Siggraph goings-on

Wow. It’s wednesday already! But I am starting to feel a bit overloaded… sort of like RenFaire. Just a lot of people. Unfortunately, Siggraph has really scaled back a lot of the activities that made it so much fun in previous years, like the two receptions (usually with cool entertainment and at excellent venues.) The course seem to be largely repeats of previous years, but there are a few hidden gems. And I’ve been having a great time with the folks that I’m here with, and had some very good food. Also, I got an article on new music/graphics tech published on Siggraph! More later… off to see some more showcased animations.

Not-so-sunny California

So I’m out in California now, specifically, Orange County. Flew out here on Wednesday, spent a couple days with some friends and then heading out to San Diego this afternoon for Siggraph. It’s been pretty fair weather here, though it’s tough to tell when it’s cloudy and when it’s just smog. Though I did discover that smog does not block UV light so well, as evidenced by my *new* sunburn, in exactly the same place as the old one. Looking forward to the start of the conference, seeing some other old friends, and playing the “impoversihed college students pack as many people as possible into a hotel room” game.
Oh yeah, and I’ve got to find one of those cool new kites that I saw on the beach yesterday. They look like a small version of a ram-air parachute. I tried to get a pic of one, but it just wasn’t to be. Nicole tells me that there are remote-controlled versions of them as well (mini para-sailers?).

dreams of younger years

I just ran across an mp3 stream of the music from “The Last Starfighter”. It used to be one of my favorite movies. Actually, it still is. I own this movie and several others on DVD, yet every time I go through my collection to look for a movie to sit down and watch for an evening, I invariably pick a movie that is not one of my favorites. I think it’s because watching one of the movies which ignited my imagination and planted the seeds of my childhood dreams reminds me of all that I wanted to do, and have not. Maybe it’s time to pull out the stories and remind myself.

Update: I did end up going home and watching “The Last Starfighter”. It was fun.

Clouds in my eyes

Well that about sums up the last two weeks here. From tonight’s weather forecast: “Scattered showers with a chance of thunderstorms during the evening…then a chance of showers.”

The office existence

It’s interesting to think about the evolution of the structured environment that the human race has created over the last millenia. It’s not really surprising that as societies grow larger and larger, the environments in which we spend our lives become more and more controlled… it’s human nature to control the world around us. But as a society becomes more interdependent upon its own citizens, the extent to which the role of any given person directly affects his or her life seems to diminish. In the extreme case, if I don’t show up to work at the U today, nothing happens. Thousands of years ago, if I didn’t go hunting or fishing today, I didn’t eat. Granted, one could argue that if I don’t show up to work, I’ll eventually get fired, run out of resources, and starve to death. But the dependency of survival on any given action has a much different proportion.

But that’s sort of a tangent. My original thought was about progressive physical isolation in workplace and home environments. I mean, I can not physically open my window. I have to walk downstairs and outside in order to be “exposed” to the natural environment. When did human society start placing the vast majority of its population further and further away from the natural environment? Was it the industrial revolution that did it? Probably not, although it was probably responsible for generating a huge increase in the “office worker” population. Maybe the Renaissance? Probably a bit closer since it was basically the genesis of a scientific and academic class. But I guess it’s realyl been happening a little bit at a time as a result of our trying to become more efficient and productive.
Is it really the natural goal of our species to completely control and dominate our environment to the point where we no longer directly part of the Earth’s ecosystem? I suppose that’s the premise behind Asimov’s “I, Robot” books (the domed cities where the “outside” has fallen into the realm of mythology).

When I look out my window, I imagine what the land must have looked like hundreds of years ago. I imagine how the native americans would have been living, maybe over on that hill a few hundred yards away. Or the settlers who came later, with a whole new world to explore (ignoring for the moment that it was already occupied). If I were living then, what would I be doing instead of driving to work in the morning, watching out for the stupid driver in front of me who is in such a hurry to get whereever he is going in order to do exactly the same thing that he did yesterday. Or what would I be doing now, instead of sitting in my air conditioned office in front of a computer? Or instead of going home tonight to a microwaved dinner, bills, and an hour of a movie?

I’m definitely not saying that progress is bad, or technology is bad, or that control of the environment is bad. I think we’ve done some great things as a species and our lives in many many ways is better than it ever has been before. But maybe isolation isn’t the answer. Maybe someday we’ll move towards integration with our world. Maybe I’ll be able to go to work by strolling in the woods, writing a program by simply thinking of the commands to use, and having a computer which is nearly invisible and weightless translate and transmit those intructions far away to an unlit, isolated room occupied only by a machine because there is no longer any reason for a person to be there.

Inquiring minds

Man o man. The backlash of a weblog audience is a gruesome thing to behold. Beware the folley of failing to update your log for a few days!
Actually, we lost power here at work (where my server lives quietly, discreetly… undetected by the ITD powers that be), and it’s IP address changed, which had the effect of fubar-ing my configurations for the johnstowncats.org and dreamstorm.net virtual servers. Apparently, the jcats stuff is still not right, but at least my journal and gallery are back up.

In other news, I was introduced to moveon.org, an online democracy (as in sharing knowledge with lots of people who then go and vote) community. Also discovered were AlterNet, a non-uberhuge media company-controlled news outlet… And Democratic Underground, from whom I ordered my own

Anyone But Bush – 2004 t-shirt.