GAMES GAMES GAMES!!!

Next week I am attending the HKU Design for Virtual Theater and Games EXPO in Utrecht at the Huis aan de Werf. It will be a great show on June 18 and 19. Don't miss it!

For an example there are a couple free games to try out that some of my students made. Felisberto de Brito has made eggCademy and Ziggy Naumann has made Hotel Luma. Both are in the running for the Festival of Games 2009 award from the NLGD. Go and check them out if you can't handle the humpday this week. Enjoy!

UPDATE:

Felis just emailed me that he has an english version of his game online to enjoy. http://eggcademy.com

A bike ride to Guggenheim in bilbao

video by Amsterdamize

Last month when I went to moderate a session about online video in Bilbao for the nonick conference. the day after the conference, Marc from Amsterdamize and I rented a couple bikes from the hotel to go explore the city. This video Marc edited as a part1 of that wonderful day we had together. I know he is working on more, with some fun action shots through Bilbao, but this sets a nice tone for the day.

If you do goto Bilbao, I highly recommend checking out The Guggenheim Museum. Besides being an amazing building, I really loved the exhibitions they had there. Marc and I spent close to 4-5 hours in the museum hanging around and checking out the work. At the moment they have some amazing Video Art pieces that you can sit and literally loose yourself in for hours. If you were not stoned before going in, the effects of these films will transport you to that state. Then head up to the top floor to see Murakami. An awesome artist that has been highly influenced by popular culture in Japan such as Anime, Manga as well as traditional artists. If you are into Anime, contemporary art or Asian culture, this exhibition is for you!

Baby, Baby, Baby

So people think it is strange that I dance out on the street in the middle of the morning. If you do, then you must not be French. Check out this music video for "Make the Girl Dance". Although I am rather disappointed that none of the girls actually dance. Even still, I suspect it will go Viral. Why? Viral Recipe for Video: 1 shot Simple VFX of um... tracking... (I wonder where the uncensored version is) 3 naked women A juxtaposition of reality Plus I think I saw Tony Hawk's name there somewhere

Make The Girl Dance "Baby Baby Baby" ( official video ) envoyé par placeblancherec - Clip, interview et concert.

A vid 4 Rose

Kodak Zi6 HD and iLife 09 test from Gabemac on Vimeo.

This is for my friend Rose. She is helping me out so much right now. Helping me get all the pieces back to restart my life in Amsterdam again. Everything from helping me clean my apartment, moving, taking me out, and even folding my clothes. An Angel.

The music in the video is “Something Beautiful” by Coco O’Connor. http://cocooconnor.com

The other reason I made this video is I am testing the Kodak Zi6 that I received from Kodak last week. I am also testing the new iLife 09 and iMovie 09 filters and workflow. Following the standard workflow and exporting to HD video this is the result I get.

I liked the fact that the Kodak imports in iPhoto, and then is transferred to iMovie easily. I don’t have that with my Sony camera. The shots I took were in intense lighting conditions to push the envelope of the camera. I liked the shot it took, but I wanted to play more with iMovie for the final result. I used a number of filters with speed and color settings in iMovie to achieve this effect.

Pros: The Kodak camera is a simple lightweight HD camera that a vlogger likes to have around. It took the direct sunlight shots very well, and did decent compensation for the hotspot sunlight shots next to the ivy.

iMovie has finally put slow motion back in. The effects and filters are very welcome, and the workflow is nice once you get used to it.

Cons: The Kodak camera does not handle low light situations very well. It is also rather large, (larger than an iPod) to always have around with me. I think most of the space is the battery and the usb flip out connection (which although is really cool, I have to use a USB hub for my laptop to connect it and my mouse or external drive at the same time).

iMovie has a nice clip editor, but it no longer scrubs audio when you are trying to tweak an edit to music and it becomes very frustrating. It would also be nice to have a “standard” HD for web export from iMovie which it does not have natively. The closest you can get is the large sharing selection if you do not want to export via QuickTime and set the settings yourself, which is what I did.

Conducting a 4 string Quartet

During DLD Yossi Vardi and Gabe Mac get to conduct a 4 string quartet in their own styles thanks to Itay Talgam. This video is best watched with headphones.

Flickr Vouyeruism

There is a guilty pleasure that really comes out in Flickr. Anonymous voyeruism. I noticed that some complete strangers have been faving certain pictures of mine for some time now. I could not figure out whether it was a stalker, or just some sad lonely person as there is nothing in the profiles to understand who it is. Then after digging deeper I think I discovered it. It is like a game almost. In my search for why or what it is... I discovered the stories. Clicking randomly on commenters, seeing thier favorites and making huge leaps and jumps starting from my own anonymous voyeuers, I begin to make a story together. A weaving through the reaches of cyberspace, to create a story in my head, based on the click of the mouse and my own A.D.D. to guide me. Here is a small glimpse into the stories you can piece together.

MAke your own story, and let me see.... Add a link in the comments.

Flickr Fun

I'm having fun with some flickr tools today. Here is a quick sample.

Anonymous Twitter Project

pic by acrib

I have started a new project called Anonymous Twitter. You can see it on http://twitter.com/anonymousidea. The reason behind it is that all twitter posts usually are traceable back to your digital identity, ergo yourself. Back in the early days of the web, we didn't have lots of email sign ups and stuff to track what we were talking about. Now every new service wants information about you. So, what happens when someone can tweet 140 characters and they know it will not be traced back to themselves. Will they post secrets, ideas they have that may sound crazy, start whistle blowing, what?

It is also a large problem on the internet as we saw a couple months back with the Steve Job had a heart attack scam, that anonymous, or non authenticated news stories can have a drastic effect on the economy when people react before checking facts.

I am not sure how long the account will stay up, but the idea is to open up this account with the password so ANYONE can twitter anonymously.

Now to get things started off I went to LeWeb08 and asked people to write down what they would like to anonymously tweet as I put on a blindfold. Those notes are now already put in.

The BBC has already reported on the project, and I am sure many more news outlets will soon as well. So stay tuned here for more news and follow the twitter feed to get the info to log in and post your own anonymous twitter.

Theater Festival Amsterdam

This is a short video of an acrobatics act that wrapped up the Theater Festival in Amsterdam. over 30 theaters were participating. There were more plays than you can throw a stick at. It's at the scale of the Edinburgh's festival, but that's where the organizers are headed. Amazing that they got no funding from I Amsterdam. This is the kind of festival that needs more attention from the city and from sponsors. For more information check the TF1 website.

Theater Festival Amsterdam