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Solar Road Trip

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Date: Aug. 22, 2013

Today, August 22nd, is a very special day. ...my birthday! OK. Well, more than that, it's Claude Debussy's 151st birthday!

We sought out to create an animated doodle to commemorate Debussy as one of the most influential composers of all time. At the outstart, the task of creating and coding visual imagery that does justice to the spirit of his music seemed incredibly daunting. But, as it turned out, all I needed to do was to resurrect my trusty CD player and hit play, and the inspiration would start flooding in. I felt flickering lights, a quiet city and pouring rain set against the magical melody of Clair de Lune.

We started off with a rough prototype that was built with simple shapes synchronized to a MIDI file generated from sheet music. The prototype was well-received despite looking and sounding like something from the 80's:

Early HTML canvas prototype synchronized to a MIDI file.

Next, we needed a recording of Clair de Lune. I enlisted my sister to perform different variations of the piece on a keyboard that was hooked up to a computer. This gave me the data I needed to drive the animations and the final music that would be used to accompany the doodle.

Data from performance used to drive the animations.

Visually, I drew inspiration from cities of the late 1800's. Stylistically, I aimed for a pseudo-flat and graphic look, as influenced by an illustrator from Debussy's time, Andre Halle. And compositionally, my goal was to make a doodle that would look nice as a French wine label. 




Thanks to Kris Hom and Mark Ivey for engineering support. Thanks to my sister, Sabrina Hong, for letting me record her performance for the doodle.

— Posted by Leon Hong, Doodler

Location: Global

Tags: Rowboat, City, Paddle, Moon, Animation, Music, Stars, Boats, Piano, Balloons, Buildings, Umbrella, Classic Music, French, Cityscape, Clouds, Romantic, Windows, Night, Comet, Interactive, Shooting Star, Composer, Cars, Boat

New drug mimics the beneficial effects of exercise

A drug known as SR9009, which is currently under development at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), increases the level of metabolic activity in skeletal muscles of mice. Treated mice become lean, develop larger muscles and can run much longer distances simply by taking SR9009, which mimics the effects of aerobic exercise. [...]

When Burris' group administered SR9009 to these mice to activate the Rev-Erbα protein, the results were remarkable. The metabolic rate in the skeletal muscles of the mice increased significantly. The treated mice were not allowed to exercise, but despite this they developed the ability to run about 50 percent further before being stopped by exhaustion.

"The animals actually get muscles like an athlete who has been training," said Burris. "The pattern of gene expression after treatment with SR9009 is that of an oxidative-type muscle -- again, just like an athlete."

Previously.

If I can think it, then that’s where my wallet is.  Hmmm, yup.  My wallet is on your car.  Now it’s being shot toward the sun on a rocket you made.  Why would you do that to my wallet?!

This is an interesting, if slightly disturbing, result: In one experiment, we had subjects read two government policy papers from 1995, one from the State Department and the other from the National Security Council, concerning United States intervention to stop the sale of fighter jets between foreign countries. The documents, both of which were real papers released through the Freedom...

That’s a big whoops.  But hey, that means the war is over, yeah?  Yay, Tank did it!

Also, let’s just all pretend The Matrix came out last weekend and that this joke is totally topical!

On his blog, Drew Crawford analyzes the performance of mobile web apps to determine why they are slow compared to native apps, and what the future holds for their performance as CPU and JavaScript runtime speeds increase. Short summary of a long article: he is not optimistic that performance will improve significantly any time soon for a number of reasons. "Of the people who actually do relevant work: the view that JS in particular, or dynamic languages in general, will catch up with C, is very much the minority view. There are a few stragglers here and there, and there is also no real consensus what to do about it, or if anything should be done about it at all. But as to the question of whether, from a language perspective, in general, the JITs will catch up–the answer from the people working on them is 'no, not without changing either the language or the APIs.'" (Thanks to Sebastian Kügler.)

The Walking Bostonian:

Recently the Boston Restaurant Authority has indicated a desire to reduce their minimum soda requirements in new restaurants.

These requirements have been in place since the founding of the BRA in the 1950s, in order to assure that every patron has access to at least one free soda with every meal. In some cases, the BRA had been requiring two sodas per customer.

This measure had been intended to reduce demand for the depleting supplies of on-street soda machines.

Over the years, minimum soda requirements have been blamed for causing over-consumption of sugary drinks. The obesity epidemic, some say, is directly related to the excessive number of soda drinks being forced upon restaurant patrons, whether they order it or not.

"We don't need to push a soda with every meal," Peter Mead, head of the Boston Restaurant Authority, said in a recent interview. He cited US census data showing that one in three Boston residents is between 20 and 35, and most drink water, juice, or beer primarily.

Critics of the new policy claim that elimination of minimum soda requirements will cause a terrible soda shortage, as restaurants may choose to devote resources to other products, such as food. They say this will put a strain on already-short supplies in on-street soda machines.

A local woman complained, "If the BRA gets their way then families will leave Boston and move to the suburbs where they can get soda for free."

Another explained, "While I appreciate the idea of promoting public health, the city's public water transporter, MWRA, is not good enough to replace soda for everyday needs."

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4's $500 and $400 launch price points (respectively) aren't necessarily what we'd call "svelt," but they're also not as expensive as consoles have been in the past. Even ignoring last generation's $600 PlayStation 3 launch, the annals of video game history are riddled with consoles that, when adjusted for inflation, make this holiday season seem like a bargain in comparison.

The Intellivision cost $300 when it originally launched in 1979, which doesn't sound all that out of the ordinary - adjust for inflation, however, and that's the equivalent of $849 in 2013 dollars, according to Ars Technica's breakdown of console launch prices and their respective histories.

The Panasonic R.E.A.L. 3DO was far and away the most expensive console in history with its $700 launch in 1993, which translates to $1,127 in today's skrilla. Hit up the source link below for more graphs comparing the cost of each console over its lifetime, both as a percentage change and a dollar figure adjusted for modern inflation.

Xbox One, PS4 launch prices compared to inflation-adjusted launches of old originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 29 Jun 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nathaniel McClure thought his resume would make it easy to break into the indie game industry. He worked at Activision for years, starting in 2002 with QA and quickly rising to producer on a host of AAA games, including Star Wars Jedi Knight 2, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and a lineup of Call of Duty games.

By 2007, McClure wanted out.

"It was 3AM when I woke up on my keyboard at the office," he told me. "I was a few milestones in, working on my fifth Call of Duty title on my fourth straight year of promotion, when it hit me. If I was to keep loving what got me into making games I would have to quit one of the largest and most popular video games in the world, something I dedicated years of my life to."

McClure resigned that year, when he was a producer on Modern Warfare. He started his own studio, Epicenter, with the goal of making games that he - and other people, he hoped - would want to play. But indie development came with its own brand of bureaucracy, and dealing with publishers, platforms, funding and legal matters made McClure's journey more complex than he imagined.

"I thought my Call of Duty and Wolfenstein credits would land me a dev deal no problem," McClure said. "I was an idiot - it doesn't work that way, and I am grateful that it doesn't."

In 2009 - two studios, a handful of unfulfilled publisher promises and a few indie releases later - McClure founded Scientifically Proven. This year he'll finish development on a gothic, eye-catching action platformer, and what might be his favorite game ever: Blood of the Werewolf.

Continue reading Call of Duty to Blood of the Werewolf: Nathaniel McClure's indie tale

Call of Duty to Blood of the Werewolf: Nathaniel McClure's indie tale originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 28 Jun 2013 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Marco Arment:

Officially, Google killed Reader because "over the years usage has declined". I believe that statement, especially if API clients weren't considered "usage", but I don't believe that's the entire reason.

The most common assumption I've seen others cite is that "Google couldn't figure out how to monetize Reader," or other variants about direct profitability. I don't believe this, either. Google Reader's operational costs likely paled in comparison to many of their other projects that don't bring in major revenue, and I've heard from multiple sources that it effectively had a staff of zero for years. It was just running, quietly serving a vital role for a lot of people.

[...]

Google Reader is just the latest casualty of the war that Facebook started, seemingly accidentally: the battle to own everything. While Google did technically "own" Reader and could make some use of the huge amount of news and attention data flowing through it, it conflicted with their far more important Google+ strategy: they need everyone reading and sharing everything through Google+ so they can compete with Facebook for ad-targeting data, ad dollars, growth, and relevance.

RSS represents the antithesis of this new world: it's completely open, decentralized, and owned by nobody, just like the web itself. It allows anyone, large or small, to build something new and disrupt anyone else they'd like because nobody has to fly six salespeople out first to work out a partnership with anyone else's salespeople.

That world formed the web's foundations -- without that world to build on, Google, Facebook, and Twitter couldn't exist. But they've now grown so large that everything from that web-native world is now a threat to them, and they want to shut it down. "Sunset" it. "Clean it up." "Retire" it. Get it out of the way so they can get even bigger and build even bigger proprietary barriers to anyone trying to claim their territory.

Well, fuck them, and fuck that.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Let this comic motivate you to do that thing you’ve been meaning to do!

And don’t forget about the Invisible Bread Facebook page!  It’s a thing that exists!

Or my Twitter account!  That exists too!

For those of you who think that only posting comics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday is silly (or if you simply hate the number 3), we have good news.  We’re going to draw up some extra material from time to time and post them to our facebook page, like this one Will posted yesterday.

Social game developer Klab is working on a "mobile version of Microsoft Studio's Age of Empires franchise" for iOS and Android. The news follows a Nikkei report that claimed Microsoft agreed a deal with Klab for various mobile versions of the former's games, including what Nikkei specified as a free-to-play version of strategy series Age of Empires.

However, in a statement issued to Polygon, Microsoft only confirmed the iOS and Android version of Age of Empires. The statement also noted certain reports "included incorrect information about additional Xbox Live-based games on iOS and Android," before adding that "there are no further announcements beyond Age of Empires at this time."

While that leaves the door ajar, at the moment Age of Empires is the one confirmed to be headed for mobiles. Microsoft's statement added the game will be initially made in English for iOS and Android, but there are plans for other languages, as well as a Windows Phone version down the line.

Age of Empires marching onto iOS, Android originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 25 Jun 2013 08:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mario Kart 8 takes the series in a new direction, which is to say, "sideways." The Wii U's first entry in the franchise introduces the concept of relativistic gravity - an idea not entirely foreign to Mario himself - to the vehicular antics enjoyed by Nintendo's mascots.

It also marks the console debut of Mario Kart 7's hang gliding mechanic and, by virtue of being on the Wii U, motion controls with the GamePad. Hang gliding is innocuous enough, but I had reservations about the implications of the GamePad's seemingly superior motion controls after a few test races in Nintendo's booth at E3.

Continue reading Mario Kart 8 drives us up a wall

Mario Kart 8 drives us up a wall originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

dear #openstack people.

I just read
http://osdir.com/featured/openstack-cloud-computing

From now on you will stop it with the cutsie naming.

the network bits will be called ‘network’
the compute bits will be called ‘compute’
the block storage will be called ‘blockstore’
the object store will be called ‘objectstore’
the authn/z bits will be called ‘authenticaton’
the image storage will be called ‘imagestore’

If there are other major components you need – they will named precisely based on what they are.
If you rev those pieces in major ways you will just iterate the major version number.

If you cannot cope with these rules someone is going to drop heavy things near your toes.

You have used up all your name change turns. You are done.

So! Now that I’m all grown up and some sort of official game industry person, I finally made it to E3 this year. Here are a bunch of random observations:

• I have never before seen “convention booths” that are two stories tall, and are so big that they have office space and a break room for the staff.
• Everywhere I looked there were attendees sitting in rest areas, against walls, etc. with 3DSes. There were a few people checking their phones, but they were vastly outnumbered by the 3DS people. I saw zero people with PSPs / Vitas. Conversely, of the games being shown, there seemed to be significantly more Vita games than games for any other system.
• The PS4 controller feels really heavy. The Xbone controller has a pair of tiny additional vibrators inside the triggers. The Wii-U controller is ridiculously unwieldy, and the few Wii-U games I saw didn’t use it at all. Some of the Wii-U games gave players the option of playing with either the Wii-U TV Tray controller or the “wiimote and nunchuk”, and everyone I saw playing those games was opting for the latter.
• Both Microsoft and Disney are trying to make Minecraft. Microsoft’s version is called “Spark“, and Disney’s version is called “Infinity“. Infinity does that extra-impossible thing of trying to be Minecraft and Skylanders at the same time. Given Disney’s track record and resources (in terms of money, IP, and positive reputation), it’ll probably work.
• All of the buses in downtown LA were wrapped with Dark Souls II ads, and there was a giant Dark Souls II billboard on the side of the convention center. Being a Dark Souls 1 fan I thought this was pretty neat, but on the other hand I thought it was weird that this much effort was being put into advertising a game that isn’t going to be released until March of next year.
• There was an enormous 180 degree semi-circular screen with additional 60″ flat panel screens on huge robot arms, and a laser light show and a giant vibrating platform that people were herded onto. It showed a movie that simulated a sort of “mission control” as the US failed to defend itself from space nukes. As a huge timer counted down, the nukes rained down on the eastern seaboard, and then gradually made their way across the country to southern California, blowing up San Diego as the timer reached zero. The screen went dark, and then we were told that “10 Years Later…” there would be another Call of Duty game. They’re like cockroaches.

And here are the games I played:

• Contrast (PC): This was my “game of show”. I played a PC build, but it was also being shown off on PS3. You control a little girl’s imaginary friend who can toggle between moving in the 3D world, and moving on a 2D plane as a shadow. Neat mechanics, great art direction. Feels like the full game will be pretty short, but long enough to be fun.
• Octodad (PS3): I’ve been hearing a lot of love for Octodad for a while, and now that I’ve finally played it I understand. You play an octopus disguised as an average human dad, trying to do average human dad things, but with crazy flailing octopus tentacles, and delightfully-obtuse controls. It reminded me of QWOP, but much more forgiving and fun.
• Rain (PS3): A surprise disappointment. You play an invisible little boy in a rainy city, who’s only visible when he’s out in the rain. There’s a similarly-invisible little girl who you’re following for some reason, and some similarly-invisible dog monsters who are trying to eat you for some reason. It sounds like a neat concept, but there’s just not much there in the execution.
• Mercenary Kings (PS4?): I think this was playing on a PS4… I played it with a PS4 controller, but the controller’s cable led into a nondescript wall with no indication of what hardware was on the other side. I backed this project’s Kickstarter, so it was fun to get to play a little of it. I didn’t play much, but what I did play felt suitably Metal-Slug-esque, with some unexpected hints of Monster Hunter (namely gathering and crafting, and bosses who disappear into the underbrush if you take too long to defeat them) which was neat.
• Puppeteer (PS3): Dynamite Headdy! No, really, it’s exactly like Dynamite Headdy, but a much bigger pill 3D. And you can’t attack. But otherwise the entire game is presented as a puppet show, there are huge crazy bosses, and you have interchangeable heads. Unfortunately, the pacing was really really bad, and the audio was broken on the kiosk I was playing it on, so I lost interest and wandered away after only finishing the first segment, even though I love Dynamite Headdy. Hopefully the pacing problem was just for the demo, or just the very beginning of the game and it gets much better later.
• Open Me (Vita): A cute AR game that’s all about opening puzzle boxes. The boxes appear in “real” space through the camera, and you have to move around them to look at the various sides (no mean feat in the cramped quarters of the demo kiosk) while using the touchscreen to interact with them. The three boxes I saw all had a very “programmer art” look to them, which is a shame since I think this game could’ve really benefited from a “Hellraiser” aesthetic.
• Tearaway (Vita): It’s that adorable papercraft game! Overall pretty fun, but marred by some bad platforming controls near the beginning of the game that made me have to redo a very simple jump a dozen times before I finally got past it.
• Wonderful 101 (Wii-U): I think this was the only Wii-U game I played. And it really wasn’t fun. It looked really fun, what with being about dozens of tiny superheroes all working together to form enormous fists and swords and things out of their bodies (and they all have quirky little costumes with things like stoplights and toilets on their heads, and individual names and bios), but the gameplay was really chaotic and repetitive and instantly boring. The Nintendo guy babysitting the kiosk assured me that, over the three days that he’d been babysitting it and playing it off and on, he’d gradually discovered some really deep gameplay. I was somewhat incredulous. But not outwardly.
• Fresh (Sifteo Cubes): Warioware for Sifteo Cubes. I’d played a different Sifteo Cubes game at Indiecade, and while this one was certainly much more fun, I didn’t feel inclined to play it ever again after the 10 minutes it took me to beat it, and the other Sifteo Cubes games I played really weren’t worth mentioning.
• Hohokum (PS4): I only played a little of this at the very end of the day as they were closing down the Sony booth and pulling the plugs on the kiosks in the middle of peoples’ games, like the good old days when the arcades let you know it was closing time by turning off all the machines. It had sort of a groovy Keita Takahashi / Vectorpark vibe to it, and I was some sort of space tadpole, and I think I was supposed to find a mermaid and bring her to a fisherman. I’d just found the mermaid and was trying to figure out how to get her to follow me when the kiosk was switched off.
• Toro’s Friend Network (Vita): A Toro game finally made it to the US! It’s Farmville!
• olli olli (Vita): Played about 5 seconds of this until I discovered that it’s Canabalt on a skateboard.
• Atelier Meruru (PS3): Played a few minutes of this where I ran around a house where exactly the kind of anime characters you’d expect to find in a game with “Atelier” in the title were just sort of hanging out. Apparently it’s some sort of super-generic JRPG. With a character named STD.
• Frogger and Asteroids (Arcade): There was a classic gaming store that had some arcade games setup. I played some Frogger and Asteroids, and wandered away from both without finishing my first game. I also do this on the Galaga machine at my favorite hotdog place while I’m waiting for my hotdog. At this point I think I’ve spent more on unfinished Galaga games at a quarter each than I have on most iOS games. There’s some profound insight to be gained from that, but I don’t know what it is.
• Tim’s new game and Brandon’s new game (Vita): I played Tim Rogers’ (and Brent Porter’s) new sliding-block puzzle game. I also played Brandon Sheffield’s new sliding-block puzzle game. I recommended that they combine their sliding-block puzzle games.

Games I did not play but feel that I should mention:

• Knack (PS4): The premise of this game is the same idea that we all had after our first marathon session of Katamari Damacy, where we thought, “ooh, what if there was a more fighty game built around this same mechanic, and you start out fighting really small enemies, and gradually grow by attaching random junk to your body, until eventually you’re enormous and fighting enormous enemies”. However, the presentation appeared to be very very linear and scripted and totally contrary to the sandboxyness that one would expect from that premise.
• Dragon’s Crown (PS3 / Vita): Between Sony’s megabooth, Atlus’s booth, and a couple other places, I think there were more kiosks playing Dragon’s Crown than any other game, but I still somehow managed to not play it. I’m honestly not that fond of brawlers.
• Game & Wario (Wii-U): This really confused me. I loved the original Warioware, and liked Twisted almost as much, but it seems like every game in the series is getting further and further from the simple greatness of the original. As I watched someone else play, he first chose the specific minigame he wanted to play, then sat through a very long cutscene, and then played the same minigame over and over. And here I was hoping they were making a Warioware game.
• Transistor (PS4): There were long lines for this every time I walked by, and I didn’t know anything about it, and finally found out at the end of the day that it’s the new Supergiant game, but it was too late to play it.

Brewster Kahle:

Because of recent news reports, I wanted to cross check the cost feasibility of the NSA's recording all of the US phonecalls and processing them.

These estimates show only $27M in capital cost, and $2M in electricity and take less than 5,000 square feet of space to store and process all US phonecalls made in a year. The NSA seems to be spending $1.7 billion on a 100k square foot datacenter that could easily handle this and much much more. Therefore, money and technology would not hold back such a project -- it would be held back if someone did not have the opportunity or will.

Another study concluded about 4x my data estimates others have suggested the data could be compressed 10:1, and the power bill would be lower in Utah.

Previously, previously, previously.

Originally scheduled to have its groundbreaking ceremony take place sometime in June, the Mac OSX version of SimCity won't be accepting new residents until August, Maxis has announced.

"We have made this tough decision because we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet," senior producer Kip Katsarelis said in the announcement. "We want to ensure the Mac is a great experience for our players and that is why we are taking more time." As an expression of gratitude for their patience, Mac mayors will receive the "Launch Park" awarded to early adopters of the PC version in Update 4.

Meanwhile, Update 5 for the PC version is expected to hit "in a couple weeks," patch notes for which can be uncovered by clickin' all up on the source link below.

SimCity Mac delayed until August originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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