Pako's Blog

A New Adventure

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:15:11 -0230

Well my second year at Laurier is finally winding down, and I can't be more relieved that it is almost over. After having to deal with weekly assignments in almost every class and 3 major projects all due within 2 days of each other I'm ready for summer to start.

This is where my adventure begins...

After hardly working at all last summer at several different jobs which never really got off the ground I was lucky enough to be approached about a summer job back in January. I had talked to my friend Mike about various programs i had created in college as well as some of the ideas I had, so when the company he works for started a new project I happened to be the first person he thought of. So this summer I will be an official programmer, working on a huge project with Silvermoon Industries for Kit-Digital.

Now as excited as I am, I'm terrified. due to the size and intensity of this project, I won't have much time to learn the business. In fact, I'll be working two days between the rest of my exams, then starting the 28th I'll be jumping in with both feet working 40 hours a week until the end of the summer.

Now some of you might be wondering what exactly I will be doing all summer, and to tell you the truth, i'm not exactly sure, which is another reason this is so terrifying. I won't really know until I get a good look at some of the code, but by then i will have signed and NDA or two and will be unable to tell anyone about it. From the little that has been explained to me, we have the freedom to work with some pretty innovative technologies.

So there is my adventure until September and possibly beyond. I hope this all works out well, and we'll see where this road leads.

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Perspective

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:14:57 -0330

I found an interesting post on Boing Boing a couple days ago about an art exhibit which visualized statistics by using one grain of rice to represent every person in the world. If it ends up in a gallery around here someday I'll have to find a way to go look at the entire exhibit. Here is a link to the original post as well as a video.

On a different note, Zoic has started a new photo game, which has given me something to think about during classes today other than whatever the prof was talking about

subtlevox stumps the swarm

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Drumline meets Revenge of the Nerds

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:45:51 -0330

If more football games had something like this for halftime, I might start watching football... The first half at least.

UC Berkley Marching band video game show

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Gever Tully vs Darth Vader

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:16:57 -0330

A very interesting talk by Gever Tully.

On a completely different note, this is the funniest video I've seen in a while

Darth Vader vs Japanese Police

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Gamer Life

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:34:31 -0330

I picked up Lord of the Rings Online while it was still in beta, and have been playing it ever since. Now don't get me wrong, its a fantastic game ans sticks very closely to Tolkien's original lore, but after a few conversations with some people i usually play with I've realized something. well I've always known it, but it wasn't until i found a post on the forums a couple days ago that it hit me how big the problem actually is, and not just with LOTRO, but with almost every game.

In the past decade, the gaming industry as grown exponentially, and will probably continue the trend for a long time, and with the realism in so many games now, especially online games, many people have almost given up reality to join these virtual worlds where they can do whatever they want. Now heres where that forum post comes in, one of the players was complaining about the rudeness of some of the people in the game, stealing kills, or standing in one spot for days on end to "farm" a monster so that no one else can get the items. Now i normally ignore posts like this, but i was bored and decided to read some of the responses. About halfway down the page, another player responded that they knew people who did this, and that they themselves were often rude to the other players. The reason for this? be cause there are no consequences.

Yes thats the point I've been been trying to get at this whole time, games have no consequences. How many times have you gotten stuck in a game and decided to just start over, or just got frustrated and killed your character on purpose? People are spending so much time in games and online that they are ignoring life and the importance of consequences. If you fail a math test, you can't just throw yourself off a cliff, then pick up a new, smarter body and start from the beginning. If the trend is moving towards recreating lives in games, then i feel that games should be made to be more like life. I know this concept won;t take off right away, and will probably upset a fair number of people, but I would rather upset some people, teaching them how to properly deal with life than watch them watch them become organic robots who do anything they want without fear of punishment.

Here ends my rant, and I encourage anyone who is a fan of Lord of the Rings to check this out.

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Watching the Wind

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:04:36 -0230

I've always wondered what the wind would look like if I could actually see it. This looks like a step in the right direction.

Firewinder

Firewinder is an outdoor light, powered by wind. When the wind picks up, it causes it to spin, turning on 20 LEDs, and can handle winds up to 40 mph. Firewinder is not meant for practical lighting, it would add a cool effect, hung from a tree.

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Only a matter of time....

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:20:44 -0230

I know I haven't posted on here in a while, but with the new school year i figured I'd try to rejuvenate this blog.

I found an interesting new advertising campaign by a fast food chain in the states, Erbert & Gerbert. Instead of spending thousands of dollars making a fancy commercial that viewers will forget 5 minutes from now they made a commercial using a flipbook, using t-shirts instead of paper.

Erbert & Gerbert's: Human Flipbook

the original video as well as the making of video can be found here

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Big Brother is Watching

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:25:40 -0230

I've always been suspicious of Facebook, but I've never been able to figure out why. Maybe it was the speed of its growth, or possibly how you can find almost anyone with no more information than a name, or the fact that so many people post their entire lives on the site for everyone to see.

I found this site not too long ago, and I did some poking around, and what they say about the privacy policy and terms of use are true, but i didn't go nearly as far into detail as they did.

Just another one of those things to get people thinking

Here are some ways to help keep your privacy on Facebook

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Something to think about

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:58:52 -0330

I found an interesting blog today about a company which has adopted a kind of survivor development strategy, where every three months a vote is taken, and the bottom 10% are replaced by new employees. The part that really caught my eye was the question they asked at the end of the post:

“If your team had a vote yesterday, would you still have a job on Monday? If not, do something about that now.”

Here is the link to the original post.

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Valentines day

nobody@vox.com(Pako) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:38:58 -0330

Since today is valentines day (and I don't want to study for my midterms anymore) I figured I'd share a couple songs. These, in my opinions, are some of the best, and don't get nearly as much playtime as they deserve.

the first i found a couple days ago on digg.

Tripod - Gonna Make You Happy

the second is my favorite of the two, and is performed by Lemon Demon(the same people who made Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny) and is called geeks in love

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