Found a concept design for tomorrow’s laptop today and thought it was cool enough to share.  What I like about this is that it doens’t just look cool and look pretty in a futuristic way but it incorporates common sense technology that not only makes sense but will be feasible very very shortly if not already.  The design was created by Orkin Design, a german design firm.  Either way very cool

Orkin Design has unveiled the rolltop concept with the support of Schlagheck-Design and the device comes with a flexible display which can be rolled and carried wherever you want.

Thanks to its OLED-Display technology and a multi touch screen, it can be used a laptop while it weighs as much as mini notebook. It comes with a 13 inch screen while being used a laptop and when being used as a monitor, you could get a cool 17 inches screen. Power supply, multi media integrated pen and even a holding belt are integrated in the ROLL TOP and it certainly is an all-in-one gadget.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html

An interesting study commissioned by the Canadian Government shows evidence that p2p users purchase more music than their non-pirate brethren and at the very least that p2p activity has absolutely no effect on purchasing habits, and consequentially nothing to do with the woe’s of the music industry.

To Quote:

In the aggregate, we are unable to find direct evidence that P2P file-sharing either increases or decreases CD purchases in Canada. That is, in our analysis of the whole Canadian population we are unable to find any relationship between the number of P2P music tracks that were downloaded and the number CD purchases

Among Canadians engaged in P2P file-sharing, we find a positive and statistically significant relationship between the number of music tracks downloaded via P2P networks and the number of CDs purchased (Table 4.3).9 For an increase in the average number of P2P downloads per month of 2.718282, the number of CD purchases per year will increase by 1.212. For an increase in the average number of P2P downloads per month of 1 (ie., 2.718282/2.718282), the number of CD purchases per year will increase by (1.212/2.718282 =) 0.44.

This is almost as good as a 90’s government funded study in the US to find the negative effects of THC on cancer cells which resulted, much to their chagrin, to the findings that pure THC(synthetic or otherwise) is one of the  most effective anti-tumeric chemicals on the planet.  Findings confirmed by a Harvard study in 1997 showing a 50-60% reduction in tumors and legions of cancer riddled mice: http://www.nowpublic.com/thc_marijuana_helps_cure_cancer_says_harvard_study

Are we seeing the slow decline of the age of ignorance which has been the past 50 years for mainstream america/canada ?

Hummingbird2

Pretty killer sale on this program now, regularly $200.00 or so I believe down to $97.00.   It’s the best twitter growth program around without resorting to spam and twitterbotting the crap out of your lists, which no body likes.  Better yet it’s all done in Adobe AIR so be it Mac, PC or Linux it runs like a charm!

Click here to Grab it Now!

At the last OK Game Developer Cluster meet-up we discussed the need to get more people networked and involved in the local Game Developer here in Kelowna.  It is a wonderful blessing to have Disney and Club Penguin in our beautiful city as they has no doubt inspired many people to pick up the trade and try their hand at game design however we can accomplish so much more if we have the means to meet up, discuss and learn from each other.

So if you are in the Okanagan and are serious about developing games either in a team or as a lone wolf operation join the newly created linked in group here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2416493 .  Feel free to contact myself, add me on twitter (www.twitter.com/ryanwiancko) and just reach out to this growing community.

And of course if you want more information and articles in audio format on game design and the business make sure to head over to www.industrybroadcast.com

Did you go and change your Wordpress theme and now your blog isn’t tracking stats properly? Well luckily for you the fix is simple and painless.

Just go into your admin area and under appearance click on ‘Editor’. Open up the footer.php file and at the bottom just above the tag paste in this line:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>

And your done! Easy peasy!

So if you fall into the half of the internet that has no idea what google wave is but is inexorably excited about it then check out this video explanation to see what all the fuss is about

A slightly less humorous explanation by the developers themselves

And finally if you have 2 hours to kill the full developer presentation:

Just caught this story on Cnet and thought I’d share.  Benchmarks of Windows 7 Vs Snow Leopard are coming in and the results are pretty much what you’d expect them to be.  Windows trumps the show with 3D stuff and Gaming, Snow Leopard takes the cake with Multitasking, encoding and boot times, as well as Battery life.

The entire article can be found here: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31012_7-10319612-10355804.html and here are some of the highlights:

The conclusion? First all of all, you’ll get much better battery life running OS X on Mac laptops than running Windows. Secondly, performance-wise, Windows 7 is probably a better choice if you are a gamer (there are more games developed for Windows, anyway), even on Mac hardware.

Third, if you can get by with just software designed by Apple and if money is not a big issue, you will be happy with a Mac. Examples of these software choices are iTunes, iLife, QuickTime, Safari, iChat, and so on (and you probably won’t need much more than those for daily entertainment and communication needs). Finally, if money is not an issue–and it definitely is for most of us–you should get a Mac anyway. It’s the only platform, for now, that can run both Windows and OS X.

The wonderful thing about this talk that I found blog-post worthy was the fact that the topic it is on is something that I have always found incredibly tedious, as is the case with most people I think and yet I found myself clued to the screen listening to Garik Israelian talk, feeling my sphere of understanding expanding by leaps and bounds.  It really opened my mind up to the potential of what we can learn and the incredible exploration that is going on in our universe.

An animator friend of mine is starting to dive into the realm of facial animation so I promised him I’d dig up as many resources on Facial Rigging as I could.  So instead of just sending it over to him I figured otheres might be able to benefit from my hard work   This is primarily for Maya users .

Here’s a 2 Part Series:

Here’s a big 7 Parter that goes into some great advanced Detail:

Quick Tut expaining some of the principles behind facial animation:

Facial Animation Rig for Delgo: Not a  video tut but this covers some non-human faces which is rare

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/tutorials/character/c/facial-animation-rig-for-delgo

This page is not animation specific but HOLY CRAP the tutorials on this page are insane:

http://www.instantshift.com/2009/03/06/45-incredible-maya-tutorials-around/

A friend put out the please for 3D studio Tutorials and Resources today so I’m answering that call:

http://www.3d-palace.com/forum/tutorials/category/autodesk-3ds-max/ – I can’t even describe how valuable this site was when I started learning Max.  There is a broad swatch of video tutorials for all levels of expertise

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/tutorials.html – Great tut sets, a lot on lighting and mentalray

http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/25-3d-studio-max-best-of-tutorials-resources.html – 25 great tutorials dealing with some a broad variety of techniques.

http://cg-india.com/tutorials/3dsmax_adv.html – Advanced Illumination Tutorial

http://www.max-realms.com/modules/mylinks/viewcat.php?cid=4 – all of the advanced max tutorials you can shake a stick at.