jayroe

As a way to start ramping up my PS efforts, I’m going to start posting status updates once a week. Since it’s Thursday, I’ll shoot for every Thursday. This will not only be for my friends who ask about PS from time to time, but will also be a means of self-motivation. What prompted this after years of apparent inactivity? Well, music of course…

Since starting my personal sci-fi comic project, Particle Sphere, back in 2001, music has been a primary creative influence second only to science fiction itself. Over the years I’ve built a list in my mind of tunes that perfectly express the essence of what I’m trying to capture with my story and characters.

I recently discovered the artist Vienna Teng. Her music just feeds my creative soul. So, when I find material like that, I work my way through it looking for things to latch onto and use for inspiration. One such object is her tune Gravity… if I had to pick a theme song for Particle this would be it. It’s just perfect.

I have wanted to compile a playlist of music that I have used for energy while thinking and working on PS. I’ll start building it and include it in a future PS Status.

The general state of the comic is currently script writing and research. I have more than 16 single-spaced, typed pages of script and sketchbooks full of notes and drawings for the origin story, ParticleSphere.Alpha. I estimate that it will be around 40 pages by the end of the year. My goal is to finish the first draft before Christmas and send it out to friends for feedback.

I have been rapidly nailing down technical conventions and major story points, such as technological capabilities, full character names, plot twists and essential events of the narrative. One of the major conceptual problems I’ve been working on is how to do space battles in a post-Singularity era.

For example, if everything is composed of smart materials and nanotech with AI driven weapons and defense systems, how do you actually damage an opponent? Wouldn’t everything end in stalemate? What I don’t want to do is recreate sea battles in space, the standard issue sci-fi space battle cliché.

I’m going for something really different here.

So I’ve been thinking of basing all the warfare on a chess paradigm. Except instead of 2 dimensions, you’d have several million dimensions both real and synthetic with a wide array of varying environmental physics. And instead of 8 pawns, you’d have a billion… self-assembling, fully sentient AI driven, massively parallel, wormhole traveling quantum reactors using nano-engineered superconducting electromagnetic containment lenses capable of firing multidimensional sub-atomic beams that could cut a planet in half and trained via evolutionary algorithm with every conceivable war tactic and technique both human and alien… or something like that.

I’m sure a nice visual metaphor would sort it all out.

Next week’s status will go into some of the research I’ve been doing, books and source materials.

~ Will

Good times, good times…

EarthLink, Inc. today announced a corporate restructuring plan. This plan will reduce operating costs across the company. The restructuring will begin immediately and be completed by the end of the year…

Approximately 900 jobs will be eliminated and the company will close its Orlando, FL; Knoxville, TN; Harrisburg, PA and San Francisco, CA offices and substantially reduce its presence in Pasadena, CA, and Atlanta, GA. EarthLink expects to record facility exit and restructuring costs of $60 - $70 million associated with the plan. These costs include $30 - $35 million for certain employee-related costs, $10 - $15 million for lease termination costs, $8 - $10 million for other costs to streamline operations and $8 - $10 million non- cash asset write-offs. EarthLink expects that these facility exit and restructuring costs will be recognized primarily in the third and fourth quarters of fiscal year 2007.

Source

The 20/20 special report Stupid In America should be yet another wake-up call to the US educational system. China and the EU are going to eat our lunch in the next 25 years. As former teachers, my wife and I got out of teaching because the system isn’t just failing, it’s completely broken….

The Atlanta Chapter of the GGDA is meeting at the American InterContinental Univeristy, Buckhead Campus (conveniently located right by the Buckhead MARTA station). I assume that anyone is invited because the email I got has a link to tell a friend. The synopsis reads:

Join us for snacks, networking, and quick journey through one of today’s industry-leading game-building kits. Get plugged in, tweaked out, and powered up as Mr. O’Gorman goes on a rampage through the Torgue Game Builder and demonstrates exactly how to jumpstart your next game project.

Date: August 14, 2007 (Tuesday)
Time: doors open at 6:30PM

After having a great time at the Atlanta Game Developers Meetup last month, I decided to join the Georgia Game Developers Association:

GGDA is a non-profit trade association of businesses and professionals of the video and electronic game manufacturing industry of Georgia. GGDA is committed to the growth and development of this industry and the success of its members as they compete internationally.

- http://www.ggda.org/

As if 2TB wasn’t enough, Western Digital has partnered with Google to provide the ultimate in offline desktop search and storage with a full 2 petabyte external hard drive. The My Book Google Edition comes preloaded with Google’s extensive cache of the Internet and their ubiquitous search interface giving you pretty much all you need until the AIs replace us completely. All this gratuitous power doesn’t come cheap, the 2PB My Book retails for $499,999 and is as loud as a jet engine, so it’s not for everyone.

A friend from work and I went to the Atlanta Game Dev Meetup Group last night and had a blast eating pizza, drinking beer and talking about video games. Interestingly enough having spent much of my life as a musician/music teacher, I ended up talking to several musicians and composers who were involved or interested in game development.

I spent most of my time talking with Paul Gilreath, a professional composer, and Zac Armgard, a composer and guitarist from Berklee who wants to get into game sound design.

Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after his death on May 11, and since then has been extended to an annual event. On this day, fans carry a towel with them throughout the day. The towel is a reference to Adams’ popular science fiction comedy series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Brian, thanks for reminding me, but you told me the wrong day! I guess Thursday was a dry run.

I have read about using lava lamps and the stray firings of CCDs, but this is a new twist to generating true random information:

Yuzoz draws upon computerized data sets from a variety of space probes that have been observing terrestrial weather, auroral displays, solar flares, the solar wind and even Venusian cloud movements. Manber is hoping that the outer-space angle will add a coolness factor to Yuzoz’s random number generator - which, for what it’s worth, has been certified by Technical Systems Testing.

“We’re the first people to brand a random number generator,” Manber said. “And the value that comes from that has to do with trust, transparency, honesty.”

Source: Random Access to the Stars via webjones

What do you get when you combine Sony PR with church dogma?

Pagan Coffee

Unintended connection by webjones. Thanks!