| Sparky Awareness Month |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|07:53 am] |
Some crazy stuff has been going on with me lately and I thought now would be a good time for a quick update to let people know (meant to do it last week but I'm lazy). April was a very busy month. It started with trips to see my family for Passover and the usual trip to Pittsburgh for booth. We missed Hirsch but that gave me the current longest unbroken streak of 10 years. Then last week happened.
First, last Monday I ran 8 miles of the Boston Marathon. ( details )
Then on Tuesday I started a new job at Harmonix, the makers of Guitar Heroes 1 and 2 and currently the Rock Band series. ( details )
On Thursday I got a pretty shady invite to see a sneak preview of the new Star Trek movie. ( details ) |
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| Frightening tale of (lack of) airport security |
[Apr. 13th, 2009|11:06 am] |
My sisters told me to post about this so I will. Yesterday I was flying back from visiting my family for Passover. I checked in to my flight online from my laptop, but since I couldn't connect to the printer at my aunt's house, I "printed" my boarding pass to a PDF on my flash drive and then printed it off of their computer. I don't know how, but somehow I managed to accidentally print another copy of my outbound boarding pass from Wednesday instead of the return boarding pass for yesterday. I didn't even notice this until I was waiting in line to board the plane. Yep, the lady who checked my boarding pass when I checked my bag and the one who checked it at the security checkpoint both failed to notice that it was for the wrong day and airport. At that point I decided to pretend I hadn't noticed either. The gate agent also failed to notice that the boarding pass was for the wrong flight even though she tried to scan it (unsuccessfully?) before letting me on the plane. On the plane they called my name and asked my to press my call button, but once I did, they didn't even come talk to me. Presumably they were just checking that I was on the plane (since I had checked in, but not been correctly scanned at the gate), but it could have been anyone that pressed that call button. I guess now I almost understand how those people who were supposed to be going to Miami got on our flight bound for London a few years ago (luckily we told them before the plane left the gate). |
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| My New Favorite Thing |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|02:22 pm] |
For some reason I'm currently in love with Palladia. It's an HD digital cable TV channel that I get. I used to just use it as my go-to demo of my HD setup when people would come over. It was great for this because it was always showing beautiful crisp HD footage, usually of concerts. It is better than finding some show because you can watch it for a just a few minutes without getting wrapped up in the show. Lately I've realized I could enjoy watching it. It is amazing because it is a music channel that actually plays music 24/7. Even better, a lot of the time it is live music (concerts) instead of just music videos. It's funny because I was never even someone who liked watching MTV, music videos or anything. |
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| Impulsiveness |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|12:42 am] |
Lately I've lamented the lack of other people (and specifically, girls) impulsive enough for me. More and more I realize how much I love adventures. Even failures/disasters can be great if they make a good story. I love the excitement in doing something unconventional, especially on a whim, just for the sake of doing it. I think this goes along with my philosophy of "doing the thing that is hard" and never backing down or shying away from a challenge. Doing things for the sake of an idea.
( Read More ) |
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| Never Redeem Bottle Deposits |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|05:29 pm] |
I do believe in recycling, at least somewhat, so I do not throw away any glass or plastic bottles or aluminum cans. In theory, when the pile gets big enough I take it to the recycle bin in the basement. But the recycle bin is often near full and so I need go down and check if there is room before I actually bring anything down there. And I'm lazy so I don't like taking 2 trips and so the pile grows, and the bigger it grows the lazier I become. I don't usually bother with the 5? deposit on a lot of the bottles, but recently I let the pile (of mostly beer bottles) get so big that it seemed like it might be worth getting some money out of it. Seemed like it would be worth it but it was a very bad idea.
( Because this happened ) |
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| Wrong (Musical) Number |
[Nov. 24th, 2008|12:45 pm] |
Last week I was in Orlando for a trade show. On Thursday night two coworkers and I got on a bus and headed out to get some drinks. On the bus I got a call on my cell phone from a "Restricted number". I answered it and it was just a person singing the Star Spangled Banner. When they were done they hung up. I thought, "That was weird." Then I got another call, this time from a Boston (617) number that I didn't recognize. I thought, "here comes the explaination" but instead I got White Christmas. Who was this? A friend whose number I don't have or a friend of a friend's phone? Now that we had a number we decided to call back and sing a song of our own. We used Yrinee's phone and Schuyler sang Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. The next call was from a different number that told the story. I got a call from my number... except with 2 digits transposed. Aha! Even though they must have realized that they failed to prank their friend when they called me instead, now they must be together. The song battle went back and forth for about half an hour. We never had a conversation and never learned any more about our mystery drunken friends other than the name Naomi on one of their voicemails a time they didn't answer. |
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| Jetting Gets It Done |
[Jun. 11th, 2008|01:44 am] |
I'm back in Denver again, and after the travel disaster I had last week, I have to rave about the experience I had tonight. I'd always heard very good things about jetBlue, but I never had a chance to fly them until recently. My first jetBlue experience was back in April. It was as good as expected. Having DirectTV is really nice. On the way back, we were a little late and they couldn't get the TVs to work so they mailed everyone a $20 voucher for the inconvenience. (a make-good from an airline without me having to do anything for a problem with a service most airlines don't even have? amazing) Well tonight absolutely put me over the moon.
I have a lot of people counting on me for some work tomorrow morning at 7am. I booked a very late direct flight, 9:35pm to 11:54pm. I was very worried when at 9:05, when we should have been boarding, they announced that all westbound flights from Boston had been temporarily grounded due to weather over the midwest and they wouldn't even get another update for at least a half hour. So what does jetBlue do? Immediate change the flight plan to have us fly south (around the weather) and have us boarding less than 10 minutes late. The new route would have taken quite a bit longer by taking us well out of the way, but just like they planned, when the hold was released at 11pm we were able to turn sooner and not go as far south, while any other airline would still be sitting on the ground in Boston. We arrived only 25 minutes late. This is the most amazing above and beyond effort to get me to my destination I've ever seen from an airline. Wow.
P.S. Third cab I've taken in the last week and all of them have had their check engine light on, what gives? |
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| East Coast Adventure, Part 1 |
[Nov. 2nd, 2007|11:50 am] |
My least on my apartment in Atlanta was up, and that was not somewhere I wanted to sign another one so I had to move out. Since I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do next, I'm not sure where I'm going to end up living. In the meantime, most of my stuff got put in storage and I'm heading home to Boston for a little while. Although the drive can be done in 2 days, I'm taking a week and making some stops.
Tuesday I packed up my car and left Atlanta. Well, first it didn't fit and I had to unpack the car, repack boxes, drive more stuff to storage, and then repack the car. But then, only 4 hours later than I wanted, I was on my way... until I ran out of gas. But then 1 hour later I was at it again. I spent the night with an Aunt and Uncle in Norfolk, VA.
Wednesday I drove to DC. There I saw Operation Spy at the Spy Museum. It's basically this interactive experience where you take on the role of a CIA agent in a foreign country trying to recover a stolen nuclear device. You control surveillance cameras, unscramble phone calls, sneak into a secure facility by disabling cameras and locks, search an office, crack a safe, and interrogate a suspect. It was awesome. I highly recommend it if you're in the area, but it is better if you go with a group of people you know (about 4). I saw my cousin Rachel and then had dinner with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) queiss, bluekirby, and kizzatz.
Thursday I drove to Philly where I had an interview. Then I went to Atlantic City to see how the fountain was doing. Now I'm in New York for the weekend. |
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| London |
[Oct. 24th, 2007|10:15 am] |
I've procrastinated writing this for a week but I guess that is long enough. For anyone who doesn't know, I spent most of last month in London. I would have written more from there but I had webserver issuez (which should be fixed for good now), so let me summarize the trip. I was there to work on a project, it was pretty crazy, I saw a lot of London, the tube is cool, made friend with and hung out with some locals, went on a crazy road trip to Scotland and all over England, my bag got lost... Ok, maybe a little more detail than that.
( too much detail for the front page )
All of my pictures |
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| Leaning Coincidence |
[Sep. 7th, 2007|03:37 pm] |
This is a story about something that happened back in May, a interesting string of coincidences. At the time I was on a business trip in LA, doing a playtest for an upcoming project with PlayMotion, when we received an email from a summer intern back in our Atlanta office with a link to an interesting YouTube video. It was of people playing a breakout-style videogame in a movie theater by leaning left and right to control the paddle. My portfolio will tell you that I'd done something like that as early as 2001, probably the basis for this project, although the person who sent me the email didn't know that, he just thought it was cool and similar to what we do.
( More coincidences abound, read on ) |
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| Set Wants to be Free |
[Aug. 2nd, 2007|04:02 am] |
In 2003 I created an online and multiplayer version of the card game Set, so that I could practice and play with people at a distance. It was one of my more successful projects and although I didn't actively advertise it many people seemed to find and enjoy it. Last September I was threatened by Set Enterprises to cease and desist infringing their trademark and copyrights. Of course I knew I had been intentionally doing this I didn't feel like I had much of a leg to stand on and took the page down. Almost a year later, I'm still receiving emails from people who enjoyed my game, who want it back, who want my program to run their own servers.
( Ben's ethical diatribe )
The question I have is, what can I do now? I'm afraid of putting the game back up or distributing the server for someone else to serve, but I want people to be able to play it. The Set Enterprises website is unbearably crappy and hasn't changed at all. I offered to give them my version for free to let them provide it under whatever terms they liked (for pay if they needed, though it should be profitable with ad support alone, I thin) and I didn't even get a reply. A simple search or the Wikipedia page will give you a list of many other sites about or containing Set. Many have playable versions as Flash or Java applets (although not many have true multiplayer capability). How is it that they can continue to operate? If anyone has a suggestion for me, I'd really like to know what people think. |
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| Parkour |
[Mar. 27th, 2007|01:35 am] |
Parkour is a physical art or sport the goal of which is to move as quickly and efficiently as possibly, overcoming obstacles in the way. It is often seen in the media as some pretty fancy urban acrobatics. It makes for great youtube videos which is how I was first interested in it. My recently renewed interest in running and general desire to get more in shape made me think it would be something fun to learn.
After reading more about it today, I thought that the philosophy is perfect for me. Anyone who has seen me running around everywhere should understand. And seriously, why go around when you can go over? I don't know if what it takes, the agility and strength, or the ability to develop it through hard work and practice, but I'm excited to try, more than I have been about any other excercise routine that was solely for the purpose of getting in shape. So I've found some locals who I think can help me.
I've had some frequently recurring dreams for a while now where I can fly. It's not like Superman or anything, mostly just 2-3 feet off the ground and only with intense concentration and training. I don't even remember the dreams in morning as dreams, but often I have memories of being able to do it that I know aren't real. It sort of feels like what it was like to hover in the vertical wind tunnel, which may have something to with the phantom memories. I imagine that the freedom of movement that is said to come with parkour to be the next best thing. |
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| My day flashed before my eyes |
[Mar. 25th, 2007|04:01 pm] |
I haven't talked about what's been going on lately. Since my apartment was broken into and things have been getting stressful at work, I've been a bit of a mess. Something else I haven't talked much about is my girlfriend, Katie. I've been seeing her for about 4 months now. Things were good, athough this week was tough since the stress I've been under, and some of hers, has effected our relationship a bit. Yesterday, however, was a great day, enough to make me want to say something about it.
( If you read on, there's an explosion in this story ) |
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| Wiiplacement |
[Feb. 22nd, 2007|03:36 pm] |
I have finally replaced my stolen wii. My new friend code is:
8623 0016 9305 2872
If you're going to enter it into your Wii, please comment with your friend code since they need to be mutual. |
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| Come right on in and take whatever you'd like |
[Feb. 7th, 2007|01:57 am] |
Yesterday while I was at work my apartment was burglarized. I got home to find my door closed, but the door frame was split in half so that nothing was really holding it that way. They didn't get all the expensive things in the place, but they sure got some good stuff. Luckily not my PC will all my data, but they did take: my laptop, my camcorder, my digital camera, my projector, my Wii, all of my Wii games and GameCube games (for playing on the Wii) as well as half of my PlayStation2 games (accidentally?) and pretty much all the accessories for all those things. Oh yeah, so if already used my Wii friend code, go ahead and send them some nasty message.
Luckily I have renters insurance, if you don't have insurance, let this serve as a warning get yourself some damn renters insurance. Nothing taken was really that irreplacable and some of the things I'll even be happy to have to replace. Still, what isn't replacable is feeling secure in this apartment. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. At the very least I can trasfer to an identical apartment not on the ground floor, although this place has had break-ins on every floor. I can buy myself an alarm system, too. What I really want is a standard metal door frame, not one made out of one by, a safer neighborhood, and a complex that cares about the security of the front door/gate. I might be able to replace a door frame here at my own expense but I'm considering moving to a place that already has all 3 of those things.
I don't know why they picked my place. I keep the shades down for exactly this reason, so that no one can see in and see all my awesome stuff. The night before, while I was watching the superbowl on my projector, I ordered a pizza and the delivery guy commented that I had the perfect setup for a superbowl party, so I can't help wondering if that had anything to do will everything disappearing the following day. Why do people have to suck? |
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| Apple are bad people |
[Jan. 9th, 2007|08:17 pm] |
Reading the summary of the MacWorld keynote today reminded of why I hate Apple. There's no question they have the best designers and they produce some seriously polished, usable products. But the reason I don't like the company and don't want to own any of their products is that they are bad people and they encourage the same of their users. The keynote was blatently elitist, which is what I have come to expect from Mac users recently. I'm all for hyping your product (or the one you enjoy) and touting its superiority over the competition but I think it is quite a different matter to be overly condescending without reason. I don't try to tell anyone that they shouldn't use a Mac or an iPod; I think they are wonderful devices, the best for those who they are especially good for. So why do they need to be rude to anyone using a product that is not made by Apple? Apple, as particularly evidenced by its recent "Mac vs. PC" ads (which I find offensive), has given its users a liscence to denigrate any competing product. They don't accept that different devices have different strengths and weaknesses that make them desirable for different people. Anything that isn't the thing they like is immediately evil, even if the thing they don't like about it is an unfortunate result of being better in some other way that I desire, just as to me the lack of that feature is an unfortunate result of the more streamlined design of the Apple product. Until Apple and its fanboys adopt a better social policy I can't, in good concience, join them. |
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| Single Serving Friend |
[Jan. 2nd, 2007|07:59 pm] |
Several times I have talked about how I enjoy meeting people in airports and on planes. I even talked my idea for a special airline class that would cater to people like me. I've been using a service that does this, but it doesn't work very well and so far has not found anyone else using the system on any of my flights. However, on my way back to Atlanta from Boston last thursday, I had the best "single serving friend" encounter to date.
I was flying from Boston to Atlanta via Philadelphia on USAir. I met Marie on the jetway waiting to get on the plane. I'd seen her sleeping under her hat in the gate area and decided to strike up a conversation by asking her where she was going. It turned out she was also going to Atlanta (where she was meeting up with a friend and driving to Savannah). When we found our rows, she was the window seat right behind mine, the two aisles already filled. I turned around and we discovered on the next flight we were in the same row, but opposite windows. Talk about coincidence. When the middle seat people arrived, they were together and since Marie and I were talking they asked if she could move up with me so they could be together. Fine with me. We talked most of that flight. We traversed the Philadelphia airport together, stopping to get "lunch", and taking the bus to the other terminal. The second plane was small, 2 and 2, and the guy on her side asked if she minded sitting on the aisle. I thought, "what the hell", and asked the guy on my side if he'd mind the window. Although traffic to the bathroom posed some interference, we completed two crosswords together across the aisle. In Atlanta we were together all the way to baggage and parted ways after our bags arrived. It was the most interesting air travel experience I think I've had, and perhaps someone I will stay in touch with. |
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| Another Restaurant Idea |
[Oct. 19th, 2006|10:47 pm] |
A couple years ago I posted about my restaurant ideas. This is something I often talk about, a fun little hobby of mine that could become a business one day, although probably not before I retire from what I really do. This summer I came up with another idea I wanted to mention.
It would be a train themed restaurant. The waiters and waitresses would be dressed as conductors and would take your order with a whole punch like on a train ticket. The food would all be delivered to your table by model trains that run on a series of tracks throughout the restaurant. |
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| Art of the Can |
[Oct. 13th, 2006|10:41 pm] |
Last night I went to an art opening for a show called Art of the Can. PlayMotion has done a bunch of work for Red Bull (yes, the energy drink) over the last couple months. They've hired us to run PlayMotion at a number of events and parties they have sponsored. Just last month I completed a PlayMotion game that Red Bull sponsored in the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore where you fly over the Baltimore harbor which we build a virtual version of. It is a simulation of an event they sponsor this month called Flugtag or "Flying Day" which is a competition where people make flying crafts and see how far they can get when pushed off of a ramp in the harbor. Because of this relationship, they are always sending us cases and cases of free Red Bull and they invited our whole office to the private opening party for this art exhibit that has come to Atlanta. Art of the Can is an exhibit of lots of sculptures made out of Red Bull cans. There was some pretty neat stuff there, everything from jewlery and clothes to dragons and guitars. The party was packed and it was a lot of fun. Although only a few other people from work went, I brought a date and we had a great time. |
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| NextFest 2006 |
[Oct. 13th, 2006|09:04 pm] |
This post is a little late but better late than never! If you are a regular reader of this space you might remember my post about NextFest last year. Well this year the event was held in New York City September 28-October 1. I went back with PlayMotion again.
It was a trying setup but a personal victory. The week before I had to manage the packing of the equipment since our main hardware and installation guy was already travelling for 5 other installations. Three others set out on Monday morning in a van with the equipment. On Monday Jeremy and I had to get the software ready. The addition of a last minute feature to allow us to run all of our stuff twice as wide (different aspect ratio) that we normally do made the task difficult and I didn't get home until about midnight and still had to do laundry and pack.
When I arrived after only one hour of sleep and met the van, our space was not nearly what we had expected or what we needed. Since there was no one there who was responsable for our previous dealings with NextFest I took charge and began sorting out the mess. It was an incredibly long day. Despite the number of requests I had, all of the show production, event center, and union staff were very helpful. I was extremely pleased that my way of dealing with them, sympathazing and thanking them profusely, worked out quite well. After two days of setup we had all the equipment working.
Quasi the robot, who I worked with a lot at the ETC, was originally invited to apply to exhibit at NextFest but was not accepted.( Read more... ) |
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