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Books Read 2017
The absolute coolest book I read this year was Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky ________ Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Jan 12, 2017 Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke – Jan 27, 2017 The New Bottoming Book – Dossie Easton & Janet W Hardy – Feb 14, 2017…
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Wonderful Projects I Did With Microsoft’s Kinect
RIP the Kinect. Literally changed the direction of my research/career/life/art. Gave it more DEPTH. — Dustin Freeman🚁LAX (@dustinfreeman) October 25, 2017 Microsoft has ceased manufacturing the Kinect. Here’s some projects, art and research, academic and industrial, that I could only have done with the Kinect. The Role of Physical Controllers in Motion Video Gaming, 2011:…
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Downloading a TV episode I had already paid for, in a different country
:| :| :| :| :|
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Nomadic Immersive Digital Experience Creator Kit
15″ 2015 Macbook Pro (the last one before USB-C) 2x lighting cables. Second one is 2 metres long; helpful for AR debugging. Wired mouse (helpful for 3d modelling or level design work Various chargers, including a battery charger 3D printed phone stand (critical for AR work, thanks @philnelson) Bridge HMD + Structure Sensor + Charger…
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Immersive Theatre Roundup: D&D Yoga
Yesterday, I saw/experienced the show “D&D Yoga”, in the Toronto Fringe Festival. This is a literal combination these two things, which worked in some surprising ways, didn’t work in some surprising ways. It is a yoga class, run by a real-life yoga instructor Christine Desrochers, during which you go on an actual Dungeons and Dragons…
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Splitting a big, single-page pdf into print-size pages
Context: I’m currently putting together a grant application. This means I need to get together documentation and press for what I’ve done. I need to submit this all on printed physical paper. URLs or pdf files by themselves are not enough. I’m on macOS. Normally, you can just print a webpage to pdf from the…
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Git LFS Sucks the Least: Prototyping and Version Control with Large Binary Assets
Here’s a story of my struggles with version control at Raktor as I push it to the limit for a variety projects in the Unity engine. Pour a drink and commiserate with me. I love git. My background is in handling large, complex codebases that go all the way down to the metal, so distributed…
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State of Virtual Reality Venues in Toronto
For the last few years, I’ve been a “VR tech professional”, which means I have, on my desk, various pieces of Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality equipment. These will get cheaper, but at the moment are dubious buys for the average person. Despite companies’ best efforts, set-up is still a confusing pain. VR still has so many goddamn…
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Proposing the (Bill) Paxton Number
The Erdős Number measures how far you are from mathematician Paul Erdős via coauthoring academic papers*. The Bacon Number measures how far you are from actor Kevin Bacon via costarring in films. In honour of the late Bill Paxton, I now propose The Paxton Number. Bill Paxton has the totally-not-dubious honour of being killed, on…
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“What’s the most insane technical thing you did that actually worked?”
Or, How I Fixed A Real-Time Image Transmission Protocol For A Live Event By Making A Numbers Station The evening before the GDC round table panel on Location-Based Stories, I was with most of them in a pub. I ended up here because I’m one-half of Playlines with Rob Morgan, who was on the panel.…