Renaissance

First Blog Post of the New Year

Jan 3, 2022,

Just spent 4 hours making that emulator for the old Halo so I can port it to Google Glass 4. The graphical overlay for the aug reality engine was changed to a higher rez.  Then I had to recalibrate the setting, enemy movements were out of place and wouldn’t sync well. I incoporated a traditional handheld controller though, direct hand motion interface doesn’t work well for the old games.

The American moon base was officially dedicated today. Nasa posted its aug reality tour of the facility for G Glass, so I got to enjoy that. It’s a lot bigger than the Chicom base, too bad the Americans were slow to get it there first. I read on bbc news that the Pentagons StratForecast Simulator is predicting that India will launch it’s first manned moon mission this year. Russia has fallen behind recently and isn’t going to get to the moon till 2025, but their 6 piece Manned Orbital Waypoint Constellations are probably the reason there is any one on the moon at all!

Posted my 37th synth music piece on Soundcloud today. Got some good reveiws. Think I’ll make some more before too long. Synth is so much easier with the Miku AI suggestion and tone editor.

Started my online Madarin Chinese lessons today. Got 54 verb usage points. I need to get these certs so I can get that job at the Singapore Space Port I’ve been looking forward to.

Mash Up

This is the “consumer mash up” assignment. You incorporate your favorite product into the logo of the store you purchase it from.

I shop at Aeon. It’s this sort of department store that also sells groceries. They have an imported foods section that sells these frozen Italian pizzas that are the best. Frozen pizza is a must because delivery is too expensive. One pizza from Domino’s in Japan is over 40 dollars. And it’s thinner than what you would get in the states. So a higher end frozen pizza is much preferable.

I took a photo of a crisp cheese pizza and then I incorporated it in to the the logo to make an “O” using the photo editor, Gimp.

I Can Read Movies

I did the ds106 assignment “I can read movies” where you create cover art for a book adaptation for a  film you like. One of my favorite movies is the 1995 Japanese animation film “Ghost in the Shell“. It deals with cybernetics, existentialism and some badass robot fights. I think it would make a pretty good novel. As a matter of fact, the film was based on a Japanese comic book.

To make the cover art, I took a photo of a mannequin and, using Gimp, painted it’s shadows dark green. Then I painted the rest a lighter green to make a kind of contrast. This also evokes a kind of early computer screen. I added the Kanji text by copy/pasting it from wikipedia into the text box in Gimp. I wasn’t sure how to add a worn out, sort of used effect like in some of the other “I can read movies” coverart assignments.

I got the image for the mannequin here (NSFW)

A Whole New World

A large mutated Chihuahua washed up on a beach this morning. A photograph captured the lazy animal in the South Pacific preparing to doze off.  Mutant Chihuahuas continue to plague the region after their release by crazed criminal master mind Dr.Novotny. Local authorities are preparing to remove the animal with dynamite.

This is the ds106 assignment “a whole new world” where you create a picture to make a subject appear either too large or too small. I inserted our pet chihuahua onto a nice beach. I’m not sure if it creates the sense of scale I wanted to communicate. Let me know what you think!

I got the image for the beach here

DFPQ1

The sentence I found the most appealing in the Gardner Campbell article was:

“Environments are not passive wrappings but active processes. . . . The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”

This very succinctly summarized what the internet is.  Activity and input are what define it. Simply by its use does the internet change behavior and social patterns. The propagation of a medium shows it true impact, whether that is millions watching TV, millions reading newspapers or millions writing blog post.

For example, Youtube exists based on the input of millions of people around the world. The message really is that millions of people have a tool that enable them to communicate globally.

Game Changer

Allied News-Stream Network

Border War Update

Dallaustin, Texas

Paranoia and desperation are running through the American South. Since the start of hostilities with the Republic of Mexico, tens of thousands of Southerners have been displaced. The refugee situation has worsened in the Mid West and Northern states since the advance of the Mexican Republican army over the Texas border.

US President and former Texas governor George Hernandez  stated in a national address today “Texas is my home and an indispensable part of these United States. The battle is not over and she will not be lost.” He added in his colloquial manner “Y’all don’t mess with Texas.”

The Texas megalopolis of Dallaustin has become the frontlines of the conflict. Hyper sonic bombers and mechanized Army troopers have been strategically redeployed to Dallaustin and other cities in the southern United States for operations against Republican forces.

Since Mexico’s full industrialization and recognition as a first world nation 40 years ago, US intelligence reports indicated that it was mechanizing shock troops in secret to match the technological level achieved by US and Chinese forces. Sightings of power-suited Republican soldiers have been confirmed by US Army Headquaters here in Dallaustin.

New intercepted intelligence suggests that the servo mechanisms used in the Artificial Articulated Limb Reflex Systems (AALRS)  of the Republican suits are copies of the Chinese version. The revelation of the possesion of such advanced robotic technology is startling to US forces as they believed only America and her ally China had been able to develop nano-mechanical bionetic tissues.

With US and Republican conventional forces so evenly matched, the fear of nuclear exchange grows larger. The US and Mexico hold the largest nuclear arsenals in the world.

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This is the Wiki Game assignment. You pick two random words that will start and end some sort of written article of your choice. Starting on the first word’s wikipedia page you click on links in the article until you get to your finish word.

I went to watchout4snakes.com, which has a random word generator. It gave me “paranoia” and “mechanical.” Starting on the “paranoia” wiki page, I clicked the link “colloquial.” Then on the “colloquial” page I clicked “y’all” and so on. My words in total were:

paranoia/ colloquial/ y’all/ southern United States/ industrialization/ mechanization/  servo mechanism/ robotics/ mechanical

It was fun to find the words and I thought it would take a long time but it was about ten minutes. Once I had my word collection, I decided to do a kind of war report set in the future.

I was inspired in no small part by George Friedman’s book The Next Hundred Years where he tries to forecast the future.  He bases alot of the premise of the book on how geography determines international relations. He proposes that the North American continent is the center of gravity for world politics because it straddles two oceans. Sea power is required for world power as demonstrated historically by Britain and Rome. So who ever controls North America can control the sea and dominate the world. But will future control reside in Washington DC or Mexico City?

Cyberbullying

I am writing a blog post about the Rutgers cyber bullying case as reported by CIS class student Alison.

A Rutgers student, Dharun Ravi, set up a webcam in order to spy on his roommate, Tyler Clementi, who was conducting a homosexual relationship in their shared dorm room. He streamed his roommates encounter live on the internet. His roommate committed suicide when he learned he had been exposed.

Upon his roommates suicide, Ravi was arrested and charged with a hate crime. Ravi is seeking a not guilty verdict and rejected a plea deal that would have required 600 hours of community service and anti-bullying counseling.

It’s interesting that had his roommate not killed himself there wouldn’t be much to charge Ravi with. Perhaps Clementi would have been able to sue Ravi for libel or invasion of privacy. He certainly would have had some level of recourse open to him. Did he think there was no way justice could be found in the situation? Or was he simple embarassed to the point of mortification, unable to cope with the exposure and couldn’t continue.

There has been significant social progress for homosexuals and it’s not as stigmatizing to be gay in America as it once was. It may not be easy to be exposed, and clearly Clementi was the victim of a crime, I find it is suprising he found it nesecary to commit suicide.  He may have been able to find the support he needed to continue his life and find acceptance in who he was. It is extremely unfortunate and saddening that he decided to take his own life.

An update on the case against Ravi. He was found guilty of hate crime and invasion of privacy.

 

Privacy Arms Race

Google, Twitter and Facebook are mining our data. Our data is taken and sold to advertising companies who then can create highly specialized advertisements based on our personal interests as suggested by the contents of your online accounts. This information can range from email addresses in your gmail account to contacts in your smartphones to your credit card number. This information is collected and stored indefinitely and is not deleted when you close an account.

This invasion of privacy is limited in Europe. New laws may be passed to require companies to delete collected information upon request.  In America the only legislative restrictions are in place to protect medical information and children 13 and younger.

Is this kind of specialized advertising  necessary? Email providers existed for years with traditional advertising.  Facebook provides chat and online photo albums. What necessitate privacy intrusion for this service? More likely it is not necessary and the fact that they had access to hundreds of millions of peoples personal information. Greed caused this abuse.

People make a decision to use the service. They agree to the terms of service and must abide by it. However the companies that require your compliance with these agreement do not hold themselves to such constraints. Google was caught  rewriting tracking cookies for Safaris browsers something not allowed by Apple. Twitter was caught collecting address books from users cellphones without their permission. These violations won’t be reversed until companies are punished.

If an Anonymous hacker did something similar, he’d be labled a thief and a criminal. Maybe get arrested by the FBI. But Google does it and when caught promise to never do it again and nothing happens. What a joke.

 

Sprawl City

I like this image. It’s suggesting that if you take suburban sprawl into account, then US cities are more massive than is popularly believed. I think it’s really cool. I like the idea of a gigantic mega city spanning from Boston to Atlanta. The setting in the Gibson book Neuromancer was called BAMA, the Boston- Atlanta Metropolitan Axis. The Star Wars franchise has various incarnations of the monolithic city planet. America’s not quite there yet, but with the current trends in US immigration, population growth is likely. Urban growth would trend along the same lines. I like living in the big city.

I think I like it because of my love for Tokyo and the massive sprawl resultant from limited space.  Not that Tokyo is the only example of this. Singapore, Hong Kong, Osaka and Souel are all crowded, compact, clean with ultra modern architeture. People are also largely considerate of others and crime is low.

I think the ecological impact would be fairly significant in the sense that it would damage woodland areas and dislocate indigenous wild life. However with a higher concentration of people, a higher demand would be created for localized supply distribution. This could make electric vehicle use in the United States more feasible, helping to drive down CO2 emissions.

As for electric consumption of households and the manufacturing sector, my favorite alternative energy concept is the Orbital solar collector. Massive  satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit collect sun light without atmospheric interference. The energy would be transmitted via microwaves to ground based collection dishes. Microwaves do not degrade in the atmosphere like sunlight which is the problem of solar collectors on Earth. This transmitted energy would power a series of massive batteries. The actual distribution of electricity would be the same as today .

Image from here

Old Kansai

Caption – “Ronin mercenaries track down known cattle russler T. Wright Hickens. He was arrested  on charges of kidnapping, extortion, russlin cattle and uncivilized barbarism.”

This is the Culture Clash assignment where you show how two cultures would mix. I thought it would be funny to do a picture with samurai and cowboys in it.  I took a picture of two samurai and a still from the 1946 film “Duel in the Sun”. I spliced it together in Pxler and it was fairly simple. I hope it doesn’t look like they are trying to kill the girl…