Whilst on our summer holiday in glorious California I got an email from the Independent Author Network book of the year awards. It said that Reconfigure was nominated as sci-fi book of the year. This is of course excellent news. I am not sure if I can fit the badge on the front cover, as some of the Amazon rules seem to say you can’t from what I remember.
Anyway here it is. I will add it to the book’s page too
It is still just 99p and sales seem to have picked up recently too. So hopefully people will enjoy it and then come and discover Cont3xt too.
With more reader there is more potential for more reviews, and that all keeps the ball rolling.
My page over at #ian1 will need updating too 🙂
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Bloxels – Physical game creation tool
Before the advent of the high end PC and Mac with all the wonderful graphics tools anyone doing any game like programming would be more than accustomed to used some pencil and paper tools to build their graphics. Small square lined paper was the main tool there. Shading in individual little pieces for 16×16 sprite. Usually then converting the rows into the binary, then hexadecimal values that would drop into the data structure to the make the on screen character. Pixel art is still a big thing though and a genre in its own right.
It was interesting to see the emergence of this game making/editing toolkit that abstracts that graph paper a little, not dealing so much with pixels but with larger block and constructs in a game environment. Family Gamer TV posted this video showing it in action.
It is the physical nature of the building and configuration that makes this different to the regular point and click builds, though it can be used for that too. Having a large number of plastic blocks in different colours means kids, or adults for that matter, can gather around the “graph paper” and chop and change their design on the table top. It is not totally clear how you go back to your source code though. Generally building something you have the base components always there. Here you will clear the rack and start again on the next one. Now if it could 3d print you the “source” if you wanted to start editing from a point in someone else’s rig that would be truly awesome.
It seems that Bloxels are doing something right as they can now only ship in the US due to a lack of inventory. I think it might make an interesting change and tool in primary schools though it suggests ages 8+ I know kids younger than that would get the concept pretty quickly.
One thing with graph paper, back in the day, if you knocked it on the floor you still had your design!
Technology, under the veneer
I tend to do the family food shopping, being based at home it is good to get out and head to the supermarket, rather than online deliveries. I usually head to Sainsburys because the local store has self scan as you go around. The handset lets you scan the items as you pack them in the bags in the trolley. You then just pay by handing the scanner over (apart from occasionally getting a full rescan by the till operator to check you are being honest), and pay. A benefit of this is that you entire shop is listed on the screen and the price of the item. It is building the list as you go along and giving an indication of the amount you are spending. As the device is so small it does not contain the entire product range/barcode and price references so it is connected to a local network. Interestingly, though, it does not process the multi-buys and offers until it is handed to the cashier. I think this may be partly a systems decision and partly beneficial as the bill is always less than your handset shows.The network connection becomes apparent when something goes wrong with it. Occasionally you scan an item and the device hangs for a little while. Very occasionally, as happened yesterday it hangs completely and looks like it is not coming back. As I was at the end of my shopping trip and heading to the till, I thought I would wait rather than just hurtling off to customer services. The device shutdown and rebooted. I thought at that point I would loose everything from my 45 minute self scanning and have to do the old fashioned way of taking everything out of the trolley and put it on the conveyor belt again. The screen sparked back into life and this happened.
There were a few more screens but it as interesting to see the boot sequence.
Then all the data I had scanned appeared. It was probably only a minute or so, but I was very impressed that the system had a continuous backup, or maybe it is a local cache, of the details. I had to rescan my last two items, as they were the ones it had hung and crashed on, but it worked fine.
Retail is great at mining data and working out who buys what, I assume that they use richer data from the scanners to determine when something is bought. With this constant network connection there is scope for the next generation of these hand held units to deliver more than just the occasional information message.
I can imagine some less tech savvy consumers might be a bit freaked out by the apparently simple little listing device doing all this, and rebooting, which is why it is handy to have some background knowledge of the technology. It made it an interesting little sojourn and break from the current workload. It also showed we are already in an age of IoT, this constantly connected device sorted its own problems out and came back working. Lets hope all the new devices connecting can do the same thing.
Why an IoT book?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an increasingly popular tag to place on almost everything out in the industry at the moment. It has far surpassed any discussion of Web 2.0 or Internet 3.0. In part it works because it does not have a version number. We all know about ‘The Internet’ as a support structure for the World now. The increase in mobile and app usage has helped separate it from ‘The Web” for many people. We used to, in briefings, have to explain the Internet as the connection of all the devices and the web was an information layer on top. The Web is not the the Internet. I think the average person in the street, bar, front room, office etc would probably think of the Internet as getting a Wi-Fi signal or a 3G/4G set of bars on their smartphone.
It is this social awareness, of connectivity, that lets the term IoT resonate with people. We all have devices that are connected to our WiFi or have some sort of sim card in them, that do not need us to be present for them to operate and communicate. Xbox and PS4 patch themselves over the air, dropbox and iCloud etc. synch their fields all over the place so we always have what we need. These are all simple everyday items already connected to the net and doing their thing. So they are obviously part of the Internet of Things, in common parlance.
That common understanding of connectivity and remote action runs into everyday life and therefore into the everyday life of people in business, CEOs, CIOs and alike combined with new product development and consultants helping shape all of industry.
So, yes, it’s another buzzword to hang everything on, but also, yes it’s really very important to us all. In a recent talk to Predlet 1.0’s year 8 secondary school class I explained to them how important IoT as an idea was to their future. Mainly this is because, aside from a technical career path building things, knowing and appreciated the connectedness of things may generate new industries and businesses that they will work in, or hopefully create.
This pitch was on top of the ‘normal’ discussions of virtual worlds, augmented reality, game technology, 3D printing, brain control devices, and open source attitudes. All those are my bread an butter, but they are also part of the general IoT umbrella of concepts and ideas.
One branch of IoT is that of sensors, instrumenting the World to gain a better insight into what is happening. We have had networked sensors for a while, but they are getting cheaper and more detailed in what they can deal with. This branch smashes into virtual worlds, at least it does where I started with it more publicly in 2006. The World of tennis was being instrumented by Hawkeye. The physical position of the ball was/is captured, via cameras and converted to x,y,z positional data. I used that data to re-visualize the ball tracking in Second Life, in a virtual world. That encompassed a visual representation of an Internet of Things style sensor reading of the physical World. That of course is a one way interaction, but allows many people to immerse themselves in the data at the same time online in a shared space. Tracking those people to help understand what they were watching and doing generated a heat map of activity. That is because it is easy in a virtual world to instrument everything. Avatars and objects re being rendered in a space that has to know where they are in x,y,z space, hence it can be collected and reported on. Making virtual worlds and ideal place to try out large scale instrumentation. What if… there were sensors on this, and there were 1,000 of them dotted around a town, how about 10,000? Oh look something is moving, follow it etc.
Whilst on virtual worlds, one of the first projects that arrived on Hursley island in 2006 in Second Life, was an angle poise lamp. To many people it seemed just like a fancy model, but the guys had wired in the distal lamp to the external World. The lamp was connected by the now open source MQTT protcol. A real lamp in the real lab could be turned on and off with an MQTT message that the lamp was subscribed to. The digital version subscribed to the same message so was in synch with the real world. The virtual bulb lit up when the message was sent. This was also built 2-way though, if you hit the virtual switch it also sent the message, just as the previous web page had. We used it as an example of integration and of pub/sub messaging but also to help people understand the environments are not stand alone, or they don’t have to be.
Roisin’s view of the World mocked up during storyboarding the novel.
This detail, about instrumentation and altering the World or knowing what is going on is why I had to label my Sci-fi novel Reconfigure, and the follow up Cont3xt as IoT books in Amazon. Currently if you search for “IoT Books” Reconfigure appears in the top ten of books on the subject. I am not jumping on a bandwagon as such, in the book the World is instrumented and Roisin controls and understands it with an virtual/augment interface. Whilst part of the extension into Sci-fi is made up, the grounding is in a long history of having been ardour this stuff and the experience that brings.
BTW don’t forget, a kindle book does not need a kindle to read it. Amazon has a set of apps and readers for most platforms. So if you want to see IoT in the future, check it out.
Reality Editor – Seeing IoT
This video is doing the rounds, Wired also reported on it. It is the latest instalment in a project from MIT. It uses augmented reality to show you the connections between your connected devices so that you can do things to those connections in the physical World. It is called the reality editor. I has been an ongoing project, see the second video for the one from a couple of years ago.
UPDATE Jan 2016 – They seem to have removed this new video from Youtube. I am currently looking for the right version.
This is very interesting on a number of fronts. Firstly the use of augmented reality to do something that you interact with, not just see adverts etc.
Secondly, it is applicable to the next generation blended reality headsets like magic leap and hololens.
Thirdly, it’s another piece of real technology that makes my sci-fi novel even more grounded in reality. The sort of interface that is used here is the sort that Roisin uses in Reconfigure, except she can move real things in space and combine materials, not just wiring and plumbing as the current technology shows.
It seems strange to write ‘just’ when referring to something so leading edge. It is that odd balance between the joy of some cool technology getting into peoples hands and everyone getting the point rather than nay saying, versus the ‘enjoy this I made it up.’ approach that I am currently taking with the science fiction.
It all is towards the same technology evangelist goal of helping people come to terms with all this change and to embrace and expand upon it.
Here is the original video from 2013 of the fluid interface concept of the Reality Editor.
Just think what you could do with this, and how far you could take it.
Soon(ish) Reconfigure will be a historical document 🙂 I am glad I put some suspense and drama in it too no just tech 🙂
Free book promo – Reconfigure
This weekend, from now until Monday Reconfigure ebook is FREE to download from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01720X7F0 in the UK
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01720X7F0 in US
But is is also available in almost every Amazon store and region.
Having had this rip roaring sci-fi techie adventure on published at £1.99/$2.99 for the past month I thought I should join in with the Black Friday/Cyber Monday fun now I have an actual product, and one worth people seeing, reading and enjoying.
I have tried lots of other routes to promote the book, which is interesting from a standing start and only having the idea to write it in September. This is one more tool in the box to try.
It would dare great if everyone who follows me, who I have every presented to, worked with, trained with, amused or helped would download it this weekend. I hope a few people would then choose to add to eh reviews on Amazon and some nice stars too.
If you have not seen the promo video this explains the book a little to (no spoilers)
The next book con3xt is coming along nicely, taking the story even further.
Thankyou for all the support so far, and thankyou for taking advantage of this offer to help me out.
UPDATE 30/11/2015
Whilst there is still a few hours of the promo left I was very pleased to see the UK stats come through.
So the result of this part of the process was a very pleasing one.
A UK Number 1 download in its genre and Number 14 in UK general science fiction.
It has reached the US top 100, as high as 52 in general science fiction, and also number 2 in its sci-fi genre on Amazon.
This is still time for the the numbers to go up of course, but I am taking stock and celebrating this success. It only happened because so many people were willing to go and download it. I think most people will enjoy it. Either way the No. 1 is a shared achievement. Thank you all.
Two STEMnet events this week
It has been quite a busy week of STEMnet activity. Being a STEMnet ambassador means helping schools and students however I can. Tuesday I spoke to a local secondary school teacher about all things emerging tech that might inspire the next generation. It was pretty much like rebooting Cool Stuff Collective. It is good to share my passion for new tech and some of the unusual twists and turns that I get to explore. This is all voluntary but it is still a service that I try and provide.
Today was a different event I joined about 20 other STEMnet ambassadors from all sorts of parts of industry, currently working and retired. We were at the Winchester Science Centre (I still call it Intech). It was where were shot one of the road trip episodes on Cool Stuff Collective. It was an event aimed at secondary school boys specifically. It was delivered as part of International Mens Day. This may seem strange to focus on us males in the workplace given there already lots of men in the industry. However, it is not always a good idea to ignore one part of society. These boys also needed the information and role models to talk to. So the excuse of a international day or event regardless of gender makes sense to catch some of them.
The day would work as well for groups of girls, the events and experiences were not specifically blokey.
We had groups building bristlebots and trying to make them go in a straight line. (These are DIY versions of Hexbugs. A bristle, like a toothbrush has a vibrating solenoid strapped to it. It causes the bug to shake itself forward in a very insect like way.
One of the very enterprising teams decided to forego the placing of pipe cleaners and weights etc to make the bug drive straight. Instead they build a rail system with straws as outriggers bolted to the bug bug much wider than it. It was a bit of a cheat, but as there were no rules I think it was a very cool build for the 15 mins they had.
The other even was trying to build a small ramps out of kinex and paper only for a micro RC car to jump off. The cars were very twitchy and it was q tricky task to even hit a ramp let alone build one. This made it even more entertaining to watch.
The final hands on was a robot arm test of teamwork. In cross school groups two people at a time had to control the arm and try to pick up the blocks. Every 30 seconds they were swapped out for other people in the team.
The final part was a speed networking. Each of us STEMnet ambassadors had table and every 4 minutes we talked to 5 students about our life and our work. We all had props. I had the MergeVR headset, my 3d printed Makie, my Flush magazine articles and of course a copy of Reconfigure I told them all about IBM and about virtual worlds and VR and the journey via TV presenting and now authoring. Still that I am a programmer, but that there is a lot they can chose to do.
One question I got was about whether it paid well. I explained a corporate job pays very well, but when you leave that money is a different matter altogether. Trying to sell a book to generate a bit of income, or chasing contracts of any value is tricky when you do leading edge stuff. I did explain that they should focus on IoT as a way forward. That would be a lucrative set of things to invent and get into.
After lunch we were treated to a full planetarium fly through. It was a bit like playing Elite Dangerous but we went out even further. The narrator/pilot was fantastic.
It was a very rewarding day indeed I think. It was also great to meet to many other people interested in helping others grow their STEM knowledge.
Human endeavour – it is what counts
On Saturday we took a family trip to London to the Lee Valley Velodrome on the 2012 Olympic park site. We had tickets to see the Revolution series. Here various pro cycling teams and riders from around the world compete indoors on the banked circuit. WE had been to see some of the Olympics during 2012 but that was the gymnastics at the O2/Millennium Dome so we had not seen the big stadium, giant sculpture nor the velodrome yet.
As predlet 1.0 is currently on crutches, with a heavily sprained ankle, we chose to go overland from Waterloo station to the park in North East London. The cabbie set off North, but our visit clashes with the road closures for the Lord Mayor’s show. So after a u-turn we skirted around the city and then he headed up towards the Velodrome. It was a drizzly rainy day but we did get to see a lot of London.
The Velodrome itself is a fantastic looking building from the outside.
It is a huge bowed wood clad curve. The entire building is raised up on a plinth and the glass walls around appear to support the wooden structure. You are let in through an air lock in small groups. The idea is to keep the air and temperature stable inside to protect the track.
Inside it makes sense that the entire structure is raised up as the banked track is incredibly deep and steep.
There are two tiers of seating, but everyone can see everything. The riders and track were very close to our seats, and we got a good view down a straight.
The preparation area, for warm up and warm down is located in the infield. So there is always something going on, some form of activity.
We got to see several types of races and mass warmups around the track in between too. The first was with individual riders. It was just them against the track and the clock. Whilst not being bike racing affiecienados it was amazing how quickly we all saw the minute differences in technique and speed that led to different times. You just knew when the winning time was being made. You could feel the wonderful interlocking of all the training with the effort on the day coming into play. The first 200m race (which the clock started a little after the start finish line) was separated by milliseconds. The top time were around 10 seconds to cover the 200m, after 2 laps to wind up to the sprint.
The predlets had not really come across fixed wheel bikes but they soon got the gist of how they worked and the fact these athletes were traveling at over 40 miles and hour with no brakes.
The sprint races were great, it was very crowd friendly and we were able to cheer and support everyone, but particularly the locals. Everyone was cheered though. It is incredibly obvious the effort that they have to put in to be able to move at those speeds. The banked curves and the pressure to try and control the bike, choosing the right line etc it less obvious but was intriguing to watch.
The one on one races were interesting too. These are the ones where the try and catch one another out. They have three laps to complete, but the first one or two are done at a very slow pace, keeping an eye out for the break. The acceleration and power as they wind up the bikes means a fraction of a seconds jump on someone matters. Equally, go to early and you loose power or the other person gets a slip stream. Again these were easy to follow.
The most impressive races were the mass races of 20 or so riders. The Women’s race was 80 laps and the Men’s 120. They tended to stay in a streamlined group unless one chose to break away. Every 10 laps was a sprint lap with points awarded for the top people crossing first. Extra points were on offer for lapping the field. Here is got a bit confusing, the comentator did their best but we got a bit lost as to the rules. When and where the lapping occurred and if it got reset after the sprint lap. It was very impressive though. a constant almost silent whoosh of power sooting past every 10-12 seconds.
Another race format was the elimination. Each lap the one at the back dropped off until there were 10 then they raced.
The final race was the strangest. A large proportion of it involved not racing at all. It was called the Longest Lap. Here all the riders attempted to balance near the star finish line, on the banked straight. They had to stay upright, no crossing the line for 3-4 minutes. A foot down or holding on and they were out. Then the signal would go and they all raced form a standing start for 1 lap. About 1/3 dropped out before the race.
It was interesting, but seemed a little odd. Then I remembered we used to do this as kids. How long can you balance on your bike without moving. So it is not quite so odd. As a spectator sport watching people balance was actually good too.
We had a great time at the Velodrome. I have to say the tea at the canteen was great too. Lots of venues have food places that are pretty bad or just non-descript. The fresh crepes, cakes and tea at Lee Valley are very nice though.
I entitled this post human endeavour – it is what counts. The combined experience of the science and technology and engineering that created the building, with the effort that the athletes and their teams put in and the variety of experiences over and above just cycling fast combined with a willing and happy crowd of spectators was and is very uplifting.
Everything is about building and improving. That includes hard work and effort, that making it worthy of celebration.
The previous weekend we had our annual trip to see Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blue Orchestra. It was another amazing show, as usual. In fact it was probably one of the best yet. It is another example where the hard work and effort of the musicians to learn their craft is celebrated by them sharing it with us. The dexterity of Jools Holland on the piano is stunning, the drum solo by Golson Lavis is always a fantastic highlight. Not only one of the greatest drummers ever, but he is there all the time for the whole 2 hour show. These solos everyone else leaves and lets him get in with it. Here is an example. It is well worth the listing to the whole thing and feeling the effort and the effortlessness combine with all his years of experience.
Everyone should have the opportunity to find their talent and to work at to, building on all that came before. It is human endeavour that counts.
A book interview, stickers, emblems and a cross-post
On Friday I had the great pleasure to be asked back to GamesAtWork.biz to talk about the relevance of writing a sci-fi book and how it fitted with both games and software development processes. In order to get my thoughts in order I decided to write a post on Linkedin’s Pulse blogging platform. I have tended to avoid posting other places as I though a central place, here, made more sense. It would seem that it is worth doing both, all, everything though. The fact it was a different platform made me think in a slightly different way. The full post is below, just in case you don’t get around to reading it on Linkedin.
A few more additions to promotional opportunities have happened since too.
I created a Call Of Duty Black Ops iii emblem (not quite as good as the car decals but the tool set is a little less rich I think)
Also there is now an evolving Icon that you can apply from Zymge.com to your Twitter avatar There are lots of other types of overlay stickers that this service can do for you too. Well worth a look.
Here is the Linkedin Pulse post.
I have not written directly on Linkedin before. However now seems a good time. As a long time blogger and contributor to all sorts of other forms I thought I would share here some of what led to me turning my hand from building virtual worlds and making sense of new technology for people, to creating a science fiction novel, and now working on the sequel. The book is linked from Reconfigurebook.co.uk
As a creator of a single person company in the emerging technology space it is quite tricky to get the right sort of work that both pays, is fulfilling and increases the skill base that I have gained over the past 26 years in the industry.
Creating code and architecting systems allows me to use a full stack of skills. In the world today it is much easier to punch above your weight. I recommend everyone, who is a techie, to just have a go making something end to end. I have done that a number of times, but usually for other people. I have never had a product of my own as such. I have worked with and helped a number of startups, those are long term investments in time and emotional effort. They seldom have yet yielded a product I could point to and say there… that’s what I built.
I had a short TV career, by short I mean 3 years of 39 episodes of weekly TV. That is something I was very proud of but the TV companies do not keep that sort of stuff up on the web. Even though the slots on tech were still relevant today they are really tied up in licensing and not just sitting on Youtube. Again no product.
My 20 years at IBM did see a number of project that were flagship ones in the development of the web, but the end results are now no longer there. The virtual world work, which I still continue today is constantly shifting. The old build in Second Life are now just memories. A few stills and movies remain. There is nothing to share as such. Reputation is fleeting after all.
So I was left thinking I need to build something. I needed to create something end to end as a challenge. I was contemplating various games to make, I started on a few but they did not grab me. I know when I am stoked, and with those I was not.
Sat on Holiday I read the Martian. I loved the scientific depth and a sense of genuine substrate to the emotional layer and adventure on top. A few days later I had an image in my head, related to virtual worlds and gaming. An image of a character being rotated in space. A thing we often have to do in virtual worlds. I imagined what it would be like to do that for real. Again another thing people often talk about when they have used a virtual reality system for a while. If only we could manipulate the real world like this. I then thought of the Internet of Things, and how we instrument the world. I then consider how we could use that to reconfigure the world. Boom I had a title Reconfigure.
As I noodled the idea I realised I wanted to get real tech that I knew into the story. I wanted to go full g33k in the set up. Taking real virtual world tech and code and then extrapolating it. I also wanted my main character to make the same mistakes we all make. That was where the idea of the starting point came. She, (and it just happened She became a She instinctively) makes a misplaced Tweet. Types in the wrong window. It is a thing we have all done. I think that makes a good hook. Instead of just hassle though she makes contact with someone or something.
Having got that basis I came home and sketched a story board. I had key types of things I wanted to happen. I had these initial images in my head but had to find the peril, the adventure. I had to find things that were difficult to solve in clever ways.
This is where is became a lot like coding a system. I had problems and sticking points in the storyboard. I had an architecture. I had to work out the code (in this case, words) to pass the tests that allowed this to work and flow.
It became an obsession for a couple of weeks flat out writing. It felt like binge-watching a boxed set. I did not always know what was going to happen, or if I did I didn’t know the details until I started. It was invention, just like a patent. I felt duty bound to make sure it stood up to some degree of reasoning and logic despite getting into the fictional elements.
That was the really fun part. I was, and I am, really happy with the story. So much so I just started on the sequel. It seems to be flowing in the same way though I have learned from my experience on the first book about hen to stop and check. Just like code, sometimes you find a better algorithm and just have to break the code again to fix it.
Doing this myself I had to learn about the formatting and setting for e-readers and specifically Kindle. I also created a sort of beta reader programme for some friends and family to help iron out the typos and bugs. It is impossible to see it all yourself when you are so close to it. That was a humbling experience in itself.
The vagaries of the US tax system, despite being Uk based and a few other little quirks all took a little time. The cover design and using the right format and size all took a while. I am not a designer, but I wanted to give it a go. I tried a couple of covers and got comments about them before settling on this one.
However a the end of October 2015 I published the e-book.
I was expecting, like most first time authors, a massive blip as friends, family, former colleagues and anyone who pays attention on social media or virtual worlds to say “Hey! epredator had written a book, I will take a look at that!” This is a mother humbling experience. There are some very close friends who have done that for me. However I realised that I needed to go wider. My friends and family blip at launch was not going to be big enough to tip the book into the charts.
I was then faced with the almost full time job of advertising and promoting the book. I am still working out the best routes. Amazon is an obvious place to advertise but I also have Facebook, dabbled with Twitter, and some Google Adwords in place.
The advice always seems to be do lots of other things. One of the first things was to brave CreateSpace and typesetting to create the paperback. A physical product still seems to make people think you have done something real. So I did that, and it went live a few days ago.
I always done lots of twists and turns on ideas so these are some of the things I have done in the past few weeks.
- Join Author central on amazon.com and .co.uk
- Create videos – I did a show and tell rather like this post and an advert using my son in a style that fitted with an element of the story (all very meta)
- Create a Forza6 car design – Yes building a lambo with Reconfigure and the book cover all over it let me drop images all over the place and add another promo video around brands hatch. Quite unusual I think?
- Tweet.. A lot ( I am still hoping the saturation with prompt a few more friends to help 🙂 )
- Facebook page – I set up the specific page for Reconfigure before going live and then made that available putting a few extras on there
- Flickr – lots of images, books arriving, weird images of me holding the book etc
- Free prize draw on Amazon.com – Offering a copy of the book in a prize draw run by Amazon to get Twitter followers
- Podcast – Tonight I am talking on Gamesatwork.biz after a kind invitation
- Pay a twitter promoter – I used Bookbear, but there are loads. I may be cheaper than ad clicks
- Change my job title here to Sci-Fi Author at Feeding Edge Ltd.
- Added the logo to my twitter avatar
- Built a second life box to with a link
- Pinged my old eightbar group on in Second Life
- Wrote this post 🙂
- Update 8th November – I also just did the podcast interview on gamesatwork.biz
There are probably more, and there will be more of course. Now much of the chatter I create relates to things in the new book. It’s called Cont3xt at the moment. It follows on and meshes with the timeline of Reconfigure. It is very exciting again. I am back on binge-watching my own series.
I have realised that the aspirational nature of writing, wanting people to enjoy your work and your product is more humbling and scary than exciting. If people don’t buy the book, it’s not because it is not good. They wouldn’t know. With only a few reviews at the moment and not really enough sample size to judge it by I just have to leave it there to be its own thing now.
If every follower and like that I had bought the £1.99/$2.99 e-book today, right now it would hit the top 100. I can see the variance that even a single sale makes to the rank. I don’t have an agent or publisher pushing it. However, I have created what I set out to do and learned a lot in the process about things I was not expecting to learn. That can only be a good thing.
I care about Roisin Kincade, my lead character. Right at the moment she is in quite a difficult place. So I need to keep writing to rescue her. I have the storyboard/architecture and I have some experience in code/writing and testing/editing plus I know how to publish and try to market it. So I best get on with it.
The book, it’s blurb and links to where to get a copy are all on Reconfigurebook.co.uk
Blended Reality – Hiding under tables.
Having been somewhat preoccupied with, you know what, the past few weeks I had not had a chance to comment and share the current wave of demos relating to Google’s Magic Leap. This video was published, ‘shot through magic leap technology’ a few weeks ago.
It has some interesting features to take note of. The little character is under the table. However he is also behind the leg of the table. The real world object clips him and obscures him as the camera pans across. He is floating around and bobbing a little, but the registration with the physical in a hand held karma shot is very impressive.
Also intersting, and more obvious in the solar system shot, is the use of focus. The objects are not always in focus just as a real camera would need to adjust as it got closer. Many AR experiences and blended reality experiences do not have that. They may have lighting and a presence relative to a physical space but they are like 3d stickers.
It is a lot more convincing and real than the large Whale jumping one that was doing the rounds. That looked like an aspirational PR video of what we could expect one day.
I am really looking forward to the next few months/years as these devices become accessible. It is way more exciting than just pure VR (though I love that too!)
It enables us to start instrumenting the world visually as much as we are under the covers with the Internet of Things.