I found this series on Hulu from the creator of Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock, and found it fascinating from a human perspective, along with the educational aspect from the documentary aspects. The premise is that the series put someone into a totally foreign environment for 30 days, and often that someone is extremely wary of what they’re getting into but at least open minded enough to give it a shot. Hilarity ensues.
In the episode I posted (my all-time favorite):
A God-fearing 24-year-old conservative homophobe from red state America travels to San Francisco’s Castro district to live in what is notoriously known as one of the gayest areas of the country.
“Would they change their mind if they just got to know each other?”
Check out this mostly-nerdcore hiphop compilation inspired by Doctor Who, Put together by the excellent nerd-musicblog, Hipsterplease. “Visitations: A Musical Tribute to Dr. Who.” It’s free as either a single-track or .rar download.
Here’s some news from my Quantazelle production product. I’ve got two new tracks to share with you, “Quantum Gazele”and a cover ofBeyonce’s”Halo”
.I’ve also released a bunch of my samples as a free download, and I’m holding a remix contest with prizes. I hope you download it and play around with the weird sounds I’ve made, and I look forward to hearing what you’ve made.
And if you’ve been link-clicking you might have noticed I have a new website.I’ve also got some posters and t-shirts for sale if you want to go check them out.
Circuit Bent Saturdays, The eSymposium
EVERY Saturday, 12:00 noon – 3:00 PM
Lizard’s Liquid Lounge, 3058 W Irving Park Rd, (773) 463-7599
To nurture the Midwest experimental electronics community, we host a free weekly “eSymposium,” a lateral lecture series where participants are both teachers and students. There’s soldering, tinkering, Q&A, show-&-tell, bending circuits, hacking toys, and Chicago’s only weekly Circuit Bent Open Mic. Stop by, join the eSymposium’s Google Group, or check out what we’ve been up to at youtube.com/eSymposiumChicago and soundcloud.com/eSymposiumChicago.
Watching WalMart documentaries. I can see both sides, as an entrepreneur and as one who has had to make decisions based on an income level 22:05:44, 2010-04-15
Jane McGonigal asks: Why doesn’t the real world work more like an online game? In the best-designed games, our human experience is optimized: We have important work to do, we’re surrounded by potential collaborators, and we learn quickly and in a low-risk environment. In her work as a game designer, she creates games that use mobile and digital technologies to turn everyday spaces into playing fields, and everyday people into teammates. Her game-world insights can explain — and improve — the way we learn, work, solve problems, and lead our real lives.
McGonigal directs game R&D at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit forecasting firm where she developed Superstruct, a massively multiplayer game in which players organize society to solve for issues that will confront the world in 2019. She masterminded World Without Oil, which simulated the beginning of a global oil crisis and inspired players to change their daily energy habits. McGonigal also works with global companies to develop games that build on our collective-intelligence infrastructure — like The Lost Ring, a mystery game for McDonald’s that became the world’s biggest alternate reality game, played by more than 5 million people. (Not to mention the delightful Top Secret Dance-Off, which taps that space in our brains where embarrasment and joy mingle.) She’s working on book called Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Change the World.
