Rambling On This and That

* MOVED *

2010-11-29T16:07:00.000+11:00

Please see http://gamesstudio.org/yusufpisan/ for any future updates.

Games Everywhere : The Larger Role for Web Platforms and Services for Games & Serious Games

2010-06-25T11:50:00.001+10:00

Ben Sawyer recently presented a Google Tech Talk I thought you mightfind it interesting:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPaCwjhZ2aY&feature=channelABSTRACTPresented by Ben Sawyer, Co-Founder, President, Digitalmill.Videogames have always been a business at the edge of technology andchange. Today, however, as games burst beyond the living room, andtraditional forms and platforms of play they are

Welcome to Kai Pisan

2009-11-11T13:44:00.011+11:00

We are excited to announce the birth of our son Kai Pisan Name: Kai Pisan Date: Sunday, 1 Nov 2009, 6:40am Weight: 2.940kg (6lb 8oz) Height: 51cm (20 inches) City: Downey, California (Los Angeles) GPS: 33.918092,-118.126554 Email: kai.pisan@gmail.com Blog: http://kai.pisan.me/ Meryl & Yusuf

Guidelines for Social Media Use

2009-10-23T14:38:00.001+11:00

Companies are starting to develop guidelines for how to use "social media", so it got me thinking.Background: I have been on the internet before it was born. I used BITNET to send emails on VAX mainframes. I participated on USENET newsgroups, helped create and moderate a couple, followed others closely. I set up mailing lists before there was any software to manage it. One of my websites was

JOB: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer for Games at The University of Technology, Sydney

2009-09-17T19:13:00.000+10:00

JOB: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer* for Games at The University of Technology, Sydney http://www.jobs.uts.edu.au/job/job_details.cfm?id=398945&from=direct Closing Date: 9 October 2009 [ Below information has a lot of my personal comments and observations, please make sure you read the key selection criteria from the above web page carefully when putting together your application ] This is a

A Fool's Ranking

2009-09-14T07:38:00.001+10:00

[ I do not represent any university, I just work in one. All my comments are as a private citizen, not as a representative of any university. ]Which university does better research, Princeton, Harvard, Yale or Cambridge? How do you choose between MIT, Stanford and CalTech? These are top-10 universities. Their rankings may differ from year to year, one might be much better in a particular area

CFP: FDG 2010: The 5th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

2009-07-25T18:11:00.001+10:00

The Call for papers for FDG 2010 is now out at http://fdg2010.org/FDG 2010: The 5th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games19-21 June 2010, at Asilomar Conference Grounds, Monterey, California. http://fdg2010.org/*** Important Dates ***Workshop Proposals: 18 Sep 2009Paper and Poster Submission: 5 Feb 2010Doctoral Consortium Submission: 12 Feb 2010

The New Professor

2009-07-15T12:18:00.000+10:00

What is the role of a Professor? Mostly paperwork.Something sad is happening at universities. Teaching and Research is no longer the two primary goals of university. Universities, whether they are for-profit or non-profit, are turning into organizations that need to make money so they can sustain themselves, so they can continue to grow. High quality teaching and good research are two of the many

X|Media|Lab on Serious Games

2009-06-08T14:05:00.001+10:00

X|Media|Lab on Serious Games is onFriday June 12, Sydneyhttp://www.xmedialab.com/?q=node%2F273So many outstanding people speaking at the conference: Hear from the world's leading "Serious Games" and "Documentary" experts: Noah Falstein - President, The Inspiracy (San Francisco) Ondi Timoner - Director of Multiple Internationally Award Winning Documentaries DIG! and WE LIVE IN PUBLIC

Art Gallery NSW

2009-06-08T14:02:00.003+10:00

Art Gallery NSW, originally uploaded by ypmm."Artworks . . . describe how they describe . . . . What art shows insuch a manifestation is,indeed, how it functions." Joseph Kosuth, “Intention(s),” Art Bulletin, 1996More information about the artist at www.skny.com/artists/joseph-kosuth/

Interactive Entertainment 2009 is on!!!

2009-05-12T17:31:00.000+10:00

I am the PC Chair for IE2009. Below is the call for papers.It should be an exciting conference. We should know the invited speakers by June!========== IE2009: CALL FOR PAPERS ==========IE2009: The 6th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment 14-16 December 2009, Sydney, Australiahttp://ieconference.org/ie2009/*** Important Dates ***Paper Submission: 21 Aug 2009Short Papers/Demo

To Kindle or not to Kindle

2009-02-25T15:15:00.001+11:00

My friends who have Kindle from Amazon love it. My friends who have similar Kindle-like devices for reading books and research papers love it. Yet, I am still not sold on the electronic book reader.First, Kindle is not an option if you are living in Australia. Yes, I can still purchase it, but I will end up missing out on lots of coll features. No impulse shopping, no easy download. Not worth it.

ACM Creativity & Cognition Conference 2009

2009-02-11T15:05:00.001+11:00

I am the tutorials chair for the The 7th ACM Creativity & Cognition Conference 2009. Check out the call for papers, art exhibition and live performances, workshops, tutorials and the graduate student symposium. See you at the Berkeley Art Museum, CA, USA on October 27-30, 2009. Brief blurb on CC09:The 7th Creativity and Cognition Conference (CC09) embraces the broad theme of Everyday Creativity.

Learn the truth, challenge the myths

2009-01-08T14:51:00.002+11:00

Start 2009 by absorbing some true facts and giving up on some myths. (Compiled by BMJ, The British Medical Journal. Articles at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec17_2/a2769 and http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7633/1288 Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in childrenSuicides do not increase over the holidaysYou do not lose most of your body heat through your headEating at night

Happy New Year

2009-01-05T17:46:00.001+11:00

Happy New Year! We made it around the Sun once again! Despite our efforts to destroy Earth's diversity, upset the weather system and use up all of its resources Earth has managed to complete its orbit the Sun yet again. Well, I guess Earth has been doing this for 4.54 billion years and we have only been around for the last 200,000 years. Wishing you a healthy, happy, and peaceful 365 days. Make

Fluid Learning -- Maybe soon, but not yet

2008-12-07T06:44:00.001+11:00

This entry started out as a comment to Fluid Learning, but grew long enough to warrant a blog entry of its own.While I agree with the general message in Fluid Learning, Capture/Share/Open argument, I disagree with the examples in the article. RateMyProfessors is a good start, and anecdotes about how people use it is interesting, but it has a long long way to go before it comes close to being

Default Happiness Level

2008-11-23T20:45:00.004+11:00

Research with identical and fraternal twins suggests that each of us is born with a particular happiness set point, inherited from our parents, that we are bound to return even after major positive and negative life events. Lyubomirsky suggests that this genetic baseline makes up 50% of our level of happiness, while another 10% is due to circumstances and 40% due to intentional activities.Here is

Nonsymmetric flight prices

2008-11-15T09:12:00.001+11:00

Los Angeles - Sydney return (17-26 Nov) is $821USD including taxes.Sydney - Los Angeles return (17-26 Nov) is $1532USD including taxes.Prices based on http://sidestep.com/ as checked on 14 Nov. The distance between two points may be equal no matter which way you measure it, but going from Point-A to Point-B is sometimes much more expensive than the other way around.As an Australian living in

Perception: University Professors

2008-11-05T16:00:00.001+11:00

Are lecturers and professors at university well-off? The general perception is a big YES. In most cases, they have a job for life. They only teach couple of hours a week and that is only when the university is in session. They have flexible work-hours. They get to set their own research agendas and have lots of autonomy in their everyday work. It is "The Dream Job", or so it seems from the

Breaking into the Games Industry

2008-11-04T10:57:00.001+11:00

Breaking into the Games Industry is not easy, but there are some good resources. * IGDA: http://www.igda.org/breakingin/resource_links.htm * Game Developer Magazine, Jul 2008; Vol.15, Iss.12; is the "Game Career Guide" -- you can access electronic versions via UTS library under "Game developer -- ProQuest 5000" database * You should subscribe to the DLF mailing list, especially the DLF-jobs

Perception

2008-10-29T17:08:00.002+11:00

Perception is everything. OK, it is not *everything*, but it does count a lot. You get treated differently at a nice restaurant if you are wearing a suit versus if you are wearing thorn clothing. Sad, but true. The societal perception of gamers that is mostly wrong. Gamers have a perception of themselves that is mostly wrong. We still think of gamers as male pimply teenagers even when we play

University Rankings

2008-10-13T10:15:00.001+11:00

ANU, Australian National University, is ranked #16 by Times Higher Education. Stanford is at #17, Northwestern (my alma mater) is #33, University of Southern California is #102.http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1 How come most people don't know ANU if it is rated so highly? A mystery to me...

Shallow Networks

2008-08-03T17:08:00.002+10:00

The war of social networks is on, or is it the war of shallow networks. Tweet some updates to your closest 200 friends, upload a picture to Facebook for all your 300 friends to see, advertise your favorite youtube videos to the world on your MySpace page, share your bookmarks via del.icio.us, customize your information feed using Friendfeed, and swell up with pride when somebody comments on your

Predicting the Future

2008-05-29T11:47:00.001+10:00

We suck at predicting the future, but it is still worth a try.I just read Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time) by Greenberg and Buxton and some background material from Don Norman about Human-Centred Design vs Activity Centered Design. Add a bit of Mark Pesce talking about the human network to the mix and you get a desire to attempt to predict the future. How does it all

University Medal

2008-05-08T23:25:00.001+10:00

Congratulations to Viveka Weiley who will be receiving the UTS University Medal for his honours thesis titled The Design of Virtual Place for Collaboration, at the graduation ceremony next week. Viveka is currently in his first year of PhD at UTS continuing his research on designing collaborative environments. You can find more about his research at his blog.

How many Wikipedia's can we produce in a year?

2008-05-02T18:13:00.002+10:00

This is a must see video of Clay Shirky Taken from: http://futurismic.com/2008/04/29/clay-shirky-on-the-cognitive-surplus/ Sharing it via GoogleReader was not enough, this one I had to re-post.

Australian Game Development

2008-05-02T07:07:00.001+10:00

At end June 2007, there were 45 businesses in Australia involved in the provision of digital game development services. These businesses employed over 1,400 people and generated a total income of $136.9m which represented an average of $3m per business. http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2008/04/australian_bureau_of_statistics_releases_data_on_local_games_industry.html Greg Bonda (CEO of GDAA) says

Academics to Poor Schools

2008-04-30T09:43:00.001+10:00

The AustralianUNIVERSITIES should send their academics into the poorest schools in their regions to boost the presence of disadvantaged students on campus after 15 years of little change, according to higher education commentator Richard James. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23619074-12332,00.htmlA noble goal. Not a novel one but a noble one. Why don't the universities do what the

Education

2008-04-21T16:40:00.001+10:00

The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchins said, decades ago: "The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens." He warned that "the death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and

Job: Animal Logic -- Software Developers/TDs

2008-04-17T21:59:00.001+10:00

You know you want to work there? :-)===Software Developers/TDsOne of the world's most highly respected digital production companies Animal Logic is a producer of award-winning design, animation and visual effects solutions for the film, television and advertising industry. Animal Logic is seeking a number of Software Developers/TDs to join its core R&D group to help continue the evolution of

Jargon Sea

2008-03-31T17:44:00.001+11:00

Is it possible to find meaning in the sea of jargon? Maybe, Google has a translator that can turn the below email into English or maybe it is a big joke...==========================from TCR Group <@gmail.com> to list@fibreculture.org,date Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 12:35 PMsubject ::fibreculture:: TCRG01 - Algorithm Draft hide details Mar 29 (2 days ago) Reply Dear Fibreculturalists,We are currently

Portable Film Festival

2008-03-31T14:32:00.001+11:00

The Portable Film Festival as part of its Portable Symposium and Screen Academy Series 2008 presents Current TV's Vice President of Development and Production in Viewer Created Content, Ezra Cooperstein. Current TV was the first fully integrated web and TV platform to hit the online space. With the onus directly on the user to create and content via podcasting about topics as diverse as politics,

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

2008-03-20T07:42:00.001+11:00

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke.Arthur C. Clarke is dead, but he left a few books and some memorable quotes behind.

SIGGRAPH ASIA

2008-03-19T07:12:00.001+11:00

I am being considered to chair SIGGRAPH ASIA. It is certainly a great honour, but but but chairing a conference with thousands of people is no trivial matter. It would probably require me to carry two mobile phones and even answer them when they ring. Do I want the headache or should I just go to my newly formed Games Studio and continue on my research projects? The first SIGGRAPH ASIA conference

Court upholds ban on Minnesota video game law

2008-03-19T07:02:00.001+11:00

"The video game industry and free-speech proponents landed yet another legal victory on Monday, when a federal appeals court affirmed a 2006 rejection of a Minnesota law restricting minors' access to violent titles. link"The video game industry already has an effective rating system, much better than movies. And yet, every couple of months, a politician decides that he can get a few more votes by

Competitive Advantage

2008-03-15T18:42:00.000+11:00

It is all about competitive advantage. Your company needs a competitive advantage over other companies to survive, to grow and to expand. Competitive advantage can come because you are the first to enter the field, because you have a cheaper way of producing the same good or more often because you have a superior piece of technology. Google succeeded because their search algorithm was better than

The Guild

2008-03-15T18:00:00.001+11:00

The Guild is the best. Vote for The Guild early and oftenhttp://www.youtube.com/ytawards07The fact that you can vote once per day makes me think that all this hype about competition is in fact much more about selling some more ads. "Hey, I have got an idea. Instead of people voting once for their favorite show, let's make them vote once an hour. We sell more ads and the winner is determined by

Games Studio

2008-03-15T10:18:00.001+11:00

We got lab space, we got equipments, we got people. Now all we need is to have an official opening and get some cool projects going. We are looking at Friday March 28h as a possible opening date. Invite people, feed them, booze them, show pretty pictures, show them some games. The equipment we have so far in the lab is as follows. I will write about the different projects later, for now you just

SXSW results are out

2008-03-11T07:46:00.001+11:00

SXSW results are out. Some really cool games are there, check them out.

Save the Children

2008-03-09T06:24:00.000+11:00

Save the children! South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson has decided that we cannot have R18+ rating for games to protect children from "harmful material".Ah, and I thought the ratings were designed, so that parents could choose what their children can view/play or not. How come the same argument does not work for movies? Aren't R18+ rated movies dangerous for children? Oh wait,

Back from GDCSE

2008-03-05T18:38:00.002+11:00

I am back from GDCE - Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development in Computer Science Education - which took place on a cruise ship.Yep, I know you are thinking boondoggle, but GDCSE is the best conference for making connections. Sure, GDC has more people, but how much time do you really get to spend with them. Everybody is so busy at GDC. Being "stuck" on a cruise does have the advantage that

Can a computer play pictionary?

2008-02-19T19:43:00.001+11:00

What would it mean to play Pictionary with a computer? Can a computer tell a person from a car from an apple? They are all round!Well, Jeremy Epstein is tackling this question as a part of his honours project. Full report at the end of 2008!

Why I have not been blogging?

2008-02-19T19:07:00.001+11:00

Google Reader is really good for following many blogs. You can read snippets, follow to the full article if you want to comment, share it easily, email it, add tags to it, and adding a new blog is so easy. Just click on the orange box, give it a tag and done. You can read it from any browser, none of this syncing of computers business. It is great. Except, EXCEPT that it is soo easy to find that

Meryl is an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist!

2008-01-17T09:07:00.001+11:00

Meryl McQueen's book "Only Salt Remains" is a semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award!!!To become a finalist, she needs *you* to write a short review of the book based on an excerpt. By posting a review you can also win a gift from Amazon (Kindle, $2000 Gift Certificate, HP Printer, etc). Of course, the gift does not even compare to the good feeling you will get for helping a writer

Sloppy Design

2007-12-25T12:26:00.001+11:00

I got a new microwave, Sanyo EMS667S. I was happy with my old one, but it suddenly decided to stop working. You would press its buttons, it would make a click noise, the light would come on, but no fan, no turning of the table and no waves to heat up the food. I am not brave enough to open a microwave and poke its innards, so I went to the store and bought a new microwave as a christmas present

Shopping Online in Australia

2007-12-11T14:47:00.001+11:00

Some of the Australian web sites for online shopping are a joke.Look at Kmart's website http://www.kmart.com.au/catalogue/20071213/small.asp?Keyword=&PageNumber=2 Their understanding of online shopping is to scan their ads and let the user go through them by clicking next. Where is the search function? Where is the detailed product information? Where are the categories? Can you only shop for *

IE2007 -- Great Conference

2007-12-08T21:16:00.001+11:00

The Interactive Entertainment conference at Melbourne was fantastic. I will try to write a summary of it for those who missed, but in the meantime you can find some pictures for IE2007 at http://biccy.anbu.biz/RMIT/IE2007_Monday/http://biccy.anbu.biz/RMIT/IE2007_Tuesday/ http://biccy.anbu.biz/RMIT/IE2007_Wednesday/If that is a bit too much, my selected sampling of pictures is at http://

EA Acquires BioWare, Pandemic for $860M

2007-10-13T16:19:00.001+10:00

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?story=49412EA has announced that it does not intend to make any changes to the studios. And why should it? Bioshock is a great game, has generated enormous buzz in the games community. Nobody would want to mess up with such a success. And yet, I get worried about the unified ownership. Large percentage of the tv and newspapers are already owned by a small group of

Free wifi

2007-10-02T05:55:00.001+10:00

Viveka writes about the trial and tribulations of getting wi-fi access at QUT.Would you ever buy a safe for $10,000 to put your $50 watch in it? Just does not make sense. Australian universities (as well as many businesses) do that. They cannot contemplate the possibility of letting somebody "steal" $50 worth of bandwidth, so they install software and firewalls, hire security specialists to

Games As Art

2007-10-02T05:37:00.001+10:00

Are games art? Can they ever be art?Oh, who the hell cares? Can YOU define what art is? Make sure your definition is inclusive enough of all the different forms of art, not just classical museum art.Suppose we finally had an answer: "Game X is a piece of art". What does that really mean? Art is not universally meaningful for everybody. It is interpreted within a cultural context. We live in a

Cohousing?

2007-09-14T05:51:00.001+10:00

I have discovered (re-discovered?) the cohousing idea. In a nutshell, the goal of cohousing is to create a neighborhood where residents know each other, share some common resources, actively participate in the neighborhood. Most cohousing communities have a shared common house, try to have have joint meals at least once a week, use consensus for decision making. In cohousing, everybody own their

GameON-NA: The conference that wasn't

2007-09-14T05:29:00.001+10:00

I just came back from GameON-NA conference. The dread of every conference organizer must be, "what if nobody shows up"! Well, only 27 people were registered for GameON-NA. About six people were in the audience for the keynote opening of the conference. About the same number for the invited talk on second day. My feelings go back and forth between feeling pity for the organizer and feeling like I

Davis' Mega Maze

2007-08-19T23:21:00.001+10:00

Been there http://www.davisfarmland.com/megamaze/, solved it

April, May, June, July -- Where have they gone?

2007-08-13T09:24:00.001+10:00

What happened in April, May, June and July. Not a single post, not a single pages. Who are we to blame? In May a good high school friend from Robert College came to Boston It was good to meet up with him in Boston. Later in May, I headed to North Carolina to meet yet another Robert College l friend. After consuming obscene amount of alcohol and eating way too much, we drove to Washing to catch up

GDC Report [Part 2/2]

2007-03-21T00:15:00.001+11:00

Thursday - Are Serious Games Worth Taking Seriously? by Noah Falstein. I had heard Noah talk at the Australian Game Developers Conference a couple of years ago and even had a couple of drinks with him afterward. Good stuff, but I am already converted to Serious Games. I know that Serious Games are big and soon we won't be able to tell between education, training and fun (yeah, right!) and my WoW

Wii

2007-03-20T23:31:00.000+11:00

I finally played the Wii,, mostly Wii Sports. Meryl beat me in all sports excepts boxing and now she is insisting that we get a Wii. Might have to wait so we don't suffer the PAL/NTSC problems when we take it back to Sydney. The Wii is good. Will need to post about the effect of "replay". Very novel addition, annoying at first, fascinating and fun afterwards.

GDC Report [Part 1/2]

2007-03-16T01:11:00.001+11:00

Quick, I must write about the GDC before it all turns into a blur. This was my first GDC, enjoyable but not something I would do every year. It is great to meet up with people I have not seen in a while. In that sense, GDC is like five conferences squeezed into one. GDC is also a great place to get a sense of the industry, establish connections with developers, put faces to names and all that

101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom

2007-02-28T08:25:00.000+11:00

This is a good resource outlining some of the different uses of SL in classrooms. Certainly worth skimming if you are using SL in your class. 101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom

MS Conference on Game Development in Computer Science Education

2007-02-27T04:31:00.000+11:00

I have just come back from the Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development in Computer Science Education. If I can catchup with all work before GDC, I will put up some comments here, but any conference where I come back a bit sunburned, win at foosball and spend a good chunk of time in the hot-tub has to be really up there. Good papers as well. I am not saying it because I am on the program

Happy Feet

2007-02-27T04:27:00.000+11:00

Congratulations to our UTS students (and others but especially *our* students) who worked on Happy Feet which has just won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year. Steve Agland Peter Brownlow, Chris Cooper Peter Georges Justen Marshall Adrian Paul Bryan Smith Go Go UTS students!!! (PS: These are outstanding students. Their success is probably despite us, but maybe we can

Train Man

2007-01-22T03:10:00.001+11:00

Wired article about Train Man shows the power of online communities. I am undecided about whether the story is true or something that 2Channel came up with. Does it make a difference? If we found out it was fake would we be cynical about helping people online or believing their stories. Lonely Girl on youtube was madeup, but the truth has not deterred fans.

Performance in SL

2007-01-21T08:54:00.000+11:00

Christy Dena writes about perfromance art inside Second Life. This opens up some exciting possibilities for artists. Maybe it is time to think about Beta_Space in Second Life as well.

Blocked

2007-01-15T13:44:00.000+11:00

Google has decided that my blog is a spam blog and is blocking my posts. Booooo! I think this is because of my post on "World of Warcraft". I have requested a review, so hopefully spam-prevention robots will soon change their minds.

Got a Cell Phone!

2007-01-15T13:36:00.000+11:00

Yep, I have caved in. I now have a cell phone. In fact, I have 2 cell phones, one for me, one for Meryl. It was either get a cell phone to coordinate the driving, pick up schedule or get a second car and the cell phone was much cheaper. When you live in Shrewsbury, MA, you drive a lot, so a cell phone is needed to arrange pick ups and drop offs.

Boston Post Mortem

2007-01-13T01:31:00.000+11:00

I attended my first Boston Post Mortem. What a great event. There were ~70 people, mostly game developers, some academics and some independents. Ben Sawyer gave a sneak preview of his GDC Talk about what gamers are doing with games in addition to playing them (art, protests, new games, new interactions, building forums, databases, interfaces, ...). This ties nicely into the class I am teaching

Sexuality in World of Warcraft

2007-01-11T08:19:00.000+11:00

Studying a video game is a difficult task. We apply Consalvo & Dutton's toolkit for the study of qualitative games to World of Warcraft and to test the effectiveness of the toolkit similar to Consalvo & Dutton we examine how sexuality is created and expressed in the game. The question of sexuality is not central to WoW. In fact, unlike Sims explored by Consalvo and Dutton most players may never

Cute squirrel, cute squirrel, EVIL!

2007-01-10T05:34:00.001+11:00

We had a bird feeder. The bird feeder fell down and broke on the balcony. The squirrel (Frank) munched on the seeds to his hearts content. Frank was cute. We liked Frank, so we put more bird food out. Frank ate first. Sylvie came later. Benji only discovered the bird seed on day 3. We thought it was a happy squirrel family except that Frank would beat anybody if they tried toe at before him. And

Sandbox

2007-01-10T02:02:00.001+11:00

An ACM SIGGRAPH VIDEOGAME SYMPOSIUM http://sandbox.siggraph.org/Deadline is 23 March. I would like to put in something. Siggraph is always so much fun.

Hot hot hot

2007-01-09T10:27:00.000+11:00

It is boiling here. OK, not boiling but never in 100 years has January in New England been this warm. I would have worn shorts and t-shirt for walking in Noanet Woodlands if I was not scared of ticks. Meryl is "lucky" enough to have been bitten by New England tick carrying Lyme disease and South African tick carrying all sorts of things, so naturally when you say tick we run! For somebody like

:-( My class may not go ahead!

2007-01-09T10:21:00.000+11:00

I had just created the cool blog for my "Virtual Worlds, Real Communities" class, made my first posting, invited the students to comment and then suddenly I get an email that says the class may not go ahead. /cry It is complicated bureaucracy stuff: an independent study cannot have more than 5 students, to get course approval requires time and committees, there are already 7 students who are

HIVE

2007-01-09T10:04:00.000+11:00

I visited Rob Lindeman's lab, HIVE, wore the tactile vest, put on the HMD and went running around int eh virtual woods with a gun! Sorry, no pictures of me in the vest, you will have to use your imagination. Nice simple idea. You do not get any feedback when you bump into walls in virtual reality. How about wearing a specialized vest that so that if you bump your elbow or walk back into

Happy New Year

2007-01-04T08:24:00.001+11:00

We got a tiny bit of snow just before new year, enough to make it look all pretty.

Visiting MIT Media Lab

2006-12-25T01:05:00.001+11:00

Matt Adcock http://web.media.mit.edu/~matta/ was kind enough to give me a tour of the MIT Media Lab http://www.media.mit.edu/ . Lots of researchers, lots of resources, lots of cool projects. Everybody knows about those. What impressed me was:1) Lots of working demos. The lab is a mess. It does feel like people live in it., cables and CPUs all over the place. And yet, when you find a gadget on a

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media -- Special issue: Gaming in the Asia-Pacific

2006-12-25T00:29:00.001+11:00

Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University) co-chair of IE2007http://www.rmit.edu.au/IE2007 is the editor for the special issue on"Gaming in the Asia-Pacific" for "Games and Culture: A Journal ofInteractive Media" http://gac.sagepub.com/The full CFP is below. Deadline is March 15th.--------------------------------Call for papersGames and Culture: A Journal of Interactive MediaSpecial issue: Gaming in the

Assistant Professor - Interactive Media and Game Development

2006-12-24T00:55:00.001+11:00

There is an Assistant Professor position at IMGD/WPI on GamesThey said they were expecting 100-150 applicants, so competition istough. I like the IMGD program. They have a good mix of CS andHumanities and having been in large Australian universities for sometime, I do have a soft spot for small colleges where you can

Bright Nights

2006-12-24T00:50:00.001+11:00

Took a tour of the Bright Nights Forest Park, Springfield, MAThese people take their lights seriously. It took 30 minutes to drivearound. It is supposed to be 3rd biggest Christmas light show in thecountry.

BSc in Games Development

2006-12-04T10:22:00.000+11:00

The new games degree at UTS will have its first intake of students in 2007. BSc in Games Development is a bit different than many other games programs.First, it is limited to 20 students per year. One thing we don't want to do is flood the games industry with new graduates, so we are focusing on a few select students rather than opening a big degree on games to help University's bottom line.

Game Design \/ Game Programming

2006-12-04T10:01:00.000+11:00

I might be away on sabbatical in 2007, but the games classes will continue, and with some outstanding teachers I might add.Christy Dena will be teaching Game Design in Autumn 2007. Christy is doing her PhD at University of Sydney on storytelling, works as a consultant to film, TV and emerging media practitioners on the cross-media design, distribution and marketing of their property and is on the

Interactive Entertainment 2006

2006-12-04T09:57:00.000+11:00

I am on my way to Interactive Entertainment 2006 conference in Perth. The plane is delayed, something about the oxygen supply which they insisted on fixing before we took off.Kevin Wong has done a great job in organising IE2006. There are so many good speakers, I cannot decide which session to attend. It is good to see the conference I started becoming a successful annual conference series.Plans

UTS Teaching Award

2006-12-04T09:49:00.000+11:00

I have been awarded a 2006 UTS Teaching Award for individual teaching!I am very happy that I decided to put in an application and UTS recognised my good teaching. The application was a bit last minute, but it did come through! Special thanks goes to the students that nominated me: Leandro Balan, Stuart Bryson, Tim Cooper, Anthony Panuccio, Kjartan Ivar Paulsen, Jay Roxas, Graeme Smith, Viggy

Upgrade

2006-12-04T09:30:00.000+11:00

I just got 2GB of memory for my laptop from http://MemorySuppliers.com/ I haven't received the memory yet, but did get an email saying if I posted a link to their webpage, they would give me a $10 credit for the order, so this is an experiment to find out whether they will keep their promise and for the first time whether I can make money from this blog.I will edit this post to provide further

Tracy on NPR: Video Game Programs Look for New Ways to Use Games

2006-11-15T21:17:00.001+11:00

Tracy Fullerton was interviewed on NPR about games. Go listen to it if you have not already. I will be working closely with Tracy next year as part of the IGDA Education SIG effort to revise the model curriculum for game studies. Video Game Programs Look for New Ways to Use GamesMorning Edition, November 14, 2006 · This year, the University ofSouthern California enrolled its first class of

Open Letter to Academic Game Researchers

2006-11-11T10:24:00.001+11:00

In response to John Hopson's article titled "We're Not Listening: An Open Letter to Academic Game Researchers" which appeared onGamasutra on 10 November 2006: http://gamasutra.com/features/20061110/hopson_01.shtml I liked the article. I think it offers good advice to researchers that are in a commercialization stage for their research. I did not find the advice particularly new or insightful,

Adventures in SL

2006-11-08T14:06:00.000+11:00

I ventured into Second Life last night (being a WoW patch night, I had to do something :-)Still trying to get a handle on SL. Having a community is critical. Without people to talk to SL is just a boring landscape with a clunky interface.Lythe Witte was kind enough to take my by the hand, virtually, show me around and hook me with interesting people. I

Horizon Report

2006-11-08T08:02:00.000+11:00

The Horizon Report which came out recently tries to identify emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching and learning in higher education. Here is what they identified: * Social Computing -- Virtual collaboration tools, replacing face-to-face meetings. The Virtual Communities project is all about developing the next generation of tools. Viveka who has just started his

View from my office

2006-10-24T19:23:00.000+10:00

This is the view from my office. Yep, no windows! I have a picture of Everest taken from Kala Patar and an upside-down world map. It is good not to have a window, so I do not get distracted by the beatiful Sydney weather. Yeah, that's right. Sure, it was my choice not to have a window.. NOT!

Reality: Camp Taurajo

2006-10-21T09:58:00.000+10:00

Have you been to Camp Taurajo? Have you seen the kodos? Did you buy the T-shirt? So, Camp Taurajo is not a real place. It is inside World of Warcraft, but does that really make it any less real? You go there with friends, run around, take pictures, watch the animals, have a picnic or more likely kill some monsters and then you go

CGIE2006

2006-10-18T17:09:00.000+10:00

The advanced program for CGIE2006 == CyberGames 2006: International Conference on Games Research and Development + IE2006: The Third Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment is now out.I will be there, so don't miss it http://www.cgie2006.murdoch.edu.au/program.html Oh, there is also a bunch of invited speakers: Elina M.I. Koivisto (Nokia Research Center), Adrian David Cheok (Mixed

A Writer's Life

2006-10-18T16:59:00.000+10:00

It is tough being a writer. Meryl is busily editing her latest book. After 1000+ hours of work, the book is still 351 pages. More hours do not translate to more pages. I think it is better. Her agent thinks it is better, but until we find a publisher that will publish the book, it remains as an "unpublished manuscript".Being a writer is tough. As a researcher, I get plenty of feedback on my

Microsoft Academic Days Conference on Game Development

2006-10-16T14:14:00.000+10:00

Don't miss you chance to come "Aboard the Disney Wonder Cruise Ship" on Microsoft. Yep, Microsoft will cover author's round trip economy air travel to Orlando, Florida plus relevant hotel and cruise cabin expenses.Paper submission closes on Nov 5th, so click now http://www.msadgd07.net/home.asp

You just don't get it!

2006-10-12T12:25:00.000+10:00

You just don't get it! It is a generational issue. It is a cultural issue. It is an issue about how we interact with the world, how we engage in tasks, what we value and despise. Oldies just don't get it. As somebody who is on the cusp of being "old", but refusing to give in, let me try to guide you. [ This blog entry is also available in hardcopy format since oldies cannot read blog. Please

Interview on ABC

2006-10-12T12:24:00.001+10:00

Sometimes I forget that I do not live in the same world as other people. I live in multiple worlds; I have several identities. I have been doing this for some time, so yesterday when the ABC reporter said she had not heard about Second Life, I was dumb-struck. What? Did other people not have multiple identities? Didn't everybody log into World of Warcraft for a quick raid after work or stop by a

8 Weeks and Counting

2006-10-12T12:24:00.000+10:00

8 weeks left. 8 more weekends before I get on a plane and move from Sydney to Shrewsbury, Massachussets for my sabbatical at Worcester Polytechnical University (WPI)'s Interactive Media and Game Development Centre.I am looking forward to the change, but dreading the shock my body will suffer going from a Sydney summer to a New England winter. What sane person will trade a summer on the beach to

Australia Needs to Look Forward

2006-10-11T21:31:00.000+10:00

The Research Quality Framework (RQF), Brendan Nelson’s gift to Minister Julie Bishop, continues to plague the government and universities. Measuring the quality and impact of research seems like a very reasonable goal, a bold effort. The trouble starts when you start building formulas, trying to come up with a number (or in this case a letter between A and D) that can be converted into dollars.

X|Media|Lab

2006-08-12T08:26:00.000+10:00

I just attended X|Media|Lab professional day in Melbourne. Brendan and Megan have done a great job in bringing world leaders in digital media. I was impressed with the quality of the speakers and look forward to how the projects will progress over the weekend. Two special mentions: Current TV -- 30-40% user generated content. Everybody compiles their story, users vote, the best video clips get

Flickr, flickr give me that picture

2006-06-08T17:58:00.000+10:00

Pictures on the web disappear in time, so when I blog I try to get a copy of the origianl picture into the blog. Google has promised up 1GB of space jsut for email, what is a couple for 100Ks for my blog pictures.Trying to steam Tim's picture from flickr, I headed to I right cliked on Tim's photo and used "Save Image As" to my horror what was

Too many languages, too little difference

2006-06-08T17:48:00.000+10:00

What language should I teach my next "Game Programming" subject? Well, it is not like I *teach* a language, but I do push students towards one language or another.C++ is good. It is the primary language used in games industry, but if you do not know C++ already, you might find yourself tearing your hair out as you try to chase memory allocation errors. If you have not groaked C++, you

Out In The Cold

2006-06-08T17:24:00.000+10:00

Out In The Cold or Just out of the Rain? An article in SMH which Tim has blogged describes how DSTC researchers were left out in the cold after DSTC officially closed its door. Tim is currently helping us out on the ACID Virtual Communities project. He has juggled this industry-academia collaboration thing for some number of years, so it is good to have him around. The idea that government

Thursday's Fictions

2006-06-08T17:18:00.000+10:00

I met with Karen Pearlman and Richard Allen to discuss their idea about building a game ligtly based on the movie Thursday's Fictions. I have not seen the movie yet, but the ccocept of Thursday trying to cheat death is intriguing. The fact that ABC bought the right to broadcast is certainly impressive given that ABC seems to be suffering from a continual budget crisis.Back to the game.

Show Me the Publication

2006-06-05T16:21:00.000+10:00

Craig Mudge asks "how could we educate university researchers to better understand the worlds of business and industry?" in his comment piece in the Australian Financial ReviewInteresting question. Craig quotes Allen Consulting and Australian Vice Chancellors Committee report that "it appears that a significant number of university researchers are either ambivalent

Rambling On This and That

*** MOVED ***

Games Everywhere : The Larger Role for Web Platforms and Services for Games & Serious Games

Welcome to Kai Pisan

Guidelines for Social Media Use

JOB: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer for Games at The University of Technology, Sydney

A Fool's Ranking

CFP: FDG 2010: The 5th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

The New Professor

X|Media|Lab on Serious Games

Art Gallery NSW

Interactive Entertainment 2009 is on!!!

To Kindle or not to Kindle

ACM Creativity & Cognition Conference 2009

Learn the truth, challenge the myths

Happy New Year

Fluid Learning -- Maybe soon, but not yet

Default Happiness Level

Nonsymmetric flight prices

Perception: University Professors

Breaking into the Games Industry

Perception

University Rankings

Shallow Networks

Predicting the Future

University Medal

How many Wikipedia's can we produce in a year?

Australian Game Development

Academics to Poor Schools

Education

Job: Animal Logic -- Software Developers/TDs

Jargon Sea

Portable Film Festival

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

SIGGRAPH ASIA

Court upholds ban on Minnesota video game law

Competitive Advantage

The Guild

Games Studio

SXSW results are out

Save the Children

Back from GDCSE

Can a computer play pictionary?

Why I have not been blogging?

Meryl is an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist!

Sloppy Design

Shopping Online in Australia

IE2007 -- Great Conference

EA Acquires BioWare, Pandemic for $860M

Free wifi

Games As Art

Cohousing?

GameON-NA: The conference that wasn't

Davis' Mega Maze

April, May, June, July -- Where have they gone?

GDC Report [Part 2/2]

Wii

GDC Report [Part 1/2]

101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom

MS Conference on Game Development in Computer Science Education

Happy Feet

Train Man

Performance in SL

Blocked

Got a Cell Phone!

Boston Post Mortem

Sexuality in World of Warcraft

Cute squirrel, cute squirrel, EVIL!

Sandbox

Hot hot hot

:-( My class may not go ahead!

HIVE

Happy New Year

Visiting MIT Media Lab

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media -- Special issue: Gaming in the Asia-Pacific

Assistant Professor - Interactive Media and Game Development

Bright Nights

BSc in Games Development

Game Design \/ Game Programming

Interactive Entertainment 2006

* MOVED *