SIMULi

The Diaspora schema

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:49:08 PDT

CC Ben Brooksbank We are always on the build to further our systems of communication, from the early cultural lexicon of signs to the printing press. We are keen to share and know what is being thought by others, the most interactive of the online social networking communities can be traced back to the late 1990's, that is, communities that participate in huddles of virtual exchange, and

Casting for Talent

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 18:19:57 PDT

There is good reason why certain actors and cast are chosen for particular roles or as extras. Sometimes it might be because the actor has built up a professional and personal relationship with the creative. Usually there is more control in getting the right look for a group of people, as extras. The Star System for top billing actors taking roles makes the process of choosing the right person

Why I UnFlattr'd

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:33:23 PDT

I registered with Flattr because as a decade plus Blogger, I suspected that the community based idea was as close to a Blog busking culture as has yet been established Online. The idea of throwing some loose change into the hat of a Blog post that has contributed to your day is indeed a worthy and beneficial one. Most Bloggers, especially small time Bloggers, plod along posting, in the same

Airs and Graces

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 17:21:32 PDT

Mac Air on laptop cooler, amongst the rubble of trinkets on my desk (Being sorted through). After nearly six years of owning two MacBooks, my first being passed on in the family (And still running today except for its battery and a replaced hard drive), the second still in good shape but now passed on to the previous MacBook family member who has passed on the first now as a general family

p2pu

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:40:30 PDT

I'm currently participating in a P2PU course structured/facilitated by Web Made Movies (Mozilla's Open Video Lab). The experience so far has been one of building and growth, and the discussions on Popcorn.js, as well as other open standard ideas revolving around HTML5. The time I devote to the program is interesting, it usually is at work between my daily tasks when I have a spare twenty minutes

DIY Education

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 19:14:56 PDT

The Practical Nomad by Todd Berman (cc). George Bernard Shaw was frequently cynical about formal education. George, a Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner, was perhaps one of the greatest advocates of self training. Not only self training, but he was critical of schooling in general. When George wrote about self training, he refers to the liberty of following one's own path of interests. Being

Cyber Consolatio and the Net Necropoleis

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Fri, 13 May 2011 20:22:31 PDT

Image by Charis Tsevis (cc) When I wander through my urban space, I see flowers tied to poles, symbols of fatalities, I query to myself what happened and who did it happen to? Where were these people going, where did they come from, and what was on their mind when this happened? When I wander through cemeteries, I read the brief inscriptions, and I wonder about the people long buried where now

I'm on a horse

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:50:53 PDT

Leo Laporte, tech journalist from TechGuyLabs interviews Craig Allen and Eric Kallman of Wieden + Kennedy about their Old Spice commercial. It's an interesting breakdown of one commercial that doesn't rely on CGI in order to produce a tricky series of shots. The awards Leo talks about are the Clio Awards for advertising.

Open Culture

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:08:39 PDT

Norwegian Smørbrød (Open Sandwich) The Free Culture Game is a playable theory by Mollei Industria which demonstrates the grapple between Intellectual Property Ideal-Estate (Ideal - As in Plato's theory of ideas) and the producers of creative form whether that be text, audio, vision, software et cetera. Further details on this knotty tug-o-war can be followed on the EFF (Electronic Frontier

Weeding out Assessment

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:39:22 PDT

Image from the Nader Library I've called this post Weeding out Assessment but it could also be called taking the pain of the 'ass out of assessment' as creativity takes on another fresh patch of ground as it converges with practices that challenge the status quo of previous methodologies into the realm of digital technologies and Ubicomp art practice. This post is not so much about the latter

Who are the Twitterers in your neighbourhood?

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:32:54 PST

What do we experience in our personal loci when we can visualise surrounding Twitter Tweets using an AR layered App to see what people are thinking or doing around us? It is worth considering community when our neighbourhood can be scanned by Twittering activity. Is someone near us feeling blue? Relaxing to a favourite tune or two? Pressed for time with work and family commitments? Developing an

WikiLeaks and Me

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:58:09 PST

Cultivating the Net ... photo from PixDaus. It's been a fairly interesting journey from when I first got an inkling of WikiLeaks a few years ago, and then recently when the media made it a viral hashtag for the public to decode what it meant to have access to confidential or unreported information available by a few taps from their finger tips. The net imploded with sensation, and every Blogger

Removing the word Tool from Technology

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 06:14:30 PST

Sonic Screwdriver by deck5 on Replica Prop Forum. There is a Hungarian proverb "When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails". The word tool, I think is a problematic and erroneous term in describing what web technologies and digital applications represent. It's as problematic as when people refer to an edited image as Photoshopped, but that's another issue altogether

Appetising for Apple Users

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 01:05:24 PST

www.apple.com/mac/app-store/ It does seriously make Mac a palpable media machine, having tested some of the available free Apps. The Dashboard widget idea was clever although it isn't integrated enough with the rest of Mac's GUI interface and is too obscure for those who appreciate the swiftness of using Exposé. When using the smart corners with Exposé and spaces, the expected outcome is to

Mashing de Bono's 6 Thinking Hats

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:29:27 PST

This was an idea I conducted during a session at my Diploma of Vocational Education and Training course. I initially had two concepts I wanted to work with, the first was examining Bloom's revised taxonomy within the framework of Web 3.0, however, Michael Fisher I discovered had already formulated this principle and so I turned to my second idea of applying the same framework to de Bono's Six

Amit's list of 101 most useful websites

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:28:13 PST

Amit is a Blogger from India who writes up a Blog called Digital Inspiration which features lots of useful technology perched posts for perusal. A recent post of his mentioned 101 quite useful websites to be found online. Five of the more odd and amusing I wanted to repost here on Simuli. The first would have to be isNSFW, a service that allows you to send links of dubious material via a

Why I'll be giving my adieu to Facebook in the New Year 2011

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 04:11:26 PST

Picture from an article by Amanda Talar I felt it was necessary to write a 'dear all and sundry' for leaving Facebook in 2011. In hindsight I found it interesting that I was compelled to do this, although it stands to reason that unlike other social networking sites, the emphasis seems to be almost like a virtual auxiliary club, that upon leaving after many years one should perhaps address

More Machinima resources

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:05:39 PST

Credit: Sterin.genini on Flickr. CC. Some Rights Reserved. Music, sound and fonts are going to play an important role in your finished rendering. A piece of media is layered with many other media forms, and it is important to recognise that these all can be separated as single entities. For instance, a SFX (Sound Effect) may have been specifically recorded for the use of Foley in media. This

My Clinic at the SPAA Fringe in Sydney this year (2010)

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:46:27 PST

SPAA Clinic 2010View more webinars from Rupert Owen. This is the talk (formally regarded as a Clinic) that I gave to independent Producers and Distributors at the SPAA Fringe, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney 2010. There are a few details that need correcting ... the first is that, and many apologies, I call Brian Solis ... "Rolis", the second is I said that Monty Python had a 30% increase in profit in

Writing with light

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:36:39 PST

Grab from John Water's comedy ... Cecil B. Demented. A few tips and terms to be familiar with when shooting video. The title of this post will take you to Cinemacuteo, a Spanish site run for Guerilla Filmmakers and Video Artists. Basic three-point lighting is useful for any formal video capture. That is where you use a back light, a fill light, and a key light, but when shooting "out and about"

Machinima Screen Capture Tools

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 20:31:36 PST

Still from Molotov Alva and His search for the Creator. The Machnima documentary that became "the first simultaneous multi-platform distribution of an American television series." The title of this post when clicked will take you to Eric Linden's Top Ten Machinima making tips, however the capturing software Eric recommends is the Windows based Fraps, another good Window's capturing software is

Digital Aesthetics: Characters

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:14:21 PDT

Picture of Dorian Gray (Picture from Ingilizce Citing David Surman (Senior Lecturer in Game Design at Newport University in Wales) from his paper "Gaming, Uncanny Realism and Technical Demonstration", a point he has brought up in regards to "dominance of player-characters within an evolving notion of genre." (Surman, D. 2008) and this may be perhaps the most characterising development in the

Machinima

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 20:58:25 PDT

Second Life is a 3D Virtual World where inhabitants can interact with different media content, other 'Avatars', and build objects within a virtual environment. DaniWeb's administrator and writer, Happy Geek states that of Feb 2010, Second Life has a total population of 18 Million. There are other 3D Virtual Worlds (Comprehensive list of Metaverses by Ariane B) but by far Second Life appears

The Conversation Prism

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 06:31:29 PDT

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis presents a taxonomy of mediums on the web which allow for communication, engagement and conversation to emerge. It represents to me a communication spectrum, and now requires to be pollinated with Metamedia. I'll be touching on some of these concepts when I deliver my Clinic session at the SPAA Fringe in Sydney this month (Title of this post will take you to

AR meets QR

rowen@kangan.edu.au (Rupert Owen) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:59:43 PDT

This is a video produced last year (2009 in September) but I thought it might be worth embedding onto Simuli because of its relationship between QR (Quick Response) and AR (Augmented Reality) both concepts that utilize the camera on your phone as a scanning device. Both concepts allow for layers to embedded and draped onto the stage of our 'real' physical environment and promise an exciting way