John
Surprise, surprise! Another few months have come and gone with naught in the way of activity hereabouts. Go figure.
So this quarter has been…interesting…if nothing else. Certainly the busiest quarter I’ve had in a long, long time. And that’s saying something, considering I’m rocking a schedule sans-MSE this quarter. I suppose I’d better try to break down recently goings here in one giant chunk, because infrequent and massive content dumps seem to be my status quo. So it begins…
If you stay remotely up to date on the goings-on in the video game industry, or if you have a sizable assortment of news outlets on your RSS reader for that matter, then you’ve most likely seen the name Alexander Stern lately. It seems as though the entire interwebs are abuzz with coverage and discussion of his recently-filed lawsuit. For anyone who doesn’t know about it, I’ll attempt to give a readers digest version before giving my two cents on the whole situation.
Last night was the much-hyped inaugural banquet for the HCDE department’s diversity mentorship program. Boeing gave the department a grant to start this program, and this kickoff event was intended to bring together a bunch of “diverse” undergrads and then meet & chat with alumni. While the turnout wasn’t quite as high as what was expected, I don’t think, we still had eight or nine undergrads and a fairly comparable number of alumni. After everyone had finished eating the provided dinner, we undergrads rotated around speed-dating-style, giving each of us — in theory — about five minutes to talk with each graduate.
Feel free to completely ignore this post. I’m only writing it to verify that this new widget I’m using is successfully linking to new posts on my twitter feed. Of course, if you’re reading this, then that most likely means it worked. Yay.
Carry on…
Last night was the third game of the season for the UW men’s basketball team; the third in three nights, actually, as this weekend the Bank of America Arena was home to the Athletes in Action Classic. I missed the first game on Friday against Wright State on account of the Pixies show, though I’m not terribly disappointed as we put up a rather mediocre effort. Sure, we won, but the margin of victory should have been much bigger considering how hyped we were going into this season. Saturday’s game against Belmont was a tad better, and featured an impressive showing from Matthew Bryan-Amaning. Last night, though…last pretty much eradicated any lingering concern I might have had about the remainder of the season.
There is no better way to kick off a season than by finishing up the third of three consecutive games (by which point one would assume a team might be starting to fatigue) with a 111-55 dominant demonstration of kickassery. Seriously, by the end of the game, I was actually starting to feel bad for Portland State’s head coach. Undoubtedly not the way he intended to start his first season at the helm. That said, there was a certain satisfaction in seeing Phil Nelson start relatively strong before ultimately proving completely ineffectual when it really counted. Nelson began his college career as a Huskey, but transferred to Portland State where he felt that he wasn’t getting enough playing time. It was clear that he really had a chip on his shoulder last night and wanted to go crazy on the court to show us what we lost. Instead, he just came off as whiny & pouty.
I just can’t wait to see what Isaiah & Q do as we edge closer to Pac-10 play. Frankly, if they both perform like they did this weekend, I really doubt there’s going to be another team in the conference that can shut them down on the offensive end.
The year was 2004, and my behind-the-times ass was watching Fight Club for the first time. That final shot (if you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about) is one of those cinematic moments that really sticks with you. Days went by, and I found that I couldn’t get the quirky song that accompanied it out of my head. On my second viewing, I found out that the track was “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies — a band I had somehow completely missed out on despite the fact I’d been musically exposed to many of their contemporaries by my parents. In the years since, they have become constants on my playlists and one of the few bands whose albums I regularly listen to in their entirety.
Fast forward five years. It’s Friday the 13th, a freak hail storm is in full swing north of Seattle, and I’m on my way to see a band I never thought I’d have the opportunity to catch live.
Two firsts for me yesterday: my first visit to the Showbox SoDo, and my first TMBG show. One was epic, one was terrible. Considering we’re talking about a band as awesome as TMBG, can you guess which was which?
We got down about a half hour before the doors opened. Since it was my first time at the venue, and their website is suspiciously vague about accessibility other than to simply say “accessible: yes”, I wanted to make sure we’d be the first ones in the door to scout the area and claim a good spot. The problems started before we even parked, though. You see, the Showbox SoDo has one handicap parking spot, and the knuckleheads in charge apparently thought that side of the building would be a perfect place for one of the acts to park their RV. Sideways. That little logistical morsel meant that rather than having to drive my chair about 20 feet through the rain, I had to drive it about three blocks.
Once I finally got to the front of the venue, fought through the zombielike masses, and arrived at the doors looking not unlike a drowned rat, things were starting to look up. The staff was very friendly and helpful — just like they were at the other Showbox — and let us in about 10 minutes before everyone else. Once inside, I realized that the layout was not really what one would consider well suited to wheelchair users. The guy who let us in said I had two options…
Okay, so I’m not much of a programmer. Far from it, in fact. Sure, I know the most basic of basics with Java, but the only programming languages I’m moderately comfortable with are of the web variety. Despite that inadequacy, though, I’ve recently decided that I’d like to look into the basics of creating programs for the Wiimote.
I feel like it has a ton of promise as a versatile alternate input system for the mobility impaired, but the only ones who seem to be tapping that promise at the moment are attempting to cash it in for everything it’s worth. Case in point: someone is selling a control "package" that supposedly will allow disabled individuals to control their computers via head tracking for roughly $300. What does this package actually include, though? A baseball cap with a velcro strap on the brim to attach your own Wiimote (that’s right, you need to provide your own…), a small applet that presumably uses freely available libraries to translate Wiimote motion to cursor control, and a little "dwell to click" program. Sorry, but I need to call shenanigans on the ridiculousness of that.
So, I figure this would be a good longish-term project. If I can develop some small programs that translate various bits of Wiimote functionality into specialized input — something like controlling the cursor’s y-axis with the camera for improving access to FPSs — that would be something that a lot of people would be able to take advantage of. Without taking advantage of them.
I’m not exactly sure where to start, or when I will for that matter, but I’m going to try to keep a detailed account of my progress here. Stay tuned.
WordPress is finally installed and operational, and I’ve migrated the contents of my old LJ over. I officially have a stable blogish thing!
I really haven’t had time to frak with any of the customization options yet, so it’s straight out-of-the-box for now. Hopefully, with moderate tweaking at some point in the next week or so, I can make this mesh well with the rest of my site. As for actually, y’know, blogging…I anticipate I’ll be considerably more prolific now that I’m not using a service of questionable stability.
I’m going to be trekking down to campus momentarily for two different research group meetings. Didn’t make it in at all on Wednesday on suspicion of coming down with Swine Flu. Considering I’m still kicking at this point, it probably wasn’t, but I’m laying relatively low for the remainder of the weekend to ensure I’m fully functional by Monday. Sleep, some moderate MSE reading, and moving forward with the custom CMS I’m building for the HRCL website are in my future. And possibly cookies…
So, this weekend is the Battlestar Galactica auction. Realistically, I probably don’t have a shot at winning anything, but I’m still going to bid. I soooooo want the small wall plaque of the “3rd Vigilantes”.
I wonder if Paul Allen is going to try to get some of the big ticket items, like the oil painting of the First Cylon War or the full size Viper Mk. II, for the museum here in Seattle. I certainly hope so, because it’s SERIOUSLY lacking BSG stuff. Right now, all they have is one of the Cylon suits from the original series.