Movie Review – Man on Wire
But the one movie I did see on the flight, was Man on Wire. The story of Philippe Petit, and his amazing stunt back in 1974, doing a wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Centre. Delivered in a similar fashion to Touching the Void, you can’t help but be captured by the story.
Without spoiling the movie, it also covers his other exploits (including Sydney Harbour Bridge pictured above), and is an exciting insight into the eccentric man himself. You don’t need to see it tomorrow, but it’s definitely a must see.
Movie Review Bonanza – Elegy, Death Race, Ghost Town, Rachel Getting Married
I’ve seen a lot of movies over the last week with the flights to Vegas, so I’m throwing them all into a single post. Being in Vegas, I’ve also become quite fond of the word ‘bonanza’.
Rachel Getting Married – Chick in rehab. Sister getting married. Drama. Cry cry. The end.
Elegy – Guy meets girl. Drama. Sick sick. The end.
Death Race – Get out of prison if you race. Zoom Zoom. The end.
Ghost Town – Guy dies. Guy sees ghosts. Life change. The end.
MIX09 Day 3 – Silverlight, Virtual Earth, and Pigmaps
Day 3 of MIX09. I head to a few sessions, all of which are interesting.
Virtual Earth integration from Silverlight was the highlight. Once again a nice clean API allows developers to pick it up, with fully integrated customised maps in Silverlight developed faster than previously possible. Video and media asset integration, scaling/zooming/”deep zoomesque” capabilities, and the ability to feed in your own map data.
So how easy is it? Well, first up you need the control DLL. And once you’ve done that, you’ll need the following XAML…
<UserControl x:Class="MapControlInteractiveSdk.Tutorials.Tutorial1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:m="clr-namespace:Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl;
assembly=Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<m:Map />
</Grid>
</UserControl>
BAM! Map with controls in Silverlight in 3 seconds. Even more impressive is all the small tweaks you can do in only a few lines of code. Chris Pendleton has a wrap up and other posts over at the Virtual Earth Evangelist’s Blog, so check out further details.
Another session I found interesting was Pigmap. All I could ascertain is that the translated meaning behind the brand could probably translate to ‘cash cow’, and although the presentation had a lot to be desired, the Korean markets tend to push online community concepts many years before the western world picks them up.
Pigmap will be a social networking site. It leverages Virtual Earth, flickr, and other services (OpenID, Live ID etc). To provide users with mapping, it searches Virtual Earth for certain locations and venues. So search for Las Vegas NV, and BAM, Las Vegas turns up on the map. But then type in ‘Venetian’ as a point of interest, and the platform searches Flickr for photos matching Venetian, grabs their geo coordinates, and drops thumbnails on the map (“The End of Theory” theory strikes again).
The questionable feature of the site is the ability to set “Missions” for people using the product. To be able to go “Dear X, I challenge you to go to this location” doesn’t really appeal to me, but “Dear X, you want to head here tonight?” might work, but many other services provide that functionality. Possibly Korea is too far ahead culturally with social networking that it zips over my head.
And that’s a wrap from MIX09. There is just so much more to talk about, and many of that will come with some of the posts that grow out of playing with the new toys. Head on over to the downloads page to grab your favourite preview/beta/CTP/SDK… and remember to check out the sessions at sessions.visitmix.com.
MIX oh-ten has been announced, and I’m excited to see where the designer and developer community has taken these tools by then.
Catch you online when I land back in Australia.
Playboyarchive.com! … and Day 2 at MIX09
Day 2 at MIX has me talking to too many interesting people. VERTIGO’s presentation of Playboyarchive.com I’ll get to in a second, because yesterday I forgot to mention Sketch Flow. Sketch Flow is, at its heart, a collaboration feature for Blend. And the only way to really discuss it, is if you’ve seen some of the Sketch Flow sessions at MIX09.
Now that you’ve done that, we’ll continue.
The biggest benefit I see for agencies and services companies is the seamless integration, and to close the loop built in streamlined review mechanisms. Although Silverlight is a great technology and the obvious place Sketch Flow would help most, Sketch Flow will be useful for any type of web project. From presales through to design, it opens the door for rapid prototyping, with the cost of finding the best user experience drastically reduced. The documentation and auto data population features are so obvious and simple, yet dream features for developers. So big thumbs up for Sketch Flow.
Yesterday’s Live Services session had me falling off my chair. It was just too easy. If you aren’t looking at Mesh, you are being left behind… the possibilities are huge.
Second on the agenda was the VERTIGO presentation. Lots of sites developed in short periods of time, using some great Microsoft technologies such as Deep Zoom and Silverlight 3. KEXP, Rolling Stone magazine archive, March Madness, and the big one, www.playboyarchive.com. The presentation covered projects of catalogued back issues of magazines, radio station download managers, and interactive live video streaming. Such a broad consumer offering, based on the same core technology stack. The Playboy archive consists of over 2 million individual files that make up the multiscaleimage, coming in at 30GB of data. But what is even truly mind blowing, is the fact all text in the deep zoom is searchable, including the advertisements, the comics, and the articles.
To go over www.playboyarchive.com in a bit more detail (assuming you are still reading and haven’t clicked the link in the first few seconds), from the home page you click through to the DeepZoom based Silverlight application.
Then clicking on a cover takes you into an issue. Clicking on pages brings that page into full view.
And an example of searching, with full highlighting, deep linked to from the search results below. (Just don’t ask how they afforded the army of chimps to highlight all the text.)
For those that feel dubious heading over and checking it out, the older 1960’s magazines are generally work safe for the first 60 pages, if not cover to cover.
Read More@MIX09 Impressive Start
I’m at MIX09 in Las Vegas the lone attendee in early waiting for the 2nd session I’m attending to kick off. Day 1 is turning out to be quite impressive. Up early for registration to miss the queues, and to hopefully catch breakfast (a 24 hour meal in Las Vegas). Registration was painless, and with my swag of Microsoft goodies I headed to the keynote.
Bill Burton and Scott Guthri were impressive. Their views were insightful, reinforcing, and the technology announcements presented were just as impressive. I recommend checking out the keynote over at live.visitmix.com. The technology announcements and demos were impressive. From Expression Blend, to IIS administration, the new features are market driving. Some are ‘about time’ and others ‘just in time’, others ahead of their time. The consistency and pipeline Microsoft provide for delivery between developers and designers with Expression, or the ease with which IIS and IIS applications can be managed are needed.
Not only were the Microsoft demos impressive, so were Netflix and BONDI/Vertigo. With Netflix being able to offer to a broader sprectrum of the consumer market, and release fortnightly instead of annually, their business has transformed. Similarly BONDI, specialists in back catalogue magazine capitalisation, created an entire new business, with the entire back catalogue of Rolling Stone magazine indexed, searchable, leveraging Silverlight 3 and deep zoom for a completely new visual experience.
Silverlight is a technology that is moving so fast I find it hard to keep up. The new pixel shader effects are exciting, and so easy it feels like cheating. Being able to splash them around on *any* control is too much fun. Be prepared for gratuitous overload for the first few months/years. Scott Guthri’s demo is worth watching to understand this. Even though Scott jokes, someone will put perspective and ripple effects on forms, and 10 people will copy that, and so on. Impressive features now in Silverlight include the ability to pump videos to FTP/WebDav locations direct from encoding, adaptive streaming over HTTP. Silverlight 3 also brings thick client “out of browser” applications. These also come with auto update features, online and offline synchronisation and data binding, and all out of the box. This isn’t just a Silverlight .NET shell for apps to run under windows, it comes with a full blown API for network connectivity detection. These applications are also running under OSX, as was demo’d in the keynote by KEXP radio. KEXP have an offline player, with online synchronisation and features, single click install (The install was such a non event most people missed it!).
Lunch consumed, and session 2 is about to start, the room looks empty. With 10 sessions going at the same time, this is a great way to have small intimate groups with audience participation/interaction.
Vaughan in Las Vegas
My flight arrives on the dot of the scheduled arrival time, and I’m through customs within 10 minutes. Things have started well. I’m at LAX with a trusty WIRED magazine read cover to cover. The iPod is flat, the laptop is charging, and I just came to the realisation my phone doesn’t have roaming turned on. Everything is going according to plan. I can’t wait to head to Vegas. With 15 hours head space I’ve psyched myself up for an awesome week of fun work.
MIX09 looks to be an awesome conference this year, and I’m really looking forward to the sessions, and spending a week with some great minds. Although my heart lies with the Silverlight 3 render pipeline session, I see the broader opportunities and scope lying with Live and Azure. Where Microsoft plan to head with these platforms will be great to hear. From a digital market perspective.
I look around the lounge and can spot the MIX09ites. They size each other up with that ‘I know what you are’ look, a sixth sense at detecting your own breed. Not that it’s hard to pick us out. All on laptops, with their minor signature traits… a MacBook with the logo turned into a biohazard symbol, a t-shirt with ‘rtfm’ in hex (because in English it’s not geeky enough), the Microsoft blooded individuals (clothing or backpacks branded with TechEd, PDC, Azure, Live et al), and me, with my trusty Dr Cube’s Posse t-shirt (more better fighto!).
But it’s the geek crew that add the real value to the trip to Vegas. It will be the conversations and learning from industry peers (clients and vendors alike) that will be most value. These are the like minded people that bend technology into the shape of something beautiful. They embrace and drive technology, and influence the directions of platforms. The personal and business value of being connected to that giant talent should never be underestimated.
And lastly, I’m trying out BlogJet for my offline WordPress blogging needs. So let’s see how that goes… [edit] In summary, BlogJet created MS Word HTML shit, which meant it didn’t render consistently, if at all, so thumbs down.
Read MoreDeep Zoom Madi Gras
And on the front page of smh.com.au! Well, it won’t be now. Took me too long to decide to blog it… but here’s a screenshot!
The team over at Microsoft have laid down the gauntlet with a deep zoom collage of the photography going back to 1978! There are hundreds of photos, all easily filtered in realtime, and the experience is impressive. The entire application was developed in just 6 days, and is stored on the Windows Azure Storage Services.
Hurry! You can still check it out HERE. And for more information on how those delicate geniuseseses put it together, head over the Michael Kordahi‘s blog.
Read More2008 in Review
And we’re back. All of me are. I’ve been AFK for too many months. I’ve been busy. Not much has hit the blog, but plenty has been happenning. First up, the blog would like to announce it posted a profit in the 2008 year, with revenue up NaN percent.
My end of year for 2008 was at lightspeed. Work and life balance are still balanced, but somehow each has grown a magnitude on either side of the scale. I’ll be doing some catch up in some following posts but first a recap.
Looking back at 2008:
- Being involved with some amazing projects at work across Media, Telecommunications, and Finance. Yes, I did mention finance. I simply didn’t think there was an exciting finance project left. I’ve been proven wrong.
- Continued to meet a great stream of people including clients, vendors, co-workers, friends of friends, and locals (at each locale).
- Managed to avoid communication saturation. Twitfacespace can shut up.
- Used the fake Facebook acount for me that was given to me about 10 times. Although, I’ve used it quite a bit this year.
- Got to check out so many cool technologies pre-release. Most I can’t publicly discuss until they launch. Some have launched… leading into…
- Got neck deep in Silverlight. Microsoft have really come a long way and impressed me with how they are growing the technology.
- I spoke at Remix08 in Sydney and Melbourne on Building Interactive Media Applications, and got to meet a great crew. Thanks to Michael Kordahi and Shane Morris and the rest of the Microsoft crew for involving me.
- Bought a DSLR camera, and in the first week took 2000 photos. Worth every cent.
- Bought 36 Rubik’s cubes as a joke.
- Made some funky art out of it.
- Bought 360 Rubik’s cubes as a joke.
- Made some funkier art out of it.
- Rubixel was born. Check it out here.
- Watched too many movies and TV Series, and still not enough.
- Rediscovered XBox Live. XBox Live Arcade seeming to consume most of my interest there.
- Rediscovered email.
- Rediscovered C++. How wonderful and painful you are.
- Started the blog but got distracted.
- Got motion sickness from Mirror’s Edge, and nightmares from Fallout3.
Things I should have done more:
- Blog posts.
- Personal coding projects.
- Rubixels. As time consuming as it is, it’s too much fun.
- Delegation.
- Said “yes”.
- Said “no”.
And that’s about it for now. I’ll catch up on the details later.
Read MoreFallout 3 and Cooking in the Dangerzone
Fallout 3 is possibly the most vast games I have seen. With 100 hour gameplay, I am scratching the surface, and the enormity of the environment only sinks in many hours into the game. The game is flawed, in many ways, but at the same time the good bits make the entire game worth experiencing.
This enormity has changed my behaviour. What I have found in Fallout 3 is that I play it for just a few minutes, and walk away at any point. The game is just so big, that persisting is pointless, and whilst the game has milestones, progression feels analog. Living with your consequences makes the game very interesting. For example, my uber hacking-lockpicking-sneaking-melee strategy isn’t going so good. Why? Let me point out there are few buildings, let alone doors, and even less computers, and in the vast expanse of the wasteland visibility is 100 miles, and nearly everyone has at least one gun.
Fig 1. Guns > Sneaky
But I’m sick of such large budget games not getting the characterisation solid. Every second character in the game still feel like cardboard cutouts. Some major characters are excellent, others feel like someone has wheeled them in.
The other aspect is radiation poisoning. Radioactive poisoning in Fallout 3 is cool. From rivers of toxic waste, to inactive bombs, and old war sites. You start to feel like the entire world is a post apocolyptic Chernobyl. Every time you eat a piece food, you get radiation poisoning. Get too much and you start to get sick. This in turn can be reduced by taking radiation reduction formula. That is pretty simple. Regardless, I dub this the ‘did we forget to balance this’ game mechanic. It constantly feels like a ball and chain slowing you down through the game progression. I like the fact swimming in radioactive water can make me sick, it is immersive, but I am at a loss as to how eating a kebab somehow makes me more radioactive than swimming across an ocean of radioactive sludge.
But enough of Fallout 3. It’s good, either buy it if you can’t wait, or borrow it when your mate has completed the billion hours of gameplay or died of radiation sickness.
Second up on the agenda today is Cooking in the Dangerzone . You can watch it on TV (in Australia) Wednesday November 5th on SBS . Stefan Gates sets out on his way to Chenobyl, and against his producer’s advice, he eats the local food, with some interesting results. A short clip from the show below…
A really interesting show, and well worth the watch. And with an 80 year old women eating radioactive food every day of her life, you start to realise how unbalanced that game mechanic really was.
Read MoreStreet Fighter Movie – Chun Li Trailer
It is no secret that I am a Street Fighter fan. With Street Fighter IV launching on console, it is a big event for the CAPCOM community.
The cardinal sin for any game is the movie, and Street Fighter was no exception. But when you make a bad movie of a game (and then consequently the game of the movie of the game), what do you do? Apparently you wait 15 years, and hope everyone has forgotten, and make another bad movie. The Chun-Li movie trailer below is sure to set the scene for what is going to be a must see for 2009.
… and for those who forgot the original, the trailer does not do the movie justice. It was far worse.
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