Until I build a proper webpage for Space Junk (something I’ll worry about much later), I’ll now direct people to here when introducing them to the game. It’ll also give context to the past and future blog posts about the progress I’m making on Space Junk. You can also find a link on the top right menu.

My Digital Wind Chime will be at the Dallas Museum of Art for two more weeks — the New Media exhibition uninstalls on January 19th.

As mentioned before, I’ve been working on a silly web game — we’ve now submitted it to a contest and could use your help for votes!

http://musegames.com/community/immunitychallenge/

Hold down left mouse button to build up gas, release to let yourself fly. Spacebar restarts level.

It would be a HUGE help if you could register and vote for Poot! If we get enough votes, we’ll be one of the five finalists.

Our game just got put up tonight and other games have been submitted for weeks, so we need a lot of votes to catch up. Registration is simple/fast and it would be GREAT if you could help by voting for Poot!

We’ve only been working on it for a few weeks and it’s definitely not finished (working prototypes are all that is required for the contest). It would definitely be nice to win the contest though.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an entry. Finals were the second week of May — this semester marked the completion of my Japanese minor and the New Media classes required for my major (all I have left are some general art classes and a science course before I can graduate).

The day after my last final, I helped with a New Media workshop at the Dallas Museum of Art — the day after the workshop, I began moving into a house. Before I managed to finish moving in, I went to Japan for a weeklong trip.

I’ve been back for a few days and have been busy again moving out of my old place and into the new. Moved the final piece of furniture today with the help of a U-Haul trailer. It was quite difficult getting this couch inside our older, thinner doorways.

Tomorrow I’ll be moving my Digital Wind Chime project to the house of a fellow classmate who has generously offered the use of his garage as a sort of studio for the class to continue working on our projects. Hopefully progress is rapid and I’ll be able to update the blog often.

I expect to be done with the Digital Wind Chime project in mid July — after which I’ll be turning my focus to game development again.

The video is of me playing — recorded and uploaded to youtube directly from the PS3.

I love trying out new game concepts and I love it even more when it’s cheap. This $5 game is unlike anything else I’ve played. You control two ends of Noby Noby Boy — his head and rear — with each analog stick. You can eat things, you can shoot things out your rear, and you can sort of fly, too. On a per-player basis, there’s not necessarily a point to the gameplay — just mess around, which luckily is fun enough. But you can report your length to Girl and, as a global community, everyone contributes to the progress — I assume we’ll unlock new levels etc, once the total collaborative length exceeds required amounts. I think there’s actually a ton of potential in this communal progress concept, so I hope Noby Noby Boy realizes it.

edit: trying out Vimeo for video uploading

Video-only test using my USB capture card (which I got off woot.com for very cheap). $5 monoprice order shipping to me now will allow me to output video/audio to both my capture device and my TV — full featured recording without input delay. If only I had a HD capture card

emedia.dfyb.net is something i’m building up as a portal, or hub, for UNT New Media majors (like what Communication Design majors have with VENT). Right now it functions as a blog. It will aggregate blog posts from students and also broadcast upcoming events and news. In the future, I hope to get a proper .com for this new website. Be sure to subscribe!

I really dig the animation. I’m indifferent toward the music in the first half but overall I quite like the intro. It was originally shown on 1up’s second game night featuring Street Fighter IV.

UPDATE: HD version here — Intro & attract mode by DjMizuhara

The new kid on the block media streaming software specifically developed for Playstation 3 is available, for free, on Windows, OSX, and Linux — it is aptly named PS3 Media Server. Not only is streaming compatible formats made easier and more streamlined, but the software excells at transcoding — matroska .mkv files are a breeze. The software also equips users with a plethora of nice options, including priority audio/subtitle choices — or if you just want something up and running without any effort, the default options should work just fine.

I was previously using TVersity to stream media, but I’ve made a full switch to PS3mediaserver. It is perfect for my needs and makes the PS3 the best media streaming device that isn’t a PC.

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I have many possible projects I’d like to work on during the winter break, but I know I won’t be able to complete all of them. Hopefully I can get a few of these done before school starts back up.

I was having trouble keeping up in my Japanese Adv Language 3060 class, so I’m going to try and review a lot of it over the break. I want to create a quick reference sheet for myself — a few pages with kanji, list of grammar patterns, and some vocab etc. I’ll also be attempting to play an import copy of Persona 4 for extra practice.

This will be hard to do, as the game features quite a few kanji I haven’t learned. I’ve already learned a couple more kanji just with context clues or listening to the dialog and comparing it to the text, so hopefully that trend continues and I don’t get too lost with the game’s story.

I’d also like to continue working on my interactive LED array. Currently, I have code that can change variables that dictate color-change-frequency and color fading working on two LED panels with 3 LEDs each. I’d like it to adjust the LED color change speed based on the tempo of the song, but that may prove difficult to do within arduino code alone — I’d like to avoid using any Processing, so that I can make this a standalone product that doesn’t need to be connected to a PC to function.

There’s a couple simpler projects I’d also like to do. One is a physical hit counter for my blog. I helped Christina set up hers, so it shouldn’t be very hard at all to get my own running by following the tutorial she found here.

The other thing I’d like to build is a simple USB station that would sit on my desk. I use a lot of USB devices and I keep my ToDoList on the thumb drive I have on my keychain. It’s annoying having to bend down to plug it in every time, so I’d like something on my desk. I’ll check out some miscellaneous project cases at Tanner’s Electronics to see if any of them would work. I’d keep it simple — probably just have my USB hub sit inside and, using cheap USB cables from monoprice, secure the USB ports to the walls of the box. I might also have one USB port come out of the station with its own cord.

My quick fix for the audio cords I had done is falling apart — I had simply used the screws to secure the wires, but I’m going to go back and properly solder them. Might use this as a chance to update the tutorial with more pictures and details.

I also need to reformat PC for a fresh start, but this time I want to make sure and create a recovery state with my most used software installed — this way, instead of starting from scratch every time I reformat, I can start with my basic needs and save a lot of time.

And lastly, I’ll be trying to work on some of my game projects. I have a few 2D games I’ve been working on, so I may try to pick one to finish over the break.