Zen Garden

Science Friction Web Fact?

Snow Crash is a book I still haven’t read yet – but I must!

I keep looking at it on the shelf in the local bookshop and I keep shuffling the list of unread books in my head and it gradually gets nearer the top of it.

It’s influence is wide but there are rumblings of a more/less tangible…  approach.

Houston, We Have A Problem

BBC article on NASA MMO

new yeAr alReady Growing

Games across the internet with ARG – this one involves music.

I can’t help thinking there is something to be had by cross-fertilizing  ARG’s with HP’s Mediascape technology…

A Jump-point for Alternate Reality Gaming

ARGNet piqued my interest when I got sight of a HP Lovecraft-inspired game-type-thing on their site

Mass Effect Soundtrack Review

Soundtrack article from scifi.com discussed how well the music created for the roleplaying game works.

How to Blog by the man who named the thing

Wired article by Jorn Barger states 10 steps to blog effectively.

Future Interaction

Here’s a dump of links regarding the next Tech breakthrough esp. electronic paper

Tech.co.uk article

1. Virtual Reality
2. Gesture recognition
3. Next-generation wireless
4. Genuinely smart cars
5. Electronic paper
6. Yes! Microsoft’s working on another Zune! We can’t wait.

Out of Body Experience for VR

HPL

VR article

use this for my ‘haptics’ stuff

holograms…

electronic paper-roll out screen

electronic paper-on a train

electronic paper-thin paper display

electronic paper-watch-type bangle thingy

electronic paper-Seiko Hi-res paper

Narrative – The Frame Story

I came across an example of the Frame Story narrative in a game today (topical as we did Narrative last Thursday). Silicon Knights (SK blog) is publishing Too Human – an Action/RPG game for the Xbox 360 (exclusive in 360 Gamer magazine) and it uses the Frame Story narrative.

Frame Story has been around a long time and was used in stories like The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights and as far back as Sanskrit texts in India. More up to date, Roleplaying games use the device, an example being Dragon Quest IV (1990) (AKA Dragon Warrior IV) being updated for the Nintendo DS this year (Japan only as yet) so there is precedence for Too Human.

Simply put it is a set of stories that are put together to make an overall story i.e. story in story. As ever Wikipedia is a starting point…

Razor – and it’s not Occam’s

Razor is the intro to the 4th series of Battlestar Galactica (the last episode), it will go out online and follow on DVD hot on its heels which is where I’ll hopefully pick it up. Battlestar Galactica is one of television’s finest hours – a remake from an old late ’70’s TV series but reimagined to perfection.

Nice website for Battlestar Galactica arcade game.