INFINITE-IDEA

Not anymore, anyway. My blog is infiniteidea.net, so just shimmy yourself on over there

(go to www.infiniteidea.net for embedded links)

   I'm cleary behind on my postings, (I blame Sandy) so here's a buncha cool things I've come across lately. It feels like I've got an insurmountable amount of work at the moment, so that's my excuse for any current lack of updates slash any lack of updates in the near future. If only I had a team of slaves to- POLITICALLY INCORRECT FILTER BLOCKER 2000 ACTIVATED

   Speaking of filters, doubtless you've heard of the 'filter bubble' - it's one of those things that mean well but is actually harmful because it just divides us as a country because it encourages dangerous things like group polarization. Sure, as my anonymous friend says, "…thank goodness for the filter bubble. Honestly. I'm glad there are mechanisms in place that allow me to screen out irrelevant nonsense." It sounds like a great idea, and with a bit more sophistication I don't think there would be any qualms – for instance, say, instead of having your particular filter bubble determine 100% of your search results, perhaps there's a 'devil's advocate' clause, a filter that is antonymous to your demographic (so for example, in my case, a devil's advocate filter would target statist financiers or something) that contributes to your search results in a certain way. OR EVEN; whenever you search something, you get a main set of results that are generated by your specifications, and then, on the side, like in a separate column or something, there's a header that says "What other people are searching for;" that is populated by your antonymous filter.

   So how do you burst your filter bubble? One thing I try to do is frequent different news sources like this and that and etcetera, but the seemingly BEST thing to do, really, is seek out reasonable people who have contrasting viewpoints and FORCE MYSELF to discern the logical foundations from where they're coming. For example, I just had a long discussion about Obamacare. The person in question with whom I discussed listed story after story about how its policies are crippling small businesses, and how the only reason why the unemployment rate is so low is because people are just giving up on finding work (and allegedly you're not counted after a certain period of time, there's a series of distinctions that determine whether you're actually unemployed or just 'not in the labor force'). I don't know if the number of people 'not in the labor force' is greater or fewer than before, but I do know that Obamacare is great for a lot of people who can't get insurance for their potentially lethal pre-existing conditions. We agreed that there are possibly pros and cons with the system, based on what we discussed. These stories would have never reached my ears if it wasn't for him. I have a feeling that for most reasonable people, their opinions are formed by what they read. I can't have opinions about what I don't read, a fact that very well may be at the heart of why our country is so polarized right now.

   But I don't know really, I'm just pontificating. Conformation bias and belief perseverance are my enemies, and I wish more people felt that way, or even knew what those things were. Okay, whew, that got a bit too political for my liking. Necessarily so, but goodness I'm adverse to people's eagerness to chastise others' based on their political beliefs, especially when it really just comes down to what they have and haven't heard. Here's hoping we're not in the middle of some cyber civil war in a few years' time.

   Okay. Ideas. As we become more and more ingrained in internet (and computer) culture, I feel that more people REALLY need to understand how computers and software works (including being cognizant of things like the filter bubble). If *I* was in charge of the public school system, I would make kids take at least one software and one hardware class. In the hardware class, we'd first go over the basic computer parts (mouse, keyboard, etc) and then move on to the more intricate parts of the computer (RAM, CPU, etc) and eventually the class would culminate in the assembly of some dummy desktop computers. The software class would come next, in which students would learn the fundamentals of some language (BASIC or Phython or something) using a VISUAL coding system, something to the effect of this. Of course we all know how impossible it is to change anything in any public school system… so this is really nothing more than an elaborate daydream, as I'm not about to devote my life to this, but it would certainly curb the 'technology is mysterious' effect that Apple really likes to play up. To become more and more subsistent on something we don't understand, and even romanticize our ignorance of? That's messed up, yo.

   Uh, in closing, watch this, too. Some poetry and thoughts and animations to mentally chew on. I particularly identify with the whole 'forgetting' one, sometimes it feels like a lot of my life is devoted to taking precautions against me forgetting everything. A recursive task – should I forget to take those precautions, well, all is lost.

vimeo.com/52595306

Other links on my site >> infiniteidea.net

HA! Look, it's a teaser trailer! My life isn't worthless after all.

     Yeah, my life isn't worthless, that's a bit of self-deprecating humor. I'm entitled to that.

     Seriously, a note about self-deprecating humor - it's the most selfless form of humor there is. No one gets their feelings hurt.

    Well okay, I guess there are puns, too. Puns and self-deprecating humor, that's where it's at.

    You can tell I'm tired because I'm thinking in short paragraphs. 'Ol Sandy really took the best out of all of us.

     Speaking of Tesla, Marco Tempest recently did a nice little omage to him recently. I'd like to call it more an educational tidbit than a masterclass of storytelling, but it's great to see people continue to support his legacy. Slowly but surely, I think.

    There's one bit there that I pick a bone with - Tesla didn't really lose funding for his wireless tower because he said it could 'contact martians', people actually thought it was cool and that it was a nice side effect, it was the fact that it could generate and transmit power wireless FOR FREE and that wasn't a profitable model. Marco doesn't even mention that this was the main point of Wardenclyffe. It kind of... diminishes how awesome Tesla's vision was.

Oh, Tesla, if you could only see the sad state the world is in now.

     Don't worry, I'm trying to bring the swag back into science. Or at least, Neil deGrasse Tyson is.

     Engineering CAN be used to make cool art-like things. Take these stage designs, for instance. CAD, engineering, material design. That totally went it to all that.

     I've recently revised my 'concentration' or, in more general terms, my course of study, from 'Multimedia and Engineering' to just plain ol' 'Narrative Engineering'.

     I realized this whilist I was trying to mathematically plot curves for dramatic tension in a narrative over time with pieces of sine waves.

    Then I realized that what I was working on, in conjunction with some other ideas I'd been tossing around, were all forms of this... narrative engineering.

    I've never really liked the name 'multimedia and engineering' for my concentration, it seemed good enough... but this really feels right.

     Not to brag, but it's my combined knowledge of psychology, computer science and narrative understanding that makes me want to fix this so badly.

     The description of 'narrative engineering' doesn't preclude me from heading off creative works, either. After all, I'm an engineer! I build things - art with the function to tell stories!

It really feels great to have that one last thing click, you know?

links for links links go to infiniteidea.net for likes and links, I hope you like them

A Bolt, A Bird? More like A BOLT, A BLOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHA

    Editing the thing has proven to be unnecessarily tedious. My editor has two high-speed external hard drives from which to edit, but they're both full. So he needed one to work from. I managed to get my 'intern' to supply him one. Now it won't turn on.

    Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! He was supposed to have something cut together by now. We haven't even started yet, folks.
    Don't you hate the feeling that you're the only one you can rely on? I'm not saying that's how I feel, but I know this would've gone faster if I'd just done it myself - in fact, I already did, but it's not for you to see. Because it isn't a very good edit. And that's why I'm not doing it myself.
    In the meantime I'm writing a multimedia theory paper and developing a VERY COOL concept design. To its fruition. It's called the "Ring" - I'll say it's related to what I'm going to mention next and leave it at that for now.
    Recently I went to a very intimate presentation by the great Ken Perlin - the Academy Award-Winning new media explore-o-naut. Try completing some sort of CGI project without running into his name. Just try.
    I'm posting that other link again because it's worth letting at least a few of your children starve for a bit longer in order to explore the depths of its crevasses.
    What was quite startling was the resolve with which he spoke. Apparently in five years we will all be wearing contact lenses that alter our perception. This is an undeniable fact. Google's working on it, Apple's working on it (omg I can't wait for the iEye), hell, maybe even Amazon's working on it. We have to put down our moral hammers and focus on what we can do to make the technology ethical, not try to stop it altogether.
    Personally, I don't want this shit in my face. Imagine looking up at the Statue of Liberty and all of a sudden stuff comes flying in out of nowhere. I can't take that shit off either, I need glasses to see, and I'm sure it'd take a few minutes to shut down. And after that I probably wouldn't turn them on again. But to each their own.
    But hey, contacts and glasses modify what we see anyway. I'm already imagining a story where some criminal deceives the police by hacking into their government-issued iEyes and changing their perceptions - swapping doors, buildings, making them drive off cliffs, the works. This would be the first time in history that contacts and glasses would help us "un-see"- while traditional glasses clarify our perceptions, the iEye would do the opposite.
    Suffice to say I'm trying to maintain a neutral mindset. I suppose at least with my whole vision clouded by digital mirages I'll be a bit less lonely.

There are LINKS, go to here for them -> www.infiniteidea.net

Wow, it was a bit easier than I anticipated to implement the <iframe> feature, however, there are still a couple bugs;

The scrollbars appear to only function as intended in Chrome, as far as I'm aware.
If you have your browser set up such that links open in a new tab, the <iframe> won't function properly.
A few of the 'Miscellaneous Links' don't open in the iframe for some reason. I'm guessing those sites are designed not to do so.
A couple other minor design refinements need to be made.

Yes, yes I know that learning something like PHP or JavaScript would fix these issues, but for now it will have to do. I think these simple changes improve the site's accessibility immensely. Click around and check it out, just remember to click on the left bar to come back here.

    A Bolt, A Bird is now in post-production and coming along nicely. We've begun editing it and are planning a second Indiegogo run. We've got a lot of post to do considering that Anna (Tesla's love interest) will now be animated, and that doesn't come cheap. To put a long story short, the puppet didn't work out. I'm hoping the fact that we actually have footage will help us out this time around. We also still owe money to a few good samaritans. Here's everyone who helped with the first run of contributions.
    I recently attended a performance by the group DeVotchKa, and man, are they awesome. I was lucky enough to use my recently-acquired first cute little smart phone and take some footage. Funny story, I uploaded it to my YouTube account (because it was just some video I took with my cell phone) and YouTube was all

"Hey, this is shaky. You want us to fix that?"
Me: "OK YouTube show me what you got"

    At first I wasn't quite sure if I liked the result - but it definitely grew on me. I could have achieved more accurate results using After Effects, but the effect generated by YouTube's algorithm is pretty neat. What an amazing age. Consider it my own little David O'Reilly moment. I want to have that man's small children.
    I recently read The Garden of Forking Paths and was consumed by the spirit to share my impressions with everyone. Here is the original article if you're so inclined.
    It was written by Jorge Louis Borges in 1941, spawning the concept of what came to be known as the 'hypertext novel' - the first of which written by Julio Cortazar in 1963, a concept which evolved into what us 90s kids today call the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Novel. It exercises control over what some call 'the 5th dimension', a dimension, like space or time, across all possible outcomes - there is some dispute amongst the scientific community over the plausibility of such a concept (plausibility that walks hand-in-hand with the ultimate fate of string theory) - I, personally, just like to think of it as an 'interactive book', though that may oversimplify the concept.
    The story in the article is simple enough, a German spy during the first World War is on the run and reaches out to a man named Dr. Albert for aid. Dr. Albert confuses the spy for another man and shows him his garden. By happenstance, we learn that it is the garden of the spy's ancestors. A whole history is unearthed, and the story of Ts'ui Pen is told.
    Ts'ui Pen, in the story, was famed for having written an indecipherable novel, and devoting the extent of his days to its realization. He commonly would withdraw to work on 'a labyrinth and a novel'. An epiphany - the labyrinth was not the garden where the spy grew up, but the novel itself!
    Personally… I think that Ts'ui Pen is given too much credit (in the context of the story). You can't invent a new medium if it's an ergonomical disaster. This is how I would approach any kind of concept that I know others had not encountered before - you've got to spell it out. The 'Choose Your Own Adventure' novels are case in point. Your decisions are clear and their consequences made apparent. If the series of possible events are strung in a linear order, and readers are operating under the modus of their inherent knowledge to how the media functions, they're just going to read the book in a linear fashion and wind up utterly confused. The keystone of the design is to consider the audience, and Ts'ui Pen did not do that.
    Granted, it sounded as if he was a bit crazy. Speaking in riddles when he could've just straight out said what he was working on.
    Ultimately, though, it is a great concept. Good on you, Jorge. Way to mix it up. Party like it's 1941.