I don't usually share much about my family on this blog, but I was so impressed by my daughter's photos of historical and old/run-down structures that I had to post a slideshow of what she's passionate about.
Lauren is a history buff and enjoys exploring around to take pictures of anything old that has a story. Whatever it takes!
The photos in the slideshow were taken with a Sony SLR, with no extra equipment. None of the photos are photo-shopped.
Lauren is great at "point and shoot", and her technique draws the viewer in to her personal POV. Lauren just had a little baby, so it might be a little while until she can finish researching the stories behind her photos. When she does, I'll be sure to share her finished work!
(If you were wondering, Lauren stopped going on risky explorations after she learned a baby was on the way.)
"According to the US elite fashion industry journal Women's Wear Daily, the Murdoch-Jobs "newspaper" will be run from the 26th floor of the News Corp offices in New York, where 100 journalist have been hired, including Pete Picton, an online editor from the Sun, as one of three managing editors. The editor of the Daily has not been announced, but observers are assuming it will be Jesse Angelo, the managing editor of the New York Post and rising star in the News Corp firmament." -Edward Helmore
SOMEWHAT RELATED Here's a video clip of a recent interview of Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. Chairman & CEO discusses countries with the greatest growth for business. "Our best growth industry is in this country (US)" (Rupert Murdoch reportedly admires Steve Job and likes the iPad.)
I came across the following video on a post on the Creative Applications blog about the Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille's recent work with OpenFrameworks, Kinect, and an interactive puppet prototoype:
You can see from the video of their Funky Forestinstallation (2007 CinKid) that they create engaging interactive applications:
Funky Forest - Interactive Ecosystem from Theo Watson on Vimeo. (Information from Theo Watson's Vimeo site) "Funky Forest is a wild and crazy ecosystem where children manage the resources to influence the environment around them. By using their bodies or pillow "rocks" and "logs", water flowing from the digital stream on the floor can be dammed and diverted to the forest to make different parts grow. If a tree does not receive enough water it withers away but by pressing their bodies into the forest children create new trees based on their shape and character. As children explore and play they discover that the environment is inhabited by a variety of sonic life forms and creatures who appear and disappear depending on the health of the forest. As the seasons change the creatures also go through a metamorphosis." Credits: Theodore Watson Emily Gobeille Project Page: muonics.net/site_docs/work.php?id=41 zanyparade.com/v8/projects.php?id=12
Note: A version of Funky Forest, Moomah Edition, is permanently installed in New York City at the Moomah Children's Cafe. This version includes interactive environments related to the four seasons of the year, including an interactive particle system with falling leaves and snow.
FOR THE TECH-CURIOUS Libfreenect for OX, by Theodore Watson
XBox Kinect running on OS X ( with source code ) from Theo Watson on Vimeo. The following information and links were taken from the Vimeo description of the above video: "This is a port/adaptation of Hector Martin's libfreenect for OS X made by Theodore Watson. Hector Martin's Libfreenect project page is here: git.marcansoft.com/?p=libfreenect.git Most of the code is unchanged but there are some changes to libusb which was needed to get it running (and a few extra libusb commands) as well as some tweaking of the transfer sizes. It should be self contained and you shouldn't need to install libusb (the app links it directly ). Grab the Source Code: UPDATE: (Tested on OS X 10.6.3 - 32bit now and with fixes) theo.tw/deliver/kinect/001-libfreenect-modded-osx-updated.zip ofxKinect for OF users - thanks Dan! openframeworks.cc/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24948#p24948 Tips: - Try both usb ports. - Try not to have too many other devices plugged in (or any)."
(Check the Vimeo website to see if there are updates)
In the previous post, I mentioned about how to prepare your system using Sysprep and received a few requests for information on how to perform Sysprep in Windows 7. Here I would like to share the steps and the information on how to Sysprep your Windows 7. Surprisingly, I noticed the process of new Sysprep [...]
SOMEWHAT RELATED Below is a presentation I gave at the 2008 Games for Health conference:
Descriptions, stories, and links related to the screen shots of the first slide of the above presentation: (Some of the links may need to be updated.)
The science screen is an interactive 'gizmo' from Explore Learning. Something like this could be incorporated into an educational game. http://www.explorelearning.com
I'm pretty sure that the picture of the ancient building was from the VAST project, described in the article 'Reviving the past: Cultural Heritage meets Virtual Reality' by Anthanasios Gaitatzes, Dimitrious Cristopoulos, and Maria Roussou. (2002, ACM) The Foundation of the Hellenic World was involved with this project. http://www.fhw.gr/fhw/
The people from the Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities at the University of Virginia are doing similar work through the Rome Reborn project: http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/
Rationale: I thought that it would be cool to have a game for health that integrated with history, so that students could learn about how people from the past handled health and diseases, and learn how scientists from the past came up with solutions that help us today.
The picture of the dragons on the space station was from a game called 'Relax to Win', created by Phil (gary?) McDarby and the MindGames team when he was at MediaLab Europe, which disbanded in 2005. Here is an article about Relax to Win, from 2002: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1972571.stm
The project targeted high school geometry students, with a goal of increasing spatial ability and improving transfer of learning. The program is consistent with Universal Design for Learning principles.
I think that some of the applications involved in this application could be useful in games designed for cognitive rehabilitation or habilitation.
The picture with the two people is from Kar2ouche, from Immersive Education. Kar2ouche is a creative role-play, picture making, story-boarding and animation software. It is enabled for use on interactive whiteboards: http://www.immersiveeducation.com/kar2ouche/
The game pad is a DanceDance Revolution pad, used as an 'exergame' in many schools to combat the increase in numbers of students who are overweight or obese. 'Dance Dance Revolution: Healthy for Kids' http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/12201/
The classroom scene is is from a virtual reality application: Rizzo, A., Bowerly, T., Buckwalter, J., Klimchuk, D., Mitura, R., Parsons, T.D. (2006). A Virtual Reality Scenario for All Seasons: The Virtual Classroom. CNS Spectrums, 11, 1, 35-44. http://vrpsych.ict.usc.edu/
