Oh my god... I just saw the most beautiful woman in the history of all that is or ever shall be... Her name's Shoshanna and she's a singer from Michigan. She's absolutely gorgeous and has the voice of an angel... in fact, I'd say she has the most beautiful voice I've ever heard. Kind of like if a flock of turtle-doves and a choir of angels got mushed up together in a blender...
anyway, check her out - http://www.myspace.com/shoshannamusic
I swear, one day, that lady will fall in love with me and I'll make a movie or something about it.
wow.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Please be upstanding...
In a last ditch attempt to get some sort of 'exercise' into my life, I have followed the examples of some dude on the Monsters Inc extras DVD and someone whose office I saw at the ABC last week and have changed my working space based around standing at my desk.
I have my laptop opened to 180 degrees and propped up, a new keyboard in front of it and everything on a chest of drawers so it all sits around waist height. Day one of the experiment went well, with a few twinges from my nearly repaired left medial ligament, but nothing serious. True, I only spent half a day standing, before going to the library and a more traditional desk arrangement, but you've got to build up to these things, especially since I've done almost no physical exercise since tearing up my knee in January*.
Day two is progressing ok, with my core muscles screaming out for a bar stool, but on the whole, I think I'll be able to keep it up for the day.
As a lifelong nerd who spends godawful amounts of time in front of my computer, I think it's a plan that will at worst bring me a little short term leg muscle building and at best be a generally healthier way to use these infernal machines without screwing my spine. I'll definitely keep everyone updated on this one with daily blog posts, no excuses, 2:45pm daily updates...
See you in a few months then :)
* ok, I haven't done any physical exercise since that one time back in 2002, but hey..
I have my laptop opened to 180 degrees and propped up, a new keyboard in front of it and everything on a chest of drawers so it all sits around waist height. Day one of the experiment went well, with a few twinges from my nearly repaired left medial ligament, but nothing serious. True, I only spent half a day standing, before going to the library and a more traditional desk arrangement, but you've got to build up to these things, especially since I've done almost no physical exercise since tearing up my knee in January*.
Day two is progressing ok, with my core muscles screaming out for a bar stool, but on the whole, I think I'll be able to keep it up for the day.
As a lifelong nerd who spends godawful amounts of time in front of my computer, I think it's a plan that will at worst bring me a little short term leg muscle building and at best be a generally healthier way to use these infernal machines without screwing my spine. I'll definitely keep everyone updated on this one with daily blog posts, no excuses, 2:45pm daily updates...
See you in a few months then :)
* ok, I haven't done any physical exercise since that one time back in 2002, but hey..
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Combustion + Premiere
A match made in... well, some place where a crude pidgin is spoken and the inhabitants, while all being kind of the same shape, are nonetheless wildly different in their outlook on the world.
Hmm... did I just compare digital film post production to being some kind of Dutch East India Company Trader doing business with the natives of some exotic land? Is there no subject into which I cannot inject some form of oblique reference to pirates, or at the very least, the world of their romanticised heyday?
No, there is not.
Anyhow, what I'm actually here to talk about is doing low budget digi film making, and specifically how not to lose quality as you export your DV footage from Premiere, import it into Combustion, then out of Combustion, back into Premiere, then out again to your DVD authoring tools.
I've been doing some stuff on this for the last few months, and I was losing colour depth at every step of the way it seemed, so by the time I got to watching a DVD, any shot I'd done any sort of vfx work on (down to colour grading) stuck out like a sore thumb.
I tried different codecs, I tried changing the 3:2 pulldown modes, I tried switching the upper and lower fields' firstness... everything looked just not quite right.
The solution? (or at least - my currently workable solution - I'm sure there's a real, correct way, but I'm a self-taught compositor/grader, so bear with me) is this:
Use TGA's.
It's actually been that simple for me - exporting from Premiere as a sequence of TGA files, then importing and exporting from Combustion as the same (I use 32-bit even though at those stages, I'm not actually screwing around with alpha) then finally re-importing into Premiere, I don't lose/change the colour quality I'm after, and the shots look infinitely better.
There are size issues - a shot exported this way seems to be a little bigger than a DV file, but it's not huge, and hell - if you're dealing with digital video, you'll have enough storage/bandwidth to deal with it!
I hope this helps anyone who's been bashing their head against a similar problem, and if there's anyone reading this who can tell me the correct method for doing this stuff, I would be most pleased to learn how.
At this stage, it's very rudimentary, and the footage on show doesn't have the benefit of being put through any of the above described process, but this is what all this is heading towards:
The Course!
Neeeeeaaaarly finished!
Hmm... did I just compare digital film post production to being some kind of Dutch East India Company Trader doing business with the natives of some exotic land? Is there no subject into which I cannot inject some form of oblique reference to pirates, or at the very least, the world of their romanticised heyday?
No, there is not.
Anyhow, what I'm actually here to talk about is doing low budget digi film making, and specifically how not to lose quality as you export your DV footage from Premiere, import it into Combustion, then out of Combustion, back into Premiere, then out again to your DVD authoring tools.
I've been doing some stuff on this for the last few months, and I was losing colour depth at every step of the way it seemed, so by the time I got to watching a DVD, any shot I'd done any sort of vfx work on (down to colour grading) stuck out like a sore thumb.
I tried different codecs, I tried changing the 3:2 pulldown modes, I tried switching the upper and lower fields' firstness... everything looked just not quite right.
The solution? (or at least - my currently workable solution - I'm sure there's a real, correct way, but I'm a self-taught compositor/grader, so bear with me) is this:
Use TGA's.
It's actually been that simple for me - exporting from Premiere as a sequence of TGA files, then importing and exporting from Combustion as the same (I use 32-bit even though at those stages, I'm not actually screwing around with alpha) then finally re-importing into Premiere, I don't lose/change the colour quality I'm after, and the shots look infinitely better.
There are size issues - a shot exported this way seems to be a little bigger than a DV file, but it's not huge, and hell - if you're dealing with digital video, you'll have enough storage/bandwidth to deal with it!
I hope this helps anyone who's been bashing their head against a similar problem, and if there's anyone reading this who can tell me the correct method for doing this stuff, I would be most pleased to learn how.
At this stage, it's very rudimentary, and the footage on show doesn't have the benefit of being put through any of the above described process, but this is what all this is heading towards:
The Course!
Neeeeeaaaarly finished!
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Blast from the Past
Inspired title eh?
Apparently, once upon a time, long before man had crawled out of the swamps and invented the electric toothbrush, the government used to run, well, anything that actually needed running. Post Offices, Roads, Education, Telecommunications, the Arts... that kind of gumpf. If it was expensive, but necessary, they made sure it got done.
Now it appears one of our partial government departments has decided to return the heady days of yore and go into the 'business' of taking physcical items from one location and getting them into the hands of, that's right - you guessed it - citizens at home. And who might be making these bold moves? Why - our very own one third owned Telstra -bless 'em. What more do I need from my national telecommunication provider than a damn dvd I should be able to download in a fraction the time it takes them to stick it in the damn post*?
I know, I know, this is old news, and in a moment I'm going to go over the 'economic rationalism' of selling off Telstra in print in the hopes that the stupidity of it stops kicking around in my head after all these years.
So instead of doing something useful with my tax dollar and two dollars of some stock market gambler, like, oh, I don't know - laying enough cable so that people in the bush can A) not pay $100+ a month for blistering 256k 'broadband' and B) maybe make a phone call to a flying doctor or two when one of their relatives is dying - the powers that be have decided that it makes sense for Telstra to become an entertainment content provider. What gives? Well many things, but I discovered something the other day that points to that old saying: "Never ascribe to malice what you can put down to incompetance"
They're just plain stupid.**
So, there's this dude. Greg Winn they call him. According to this article on ZDnet he is "considered Telstra's second-in-charge and oversees most of the carrier's big product decisions."
Fine. All well and good. I'm sure he's got an MBA*** so he must be suitable to run a company, er, semi-former government department. So what pearls of wisdom does Mr Winn have to share with us about Apple's new iPhone?
If the 2IC of our national carrier doesn't even know about the current state of the industry, how the hell can he help lead it into the future?
Ok, enough ranting from me. But before I go, let's throw some numbers around, with regards to 'making money by selling Telstra'
Let's say, pre-sale, Telstra was a fantastically elaborate work-for-the dole scheme, that employed a lot of people, and made approximately three billion dollars a year and just about kept to its mandate of allowing all the people who live in our country to talk to each other. Let's say that you wanted to sell it off - to make more money. So you ask for fifteen billion dollars. Wow - that's a lot of money! Great. So, after a year, you're ahead - even after two or three. But, wait - six years have passed (and because someone somewhere hates us all, that same government is still in power) and now we get no more money from them. For ever. How on earth does that make sense? If someone can tell me how, I'm actually quite curious to know.
In the meantime? Telstra - LAY SOME FUCKING CABLE YOU CHEAP WANKERS.
* I should say at this point, I do love Australia Post - sure, they're not the fastest in the world, but for some reason I actually really enjoy going into post offices - I actually had to post something to Beverly Hills - that's 90210 - the other week, and damn did it feel good!
** I would have also accepted 'uninformed' or 'They just plain don't give a flying rat's monkey'
*** I'm sure it's like lawyers with this bunch - the 99% giving that 1% the bad name. Ok, to be fair, people I've met with MBAs have all been fine. MBA students, particularly the ones I sold books to over 5 years, can all go to hell
Apparently, once upon a time, long before man had crawled out of the swamps and invented the electric toothbrush, the government used to run, well, anything that actually needed running. Post Offices, Roads, Education, Telecommunications, the Arts... that kind of gumpf. If it was expensive, but necessary, they made sure it got done.
Now it appears one of our partial government departments has decided to return the heady days of yore and go into the 'business' of taking physcical items from one location and getting them into the hands of, that's right - you guessed it - citizens at home. And who might be making these bold moves? Why - our very own one third owned Telstra -bless 'em. What more do I need from my national telecommunication provider than a damn dvd I should be able to download in a fraction the time it takes them to stick it in the damn post*?
I know, I know, this is old news, and in a moment I'm going to go over the 'economic rationalism' of selling off Telstra in print in the hopes that the stupidity of it stops kicking around in my head after all these years.
So instead of doing something useful with my tax dollar and two dollars of some stock market gambler, like, oh, I don't know - laying enough cable so that people in the bush can A) not pay $100+ a month for blistering 256k 'broadband' and B) maybe make a phone call to a flying doctor or two when one of their relatives is dying - the powers that be have decided that it makes sense for Telstra to become an entertainment content provider. What gives? Well many things, but I discovered something the other day that points to that old saying: "Never ascribe to malice what you can put down to incompetance"
They're just plain stupid.**
So, there's this dude. Greg Winn they call him. According to this article on ZDnet he is "considered Telstra's second-in-charge and oversees most of the carrier's big product decisions."
Fine. All well and good. I'm sure he's got an MBA*** so he must be suitable to run a company, er, semi-former government department. So what pearls of wisdom does Mr Winn have to share with us about Apple's new iPhone?
"You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality.""Will be coming out with..." Will be? Ok, so, I'll forgive the guy for not being a Mac tragic and not watching the keynote address where the iPhone was announced, but please - Steve Jobs said it himself - all these other so-called 'smart' phones have this functionality already. They're not going to follow Apple's lead by putting web browsing on a phone because they simply don't need to - they already do it. All Apple have done is create a phone that people will actually be able to USE these existing functions on.
If the 2IC of our national carrier doesn't even know about the current state of the industry, how the hell can he help lead it into the future?
Ok, enough ranting from me. But before I go, let's throw some numbers around, with regards to 'making money by selling Telstra'
Let's say, pre-sale, Telstra was a fantastically elaborate work-for-the dole scheme, that employed a lot of people, and made approximately three billion dollars a year and just about kept to its mandate of allowing all the people who live in our country to talk to each other. Let's say that you wanted to sell it off - to make more money. So you ask for fifteen billion dollars. Wow - that's a lot of money! Great. So, after a year, you're ahead - even after two or three. But, wait - six years have passed (and because someone somewhere hates us all, that same government is still in power) and now we get no more money from them. For ever. How on earth does that make sense? If someone can tell me how, I'm actually quite curious to know.
In the meantime? Telstra - LAY SOME FUCKING CABLE YOU CHEAP WANKERS.
* I should say at this point, I do love Australia Post - sure, they're not the fastest in the world, but for some reason I actually really enjoy going into post offices - I actually had to post something to Beverly Hills - that's 90210 - the other week, and damn did it feel good!
** I would have also accepted 'uninformed' or 'They just plain don't give a flying rat's monkey'
*** I'm sure it's like lawyers with this bunch - the 99% giving that 1% the bad name. Ok, to be fair, people I've met with MBAs have all been fine. MBA students, particularly the ones I sold books to over 5 years, can all go to hell
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Argh, or, How I learned to keep motivated when at my wits' end.
Ok, doubtful placements of apostrophes in the title aside, and inspired by jim's new blog, I have decided to resurrect this old blog thing and start griping again. Actually, this isn't so much a post as a query of my loyal readership (who I am sure have all moved on to bigger and better blogs by now, but be that as it may be)
How the hell do you keep yourself motivated to do stuff that should be fun, but has long since lost all its enchantment?
You know how it is, you start a project - it's new, it's cool, and you love every aspect of it. You work hard, and then you work harder - it's going gangbusters and you're loving every sleep deprived minute of it. Then time moves on. The project continues. People's roles in it finish, and they move on to other things, and there's still a million things to do. So you do them - gotta get it finished - and then there's more things to do, then more, then more, plus you're getting committments on other projects - more fun things, more pressing things... technical issues are getting in the way of doing what you set out to do, and you seem to spend more time fighting them than creating your vision...
I often wonder if really amazing creations, like Jaws or the Sistene Chapel roof went through such periods of slog, and assuming that they did (which I hope is an accurate assumption) - how the hell did Steven Spielberg and Michelangelo keep themselves going through the perspiration times.
By my nature, I am disorganised and am a creature of the start of projects - ideas are fun and easy to bounce around and play with. But an idea without completion is worth nothing and I sure as hell don't want to be the proud producer of a whole lot of nothing. So, I'm trying to improve my completion outlook and decrease my procrastination coefficient. I have only two methods that I can really point to as successful ones.
The first I stumbled upon by happy chance, and that is to work with two other people. If you're working on something day in, day out, it actually takes three to keep everyone motivated. It's easy for two people to get sidetracked and for heaps of not work to get done. I don't know what the upper limit on this is, but I'd imagine it wouldn't be that large a number - probably less than a dozen working on a single part of a project. This technique seems to work pretty well, as evidenced in Exhibit A.
The second is to set a deadline. This has been imparted to me by many people. Some call it 'goal setting,' others don't. Basically it boils down to the old saying "If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done." Unfortunately, the nature of some of my projects is to not actually have last minutes, so you have to artificially create them, or find them somewhere. This can be difficult.
Deadlines, working with other people, cups of tea and updating your blog... no, wait... that last one doesn't help. Damn!
So... if anyone has any ideas on how to get yourself re- re- re- re- re- re- re- re-motivated, let me know!
How the hell do you keep yourself motivated to do stuff that should be fun, but has long since lost all its enchantment?
You know how it is, you start a project - it's new, it's cool, and you love every aspect of it. You work hard, and then you work harder - it's going gangbusters and you're loving every sleep deprived minute of it. Then time moves on. The project continues. People's roles in it finish, and they move on to other things, and there's still a million things to do. So you do them - gotta get it finished - and then there's more things to do, then more, then more, plus you're getting committments on other projects - more fun things, more pressing things... technical issues are getting in the way of doing what you set out to do, and you seem to spend more time fighting them than creating your vision...
I often wonder if really amazing creations, like Jaws or the Sistene Chapel roof went through such periods of slog, and assuming that they did (which I hope is an accurate assumption) - how the hell did Steven Spielberg and Michelangelo keep themselves going through the perspiration times.
By my nature, I am disorganised and am a creature of the start of projects - ideas are fun and easy to bounce around and play with. But an idea without completion is worth nothing and I sure as hell don't want to be the proud producer of a whole lot of nothing. So, I'm trying to improve my completion outlook and decrease my procrastination coefficient. I have only two methods that I can really point to as successful ones.
The first I stumbled upon by happy chance, and that is to work with two other people. If you're working on something day in, day out, it actually takes three to keep everyone motivated. It's easy for two people to get sidetracked and for heaps of not work to get done. I don't know what the upper limit on this is, but I'd imagine it wouldn't be that large a number - probably less than a dozen working on a single part of a project. This technique seems to work pretty well, as evidenced in Exhibit A.
The second is to set a deadline. This has been imparted to me by many people. Some call it 'goal setting,' others don't. Basically it boils down to the old saying "If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done." Unfortunately, the nature of some of my projects is to not actually have last minutes, so you have to artificially create them, or find them somewhere. This can be difficult.
Deadlines, working with other people, cups of tea and updating your blog... no, wait... that last one doesn't help. Damn!
So... if anyone has any ideas on how to get yourself re- re- re- re- re- re- re- re-motivated, let me know!
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Fifthlist is here!
That little list above is coming straight from my account over on www.fifthlist.com, the latest and greatest web service from the people who brought you jebediah.net and pretty much any aussie band site worth mentioning in the last decade.
Head on over, grab yourself and account and start putting your lists in your blogs/myspace things and google homepages!
Nice work Harman!
Thursday, September 21, 2006
in ol' melbourne town
Hi all who still remember this thing's here (it seems I'd forgotten until just recently)
I'm back in melbourne to do the edit and composite/vfx work on our film. It's just like catching up with old friends, seeing all the brilliant performances from everyone in the cast and remembering all the good times on set... ahh, the party scene...
anyhow, more on the wonders of low budget filmmaking later, this post is mainly to link to a couple of blogs that need mentioning...
First up, we have Rockran's new blog of his Japanese adventures, which can be found here: RockranRollTokyo
Then we have cuzz'n Piptoi's gestation blogation... well, I'm not sure really... I'll post that one a bit later when I've worked out where it is!
and finally we have Save The Austin! Dad's blog of the restoration of his 1929 Baby Austin 7 in time for me big sister's wedding. Go Dutti Go!
join us next time, when we'll discuss how to solve cutting room arguments between the director, writer and editor ;)
khrob
I'm back in melbourne to do the edit and composite/vfx work on our film. It's just like catching up with old friends, seeing all the brilliant performances from everyone in the cast and remembering all the good times on set... ahh, the party scene...
anyhow, more on the wonders of low budget filmmaking later, this post is mainly to link to a couple of blogs that need mentioning...
First up, we have Rockran's new blog of his Japanese adventures, which can be found here: RockranRollTokyo
Then we have cuzz'n Piptoi's gestation blogation... well, I'm not sure really... I'll post that one a bit later when I've worked out where it is!
and finally we have Save The Austin! Dad's blog of the restoration of his 1929 Baby Austin 7 in time for me big sister's wedding. Go Dutti Go!
join us next time, when we'll discuss how to solve cutting room arguments between the director, writer and editor ;)
khrob
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
I've been doing this too long
Walking through the city this morning, I saw a sign up ahead for a store called "The Original SoupMan"
I wondered in earnest what they could possibly be selling. Imagine my surprise when i drew level with the store, only to discover they were purveyors of fine liquid foods.
I honestly hadn't even considered it.
I wondered in earnest what they could possibly be selling. Imagine my surprise when i drew level with the store, only to discover they were purveyors of fine liquid foods.
I honestly hadn't even considered it.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Still More Lesson One
Wacoming this stuff can be a little tedious - I did some on paper this evening, but have no scanner here, so you'll just have to beleive me that they're better than tonight's digital offering!
That said, having ctrl+z at your fingertips gives you freedom to be very bold with your lines, which I'm enjoying (except when I go back to paper and pens/pencils/etc - my right hand is constantly looking for a keyboard that isn't there!)
I'm not going on to lesson two until John K gives me the ok! You hear that John?! I'm gonna keep posting these things until you say...
Feedback/help from anyone would be welcomed in the meantime!
That said, having ctrl+z at your fingertips gives you freedom to be very bold with your lines, which I'm enjoying (except when I go back to paper and pens/pencils/etc - my right hand is constantly looking for a keyboard that isn't there!)
I'm not going on to lesson two until John K gives me the ok! You hear that John?! I'm gonna keep posting these things until you say...
Feedback/help from anyone would be welcomed in the meantime!
Friday, May 12, 2006
Lesson One Part Three
Here are some comparisons and redraws with discrepancies marked in red.
Again, this was all done straight to the wacom. The only image manipulation was scaling to get the approximate sizes of my pics and the originals about the same.
Glad to see some other people getting into this as well - Happy drawing/animating to all!
Oh yes - before I go - here's the first rough animation I've done in flash (yes, it's not in HD, but the next ones will be)
Looking forward to looking back on this one and laughing - oh wait, I am already!
Again, this was all done straight to the wacom. The only image manipulation was scaling to get the approximate sizes of my pics and the originals about the same.
Glad to see some other people getting into this as well - Happy drawing/animating to all!
Oh yes - before I go - here's the first rough animation I've done in flash (yes, it's not in HD, but the next ones will be)
Looking forward to looking back on this one and laughing - oh wait, I am already!
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Ein Neuer Anfang
And with that quote from The Rocketeer, we begin a new direction in T&T&T's life. I'm finally getting around to doing that thing I've wanted to do since I was 6 years old - becoming a 2d animator. Of course, I'm still hard at work at good ol' Souptoys, but in the evenings, with a white russian in one hand and a Wacom Graphire 3 in the other, it's time to get down to the serious business of drawing 'n stuff.
But that's not all folks! (Hah! - you see what I did there?) I'm not only going to do this without paper (alias sketchbook and flash all the way) - I'm going to do the whole thing...
in HIGH DEFINITION!
That's right! Every animation and pic you see posted here will be rendered in crisp, clear, 1920x1080 HD.
The course I'm doing can be found here
Let's go! Before we I get onto lesson one part one (Make an egg model and draw it from several angles using the techniques of construction) I decided to get my hand in with some circles. Here they are:
Mmmmm - jpeggy. Right. On with Lesson One:
Make an egg model and draw it from several angles using the techniques of construction.
I'm going to post before I lost this... Next steps of lesson one coming real soon now.
But that's not all folks! (Hah! - you see what I did there?) I'm not only going to do this without paper (alias sketchbook and flash all the way) - I'm going to do the whole thing...
in HIGH DEFINITION!
That's right! Every animation and pic you see posted here will be rendered in crisp, clear, 1920x1080 HD.
The course I'm doing can be found here
Let's go! Before we I get onto lesson one part one (Make an egg model and draw it from several angles using the techniques of construction) I decided to get my hand in with some circles. Here they are:
Mmmmm - jpeggy. Right. On with Lesson One:
Make an egg model and draw it from several angles using the techniques of construction.
I'm going to post before I lost this... Next steps of lesson one coming real soon now.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Stupid Smart People
Or as my close personal friend Bruce Campbell might have said, had it not ended up on the cutting room floor: "Oh, you STUPID Wise Men!"
Perhaps an even more appropriate title might be 'Intelligent Ignorami'
Example the first: My older sister, aged around 13, playing Mario on my new gameboy. I thought it was funny that she would jerk her hands upward as she tried to make Mario jump. Seems the joke was on me.
Example the second: A few years ago, showing my mate Has how to model in 3D Studio Max. His first response - "Why can't I just draw it?" Good question.
I'm fortunate to be surrounded by them. They're intelligent folk, who have no idea about something you do, or want to. If I were a publisher looking for someone to write a textbook, I'd look for someone very intelligent who knows as little as possible about the subject, and get them to write it in an almost diary-like fashion, so students get how someone actually learned the topic, rather than how someone thinks they should learn it.
Just a thought.
And for those back home to whom I haven't waxed lyrical on the subject - I have found a new ideal career - As a tourguide, punting along the river Cam. Big thanks to Lu for putting a roof over my head and introducing me to so many fun people while I was in Cambridge the other week!
"It's dot com!"
Perhaps an even more appropriate title might be 'Intelligent Ignorami'
Example the first: My older sister, aged around 13, playing Mario on my new gameboy. I thought it was funny that she would jerk her hands upward as she tried to make Mario jump. Seems the joke was on me.
Example the second: A few years ago, showing my mate Has how to model in 3D Studio Max. His first response - "Why can't I just draw it?" Good question.
I'm fortunate to be surrounded by them. They're intelligent folk, who have no idea about something you do, or want to. If I were a publisher looking for someone to write a textbook, I'd look for someone very intelligent who knows as little as possible about the subject, and get them to write it in an almost diary-like fashion, so students get how someone actually learned the topic, rather than how someone thinks they should learn it.
Just a thought.
And for those back home to whom I haven't waxed lyrical on the subject - I have found a new ideal career - As a tourguide, punting along the river Cam. Big thanks to Lu for putting a roof over my head and introducing me to so many fun people while I was in Cambridge the other week!
"It's dot com!"
Friday, March 03, 2006
It's Time To Play
At long, long last, our little project is live and active...
Come and get the world's coolest desktop toys from Souptoys!
I'll be doing more philosophical bloggings on the subject of toys soon, but in the mean time, I hope you like them!
Khrob
Come and get the world's coolest desktop toys from Souptoys!
I'll be doing more philosophical bloggings on the subject of toys soon, but in the mean time, I hope you like them!
Khrob
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Filing a Provisional Patent
Here is what to do if you want to file a provisional patent application at the USPTO with their ePave and EBX/THX/BLAH templates:
Forget it.
This is by no means definitive, but after many days and long nights trying to decipher the online system, I thought I'd put up our final procedure.
Get yourself to www.nolo.com, and find this book and buy it. Read it. Answer the 9 questions. (Some are easier than others, but I still had to check the spelling on 'Khrob')
Once you've gone through their stuff on how to write it, get these forms:
The Cover Sheet
The Fee Transmittal Form
Credit Card Payment Form
Print them out, fill them in, and (here's the tricky part) Go to the post office and send them from there. (Along with your actual application stuff of course) Send them registered mail and be sure to include the return postcard with the details it says in the nolo book on it.
Because it's registered, you are effectively filing it there and then, and can get on with utilising your invention instead of worrying about how to protect the thing.
This information is provided purely for interests sake, in the hope that someone googling at 3 in the morning stumbles across it and it is of some help. I have no desire to discuss the matter further - for me, the subject of patents is now closed. Yes, the area of software patenting is full of interesting issues, annoyances and stupidities, but truth be told, I just don't care. Please feel free to put any corrections/addenda into comments below for the benefit of those who come after (or if circumstances change). Like I say - that's me and Provisional Patents turning our backs on each other for what I hope is a long time.
Good luck with your provisional patenting
Forget it.
This is by no means definitive, but after many days and long nights trying to decipher the online system, I thought I'd put up our final procedure.
Get yourself to www.nolo.com, and find this book and buy it. Read it. Answer the 9 questions. (Some are easier than others, but I still had to check the spelling on 'Khrob')
Once you've gone through their stuff on how to write it, get these forms:
The Cover Sheet
The Fee Transmittal Form
Credit Card Payment Form
Print them out, fill them in, and (here's the tricky part) Go to the post office and send them from there. (Along with your actual application stuff of course) Send them registered mail and be sure to include the return postcard with the details it says in the nolo book on it.
Because it's registered, you are effectively filing it there and then, and can get on with utilising your invention instead of worrying about how to protect the thing.
This information is provided purely for interests sake, in the hope that someone googling at 3 in the morning stumbles across it and it is of some help. I have no desire to discuss the matter further - for me, the subject of patents is now closed. Yes, the area of software patenting is full of interesting issues, annoyances and stupidities, but truth be told, I just don't care. Please feel free to put any corrections/addenda into comments below for the benefit of those who come after (or if circumstances change). Like I say - that's me and Provisional Patents turning our backs on each other for what I hope is a long time.
Good luck with your provisional patenting
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Adventure Gaming
As we wind up to our ever delayed launch (4 to 6 weeks, I swear) and I spend more and more time bashing my head against php and html in notepad (one day I'll get a visual html editor, I swear*) my mind keeps itself handily away from my work by thinking about adventure games and the lack of good ones these days. (I'll stop putting things in brackets after every thought at some point in this post, I swear)
The sad thing was that even back in the day, when adventure games ruled the EGA, most of them were pretty crap. Sure, there were some absolute classics, but it wasn't as rose-tinted as I like to recall. I think that was just the blue gun in my monitor giving up.
The gold was pure though, thanks to these men and the other luminaries at Lucasarts. Great days.
So it was, with great excitement that I downloaded the demo for Bone. I loved the comics (Bish, you'll get them back one day) and I loved adventure games. And possibly it was the unrealistic expectations I had given myself in the short time between discovering and playing the game, but I was to be both exhilarated (hurrah!) and disappointed (boohoo)
Don't take this as a negative review - I've played the game for a sum total of maybe 12 minutes, which qualifies no one to apply the 'review' moniker on anything. It just stirred some thoughts. First off though, the good bits:
The animation, design sound and puzzles. Animation was beautiful, the design of everything was very true to the source and the puzzles, such as they were, were quick and fun. The voices were well performed and the characterisation faultless.
So... where did it fall down for me?
Point 1 - It was very linear. The flow went like thus: Be on a screen. Solve the puzzle/s. Move to the next screen. Latherrinserepeat. In the opening sequence, I forgave this, knowing the story and knowing that the 'game proper' would take place in the valley, but Bone would have to get there from the desert first. I quite liked the notion of ludicrously simple puzzles and nice animations with some character control as an introduction. It worked for me, were I to do the same thing in a game, I would keep this to around 5 minutes.
Then I get into The Valley, where I meet a character I had in fact totally forgotten from reading the comic, which was a nice surprise. But from this point on, I was hampered by having to solve a puzzle to move any further into the game. Yes, the puzzles were nice, and yes, changing the character I controlled to make a different kind of puzzle available to me was refreshing, but this is an Adventure Game - not a hypercard stack of puzzles! I want to explore. I want to find out about this world. I want to meet interesting characters and talk to them when _I_ think it's time. There is a way to do this, if you follow Ron's Guidelines. You could make a valid argument for the linear puzzle genre, but in making things a little more open, when the player reaches a puzzle that takes a little more thought to solve, they'll move away from it and look at some other aspect of the game, instead of (like me) remembering that they're meant to be working and exiting. This wasn't such a problem in the old days. Somehow over a few months you'd scrape together your $70 and then buy the latest Noun's Quest. But in today's try before you buy world of gaming, you don't want anything that reminds the player they could (and probably should) be doing other things.
The other thing that didn't work for me was the dialogue interface. The dialogue itself was very well executed, and there were even some puzzles based on it very early on, where you could (in the one conversation) pit two other characters against each other. My problem comes from the doubling up of information. When I have just read my three possible choices for my next contribution to the conversation, I don't want to wait around while my character reads the line again before I get to what I really want - to hear the other character's reply. I don't care how good the acting is, it's just repetition. Which is dull. Repetition is dull. It's not interesting... repeating things.
And another thing - Let me click through dialogue. I can read faster than characters can speak. We don't have a 'language' for games in the way films, plays and the various forms of literature have. These 'languages' are used to describe the progression of the audience through the information in the story. The progression or flow is used to suggest and dictate mood and interest. In games, and especially in adventure games, the flow is on getting peices of information and _using_ that knowledge to solve the puzzle, not the presentation of the information. It's about action, not immersion.
The team behind Bone have done some fantastic things to breathe life back into a genre that could be so popular (and profitable!) both in terms of modernising the graphics and their business model. If we can solve a few of the teething issues I mention, there's so much fun we could have.
To sum up (and add a few things):
- Give me a definite goal but freedom to approach it from different angles (even if there is only one correct solution)
- Don't double up on the information delivery
- Let me click through dialogue and cut scenes
- Don't have cut scenes
- Except where they're REALLY necessary
- Seriously - even if they're funny.
- And when you do have them - keep the really short. Really short.
Oh, and anyone out there writing an adventure game, or thinking of doing so - take another very important lesson from Monkey Island: Use A Five Act Structure. It Works. It Keeps Goals Clear For The Player. It works across so many genres of storytelling that in not using it you're just being arrogant. If you don't beleive me, play Monkey Island again. I just can't beleive how few games that followed did the smart thing and copied it.
Seriously. Use a five act structure.
Damn I want to make an adventure game now. Maybe I'll just go to bed instead.
* if notepad had tabs on it, and a goto line number option in one of its menus, I'd never need another text editor. Ah well.
The sad thing was that even back in the day, when adventure games ruled the EGA, most of them were pretty crap. Sure, there were some absolute classics, but it wasn't as rose-tinted as I like to recall. I think that was just the blue gun in my monitor giving up.
The gold was pure though, thanks to these men and the other luminaries at Lucasarts. Great days.
So it was, with great excitement that I downloaded the demo for Bone. I loved the comics (Bish, you'll get them back one day) and I loved adventure games. And possibly it was the unrealistic expectations I had given myself in the short time between discovering and playing the game, but I was to be both exhilarated (hurrah!) and disappointed (boohoo)
Don't take this as a negative review - I've played the game for a sum total of maybe 12 minutes, which qualifies no one to apply the 'review' moniker on anything. It just stirred some thoughts. First off though, the good bits:
The animation, design sound and puzzles. Animation was beautiful, the design of everything was very true to the source and the puzzles, such as they were, were quick and fun. The voices were well performed and the characterisation faultless.
So... where did it fall down for me?
Point 1 - It was very linear. The flow went like thus: Be on a screen. Solve the puzzle/s. Move to the next screen. Latherrinserepeat. In the opening sequence, I forgave this, knowing the story and knowing that the 'game proper' would take place in the valley, but Bone would have to get there from the desert first. I quite liked the notion of ludicrously simple puzzles and nice animations with some character control as an introduction. It worked for me, were I to do the same thing in a game, I would keep this to around 5 minutes.
Then I get into The Valley, where I meet a character I had in fact totally forgotten from reading the comic, which was a nice surprise. But from this point on, I was hampered by having to solve a puzzle to move any further into the game. Yes, the puzzles were nice, and yes, changing the character I controlled to make a different kind of puzzle available to me was refreshing, but this is an Adventure Game - not a hypercard stack of puzzles! I want to explore. I want to find out about this world. I want to meet interesting characters and talk to them when _I_ think it's time. There is a way to do this, if you follow Ron's Guidelines. You could make a valid argument for the linear puzzle genre, but in making things a little more open, when the player reaches a puzzle that takes a little more thought to solve, they'll move away from it and look at some other aspect of the game, instead of (like me) remembering that they're meant to be working and exiting. This wasn't such a problem in the old days. Somehow over a few months you'd scrape together your $70 and then buy the latest Noun's Quest. But in today's try before you buy world of gaming, you don't want anything that reminds the player they could (and probably should) be doing other things.
The other thing that didn't work for me was the dialogue interface. The dialogue itself was very well executed, and there were even some puzzles based on it very early on, where you could (in the one conversation) pit two other characters against each other. My problem comes from the doubling up of information. When I have just read my three possible choices for my next contribution to the conversation, I don't want to wait around while my character reads the line again before I get to what I really want - to hear the other character's reply. I don't care how good the acting is, it's just repetition. Which is dull. Repetition is dull. It's not interesting... repeating things.
And another thing - Let me click through dialogue. I can read faster than characters can speak. We don't have a 'language' for games in the way films, plays and the various forms of literature have. These 'languages' are used to describe the progression of the audience through the information in the story. The progression or flow is used to suggest and dictate mood and interest. In games, and especially in adventure games, the flow is on getting peices of information and _using_ that knowledge to solve the puzzle, not the presentation of the information. It's about action, not immersion.
The team behind Bone have done some fantastic things to breathe life back into a genre that could be so popular (and profitable!) both in terms of modernising the graphics and their business model. If we can solve a few of the teething issues I mention, there's so much fun we could have.
To sum up (and add a few things):
- Give me a definite goal but freedom to approach it from different angles (even if there is only one correct solution)
- Don't double up on the information delivery
- Let me click through dialogue and cut scenes
- Don't have cut scenes
- Except where they're REALLY necessary
- Seriously - even if they're funny.
- And when you do have them - keep the really short. Really short.
Oh, and anyone out there writing an adventure game, or thinking of doing so - take another very important lesson from Monkey Island: Use A Five Act Structure. It Works. It Keeps Goals Clear For The Player. It works across so many genres of storytelling that in not using it you're just being arrogant. If you don't beleive me, play Monkey Island again. I just can't beleive how few games that followed did the smart thing and copied it.
Seriously. Use a five act structure.
Damn I want to make an adventure game now. Maybe I'll just go to bed instead.
* if notepad had tabs on it, and a goto line number option in one of its menus, I'd never need another text editor. Ah well.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
So close!
As all five of you out there who read this thing with any degree of regularity may have noticed, our beloved souptoys.com has yet to go live as semi-scheduled. While this is a little disappointing, it's way easier to take than releasing with a product that is almost completely awesome.
The boys have been putting in superhuman performances. 'Bed' is a strange concept these cabin-bound days. 'Sleep' I find even less familiar, because even once the body cries "Enough!" at around 4:00 or 4:30am, the brain takes that much longer to slow down. On the plus side, this means I've read more books in the last 6 weeks than I did all last year. (This is actually not much of an acheivement)
It's not as though forces beyond our control got the better of us. What snow we've had here has been very calm and well-mannered. It's simply that when you're a group of three perfectionists who will happily argue for hours over the colour of a translucent column of pixels for a button that will be seen occasionally by advanced users, everything takes that little bit longer.
And judging from the responses we've had from the alpha - it's worth it!
One of the best responses I've had was that it "looks so professional!" Even with a slight tone of surprise in there, that's a compliment. Mind you - it's not like we've been doing nothing these last 17 months!
So the current release plan? Maybe friday? When it's done?
Or, to quote old Sierra Catalogs:
RSN*
We thought it'd be a good idea to have an early night tonight - recharge a bit for tomorrow. How the hell did it become 02:15am?
Happy 21st Alex!
hvd cfkkafsdsmrjmmc
Khrob out
* Real Soon Now
The boys have been putting in superhuman performances. 'Bed' is a strange concept these cabin-bound days. 'Sleep' I find even less familiar, because even once the body cries "Enough!" at around 4:00 or 4:30am, the brain takes that much longer to slow down. On the plus side, this means I've read more books in the last 6 weeks than I did all last year. (This is actually not much of an acheivement)
It's not as though forces beyond our control got the better of us. What snow we've had here has been very calm and well-mannered. It's simply that when you're a group of three perfectionists who will happily argue for hours over the colour of a translucent column of pixels for a button that will be seen occasionally by advanced users, everything takes that little bit longer.
And judging from the responses we've had from the alpha - it's worth it!
One of the best responses I've had was that it "looks so professional!" Even with a slight tone of surprise in there, that's a compliment. Mind you - it's not like we've been doing nothing these last 17 months!
So the current release plan? Maybe friday? When it's done?
Or, to quote old Sierra Catalogs:
RSN*
We thought it'd be a good idea to have an early night tonight - recharge a bit for tomorrow. How the hell did it become 02:15am?
Happy 21st Alex!
hvd cfkkafsdsmrjmmc
Khrob out
* Real Soon Now
Monday, February 06, 2006
Step One
So how does one set about becoming a toymaker in these modern times? I'm no master carpenter; my skills with injection molding are haphazard at best, and that's leaving my sewing 'skills' entirely unmentioned.
Being a nerd helps. Following the resounding lack of wider interest that was 'Raptor Crunch' (coming soon to a crappy java game site near you) the SoupCrew decided to take a different approach. To fully understand this approach, I think it's necessary to form some sort of appreciation of 'Napes'...
Now, 'Napes' or Napier St was not something you could call unique. It was a house dwelled in by two (then later three) uni students. As such, one could expect certain things. Couches on the front verandah. A dead garden. The slightly odd smell that never seemed to go (and was there when we arrived, we swear). 7 meals in 8 cooked on the BBQ (in our case, the mighty 'Beff Baron'). A student house. A place where everyone knows your name. A drop in house of late night imbibery.
They say cleanliness is next to godliness. We were directly across the road from a church. Whether that qualifies us as 'clean' I dread to think, but there you go. (Someone 'liberated' the flag from the church at one of our more.... elongated... parties one evening. I kinda feel bad about that, but it wasn't me, so hey.)
But I'm sure you know the place. You went there a million times during your time at uni. Maybe you picked up your cigarette butts and maybe you didn't. I'm not here to judge. What Napes was though, was a place where ideas could get a good discussion. We had a tradition with some good mates in the Napes days... that of the curry night. Tuesday nights (before we declared Tuesday a freeloader on the 'week') were often a night where a goodly group of us would congregate, eat a curry prepared by one or more of the attendees, and several relaxing ales were taken alongside extensive discussion of our beloved nerdly industry.
Ideas for sharing networks, quiz shows, top five ratings systems and many many more were bandied around at these evenings. Do you know why Pixar invests so much time in storyboarding? It's because one person with a pencil can draw a shot from a film in 20 seconds, and from that sketch, it can be determined whether it's worth letting the other 40 people who have to work on that shot, frame by frame, to get it to the big screen. 20 seconds from one person is a hell of a lot cheaper than a day or a week from 40 others, and even if that person has to draw that shot 600 times, you still wind up with a better product. That's what curry nights were at Napes (and Railway; and Jimbo's; I'm just making a long-winded point here). They were test-beds for ideas.
Some ideas stick.
Others insinuate themselves into your head and kick around there. But the point is, it's easier to shoot down lots of ideas with intelligent and informed mates, than it is to take an idea and try and prove it yourself. Discussion is the storyboard of the startup. I know you've got friends. Cook them a curry. Tell them to bring beer. Talk about what you're thinking of. If an idea deserves to die a cold, heartless death in the idea wasteland, it will soon get shot down.
Just don't be afraid of your ideas shrivelling under that process. One of the hardest things to reassure yourself about is that you WILL have more ideas. Some will be crap. Some will be fantastic. Just don't stop throwing them out there when one does get shot down. This is what the curry and alcohol is for. It both cushions the fall of bad ideas, and encourages... well... abstract thought about the good ideas. Don't worry though - more ideas WILL come.
I'm sure I've said it before, but we have a rule at Souptoys: "All ideas MUST be stated." If you have a bad idea in your head, and you don't tell anyone, it's taking up room for good ideas in that noggin' of yours. Get it out there. We're fortunate in that we're essentially a few mates, and we take the bad ideas with the good; if you have to work a little harder at making an environment where bad ideas aren't used against their originator, so be it. I swear it'll be beneficial.
So when we hit on the idea for toys on your computer, you can rest assured that we attacked the problem from many angles, before any fingers hit keyboards.
So that's Step One. Have an idea and try to kill it with discussion.
Being a nerd helps. Following the resounding lack of wider interest that was 'Raptor Crunch' (coming soon to a crappy java game site near you) the SoupCrew decided to take a different approach. To fully understand this approach, I think it's necessary to form some sort of appreciation of 'Napes'...
Now, 'Napes' or Napier St was not something you could call unique. It was a house dwelled in by two (then later three) uni students. As such, one could expect certain things. Couches on the front verandah. A dead garden. The slightly odd smell that never seemed to go (and was there when we arrived, we swear). 7 meals in 8 cooked on the BBQ (in our case, the mighty 'Beff Baron'). A student house. A place where everyone knows your name. A drop in house of late night imbibery.
They say cleanliness is next to godliness. We were directly across the road from a church. Whether that qualifies us as 'clean' I dread to think, but there you go. (Someone 'liberated' the flag from the church at one of our more.... elongated... parties one evening. I kinda feel bad about that, but it wasn't me, so hey.)
But I'm sure you know the place. You went there a million times during your time at uni. Maybe you picked up your cigarette butts and maybe you didn't. I'm not here to judge. What Napes was though, was a place where ideas could get a good discussion. We had a tradition with some good mates in the Napes days... that of the curry night. Tuesday nights (before we declared Tuesday a freeloader on the 'week') were often a night where a goodly group of us would congregate, eat a curry prepared by one or more of the attendees, and several relaxing ales were taken alongside extensive discussion of our beloved nerdly industry.
Ideas for sharing networks, quiz shows, top five ratings systems and many many more were bandied around at these evenings. Do you know why Pixar invests so much time in storyboarding? It's because one person with a pencil can draw a shot from a film in 20 seconds, and from that sketch, it can be determined whether it's worth letting the other 40 people who have to work on that shot, frame by frame, to get it to the big screen. 20 seconds from one person is a hell of a lot cheaper than a day or a week from 40 others, and even if that person has to draw that shot 600 times, you still wind up with a better product. That's what curry nights were at Napes (and Railway; and Jimbo's; I'm just making a long-winded point here). They were test-beds for ideas.
Some ideas stick.
Others insinuate themselves into your head and kick around there. But the point is, it's easier to shoot down lots of ideas with intelligent and informed mates, than it is to take an idea and try and prove it yourself. Discussion is the storyboard of the startup. I know you've got friends. Cook them a curry. Tell them to bring beer. Talk about what you're thinking of. If an idea deserves to die a cold, heartless death in the idea wasteland, it will soon get shot down.
Just don't be afraid of your ideas shrivelling under that process. One of the hardest things to reassure yourself about is that you WILL have more ideas. Some will be crap. Some will be fantastic. Just don't stop throwing them out there when one does get shot down. This is what the curry and alcohol is for. It both cushions the fall of bad ideas, and encourages... well... abstract thought about the good ideas. Don't worry though - more ideas WILL come.
I'm sure I've said it before, but we have a rule at Souptoys: "All ideas MUST be stated." If you have a bad idea in your head, and you don't tell anyone, it's taking up room for good ideas in that noggin' of yours. Get it out there. We're fortunate in that we're essentially a few mates, and we take the bad ideas with the good; if you have to work a little harder at making an environment where bad ideas aren't used against their originator, so be it. I swear it'll be beneficial.
So when we hit on the idea for toys on your computer, you can rest assured that we attacked the problem from many angles, before any fingers hit keyboards.
So that's Step One. Have an idea and try to kill it with discussion.
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