SketchUp after reading Make’s blog post of SliceModeler – fantasy to physical (the video @ PAI demonstrates the joy of good soundtracking as well). If you’re determined, stingy, and slightly capable, you can get 3d-object to laser-cut-friendly output on the free.  Since the free SketchUp doesn’t export anything useful, use the SVG Outline Plugin to get back to flat space.  While labor intensive (at least in free mode), the process lets you scale up the shape complexity.  Certainly less work than attempting similar antics by hand.

Bad case of pictomediatourettes

sometimes you just have to work thru it…

and sometimes its a-ok…

thank you, NPS(USDoI).

Mass Effect missed opportunity: personal game play footage

Finished playing thru Mass Effect.  Took a few sessions to match tempo with the game, that possibly being the games weakest point. Can understand most of the other complaints served up in the usual places. Several feel like arguments against a style of play (fluffy combat, lots of talking), some speak to the platform (caching, menus).  Overall, I enjoyed the time spent and would recommend the game to anyone who can slow down enough to savor the experience.

What I’m surprised no one has commented on, and what appears to not be in the game at all unless it’s hiding in one of the inscrutable menus, is a ‘save to movie’ option. All the pieces are there.

more at ME gallery…

Plot points are decided and resolved by conversations, some secondary options being possible depending on your character stats. There’s a few moments where you’re dropped back into the free-roaming world to resolve something, but that is after the fact. Either you pissed someone off so bad you’re in a fight, or everything is a-ok.

The world itself is a fully rendered 3d environment, but since no movement is allowed during conversations the environment ends up a stage piece. This fixed stage allows for more expressive camera language during the conversations. Combined with the hand-crafted scene elements is in-game details — who you’ve selected as a party, what armor you are wearing, etc. Greatly helps to keep the scene feeling relevant to what you’re doing as a player.

Given all that, the internal state for all these interaction scenes is completely known. It wouldn’t be hard to keep a running log of when in the overall play sessions these events happen.  At the end of the game, you  pipe the full events to a single video file. A bunch of cut-up pieces on a time line would be just as good. Anything to produce some artifact of how you interacted with the game would have pushed Mass Effect from good to brilliant.

A number of the major scenes, my wife stopped what she was doing to see the outcome. Her interest was the same as someone watching a few minutes of an unknown show, “Who was that guy? Is he working for the villain? Don’t think I would trust him.” She had no interest in playing the game itself, but could appreciate the opera. It would have been great to be able to tab over to a menu and show the “on last weeks episode” events.

It would also be nice for comparing how people resolved situations. I’m curious how people dealt with the crazy fan, or who they chose to leave behind. Not curious enough to invest another 20 or so hours just to see the other plot branches, but enough to download a 20meg video.  These minor events also gain weight by their juxtaposition.  The pushy reporter is a different beast after returning from a difficult encounter.

And to be honest, after spending so many hours poking around in a game that puts so much emphasis on narrative and exploration, I was expecting it. This isn’t a sandbox game, this is as close to an interactive movie as there is to date. The only satisfying reward would have included unlocking this “best of” movie. Think of it as the slideshow from the summer vacation. Hell, I’ve probably spent more time inside of Mass Effect than I have Yellowstone National Forest.

What do people think a map is?

LAPD’s Muslim mapping plan killed…The LAPD has not provided details about how it planned to build the Muslim database. But in a document reviewed by The Times last week, the department’s counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies.

How can anyone in public office still be this naive? So let’s put this together. A police force is going to use census data to locate someone by religion. But the Census Bureau isn’t allowed to gather religious data. So you aren’t using it for that. Oh, you really mean you’re using census data to get ethnic information, which you could cross-tab some random religious poll to.

Wait a second, neither ethnicity nor religion is a binary state. No one “is Muslim”. People, belonging to various ethnic backgrounds, practice to various degrees the religion of Islam. How is your database going to cope with that ambiguity?

Try the mental exercise of creating a “Christian map”, and the ensuing conversation with the cops…

Officer DB: We’re outreaching to you, because you are a Christian.

Me: No, I’m not.

Officer DB: Yes you are. We have this database that says you are.

Me: Must be wrong.

Officer DB: Weren’t you born a Christian?

Me: Well… My father’s an atheist born to non-practicing Luthern and Presbyterians. My mother’s agnostic born to social Anglicans.

Officer DB: That doesn’t matter. We see you have a Christmas tree. And from the medical records, you haven’t been circumcised. You’re Christian!

Officer DB: Now, let us explain how, as a Christian, you can work with the LAPD.

It’s just absurd, and shouldn’t be tolerated. Anyone involved with this should be shit-canned immediately. Not because they didn’t have enough sensitivity training or need more dialogs with concerned entities. Because these people are trying to hijack language to serve a screwed up agenda. Because they’ve wasted resources and time participating in the theater of fear.

This isn’t a problem of misguided insensitive people, it’s a problem of the wrong people having any power at all. By my count, there’s been more domestic terrorism than foreign. Why not get hopping on that “American map”, if you’re so concerned?

[Reuters][AFP][LA Times]

Halo v. The War: Creepy coincidence of timing

My introduction to Halo was over the shoulder of Billy Zane playing at the Virgin Sunset at closing time. That pretty much guaranteed I’d be one of the fifteen people who wouldn’t follow the series. Nothing against Halo, just … you know, The Phantom. Ugh. Thanks to some clever commercials and a massive media blitz to all corners, I did realize Halo 3 was almost here.

On the flip, I hadn’t paid much attention to the release of Ken Burns‘ ‘The War‘ until wandering around a bookstore and realizing the iconic infantry man was everywhere. Books, newspapers front pages, magazine covers. The local PBS was even showing it when I got back home.

So there I sat, listening to the stories of Luzon and Guadalcanal, waiting for the Halo 3 Believe sub-site to finish caching. Not even realizing there was, and always had been, a big narrative it was a bit of a shock. Watching the videos while ‘The War’ was on was even more disturbing. It’s great work, but just how much of this timing hi-jinks was planned? Am I being cynical for noticing this or does Mountain Dew and as real as it can get discussions of war go together?

Edit: Trouble with Believe? Try reloading the page.  Not sure why, but a few sites have been failing their flash startup on initial load.  And at least a few out there still snark enabled at this point. Love the Halo : The Future of Gaming video [via Gizmodo].

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Arr!

What county do you live in?

If you live in Los Angeles, you probably don’t really know. Sure, you can guess L.A. County but you really saying “Greater Los Angeles Area” which is five counties and change. Throw in a half dozen unofficial monikers (San Gabriel Valley, Inland Empire, The Gateway Cities), twenty or so neighborhood constructs (Chinatown, Boyle Heights, Silver Lake), sixty unincorporated towns (Altadena, Topanga, Castaic), eight area codes, and 277 zip codes and a little bit of doubt starts to creep in.

Then ask yourself how you verify you really do live in L.A. County?  Search the web of course.

‘91106 county‘ … first results will land you at Insider Pages (“Insider Pages was created to help people find the best local businesses through recommendations from their friends and neighbors.”).  Erm, no so authoritative.  It just goes down hill from there… third is a page from the Orange County CitySearch.

‘los angeles county‘ … gets you to LACounty.info (info?) which you can search about for hours to find the answer. I did manage to find this via the search tool…

100% No Document Title
Operational Objectives & System Needs Appendices Final Rev 1 San Gabriel

… yeah. Turns out everything LACounty does is in PDF format. Which means they have faithfully reproduced the experience of going down and thumbing thru hundreds of documents in person… on the web. Well done!

‘what county is pasadena california?‘ … leads you to  Pasadena, California – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia answer, “Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States.”

How many kinds of broken is this?  Fan of Wikimedia, don’t get me wrong.  But, if you want to argue that public open information sources are suspect, I’d suggest you tour the originators of the data to see the bang up job they do.

Nokia n95 + Apple OS X iSync

Update: Nokia caught up with the world, go to http://europe.nokia.com/mac/isync/. Warning: some really foul pop-ups will need to be allowed to start the d/l. Sheesh, Nokia.

Fairly trivial process to get this working if you’ve ever done this type of profile hacking before. If not, you’ll scratch you’re head over the “just use this” posts on forums. Here’s the missing ingredients.

Over at MacOSXHints.com there’s a post that has a zip of a working profile for the n95. Technically, it’s a hacked E61 profile, but it also includes the proper icons for the 95. Grab that file and unzip it. Should end up with a folder called Nokia-N95.phoneplugin.

Next, with the Finder drill over to the system Library (/Library) and make a folder called PhoneProfiles. Drop the Nokia-N95.phoneplugin inside the new PhoneProfiles.

Almost done. Turn on the n95′s and Mac’s bluetooth. Go to the System Preferences → Bluetooth menu (or use the taskbar icon if it’s been enabled) and Set Up New Device. Shoud be straight forward following the prompts.

Start up iSync and Add new device. Should just pop up on the list at this point, and start the initial sync process. Won’t make any claims as to best settings since I’m a iSync newb.

Oh, to remove the confirmations on the n95, on the phone go to the Bluetooth → Paired Devices screen, highlight the entry for your computer and Option → Set as authorised.

Why pirating doesn’t matter.

Steve Jobs says DRM hurts music sales, and EMI agrees. Wired runs articles on the timing of DVD screeners on BitTorrent in relation to release dates and open source alternatives to DRM enabled devices. Hit TV shows get their highest ratings in the daily + 7 zone… in countries where it never aired.

This is all good. Yet there’s an undercurrent, everyone seems to have forgotten any digital format even open ones are limited. Transitory. Ephemeral. Twenty years from now, the iPod, mp3s, and my rights on an Apple Store account will be irrelevant. Perhaps upgraded, perhaps on my iMplant. Perhaps not.

Somehow, everyone thinks *this* encoding of Purple Haze will be the last to exist. Ever. It’s done, solved problem, now we just have to worship this one file format, storage method, and player combo for the rest of time and we’re golden.

Did everyone forget what led up to the current state?

In my limited gadgeting, audio playback enabled storage has wandered from vinyl to 8-trak to cassette to CD to DVD to hard disk and micro disks. The same time, audio quality has wandered all over the spectrum including craptastic tape players that couldn’t maintain their timing and mp3 files mashed into bit rates with 1910 radio acoustics.

And it’s not going to stop. Not for existing recordings (mediaphiles don’t pass on improving fidelity) or future recordings (artists will play with each successive technological addition for artistic purposes).

So, if someone wants to make money on this stuff, I have this suggestion. Become the living trust, archive, and escrow for media producers. Don’t charge me for a song bound to a media in a particular format. Let me buy rights, in perpetuity, to a performance. Don’t ever charge me again if I want to have it on a tape or a CD or jam it in my cell phone or watch it at my friends house. Use these fees as for the preservation of that music and it’s associated ephemera. If you’re still wanting more money, charge me for the advanced things — finding new media, beat matching everything I like to listen to, generating ambient music tracks based of my collection. Charge me for the pipe, at fair market value, to listen to this collection so I don’t need to worry about my iPod being in sync and charged. Media as non-local utility, where history and preference matter. Charge me, by percentage of total users, the cost of hiring the developers to develop compatibility software, to keep old files viable, as well as encoding original material into the latest flavors.

Do this, make it legally bullet proof and at a reasonable rate (no “$24 CD” routine again), and you will have my money, my business, and my loyalty forever. Think Netflix. Think blogs and wikis. Think Library of Congress.  Think of the fact that every “pirate” has been laying down the ground to this new ecology. They took the painful job of training people what happens when you get every song you ever wanted. And springing out of that groundwork is better public databases, catalogs, reviews, and analysis tools. All ready for harvest.

I’m convinced the way to make something that is scarce even more valuable is to make more of it.

Science v. Religion

Fresh Air recently did countering interviews between “religion and science”. Given the state of the nation, with the current number of the religious followers, I can understand why the topic comes up.

Richard Dawkins does his usual acerbic English routine. While extremely lucid, his very presence must set the devout on edge. He’s the ugly pitbull humping the leg of the evangelical.

I’d hoped Francis Collins could provide an equal amount of vigor, simply to make it an interesting debate. Yet, he trucks down the same path, that religion is spirituality and faith and morality and unassailable. True awe is only reachable in the context of religion.

Thinking this over, I notice that often these debates are arranged between an atheist “Scientist” and a Christian. That whenever someone says, “He’s a religious scientist,” or “He’s a religious politician,” what they’re really saying is, “He’s a Christian”. The only reason I can think for this bias is that Christianity is conveniently devoid of traditions.

Yes, I realize Catholicism has rites seven ways to Sunday, but they don’t impinge on more basic cultural traditions. Or that those traditions have been subsumed into the mass culture. Really, you’re more likely to reorganize your menu because of a vegetarian than a Catholic.

This lack of cultural conflict, somehow, lets Christians take the high ground and claim spiritualism. “Since we don’t tell you how to dress, our opinion on the grace of man is more relevant”. It seems strange. I often wonder why atheists give a pass on this. Perhaps its just a case of bad PR. The lack of a Bible for athiests to wave around, explaining how you can be moral without paranormal consequences to keep you in line.

What’s worse, the Christians-as-keepers-of-morality being so pervasive means dealing with absurd taboos. FCC fines for defaming Jesus. MPAA following Christian oversight. The US administration dropping in “evil”, to be heard as “not Christian”, at every press conference.

The real debate should be Spiritualism v. Religion. Once we can hash thru the fact that being Christian or Muslim or Taoist doesn’t imbibe you with special qualities, we can move on to removing silly culture quirks and, well, just get along with each other.