1st meeting
Posted: 31 October 2006 Filed under: Dissertation, Undergrad | Tags: Undergrad Leave a commentMet with Geoff yesterday to talk thru my dissertation. He made an interesting point about some of the internal issues/conflicts such as modern hackers accusing old-school hackers of having sold out, OSS and FOSS as well as the differences in ideology between Wark and Lessig. I have recently come across the first when skimming thru’ one of my books but I never considered the last before. I know OSS doesn’t necessarily mean free even though I have been guilty in the past of not making a token payment.
So, more interesting stuff to follow up on.
Sound applet idea
Posted: 31 October 2006 Filed under: Sound, Undergrad | Tags: sound, Undergrad 1 CommentYears ago when she was younger, my daughter had a rainmaker similar to the picture below. Inside the tube were hundreds of little bits which when you shook the tube or turned it upside-down made a noise. I think the toy itself is based on the instrument that was used by the native American indian to try and make it rain during droughts – not that I think mine will have any impact on climatic conditions unless I can find a MAX object I can hack that is. So, that’s what I wanna make and I guess I’ll need a tube, some tilt sensors and loads of wire. I’ve got an old PS/2 keyboard and a PS2-usb converter so getting it connected up to the computer ought to be ok. I’m not sure what I wanna do for the end result. Transfering the motion to sound is probably a good place to start but maybe using it to mix video might be fun as well. Or at least I think it ought to have some sort of visual representation.
The Infinite Monkey Project
Posted: 30 October 2006 Filed under: Ramblings | Tags: monkey, music, sms Leave a commentHere’s a nice use of SMS. Text a random word to 07797801003 along with your name and anytime something nearing a grammatical sentence is created it will be set aside. The collected “sentences” will then be handed over to a music producer who will use them to create a song. If your word is used then you will be credited as a songwriter and get a cut of the royalties. It might not be much but then again how many people can say that they’re a published songwriter. More details can be found at The Infinite Monkey Project.
Camera work
Posted: 29 October 2006 Filed under: 4D, Undergrad | Tags: 4D, Undergrad Leave a commentI’ve had a bit of an experiment with UT2004 with cameras and capturing the action. Using an existing map that came with it, I’ve managed to set up 2 cameras and get them to move. Unfortunately one of them moves thru’ some scenery which spoils the effect a bit but I guess you’ve gotta start somewhere. I’ve only got it working in the Preview view but hopefully later in the week I’ll be able to get it to run in the game itself. Plus, I’ve been able to workout how to capture the action using Fraps. It’s a brilliant little tool, I can see it being dead handy in making training videos – pity it’s Windows only. So, click on the link below and marvel at it.
Respect Festival….again
Posted: 29 October 2006 Filed under: Ramblings | Tags: film, plymouth, respect festival, workshop Leave a commentAlong with Jamie, Steve, Becky and Justin, I did another v-mob workshop today which was the second one as part of the Respect Festival. We were tucked away up on a balcony in the Guildhall but despite that, it still went really well. I did have a couple of problems with a kid throwing himself down the stairs and another forgetting that he had asthma when asked if he would take part in some fitness tests, and then collapsing whilst having a bit of an attack but I guess I just bring that sort of thing out in people. I didn’t really get to see much of the stuff going on but people who did the workshop seemed to have good things to say about it so I guess it was a success. But, the highlight of the day has got to be seeing Romain Larrieu, Lilian Nalis and Anthony Barness. They were sat on the stairs behind us watching the videos from the Efford workshop. After getting over the initial shock of seeing them, I was gonna ask them if they would like to take part in the workshop but we got a bit busy. Fortunately, Tom was there at the time with his mate doing a workshop with us so he went up and asked for their autographs.
Anyways, I think the videos will be put on the v-mob mini site but you might need to give it a couple of days for them to be loaded up. Below is some footage of the opening procession I managed to shoot before we got underway.
Procession
Crossover 1
Posted: 28 October 2006 Filed under: Dissertation, Space, Undergrad | Tags: space, Undergrad Leave a commentSo I’ve just started looking thru’ Hacker Culture by Douglas Thomas and I came across the name Foucault. Surely not the same one we’re looking at in Space? His work Discipline and Punishment is being used in the explanation of hacking, the law and punishment. For example, he writes that we should “regard punishment as a complex social function”. Douglas askes the question that if we are being protected from the hackers, what is being protected.
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that what appears to be totally different subjects have some kind of overlap. What could be interesting is to see just how many and by how much come the end of my research.
4D machinima thing
Posted: 28 October 2006 Filed under: 4D, Undergrad | Tags: 4D, Undergrad Leave a commentJamie and I had a chat about what we’re gonna do and the first thing we need to decide on is which game to use. We thought it best to use one that has a bit of a track record so at least we know it’s possible and have narrowed it down to:
- Unreal Tournament 2004
- Quake 3
- Doom 3
- FEAR
Even Second Life is a possibility but as I’m not having much luck getting it to work at the mo, it might get crossed off the list pretty quickly. So the next step is to get hold of a copy or 2 of them and start playing….all for the purposes of research obviously. We also agreed that there will be no voiceovers. Firstly, who wants to hear a pair of janners but more importantly, when lip-synching is wrong it stands out like a sore thumb – just watch any foreign language film dubbed into english.
Abstract
Posted: 27 October 2006 Filed under: Dissertation, Undergrad | Tags: Undergrad Leave a commentSince the early days of the MIT Railway Club when the foundations for what we know as hacking were being laid, there has been an understanding that information should be free to be exchanged with anyone who needs or wants it. Back in those early days, the “hackers†shared code amongst themselves; they even had a drawer near their console containing utilities available to everyone to use and improve upon. They saw as an efficient use of everybody’ time by reducing the time-wasting effort of different people developing their own version of the same program. So, even though the term Open Source Software (OSS) was not first used until the late 1990s, a good 20 years later, as hacking came into being did it not also give birth to OSS?
In this dissertation I intend to explore the relationship between hacking and OSS. I will look at their beginnings with the MIT Model Railway Club and the belief in those early days that all information should be free, the underlying principle in my opinion of the hacker/open source movement. I will explore how the development of the Internet was dependant upon them. I also intend to investigate how they have become politicised through Creative Commons, the media’s (mis)interpretation of hacking and what McKenzie Wark describes as a “class conflictâ€; the difference of philosophy between hackers and the large corporations who want to protect their intellectual property. Through this, I hope to show that the development of one has had a direct impact on the other and that they have become co-dependant.
First meeting
Posted: 25 October 2006 Filed under: Final Year Project, Undergrad | Tags: Undergrad Leave a commentI’ve got Chris as my project supervisor and we had our first meeting today just to set some ground rules – what he wants from us, how he does things, that sort of stuff really. He also gave us a top tip about the project and researching it. If we think of it as a triangle and at each point is one of our areas of research that make up the subject we’re researching. We then look for stuff that covers one or two of the points. Right, I’ve lost you now haven’t I? Yeah we were a bit like that when Chris explained it so he did an example and as luck would have it, we used my project. My three things are open source, immersion and disability so I need to find stuff that covers each of them as well as open source & immersion, and disability & open source and, well, you’ve probably got the picture now. He also made a really good point that the chances are, the only person to have any sort of interest in all of these three points are us and by the end of the project we’ll be the experts in the thing that covers all three – now that’s a bit scarey.
We also got our timetable of meetings for this term which I really wanted to get sorted as soon as possible. What with working, I need to map my life out for the next few months (perhaps I should be entering this under Space). So, all in all it was a really good meeting….now the hard work begins.
Proposal
Posted: 24 October 2006 Filed under: 4D, Undergrad | Tags: 4D, Undergrad Leave a commentJamie and I have decided to make a film in the machinima style. What the narrative will be or what game we will use has yet to be decided but experimenting will be part of the fun. You can download our (brief) proposal here.