GDC Report:
Ok, I want to record the series of events that happened this past week before I quickly forget them. The first thing to note is that nothing of particular significance really happened, but I want a record of my trip nonetheless.
I will start on last Friday the 4th. I received my Freemason ring; I believe I mentioned this already. However, I don't think I put up a link to go with it. I purchased M26.
Of course I didn't meet any Freemasons at the conference. In fact, I didn't bring the topic up except with some of my friends. The general response I would get is my grandfather/uncle/brother in law is/was a Mason. I spoke to Michael Abrash about the topic quite a bit and I seemed to convince him it was an excellent way to spend time once you eventually 'retire'. Of course, Michael is still very skeptical about the concept of retirement in general and we had a lengthy discussion on the many things a person can do while they are, technically, 'retired'.
While I was out of town I received an email from a lodge brother about an article that came out about Freemasonry becoming less secret to better adjust to the modern world. Here is the link.
On Friday, on my way home from work, I called my good friend John Miles to see if we could meet up at GDC. It turns out John decided to skip GDC this year but we had a really pleasant conversation about Freemasonry. He seemed quite interested that I had joined the organization and, in fact, seemed to think it was kind of cool. In our conversation he asked if I had read "Foucault’s Pendulum" and I said 'no' but would add it to my extensive reading list at this time. I checked out what people had to say about the book on Amazon.com and the reviews were not entirely favorable. In fact, most people seemed to find the book unreadable. On Sunday I went to the book store and picked up a copy as well as "The Book of Hiram" by Knight and Lomas. This is a follow up to their book "The Hiram Key" which I have previously read. Knight and Lomas are, well, to put it politely they are insane. In "The Hiram Key" they claim they found definitive proof that Hiram Abiff was, in fact, an Egyptian mummy that was found with its head smashed in. "The Book of Hiram" is something like their third follow up book six years later. In this book they completely ignore the entire premise of their first book and acknowledge that Hiram Abiff is, in fact, the same character mentioned in the Old Testament. I wonder if they plan to give out refunds to everybody who bought the first book?
After I purchased “Foucault’s Pendulum” and was heading back to the car a thought struck me. Maybe John Miles wasn’t actually recommending the book? Maybe he was just suggesting it as a joke, because it is famous for being the most unreadable novel in the history of literature next to James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. So, I gave John a call and asked him “Did you recommend this book because it is the most famous book people buy but don’t actually read or because you really like it?” His response was ‘both’. I was relieved to find out that John did recommend it and I informed him that I had just purchased a copy. His response was, well now you will have two. Apparently as soon as I got off the phone on Friday John went and bought me a copy on Amazon.com as a gift.
I spoke to John further about the novel and learned that he is a huge Umberto Eco fan. “Foucault’s Pendulum” is famous for being a book that people buy and carry around to show how ‘intellectual’ they are, but don’t actually read it. John compared it to the novel “The Satanic Verses” which was so controversial but few people ever actually read. I presumed that “Foucault’s Pendulum” must have something do with Freemasonry or John wouldn’t have suggested it in context to our previous conversation. Now that I am reading it, it is about page 440 before the Freemasons are finally mentioned in any sort of detail.
The book is, at its most basic level, a fairly standard mystery story. In reality, it is an incredibly staggering tour de force of philosophical and intellectual inquiry into the esoteric beliefs of humanity throughout all of history. In short, it is just my kind of book. The first four pages are almost incomprehensible, requiring an incredible vocabulary as you are stunned by words that you would swear have been made up for poetic purpose alone. The first forty pages are a great challenge to struggle through. Then, after that, the book settles into a more conventional narrative, albeit with a rich use of language.
So, I read the first two hundred pages on my flight out to San Francisco and another two hundred on my way back. I am on the downhill slope of this 600 page novel and am enjoying it enormously. I don’t know if I could recommend it to many other people since I know almost no one with such a passionate interest in these topics besides myself…..and..apparently…my good friend John Miles. The thing I have been most amazed by as I read the book is that John Miles recommended it so highly. The book deals with highly esoteric (i.e. spiritual) subject matter and I didn’t know that my rationalist friend found such material inspiring or enlightening. I suspect we will share many more books on our bookshelf in the future. I already knew that John and I have virtually identical tastes in film and music, so it shouldn’t be that surprising we share a similar passion for the same kinds of literature.
On Tuesday afternoon I arrived in San Francisco and was met by my good friend John Oberschelp and his son Hans who had taken the day off of school because he didn’t feel well. We went out for lunch together and chit chatted about various topics, “Foucault’s Pendulum” being high on the list because it was fresh on my mind.
Hans and John Oberschelp while we had lunch.
Yeah, Hans looks sick enough here to justify staying out of school. In fact, Alisa found out it 'costs' the school $45 each day a kid missing school sick.
In the evening we watched some episodes of “Wonderfalls” that I had purchased on DVD. If I haven’t mentioned it on this blog before, well, I am now. Please run, rush, leap, fly, out to your nearest retail outlet and purchase a copy of “Wonderfalls”. I won’t even go into ‘why’ you should. You simply should. That is, if you like to laugh. You like to laugh don’t you? Don’t you?!?
On Wednesday morning I took public transportation to the conference center and it went quite smoothly. I got my badge and immediately started going to lectures. The lectures, sadly, made me feel very dumb. In the first one I attended the lecturer had the nerve to say, and I am quoting more or less exactly, "For anyone who got a passing grade in multivariate calculus the derivation of this equation should be obvious." Hmm....sure..obvious to Phd's who spent eight years working on this particular problem. Now, since my last math class was in 1980 it wasn’t quite so obvious to me. I am finding it ever more difficult to 'keep up' with the state of this industry. I'm smart enough, I suppose. I can still program very high quality code very fast. However, the advanced mathematics required to work with some of the latest technologies is quite daunting indeed. Fairly soon I am going to have to get myself a job in management so I can simply boss around kids who passed multivariate calculus more recently than 25 years ago.
In the afternoon I was able to walk the show floor and see some of my friends. I also saw 'my book' out in print for the first time. It isn't really 'my book'. Its mine along with the 25 other guys who all wrote a book chapter. Nevertheless, that is what is fun about writing book chapters. You get to hold t his great big heavy book and say it is 'your book' simply because you spent a couple of weekends writing 5,000 words.
Mike Sartain and Mitch Soule; friends of mine from Rad Game Tools.
My old friend Ned Lerner who I got a chance to get caught up with at the conference. I know Ned from way back in the old Electronic Arts days when he wrote "Chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator.
My friend and colleague Matt Shaw from Mythic. Matt and I worked together on Planetside.
My friend Billy Zelsnack. Billy works with me at Ageia now. While I was keeping my head low, Billy had to dress conservatively to work public relations at our booth. As you might guess, conservative attire is not the norm for Billy.
On Wednesday afternoon on my way back from the conference I saw a bunch of chess tables set up in the park. I chatted with a few of the guys there and thought it would be a lot of fun to come back one evening to play a few pickup games. This is a rather 'colorful' group of people to say the least.
When I got to the subway I suddenly realized I lacked a crucial piece of information. I didn’t know which train to get on. I asked several people but they were not any help. I couldn’t call without exiting the station because cell phones don’t work there. When a train pulled up that said “Balboa Park” I went ahead and got on thinking that was the park near John and Alisa’s house. Once the train got above ground I called. Alisa said, yes, I had gotten on the wrong train but it wasn’t any problem. I just needed to get off at a particular station and she would meet me. However, there was some confusion and I ended up taking the train to the end of the line. Eventually, through many repeated cell phone calls, I was able to meet up with Alisa. As I jumped into her car I head something clatter from my pocket. Uh..oh… We immediately looped around the block but my cell phone was no where to be found. I haven’t lost a cell phone in over 15 years. This must have been a sign. The next day I went to buy a replacement at the sprint store.
While the phone was outrageously overpriced, I ‘counted on’ my sales consultant ‘Kamau’ to take care of me.
My friendly Sprint sales consultant Kamau
On Wednesday evening John and I took Hans and Mason out to Berkeley to buy a game of 'Chess 4'. If you are not familiar with the game, it is a version of chess that lets you play with four people. It is surprisingly fun and a great party game. Both of John's boys are really into chess. Hans seems to be burning out a little bit right now, but Mason (6 years old) is really still quite enthusiastic.
Here is a picture of Mason being enthusiastic about the prospect of going to Berkeley to buy a Chess 4 game.
On Thursday I was contacted by a local high school back here in St. Louis to participate in a mentoring program. I am supposed to take a high school kid along to my job one day to show him what it is like working in an industry they are interested in. I also will be doing a presentation about job opportunities in the game industry. I decided to start taking photographs of some 'typical' game developers at the conference. My plan is to take the credits from a major computer game like "Halo" and use it to create a PowerPoint presentation that describes the job titles that people have in the game industry. Here are a couple of the photographs I took of 'typical' game developers.
During the day at the conference our company was making a big buzz. This was mostly due to the fact that Epic was running a demo of the Unreal Engine 3 with some amazing looking demos that showcased our technology. Additionally the COLLADA presentation went really well and XSI had done deep integration of our technology into their product as well. I took this all as a good sign and was quite pleased with the reception we were getting.
In the afternoon I heard some amazing music outside. A street musician was playing a dulcimer in a most incredible fashion. His name is Michael Masley and he plays an instrument called a Cymbalom. However, he plays it in a most unique way. He plucks, strokes, strums, drums, and ultimately feathers it to produce the most amazing ethereal music. On the tips of his fingers he uses horse-hair bows producing sounds similar to a violin. The entire result is a richly textured multi-layered sound that is beautiful to listen to. You can find his website here. Also, do a google search on his name and you will find a number of samples you can listen to. He has a most interesting story. I would imagine he makes a decent amount of money since, while I was listening to him, he sold out almost a whole box of CD's at $12 apiece or two for $20. I bought both of his CD's and can't wait to put them on my Ipod.
On Thursday evening I, John Oberschelp and Ray Tobey went out to dinner together.
Here is a picture of Ray Tobey on the right and my friend Jeff Roberts on the left.
We had a great meal and after dinner we went out to a nightclub. The first place we tried had a bouncer and a twenty dollar cover charge. We tried to get them to come down on the cover price, but no luck. As we started to walk away I had my first public 'fan-boy' experience. The bouncer goes, hey, do you play 'Planetside'? (He had seen my Planetside jacket.) I replied, yeah man, I worked on that game. His response was extremely enthusiastic, assuring me that the game did, in fact, 'rock'. Nevertheless, this new found fan still would not allow us to 'hack' our way into the nightclub at a lower price point. Fame, even fleeting, only does you so much good.
On Friday morning I received an interesting email from Ian Lawton. Ian Lawton is an author of books of a somewhat esoteric nature. A few months ago I bought one of Ian's books at the bookstore titled "Genesis Revisited". I read the first 150 pages and quite enjoyed it. So I went to Amazon.com to read what some other people had to say. Universally the reviews were scathing. People absolutely *hated* the book. Well, I was quite enjoying it so I wrote my first Amazon.com book review. I have to confess, my review was a bit too glowing. In fact, I was still only 150 pages into the book when I wrote it. As I ploughed my way through the entire document I came to realize that those critical of the book had some pretty valid points. Nevertheless, the book was not nearly as bad as they suggested and I did, overall, find it an entertaining diversion.
Ian Walton's book 'Genesis Revisited' follows the time honored tradition of suggesting that early human civilization sprung up intact from a single source. However, instead of suggesting this was the product of some kind of alien intervention (as other authors love to do) Ian simply suggested that the impetus was primarily 'spiritual' in nature. Personally I didn't think that was, on the face of it, any wackier than suggesting aliens in spaceships. In fact, to me, it seems a lot less far out.
In one section of Ian's book he presents a spiritual and cosmological model that closely matches that of the Seth material. I'm a rather big fan of the Seth material and I assumed that Ian Walton was quite familiar with it as well. I did find it odd that he didn't cite the Seth material as a reference though. So, I sent him a kind email pointing out the obvious parallels between the two points of view. He replied kindly enough, somewhat surprised that I though the Seth material was worth any consideration. He had heard of it, but never bothered with it since he generally considers New Age channeled material all a bunch of twaddle. Now, generally speaking, this is my point of view as well. However, I make an exception in the case of Seth.
This interchange happened a couple of months ago and that was the end of the affair. I have since moved on to many other books to read. The only thing I recall about the event is how I find it generally fun to directly interact with an author. I remember the time I sent an email to Greg Bear criticizing a plot point in his novel "Darwin's Children". I felt honored when he sent an email response justifying the plot twist with a rationalization he hadn't presented in the novel itself.
On Friday I got an email from Ian Walton asking for my input on an appendix he had written to his book. Apparently when I suggested he read the Seth material I ended up causing him to have an existential crisis. “Existential crisis” and “Ontological shock” these have got to be my two favorite phrases in the English language. I felt honored, yet once again, that simply by recommending reading material to this seeker in the UK I had caused him such spiritual and intellectual distress. He had read the Seth material, found it to be superficially illuminating, only to feel it was built on shaky ground. His appendix is 17 pages single spaced. His major objections have to do with the many worlds interpretation of spiritual reality that Seth puts forth. I’m not surprised. I intend to send Ian a detailed follow up later this week. Nevertheless here is the link to his site and the appendix. I had fun discussing this event with my friends Ray Tobey and Jeff Roberts.
On Friday afternoon I saw that an old friend of mine was giving a presentation at the conference. So, I decided to skip the final ‘hurt my brain’ physics talk of the conference and attend my friend's talk instead. My friend's name is Rungey and he was an artist on Planetside here in St. Louis. He is doing very well and it was great fun to see him give his presentation at the show.
Here is a picture of Rungey, proud and happy that his talk was over.
On Friday evening I met John, Alisa, Hans, and Mason at the conference. We had decided it would be fun to have a 'Searching for Bobby Fischer' moment. We took Hans and Mason to the sidewalk by Powell station where the 'colorful people' congregate to play chess for a dollar. It seemed a bit dicey at first and I just played Mason myself while John played one of the chess experts that was there. John lost but gave it a valiant effort. After John's game Mason went ahead and played. We created quite a sight and many tourists snapped a few shots of the scene. The guy who played Mason was incredibly kind and helpful. He gave Mason lots of advice and let him take back bad moves so he could learn from his mistakes.
Here are some of the photographs from the event.
Here is a nice photograph of Alisa while we were waiting to get on the subway to come home.
So this pretty much brings a close to my trip. There is one final epilogue though. It seems I suffer from a particular neurological disorder. This disorder is connected between my optical nerve and my cerebral cortex causing me to act inappropriately when photons resembling beautiful young women enter my brain. On the subway ride home I saw the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life. Of course, beauty is a completely subjective thing. Here I had been taking snapshots as a record of my entire trip and like a bird watcher finally finding that elusive prey I felt compelled to capture this mythical creature that suddenly appeared before me.
There really is no subtle way to do such a thing. So, I just got out my camera and snapped a shot. Well, I wasn't fooling anyone and the young lady immediately turned to me and asked "Did you just take my picture!??"
Busted. They guy sitting next to me gave me a look designed to indicate just exactly how stupid I actually am. In fact, I'm pretty sure he thought I was more stupid than I felt when James Obrien gives a presentation on advanced physics simulation with multivariate calculus.
I stammered and told the young lady that I was just taking a photograph of my subway experience and..perhaps..she might have been in the shot. Her immediate response was pleasantly surprising. She noted that she rarely gets a 'natural' photograph taken of her and would I mind emailing her a copy of the picture. As she scribbled out her email address on my business card the expression of my subway neighbor changed dramatically, clearly indicating he couldn't believe how I managed to get away with that.
Below is the picture of the young lady I met. I had a pleasant conversation about her interests and aspirations. I did email her a copy of the photograph which does not do her justice in any way.
I must bring this blog post to a close, as this completes the record on a lovely GDC experience. Until next year. Or, perhaps, just until E3 at least.
Ok, I want to record the series of events that happened this past week before I quickly forget them. The first thing to note is that nothing of particular significance really happened, but I want a record of my trip nonetheless.
I will start on last Friday the 4th. I received my Freemason ring; I believe I mentioned this already. However, I don't think I put up a link to go with it. I purchased M26.
Of course I didn't meet any Freemasons at the conference. In fact, I didn't bring the topic up except with some of my friends. The general response I would get is my grandfather/uncle/brother in law is/was a Mason. I spoke to Michael Abrash about the topic quite a bit and I seemed to convince him it was an excellent way to spend time once you eventually 'retire'. Of course, Michael is still very skeptical about the concept of retirement in general and we had a lengthy discussion on the many things a person can do while they are, technically, 'retired'.
While I was out of town I received an email from a lodge brother about an article that came out about Freemasonry becoming less secret to better adjust to the modern world. Here is the link.
On Friday, on my way home from work, I called my good friend John Miles to see if we could meet up at GDC. It turns out John decided to skip GDC this year but we had a really pleasant conversation about Freemasonry. He seemed quite interested that I had joined the organization and, in fact, seemed to think it was kind of cool. In our conversation he asked if I had read "Foucault’s Pendulum" and I said 'no' but would add it to my extensive reading list at this time. I checked out what people had to say about the book on Amazon.com and the reviews were not entirely favorable. In fact, most people seemed to find the book unreadable. On Sunday I went to the book store and picked up a copy as well as "The Book of Hiram" by Knight and Lomas. This is a follow up to their book "The Hiram Key" which I have previously read. Knight and Lomas are, well, to put it politely they are insane. In "The Hiram Key" they claim they found definitive proof that Hiram Abiff was, in fact, an Egyptian mummy that was found with its head smashed in. "The Book of Hiram" is something like their third follow up book six years later. In this book they completely ignore the entire premise of their first book and acknowledge that Hiram Abiff is, in fact, the same character mentioned in the Old Testament. I wonder if they plan to give out refunds to everybody who bought the first book?
After I purchased “Foucault’s Pendulum” and was heading back to the car a thought struck me. Maybe John Miles wasn’t actually recommending the book? Maybe he was just suggesting it as a joke, because it is famous for being the most unreadable novel in the history of literature next to James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. So, I gave John a call and asked him “Did you recommend this book because it is the most famous book people buy but don’t actually read or because you really like it?” His response was ‘both’. I was relieved to find out that John did recommend it and I informed him that I had just purchased a copy. His response was, well now you will have two. Apparently as soon as I got off the phone on Friday John went and bought me a copy on Amazon.com as a gift.
I spoke to John further about the novel and learned that he is a huge Umberto Eco fan. “Foucault’s Pendulum” is famous for being a book that people buy and carry around to show how ‘intellectual’ they are, but don’t actually read it. John compared it to the novel “The Satanic Verses” which was so controversial but few people ever actually read. I presumed that “Foucault’s Pendulum” must have something do with Freemasonry or John wouldn’t have suggested it in context to our previous conversation. Now that I am reading it, it is about page 440 before the Freemasons are finally mentioned in any sort of detail.
The book is, at its most basic level, a fairly standard mystery story. In reality, it is an incredibly staggering tour de force of philosophical and intellectual inquiry into the esoteric beliefs of humanity throughout all of history. In short, it is just my kind of book. The first four pages are almost incomprehensible, requiring an incredible vocabulary as you are stunned by words that you would swear have been made up for poetic purpose alone. The first forty pages are a great challenge to struggle through. Then, after that, the book settles into a more conventional narrative, albeit with a rich use of language.
So, I read the first two hundred pages on my flight out to San Francisco and another two hundred on my way back. I am on the downhill slope of this 600 page novel and am enjoying it enormously. I don’t know if I could recommend it to many other people since I know almost no one with such a passionate interest in these topics besides myself…..and..apparently…my good friend John Miles. The thing I have been most amazed by as I read the book is that John Miles recommended it so highly. The book deals with highly esoteric (i.e. spiritual) subject matter and I didn’t know that my rationalist friend found such material inspiring or enlightening. I suspect we will share many more books on our bookshelf in the future. I already knew that John and I have virtually identical tastes in film and music, so it shouldn’t be that surprising we share a similar passion for the same kinds of literature.
On Tuesday afternoon I arrived in San Francisco and was met by my good friend John Oberschelp and his son Hans who had taken the day off of school because he didn’t feel well. We went out for lunch together and chit chatted about various topics, “Foucault’s Pendulum” being high on the list because it was fresh on my mind.
Hans and John Oberschelp while we had lunch.Yeah, Hans looks sick enough here to justify staying out of school. In fact, Alisa found out it 'costs' the school $45 each day a kid missing school sick.In the evening we watched some episodes of “Wonderfalls” that I had purchased on DVD. If I haven’t mentioned it on this blog before, well, I am now. Please run, rush, leap, fly, out to your nearest retail outlet and purchase a copy of “Wonderfalls”. I won’t even go into ‘why’ you should. You simply should. That is, if you like to laugh. You like to laugh don’t you? Don’t you?!?
On Wednesday morning I took public transportation to the conference center and it went quite smoothly. I got my badge and immediately started going to lectures. The lectures, sadly, made me feel very dumb. In the first one I attended the lecturer had the nerve to say, and I am quoting more or less exactly, "For anyone who got a passing grade in multivariate calculus the derivation of this equation should be obvious." Hmm....sure..obvious to Phd's who spent eight years working on this particular problem. Now, since my last math class was in 1980 it wasn’t quite so obvious to me. I am finding it ever more difficult to 'keep up' with the state of this industry. I'm smart enough, I suppose. I can still program very high quality code very fast. However, the advanced mathematics required to work with some of the latest technologies is quite daunting indeed. Fairly soon I am going to have to get myself a job in management so I can simply boss around kids who passed multivariate calculus more recently than 25 years ago.
In the afternoon I was able to walk the show floor and see some of my friends. I also saw 'my book' out in print for the first time. It isn't really 'my book'. Its mine along with the 25 other guys who all wrote a book chapter. Nevertheless, that is what is fun about writing book chapters. You get to hold t his great big heavy book and say it is 'your book' simply because you spent a couple of weekends writing 5,000 words.
Mike Sartain and Mitch Soule; friends of mine from Rad Game Tools. My old friend Ned Lerner who I got a chance to get caught up with at the conference. I know Ned from way back in the old Electronic Arts days when he wrote "Chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator. My friend and colleague Matt Shaw from Mythic. Matt and I worked together on Planetside. My friend Billy Zelsnack. Billy works with me at Ageia now. While I was keeping my head low, Billy had to dress conservatively to work public relations at our booth. As you might guess, conservative attire is not the norm for Billy.On Wednesday afternoon on my way back from the conference I saw a bunch of chess tables set up in the park. I chatted with a few of the guys there and thought it would be a lot of fun to come back one evening to play a few pickup games. This is a rather 'colorful' group of people to say the least.
When I got to the subway I suddenly realized I lacked a crucial piece of information. I didn’t know which train to get on. I asked several people but they were not any help. I couldn’t call without exiting the station because cell phones don’t work there. When a train pulled up that said “Balboa Park” I went ahead and got on thinking that was the park near John and Alisa’s house. Once the train got above ground I called. Alisa said, yes, I had gotten on the wrong train but it wasn’t any problem. I just needed to get off at a particular station and she would meet me. However, there was some confusion and I ended up taking the train to the end of the line. Eventually, through many repeated cell phone calls, I was able to meet up with Alisa. As I jumped into her car I head something clatter from my pocket. Uh..oh… We immediately looped around the block but my cell phone was no where to be found. I haven’t lost a cell phone in over 15 years. This must have been a sign. The next day I went to buy a replacement at the sprint store.
While the phone was outrageously overpriced, I ‘counted on’ my sales consultant ‘Kamau’ to take care of me.
My friendly Sprint sales consultant KamauOn Wednesday evening John and I took Hans and Mason out to Berkeley to buy a game of 'Chess 4'. If you are not familiar with the game, it is a version of chess that lets you play with four people. It is surprisingly fun and a great party game. Both of John's boys are really into chess. Hans seems to be burning out a little bit right now, but Mason (6 years old) is really still quite enthusiastic.
Here is a picture of Mason being enthusiastic about the prospect of going to Berkeley to buy a Chess 4 game.On Thursday I was contacted by a local high school back here in St. Louis to participate in a mentoring program. I am supposed to take a high school kid along to my job one day to show him what it is like working in an industry they are interested in. I also will be doing a presentation about job opportunities in the game industry. I decided to start taking photographs of some 'typical' game developers at the conference. My plan is to take the credits from a major computer game like "Halo" and use it to create a PowerPoint presentation that describes the job titles that people have in the game industry. Here are a couple of the photographs I took of 'typical' game developers.
During the day at the conference our company was making a big buzz. This was mostly due to the fact that Epic was running a demo of the Unreal Engine 3 with some amazing looking demos that showcased our technology. Additionally the COLLADA presentation went really well and XSI had done deep integration of our technology into their product as well. I took this all as a good sign and was quite pleased with the reception we were getting.
In the afternoon I heard some amazing music outside. A street musician was playing a dulcimer in a most incredible fashion. His name is Michael Masley and he plays an instrument called a Cymbalom. However, he plays it in a most unique way. He plucks, strokes, strums, drums, and ultimately feathers it to produce the most amazing ethereal music. On the tips of his fingers he uses horse-hair bows producing sounds similar to a violin. The entire result is a richly textured multi-layered sound that is beautiful to listen to. You can find his website here. Also, do a google search on his name and you will find a number of samples you can listen to. He has a most interesting story. I would imagine he makes a decent amount of money since, while I was listening to him, he sold out almost a whole box of CD's at $12 apiece or two for $20. I bought both of his CD's and can't wait to put them on my Ipod.
On Thursday evening I, John Oberschelp and Ray Tobey went out to dinner together.
Here is a picture of Ray Tobey on the right and my friend Jeff Roberts on the left.
We had a great meal and after dinner we went out to a nightclub. The first place we tried had a bouncer and a twenty dollar cover charge. We tried to get them to come down on the cover price, but no luck. As we started to walk away I had my first public 'fan-boy' experience. The bouncer goes, hey, do you play 'Planetside'? (He had seen my Planetside jacket.) I replied, yeah man, I worked on that game. His response was extremely enthusiastic, assuring me that the game did, in fact, 'rock'. Nevertheless, this new found fan still would not allow us to 'hack' our way into the nightclub at a lower price point. Fame, even fleeting, only does you so much good.
On Friday morning I received an interesting email from Ian Lawton. Ian Lawton is an author of books of a somewhat esoteric nature. A few months ago I bought one of Ian's books at the bookstore titled "Genesis Revisited". I read the first 150 pages and quite enjoyed it. So I went to Amazon.com to read what some other people had to say. Universally the reviews were scathing. People absolutely *hated* the book. Well, I was quite enjoying it so I wrote my first Amazon.com book review. I have to confess, my review was a bit too glowing. In fact, I was still only 150 pages into the book when I wrote it. As I ploughed my way through the entire document I came to realize that those critical of the book had some pretty valid points. Nevertheless, the book was not nearly as bad as they suggested and I did, overall, find it an entertaining diversion.
Ian Walton's book 'Genesis Revisited' follows the time honored tradition of suggesting that early human civilization sprung up intact from a single source. However, instead of suggesting this was the product of some kind of alien intervention (as other authors love to do) Ian simply suggested that the impetus was primarily 'spiritual' in nature. Personally I didn't think that was, on the face of it, any wackier than suggesting aliens in spaceships. In fact, to me, it seems a lot less far out.
In one section of Ian's book he presents a spiritual and cosmological model that closely matches that of the Seth material. I'm a rather big fan of the Seth material and I assumed that Ian Walton was quite familiar with it as well. I did find it odd that he didn't cite the Seth material as a reference though. So, I sent him a kind email pointing out the obvious parallels between the two points of view. He replied kindly enough, somewhat surprised that I though the Seth material was worth any consideration. He had heard of it, but never bothered with it since he generally considers New Age channeled material all a bunch of twaddle. Now, generally speaking, this is my point of view as well. However, I make an exception in the case of Seth.
This interchange happened a couple of months ago and that was the end of the affair. I have since moved on to many other books to read. The only thing I recall about the event is how I find it generally fun to directly interact with an author. I remember the time I sent an email to Greg Bear criticizing a plot point in his novel "Darwin's Children". I felt honored when he sent an email response justifying the plot twist with a rationalization he hadn't presented in the novel itself.
On Friday I got an email from Ian Walton asking for my input on an appendix he had written to his book. Apparently when I suggested he read the Seth material I ended up causing him to have an existential crisis. “Existential crisis” and “Ontological shock” these have got to be my two favorite phrases in the English language. I felt honored, yet once again, that simply by recommending reading material to this seeker in the UK I had caused him such spiritual and intellectual distress. He had read the Seth material, found it to be superficially illuminating, only to feel it was built on shaky ground. His appendix is 17 pages single spaced. His major objections have to do with the many worlds interpretation of spiritual reality that Seth puts forth. I’m not surprised. I intend to send Ian a detailed follow up later this week. Nevertheless here is the link to his site and the appendix. I had fun discussing this event with my friends Ray Tobey and Jeff Roberts.
On Friday afternoon I saw that an old friend of mine was giving a presentation at the conference. So, I decided to skip the final ‘hurt my brain’ physics talk of the conference and attend my friend's talk instead. My friend's name is Rungey and he was an artist on Planetside here in St. Louis. He is doing very well and it was great fun to see him give his presentation at the show.
Here is a picture of Rungey, proud and happy that his talk was over.
On Friday evening I met John, Alisa, Hans, and Mason at the conference. We had decided it would be fun to have a 'Searching for Bobby Fischer' moment. We took Hans and Mason to the sidewalk by Powell station where the 'colorful people' congregate to play chess for a dollar. It seemed a bit dicey at first and I just played Mason myself while John played one of the chess experts that was there. John lost but gave it a valiant effort. After John's game Mason went ahead and played. We created quite a sight and many tourists snapped a few shots of the scene. The guy who played Mason was incredibly kind and helpful. He gave Mason lots of advice and let him take back bad moves so he could learn from his mistakes.
Here are some of the photographs from the event.
Here is a nice photograph of Alisa while we were waiting to get on the subway to come home.
So this pretty much brings a close to my trip. There is one final epilogue though. It seems I suffer from a particular neurological disorder. This disorder is connected between my optical nerve and my cerebral cortex causing me to act inappropriately when photons resembling beautiful young women enter my brain. On the subway ride home I saw the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life. Of course, beauty is a completely subjective thing. Here I had been taking snapshots as a record of my entire trip and like a bird watcher finally finding that elusive prey I felt compelled to capture this mythical creature that suddenly appeared before me.
There really is no subtle way to do such a thing. So, I just got out my camera and snapped a shot. Well, I wasn't fooling anyone and the young lady immediately turned to me and asked "Did you just take my picture!??"
Busted. They guy sitting next to me gave me a look designed to indicate just exactly how stupid I actually am. In fact, I'm pretty sure he thought I was more stupid than I felt when James Obrien gives a presentation on advanced physics simulation with multivariate calculus.
I stammered and told the young lady that I was just taking a photograph of my subway experience and..perhaps..she might have been in the shot. Her immediate response was pleasantly surprising. She noted that she rarely gets a 'natural' photograph taken of her and would I mind emailing her a copy of the picture. As she scribbled out her email address on my business card the expression of my subway neighbor changed dramatically, clearly indicating he couldn't believe how I managed to get away with that.
Below is the picture of the young lady I met. I had a pleasant conversation about her interests and aspirations. I did email her a copy of the photograph which does not do her justice in any way.
I must bring this blog post to a close, as this completes the record on a lovely GDC experience. Until next year. Or, perhaps, just until E3 at least.
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