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Friday, February 20, 2004 |
Moment of visual zen: DARPA Grand Challenge illustration. 
In this month's Popular Science Magazine, an illustration by Kenn Brown, who says:
"DARPA is putting together a race of autonomous (robotic) vehicles
that runs from LA to Las Vegas. Completely remote, no one at the wheel.
They are recruiting people (these guys are serious robot geeks who
build and tinker with this stuff as a hobby and obsession) to build
their own vehicles to participate in the race. The vehicles range from
motorcycles to HumVees. The point of this story is to illustrate
DARPA's interest in this technology, and that they hope to have
autonomous vehicles waging war by 2015. "
Oh, goodie. I can hardly wait.
Link
[Boing Boing Blog] 
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SimCity for Sims, recursion will eat itself. A third-party Sims developer has produced a version of SimCity for use in the Sims,
so that your simulated people can simulate being the mayor of a
simulated city. No word yet on whether we are all just sims in a great
simulation in the sky, executing on a celestial computer the size of
the universe, with "God" simply a gamer playing an unimaginably scaled
up version of the Sims. But I have my suspicions. Have a melon. Lag. Dude.
"The Sims must routinely refurbish the buildings to keep the citizens
happy, or just let them deteriorate and force the citizens to become
unhappy and move away," says Alvey. "Happy citizens go to work and pay
taxes, which the Sims collect as revenue. The higher the profits, the
more attractive the city becomes, so more citizens will move into it."
Link
(via Futurismic) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Social Software for Children. Fiona Romeo has posted her notes from her excellent ETCON presentation, "Social Software for Children."
My talk focused on the findings of the BBC identity group's qualitative
research and usability testing with children and teens. I shared
insights into Jessica and Jake's approaches to identity management,
friendship and group membership, with the view to inform actual product
development work in this area.
While the purpose of my talk was to stimulate interest in the
question: How can we ensure children's safety while letting them have
expressive identities in social software?, I also gave some of my own
opinions about the appropriateness - or not - of existing social
software, and speculated about some positive future directions that
wikis and weblogs could take (e.g. using RSS syndication to involve
parents in the moderation of social spaces for children).
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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HOWTO: turn off html in your mailer.
Here's a great overview of the reasons to eschew HTML for email, and an
amazing, exhaustive primer on turning off html-mail-sending in dozens
of mail clients. I keep my screen resolution high enough that most of
the html mail I receive shows up at completely unreadable sizes --
plain text mail automativally sizes to my preferred scale, but not so
html mail.
Many E-mail and Usenet News reader programs, usually the mail and news
reader programs that come with browser packages, allow users to include
binary attachments (MIME or other encoding) or HTML (normally found on
web pages) within their E-mail messages. This makes URLs into clickable
links and it means that graphic images, formatting, and even color
coded text can also be included in E-mail messages. While this makes
your E-mail interesting and pretty to look at, it can cause problems
for other people who receive your E-mail because they may use different
E-mail programs, different computer systems, and different application
programs whose files are often not fully compatible with each other.
Any of these can cause trouble with in-line HTML (or encoded
attachments). Most of the time all they see is the actual HTML code
behind the message. And if someone replies to the HTML formatted
message, the quoting can render the message even more unreadable. In
some cases, the message is nothing but strange looking text. For this
reason, many mailing lists especially those that provide a digest
version, explicitly forbid the use of HTML formatted e-mail. See
examples section.
Link
(via Dive Into Mark) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Mathematics of M&M packing.
According to a paper in the new issue of Science, researchers were
surprised to discover that M&Ms randomly dumped into a bowl pack
together much more densely than spheres. Why? Aspherical ellipsoids
like M&Ms can touch eleven neighbors when dumped together while
spheres only saddle up to six. Understanding how particles pack
together can help scientists develop new and denser materials, like
ceramics for heat shields. Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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More offshoring analysis. Maryam's
relatives came over on Saturday for a party. What's on their minds?
Offshoring. People are really freaked about this trend. Politically,
there is going to be a lot of pressure to do something. But, what can
be done for programmers, IT folks, and service folks? Tariffs? Yeah,
I'd like to see you put in place a tariff for programmers. Not unless
you're going to shut down the Internet and FedEX. It's easy to tariff
something like steel, but not so easy when it's just bits traveling
across the Internet.
Anyway, Rajesh Jain's weblog points to the
New York Times analysis. Do we really need to analyze this? Let's see.
Average Chinese worker gets paid about $1000 a year. Yes, that's right.
In Bejing the number goes up to $2500 per year. How much are you paid?
I am paid a lot more than that. Is there pressure to send my job over
to China? You betcha there is.
Watch out, the politicians will probably start making promises (and
accusations) on this issue that will astound. Offshoring could become
THE US election issue this year. [The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]
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Nice chat with Russell Beattie. Demo is quite a conference.
I just had a nice talk with Russell Beattie (for those of you who
don't know, we've had some public disagreements in the past). But, the
company he joined, WaveBlog, is doing one of the more interesting
things I've seen here at Demo. Here Russell shows off what they Demo'd here.
Yeah, he hates Microsoft. Yeah, his company is building on top of
Linux. But, it still is cool and I can't wait to try his system out.
Speaking of anti-Microsoft stuff, yesterday Evermore showed
off a copy of Microsoft Office that was coded in Java. Funded by
Chinese government. Oh, great, not only are we competing against
programmers who get paid $2500 per year (or less), but we're competing
against software funded by governments now too. Yeah, it's OK, they are
just beating up on Microsoft, right? Well, wait until their government
comes after your job. Is this having a chilling effect on the industry?
You betcha. I was talking with several VCs this morning and they are
looking for things that pay them back their investments even faster and
for things that are harder to copy.
It's interesting, because of my role on stage at yesterday's weblogging panel (here's a Red Herring report on that)
VCs are asking me about whether there's money in weblogging. I ask them
back "if we talked in 1994, could you have told me how you would have
made money with HTML?"
One knock against weblogging and potential businesses that are being
built around weblogs is "they are technically easy to reproduce."
So, what's the coolest thing I saw? I agree with Amy Wohl that Total Immersion had
the best demo of the two days. These guys came out on stage. In the
demoer's hands was a flower. At least that was how it looked on the
15-foot monitors at the front of the room. But, he didn't really have
anything in his hand.
Soon the demoer had a light saber in his hand. My son would have
loved this system. The demo moved to a table with real models laid out
(sort of like a city). On screen the demoer dropped a virtual car onto
the table. It started driving around and interacting with the "real"
city. Then, he showed that the "real" city could be augmented. Changed.
Played with.
This stuff is so amazing I simply don't know how to describe it in
ASCII text. Soon he had a helicopter flying over the hybrid
real/virtual city and, even, the audience.
I saw Paul Allen walking around the show floor yesterday, and his new company, Vulcan Ventures,
had the sexiest thing. A tiny laptop running Windows XP. Not much
larger than a PDA, but that has a 1024x600 resolution screen. I want
one, although I'd be more likely to spend the $1500 on a new Tablet PC.
I've always wanted to videoconference with my brother-in-law who
works at Apple (among others) but there was never a good cross-platform
system. SightSpeed showed me
their new system that works on Windows, Linux, and Macs. Very excellent
video quality, although the audio crackled a bit while they were on
stage.
AlMiMedia made me want to get a Windows Media Center. And that was built on .NET too.
My friend Buzz Bruggeman just won a Demo God award. Congrats! [The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]
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Webmonkey closes down.
This may be the year of the monkey, but sadly it is not the year of the
Webmonkey. I'm gonna miss it. I learned some of my very first lessons
about building websites from that website, and I still have various
sections bookmarked for handy reference.
BoingBoing reader Philip
says:
Webmonkey is closing down! They
finally pulled the plug. "Webmonkey, the site that turned humble Web
developers into attention-grabbing authors, said last week it is
closing down following a round of layoffs in the U.S. division of its
parent company, Terra Lycos (also the parent company of Wired News).
Judging by blog posts and e-mails, the site's fans aren't surprised.
Still, they're sad to see the end of an era."
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Sponsored Paris. 
More
logomarked futurism: a Flash app (with un-mutable, obnoxious
soundtrack) showing various Paris landmarks as they might appear once
sponsored by multinational brands. You know, I wrote a story about this (reprinted in this book).
Link
(Thanks, Chryde!)
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Waveblog. WaveBlog. 
I'm here with my company WaveMarket at DEMO and this morning -
after a few days of last minute rush - we launched our suite of
Location Based Services, including my baby WaveBlog. Yay! What a push. And whew! Now I can talk about what I'm doing!
This is what I've been working on for the past several months. It's
a combination of a custom J2ME based mapping client, weblog service and
location alerting system. It's being sold to carriers, not to the
general public, but you can play with the public weblog site above.
This is the piece I developed. It still needs a lot of hardening and
ever more features need to be added to keep up with the TypePads of the
world, but in general it's your standard weblog service, but with the
integration of location information and maps. The location information is the hard part, and the piece of
the puzzle my company fills in. First, you can use the J2ME app (called
WaveSpotter) to locate a position on a map with crosshairs for a
one-click post to your weblog, or in the coming months we're going to
be announcing deals with American and international carriers who will
provide the location information on the back end which will geo-tag
email and web posts automagically. I've also added a geo-encoding form
to the site as well, so at the worst case you can just enter the
address information and it'll look up the location info for you. In addition to the maps on the weblog, the RSS feed also
incorporates per-post geolocation using the W3C geo proposed namespace
and tags. The idea is to provide that data for others to use and to
start aggregating other geotagged feeds so that using a handset - via
J2ME or WAP2 - you can see which weblogs have been updated in real time
near you or in another specific location ("location-based mobile
aggregation"). Our pitch has to do with club-goers and other trendy
what-if scenarios that carriers love, but in general it's just the next
step in mobile weblogging. Going from "photo blogs" to *real*
moblogging, by enabling producing and consuming of information
organized not only by time, but also by location. When you combine this
with the rich media that modern handsets can produce, people become
"personal broadcasters" where every mobile user (everyone?) becomes a
roving reporter on the scene around them. Now this is just the weblogging piece. WaveMarket existed long
before I got there - they've got this really intense Alert system (the
third product in the suite) which is not just a product, but a
platform. Carriers buy our server and can then enable any of their
third party developers to add location based alerts to their products
(we'll be using the Alert system ourselves in the WaveBlog). For
example, Buddy Alert allows you and your friends to sign up for alerts
if you come within a certain distance of each other: "Alert: Ana is
within 1 kilometer of you. Call her?" or things like Child Tracker:
"Alert: Alex just decided to leave town with your car. Call him?" (This
example will obviously not be for a few years, but the tech exists
today.) And that's the launch. Whew! We're pretty exhausted already
and it's only day one. Luckily we got to present (not me, my CEO) early
on Day One, so now we can just hang out in the Pavillion and answer
questions. I got a great visit from Dave Sifrey and Doc Searls
this morning (who brought along an AP reporter with them. THANKS
GUYS!). Doc is going to come back and pick my brain on the Linux
systems we're using. I haven't mentioned that yet, but I'm the only
developer who uses Windows. Everyone else uses Linux on their desktops,
which is very cool, and WaveBlog (of course) runs on Linux (Debian,
actually). Wonder why I like my job so much? Okay, back to the conference...
-Russ By russ@russellbeattie.com. [Russell Beattie]
Congrats to Russ on his launch. Maybe I'll have to get one of those phones now! [Marc's Voice]
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VoIP and wiretapping. This is a battle that is going to be lost. Wardriving + Skype = amazing combo. [John Robb's Weblog]
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'Xen' to Morph Into 'X Omega'.
We have more details on Microsoft's XML programming language (known as
"X#," "Xen," and soon, "X Omega"). Microsoft Research expects to
deliver a prototype by mid-year. Meanwhile, the Longhorn and SQL Server
teams are both looking into potential uses for the forthcoming
programming language. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]
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Paranoia Returns. PARANOIA XP ANNOUNCED
Cult Roleplaying Game to Be Revitalized for the Digital Millennium
The Revolution Will be Blogged
February 19, 2004 - New York, NY - For Immediate Release
The
Computer says that failure to feature this announcement prominently is
treason. Treason is punishable by summary execution. Thank you for your
cooperation.
Mongoose Publishing of Swindon, Wilts., UK
(www.mongoosepublishing.com) announced today agreement with the
creators of the fondly remembered tabletop roleplaying game Paranoia,
to develop and publish a new edition of the game, Paranoia XP. The new
version will be written and produced by legendary game designers Allen
Varney and Aaron Allston, with participation by Paranoia's original
co-designer Greg Costikyan.
The developers will conduct
their discussions about the game on a blog hosted at
www.costik.com/paranoia, and those interested in the game are invited
to comment and participate in the process.
Paranoia,
originally published in 1984, has sold more than 200,000 copies
worldwide, and retains a fanatical following despite having been out of
print for almost a decade. Designed by Dan Gelber, Greg Costikyan, and
Eric Goldberg, it and its supplementary products have garnered numerous
industry awards, including several Origins Awards and the Gamer's
Choice Award. It is known not only for its hilarious, dark vision of a
future world controlled by an insane Computer, but also for its ability
to attract world-renowned authors to contribute to its supplements and
ancillary material--people such as multiple World Fantasy Award-winning
author John M. Ford; Warren Spector, whom PC Gamer magazine names as
one of the top 20 creators in digital gaming, and Ken Rolston,
co-creator of the best-selling PC game Morrowind.
Paranoia
debuted at a time when the Soviet Union was shooting down jet liners
and invading Afghanistan, and when many workers feared they would lose
their jobs as a result of the spread of desktop computers. With its
vision of an Orwellian world, a totalitarian society controlled by an
insane Computer that demands instant obedience at laser-point, it
struck a worldwide nerve. According to Costikyan, that vision is
relevant now more than ever. "Paranoia XP is not an attempt to bring
back an old RPG for the nostalgic. Its basic themes -- totalitarianism,
fear of technology, mistrust, and loathing--are, if anything, more
relevant than they were in 1984. Spammers. Identify thieves. Blackhat
hackers. The RIAA. Weapons of mass destruction. Totally dysfunctional
government. Just as it did lo these many years ago, so shall the new
Paranoia encapsulate and make funny the terrors we live with every
day... or remind us to be afraid of things that we currently think are
merely funny."
Alex Fennell, Mongoose's director, set down
his Red Bull and Coke long enough to say, "We're bloody delighted to be
publishing Paranoia XP. Yanks don't come any funnier than these blokes."
Allen
Varney, who contributed to many early Paranoia supplements, looks
forward to revisiting the game's futuristic underground city, Alpha
Complex. "For years society has been inventing new material for
Paranoia. I'll have a great time transcribing it. I hope players will
like our newly redecorated setting, and I'll do my best to make them
feel at home. Alpha Complex is not a place but a state of mind. Oh, and
ginger ale for me, please."
Eric Goldberg who since 1984 has
become one of the most respected figures in the online and mobile
gaming industries, said, "For those who know the game, Paranoia has
settled into the deep hindbrain. Catch phrases like 'The Computer is
Your Friend,' 'Commies are Everywhere,' and 'Happiness is Mandatory'
come to mind at the most socially awkward moments. Back in the 80s, a
concern with the social implications of technology was the purview of a
geeky few; today, it's of fundamental importance to everyone. Games,
too, are now a huge part of the vernacular. I believe Paranoia XP will
be of considerable interest not merely to the audience of tabletop
roleplaying gamers but also to anyone interested in and concerned with
the social-technological issues of today-the attempt to control IP, to
police the Internet, to suppress dissent. We're living Paranoia. By the
way--what a bunch of wimps. I'll have the pale ale."
The
text-based online game rights to Paranoia have separately been licensed
to Skotos (www.skotos.com). Reports that Paranoia XP will also be
published in several other languages, and that film, computer, and
console versions are may be forthcoming are rumors. Rumors are treason.
Treason is punishable by summary execution. Have a nice day!
Mongoose
Publishing is one of the leaders in the RPG market, producing games
such as Babylon 5, Conan, and Judge Dredd for roleplayers all over the
world. Its publications are available in all good hobby and book stores.
Greg
Costikyan (www.costik.com) and Eric Goldberg have collaborated on
various games since they first met at Simulations Publications, Inc. in
the 1970s, including on the first online game to attract more than a
million players.
Greg has designed more than 30 commercially
published board, roleplaying, computer, online, and mobile game, has
won numerous industry awards, and has been inducted into the Adventure
Gaming Hall of Fame for a lifetime of accomplishment in the field. He
writes about games, game design, and game industry business issues for
publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal
Interactive, Salon, Game Developer magazine, and his blog
(www.costik.com/weblog), which is one of the most widely-read blogs
dealing with games. He is also the author of four science fiction
novels.
Allen Varney (www.allenvarney.com) has published
three boardgames, over two dozen roleplaying supplements (including
several for Paranoia), seven books, and 250+ articles, stories, and
reviews, including regular columns in four national gaming magazines.
Varney recently designed and ran the UT Executive Challenge, a
three-day business ethics simulation for 100 second-year MBA students
at the University of Texas McCombs Business School. He is now
developing a Web-based "business simulator" with the e-learning company
Enspire Learning (enspire.com).
Aaron Allston
(www.aaronallston.com) is the author of a dozen science fiction and
fantasy novels and the award-winning designer of more than forty
tabletop role-playing games and game supplements. He has recently
written a script for a feature-length horror movie intended to carry
his trademark humor into the realm of ultra-low-budget filmmaking.
For more information, contact
Greg Costikyan
+1 646 489 8609
===========================
MONGOOSE GETS PARANOID
New PARANOIA XP edition and support line debut in August 2004
The Computer: Greetings, citizen! How may I help you?
Player:
I hear Mongoose Publishing is releasing a new edition of the Paranoia
roleplaying game this August. What can you tell me about it?
The Computer: State your reason for requesting this information.
Player: Uh... I guess I was wondering whether to buy it.
The
Computer: Excellent, citizen! You wish to legitimately purchase this
product, rather than steal The Computer's valuable intellectual
property like a traitorous data pirate. This demonstrates your loyalty
to the ideals of Alpha Complex.
Brought to you by The Computer's
brilliant researchers in the R&D service firms of MNG Sector,
PARANOIA XP is the entirely updated and perfected version of the darkly
humorous RPG originally published by West End Games. The new edition's
writers include PARANOIA co-creator Greg Costikyan, longtime paranoiac
Allen Varney, and Famous Game Designer Aaron Allston. There are also
devious and subtle new contributions from the original PARANOIA line
editor, Ken Rolston.
Player: Is PARANOIA XP still about living in an underground city of the future ruled by an insane Computer?
The
Computer: The Computer is not "insane." Traitors lurk everywhere. In
the old days, The Computer's loyal Troubleshooters only worried about
Commie subversion, secret society sabotage, unregistered mutants, robot
liberators, feuding High Programmers, tainted drugs, exploding food
vats, nuclear hand grenades, and the occasional giant atomic cockroach.
How naive!
Now your clone family faces not only these persistent
threats, but a new host of looming dangers such as viral licenses,
closed-source genetic retooling, identity rentals, subconscious
post-hypnotic brain-spam, Infrared-market WMD auction sites, and
filesharing.
Player: Filesharing?
The Computer:
Filesharing is Communism! Fortunately, The Computer's loyal Central
Processing service firms have devised many innovative digital-rights
management methods to shield you from temptation. The most promising
methods manage your actual physical digits. Would you care to get your
fingerprints remapped?
Player: Uh... maybe later. Is this new PARANOIA XP anything like the game's earlier editions?
The
Computer: PARANOIA XP combines the scary-funny, sardonic tone of
PARANOIA's first edition (1984) with the fast-playing, rules-light
approach of the second edition (1987).
Player: Are you using the d20 rules system?
The Computer: No. PARANOIA is fun. D20 games are not fun. The Computer says so.
PARANOIA's second edition rules were, of course, perfect. The new
PARANOIA XP expunges certain imperfections introduced by subversive
elements, and will be even more perfect.
Remember, citizen,
PARANOIA is a game of satire, not parody. It is not -- attend to this
-- NOT "wacky." Expect NO awful misfiring "wacky" parodies of Westerns,
cyberpunk, Arthurian myth, post-holocaust Australia, or angsty
goth-punk blather.
Player: "Orcbusters" was a parody of fantasy games, wasn't it?
The
Computer: "Orcbusters" obtained prior Internal Security approval using
Special Registered Parody Dispensation Form KR1986-12/j. All
unregistered parodies are treason.
Instead, the new PARANOIA XP
support line recalls the illustrious releases of 1984-88, such as Acute
Paranoia, Send in the Clones, Alpha Complexities, and the award-winning
Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues. Mongoose will reissue updated
versions of much of this excellent material soon after PARANOIA XP
debuts.
Player: Does the new edition use material from the "Fifth Edition"?
The Computer: There is no Fifth Edition.
Player: Huh? Come on, I've seen it myself!
The
Computer: You are mistaken, citizen. No Fifth Edition was published by
West End Games in 1995, nor did West End show pages from a projected
"Long Lost Third Edition" at GenCon in 1997. Note that there also has
never been a Crash Course Manual, nor any "Secret Society Wars,"
"MegaWhoops," or "Reboot Camp" adventures.
These products never existed. They are now un-products.
Are you absolutely clear on this, citizen? Do you still doubt The
Computer? Perhaps you need to visit the Bright Vision Re-Education
Center.
Player: Uh, no! I trust The Computer. The Computer
is my friend! But Friend Computer -- against all the dangers you so
brilliantly enumerated, how can I possibly survive?
The Computer: I'm sorry, that information is not available at your security clearance.
PARANOIA XP. AUGUST 2004. MONGOOSE PUBLISHING.
BUY PARANOIA. IT WILL BE FUN. FUN IS MANDATORY.
PARANOIA
is a trademark jointly held by Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan and
used under exclusive license by Mongoose Publishing. Copyright (c) 2004
Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan. All rights reserved.
[Games * Design * Art * Culture]
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Clayton Christensen at MIMC.
I attended another of MIMC's Fireside Chats last week. This one was to
hear an interview with Clayton Christensen. He's famous for writing The
Innovator's Dilemma, and is now promoting his new book, The Innovator's
Solution, which I reviewed here on this weblog last October. Great
meeting. I've written up my notes and added a few pictures. Clayton
comments on things from drug research to low-cost airlines to Open
Source. [Dan Bricklin's Log]
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Automating The Sims Character Animation Pipeline with MaxScript.
From: johnw@lyric.com (John Wainwright)
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 1998 1:31 PM
To: dhopkins@maxis.com (Don Hopkins)
Subject: CGDC talk
Hi, Don.
Kinetix has roped me into giving a talk about MAXScript at the Game
Developer's Conference in Long Beach on Friday. I wanted to see if its
OK to mention your use of MAXScript at Maxis and if so, maybe you could
give a few bullet points on what it's OK for me to mention. Of course,
I remember the note track key stuff and the Access database interface,
but I'm not sure if there were other things and how all that wound up
coming together.
Thanks,
John.
Certainly! Here is a descripton of how I'm using MaxScript to implement The Sims character animation pipeline:
The Sims character animation system is fed by a complex content
pipeline, which integrates disparate tools including: SourceSafe,
Access, 3D Studio Max, Character Studio, Biped, Physique, MaxScript,
and a custom C++ plug-in that incorporates The Sims character animation
engine, the same code which runs in the game.
The goal was to automatically drive the exporter from the database,
to minimise the effect of human error, and to support automatic batch
exporting of many files sequentially.
At first, I implemented the initial version of the character
animation exporter in C++, as an ordinary 3D Studio Max exporter
plug-in. But that was inflexible and couldn't be easily extended or
automated.
So I recast the animation exporter as a MaxScript primitive, so I
could call it under MaxScript program control, through MaxScript's
extension plug-in interface.
The new character animation exporter is implemented in 3D Studio Max
with MaxScript and a C++ plug-in. It has a utility interface panel for
automating content creation tasks like database queries, content
validation and batch exporting.
The MaxScript extension plug-in interface allows developers to add
new primitives to the MaxScript language in 3D Studio Max, call any C++
code or libraries from MaxScript, pass parameters back and forth, and
fully access the underlying Max plug-in interfaces. So it was desirable
to implement the exporter in MaxScript, instead of resorting to using
the standard exporter interface with only C++.
The standard 3D Studio Max exporter plug-in interface is inflexible,
and requires you to implement a bizarre node enumeration callback
interface; but the MaxScript extension interface is completely general
purpose and easily extensible. It allows you to do most of the
programming in MaxScript instead of C++, which is much more fun and
concise.
By using MaxScript, I was also able to integrate the exporter with
other tools in various ways: I used OLE automation to read an Access
database table describing all the animations, the DOSCommand primitive
to invoke SourceSafe to check the files in and out of the source
control system, and the file system access primitives to read and write
text files.
Implementing The Sims character animation exporter as a MaxScript
primitive, instead of as a normal exporter plug-in, had many
advantages: MaxScript makes it easy to write user interface dialogs
integrated with 3D Studio Max's interface. You can pass complex
parameters to plug-in MaxScript primitives, and they can return error
messages and rich data structures describing the results of exporting.
MaxScript can read the parameters from a database, automatically call
the exporter without any human intervention, validate the results
against the database, and report meaningful error messages and
statistical measurements.
I used MaxScript to make a utility control panel, which allows
artists to browse all the animations in the database, load the
corresponding Max files, check the content in and out of SourceSafe
source code control, configure the export directory, automatically
export any animation, and batch export the whole database or subsets of
it.
We're using note tracks to mark up the animations in time, and to
insert events into the animation. Think of note tracks as XML in
3D+Time. A note track can be associated with any node in the 3D
hierarchy, and contains keys in time, with any text property values.
The text is formatted as a property list of "name=value" associations.
The exporter looks for these notes to figure out what to do.
I added some note track access primitives, so MaxScript could
automatically insert appropriate note tracks and properties as
specified in the database, and validate that the required notes are
present in the file. The arist can then adjust the position of the
notes in time (moving footstep events so they correspond to the time
when the foot hits, for example), edit their text "name=value"
properties (to control the exporter behavior and pass it parameters, as
well as sending events to the animation playback engine at run-time).
If you would like to show an interesting MaxScript programming
example, there's a neat function called "defRecordStruct" in the code I
posted to the Kinetics MaxScript bboard, that takes an Access RecordSet
OLE object, and defines a MaxScript record that corresponds to it, and
a MaxScript function that reads it into a record. An interesting
exercise would be to extend it to define a MaxScript function that
writes the record back into the OLE RecordSet.
One reason I like MaxScript so much, is that it's extremely similar to ScriptX.
But it has many extensions to support 3D animation, and an excellent
native code plug-in interface, which ScriptX lacked. I like ScriptX
because I had fun working with it for two years at Kaleida Labs. It's
no coincidence that ScriptX and MaxScript are similar, because both
languages were designed by the same person, John Wainwright, whose
language design sense is elegant and practical.
[Don Hopkins' RadiOMatic BlogUTron]
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Curry KitKats. Nestle is rolling out curry-flavored KitKats.
As well as the cumin and masala flavour, Nestle is considering offering lemon cheesecake, liquorice, saffron and passion fruit.
Lemon cheesecake KitKat is already sold in Germany and Japan, and the group confirmed it may be brought to Britain.
Link
(via Fark) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Fun rubegoldberg Flash toy.
Jed sez, "Cute Flash toy in which you try to determine the order in
which to drag various items into the middle. Each time you drag an
item, the items you've already placed change ("level up") and interact
with each other. The goal is to drag all the items in the right
sequence to advance them all to their maximum levels. (The maximum
score is 20,000.) There are quite a few possible sequences that do
this, as well as some sequences that don't reach the maximum but do
produce fun effects."
Link
(Thanks, Jed!) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Build handcranked automata from books of die-cut parts. 
Wacky Neighbor
sez: "I just ran into this while googling Die Fledermaus. Little
origami robots for the desktop. They call 'em paper automata, and
they're trying to sell them as executive toys. Although I think their
real market is the geek sector. And given the lascivious movement of
the witch, I think with minor redesigns, they could have a future in
the risque novelty market. Whether the titular flying pig appears at
life's lineups, a la Kids in the Hall, is another matter." Link
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Stephen Dulaney announces
that the SmartManila beta is up. It is a slick editing interface for
Manila weblogs. This software makes it much easier to introduce
nontechnical newbies in your organization to weblogging. No knowledge
of tags necessary. Spell check. Undo. Forgiving editing interface (none
of the browser problems you currently run into on all Web-based
weblogging systems). [John Robb's Weblog]
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Cool new TypePad features (most of which Blogware already has). Very cool new features from TypePad. The Palm Client, in particular, sounds great!
Blogware has had most of these features from the start.
QUOTE The mobile features below will be released in a major update to TypePad within the next couple of weeks.
Posting Controls on Moblogs
Instead of just one email address that can post to the moblog, allow
multiple authors to post, or allow anyone with access to email post
with a Public Moblog (like the DEMO 2004 Moblog).
Audio Content
In addition to photos and text, audio content can now be sent to a
moblog--perfect for annotating a photo while on vacation, or capturing
the ambient sounds at a soccer game.
Palm Client
To
make moblogging an even simpler process, we will be releasing a Palm
client for posting photos and text to TypePad weblogs and moblogs,
perfect for blogging from the road.
Custom Moblog Templates
You will be able to select from custom moblog-specific templates, optimized for the display of posts from mobile phones.
Better Weblog Integration
Photos sent from a mobile device are now resized if they are too wide
for your weblog, providing a better viewing experience for your
visitors, and you can include a number of the most recent photos sent
to your moblog into the sidebar column of your weblog.
Moblogging Availability for All Levels
Moblog functionality will now be available to TypePad Basic users in addition to Plus and Pro. UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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