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particle sphere ~ 2 years in and the script is at version 0.8 with 31 pages. Dialog and descriptions are essentially complete. I am making final sweeps for consistency and story logic. Special thanks to a powerful new ally for the comix lunches.

• My mom passed from cancer - This happened about two months before we moved to San Francisco and didn’t really hit me until a year later. This is the single greatest personal tragedy that I have ever experienced. I am starting to agree with the likes of Ray Kurzweil on this one: death is not normal, it’s a disease that we need to cure.
• Less really is less - If you’re going to move about the country for the betterment of your family, quality of life and career… pack light! We schlepped entirely too much stuff from one North American coast to another. If it weren’t for the generosity of Missy’s father driving the rental truck from Jackson, Mississippi, to San Francisco in 2006 and then to Atlanta in 2007 with her brother, we would have had a much tougher time.
• Star Trek Online - Back in high school (circa 1988) I remember using Basic to make simple animated vignettes of the starship Enterprise flying through space and going into and out of warp. In 2006 my friend Sean Bollin and I got to build a teaser website for Star Trek Online [update 1/27/2008: STO was dropped and is currently in limbo, so our wonderful website is now dust in the æther]. It was one of coolest things I have ever been a part of and makes me feel like I was able to give a little back to the sci-fi universe after all the enjoyment and big ideas science fiction has given me.
• Food Allergies can be fatal - My son, Carter, has always had a severe allergy to dairy. It was not until he and Missy were on a plane bound for California that we discovered the peanut allergy. Fortunately, Missy had Benadryl on the plane. Once in California, we soon found the best allergist and pediatrician we could imagine. Of course it helped that we were so close to Berkeley. Most people never stop to think that something as wholesome and innocent as a Snickers bar or child’s pizza birthday party can send someone with severe food allergy into life threatening anaphylactic shock. The social implications of this on our family continue to be a major challenge. Read more about Food Allergies.
• Dial-Up is (not) dead - Our family decision to move from San Francisco after only one year on the West Coast was solidified by an opportunity offered by my friend Craig Jones at EarthLink. The food allergy challenge, extreme cost of living and distance from family really made our life in California difficult. Atlanta has turned out to be a good choice for our future despite choosing to abandon EarthLink in the wake of massive corporate restructuring. What I learned: there are millions of people still on dial-up… welcome to 1996!
• Lost 50 lbs - In the Spring of 2007 I went to the doctor for a general physical, blood tests, etc. I had been gaining weight for the past few years and was up to about 210 pounds (dry). I felt like crap all the time and was tired of being tired. Of course diet and exercise was the solution, but the diet the doctor suggested, The Zone, was actually based on science so that appealed to me. I’ve always intended to take care of my health because I’ve always wanted to live far into the future… download my consciousness into a robot, explore space… you know, stuff most people don’t think of when they think retirement.
• Switched to Mac - The Apple Intel-based MacBook Pro is the smoothest windows machine I have ever had. If you Bootcamp into Windows, be prepared for an epiphany of computing experience. That said, I spend all my time in OS X and hit Parallels or VMWare for XP. Sometimes I miss the aged comfort of XP, but all in all OS X is now my home.
• Back to the FEDeration - In November 2007 I left EarthLink for the calmer, more creative seas of Macquarium Intelligent Communications. I am now working as a Front End Developer (FED) for Macquarium’s Front End Development team, also know as the FEDeration. Validate or do not validate, there is no try.
• Brian joined the Peace Corps - My good friend Brian Woods made it into the Peace Corps in the Fall of 2007. Stay strong man, it’s nice to know a real life hero.
• Particle Sphere (now a working title) graphic novel - Despite nothing to show publicly, my personal project of creating a sci-fi graphic novel continues. I have been working on a script for the past 2 years and have actually made significant progress. I have been consistently drawing and sketching the concepts and characters and have a formal 20 page script that is nearing completion. When complete, I will send out to friends and families for feedback and start on the storyboard process. My goal is to finish storyboarding and start creating production art by the end of the summer. So, tentative publication date of mid to late 2009? Should I just put it up on the web under a CC license or should I try and publish a real book? Both?

Happy 2008,

Will

I received an interesting package from the State of Georgia over the weekend. It was from the Digital Entertainment Liaison for the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Film, Music and Video office.

Inside was a copy of the “Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual” and little pack of press releases singing the praises of Georgia and pointing out that the state has become “a hotbed for video game industry development.”

Hotbed you say? Read on…

In a modern Alpharetta office building, nearly 50 employees at Hi-Rez Studios have been working on a “spyfi” video game called “Global Agenda” for more than two years.

The effort has cost owner Erez Goren millions of dollars. But he’s hoping he’ll enjoy a huge payoff: 100,000 or more players worldwide paying $12-$15 a month for a taste of intrigue in a virtual world.

In the real world, the action centers on the game industry’s rapid growth and where the new jobs will go.

Georgia is eager to be a player.

At the first Southern Interactive and Game Expo — SIEGE — which opens today at the Crowne Plaza Perimeter Hotel in Atlanta, one of the sponsors is the Georgia Economic Development Department, which doled out $10,000 to impress the game enthusiasts.

SIEGE is expected to attract affluent game businessmen, cash-strapped students and hundreds of others over the weekend.

“It’s a big deal,” said Bill Thompson, deputy commissioner of Georgia’s Film, Video and Music Office, a division of the Economic Development Department.

SIEGE was organized by the 2-year-old Georgia Game Developers Association, which has about 60 member businesses and a mailing list of 350.

“We’re looking to make Georgia the new game mecca,” said Clinton Lowe, the association’s co-founder and chairman.

Read more: Georgia a player in booming video game industry | ajc.com

SIEGE begins this Friday, October 5th at 5 pm. That’s when Johnny Wilson, former editor of Computer Gaming World; Bill Bridges from CCP/White Wolf; Dov Jacobson from Games That Work; and Celia Pearce, head of the Experimental Games Lab at Georgia Tech; take the stage to discuss how to bring art to games.

Following that, we have numerous concurrent sessions, including ones on game writing, creating Flash games, censorship, marketing, the games business and more.

The evening concludes with a party thrown by CCP/White Wolf, a company that has earned a well-deserved reputation for its bashes, as well as LAN gaming competitions. A full schedule of events, including details on our mod competition, concept art contest, portfolio review, college fair and more, is on our web site at: Schedule / Events

Come join us and enjoy.

There is ample parking at the hotel, the Crowne Plaza Perimeter NW at:

6345 Powers Ferry Rd
Atlanta, GA 30339
Hotel Front Desk: 1-770-955-1700

See you Friday!

I use this parallel approach to learning while researching and creating my comic ParticleSphere, now in the script writing phase. I seek out media that address as many of my interests as possible at the same time. This multitasking allows me to build conceptual structures that apply not only to a science fiction comic but my professional and personal interests as well. This process of assimilation and connection is why I like to use the phrase “everything is connected” as a general creative mantra.

The PS Status updates for the next few weeks will feature some of the books from my 2007 readings. These books are relevant material for anyone interested in the nature of technology past, present and future. All were in some way relevant to the story I have in mind and each one helped me better understand how I might get the thing on paper (well, in pixels at least).

This week’s book is Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis. I have had this book in my collection for years and finally knocked it out. A mind-blowing work of cultural analysis that puts technology and spiritual culture into a tumbler and serves up a dirty techno-martini complete with a magical olive.

The world I’m attempting to create for ParticleSphere is my way of dealing with the coming genetic, bio- and robo- technological revolution where machines will become not only sentient but capable of taking human intelligence to the next evolutionary level. Particle’s personal avatar, Sphere, is a self aware general artificial intelligence without which Particle could not command her powers over space-time. At the same time, Particle often resents his presence because he acts as a limiting factor, a “voice of reason.”

Davis statement near the end of Techgnosis alludes to this type of human / AI relationship:

…technology is a trickster. We blame technologies for things that arise from our social structures and skewed priorities; we expect magic satisfactions from machines that they simply cannot provide; and we remain consistently hoodwinked by their unintended consequences. Technologies have their own increasingly alien agenda, and human concerns will survive and prosper only when we learn to treat them, not as slaves or simple extensions of ourselves, but as unknown constructs with whom we make creative alliances and wary pacts.

Next week, Jospeh Campbell’s The Power of Myth and why I think sending humans to Mars is dumb - why ancient mythology and modern futurists agree: humanity in it’s current form cannot explore space.