Gaming and 3D virtual worlds

Posted on June 8, 2011 by mpfl

This is the fourth post in a series produced for studying purposes. I realise now that I’ve been posting more about study than not-study. I might have to remedy this.

The Second Life project was our last, best hope for peace.

It failed.

(With apologies to JMS)

A few years ago, everyone was talking about Second Life and how it would revolutionise the way that libraries and educators would interact with their clients and students. It seemed everybody was jumping on board the Second Life bandwagon. It even appeared in the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report as recently as 2007.

Before I continue on this rant, I must point out that I was never a big fan of Second Life. When I first logged in, I was confronted by an ugly and difficult-to-use interface. Despite having blisteringly fast (at the time) ADSL, the world would slowly load at a pace that was quite infuriating to a player of World of Warcraft and EVE Online.

I applaud the courage and gumption of my colleagues that dived in head-first and had a good play with Second Life. I applaud those that managed to avoid the anachronism of real-world architecture and actually realised that people could fly when they decided to make their buildings. Too often, however, someone would think that it was a Really Good Idea ™ to put a roof on a building that will never get wet.

Now, my lack of respect for people that failed to think using a new paradigm when encountering a world that doesn’t obey the laws of physics that we’re used to, my problem with Second Life as a tool for interacting with people that are far away really comes down to one thing:

It’s much faster to exchange information using any number of other communications tools, including Skype (video chat allows for body language) and your humble web page (which can transmit information at much greater bandwidth).

My dislike of Second Life must now be quite evident to you, dear reader, so I think I should perhaps talk on a more theoretical level. What of virtual worlds in general?

Currently, virtual worlds are mostly used as environments for massively-multiplayer online games like the aforementioned World of Warcraft and EVE Online. They are incredibly successful because they have a very limited scope in what they permit the user to do (generally killing things and doing missions/quests with other players).

Virtual worlds have the potential for incredible applications in teaching things like physics, where you could have a sandbox simulation that permits you to change the laws of physics (What happens if you change gravity of turn it off entirely? Not something you can easily do in the real world).

When it comes down to it, libraries are really about one thing: helping people find information. Frankly, I don’t see the use of virtual worlds in doing that. There are many other emerging technologies that will allow us to engage with our clients much more effective.

My online personal learning network

Posted on May 23, 2011 by mpfl

This is the third post in a series produced for studying purposes. Not quite what I post normally, but I imagine it will let you see a different side of me.

We all have a personal learning network (PLN). Whether we use it for work or for play, our PLN is the group of people that we trust to provide us with useful information and/or advice. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprised you that social networking has revolutionised how we interact with our PLNs.

My own PLN is big. Probably too big. In fact, I actually spend far too many hours in a day keeping track of it.

I follow updates from many people on many different sites. Too many, I think. Following Dave Warlick’s Stages of PLN adoption, I would certainly say that I’m at Stage 3 “Know it all”, and probably about to fall into Stage 4 “Perspective”.

At work, my PLN impacts productive hours in the day. I spend a lot of time in just keeping up with all the updates from all the people I follow. Sure, I’m fed with lots of juicy information that I could potentially use in my workplace, but I lack the time to actually investigate things in-depth or, heaven forfend, actually implement something.

In my personal life, it’s a little easier – I don’t mind skipping updates on non-work-related things. That being said, Facebook emails me whenever something potentially interesting has happened. That makes my phone bing and I almost immediately hop online to see what the fuss is about. In my defence, however, transitioning from a dumbphone to a smartphone was responsible for cutting the amount of hours I actually spend in front of a computer.

Even when I was recently on holiday, I was almost always connected through my phone or tablet. I was social networking while I should have been either paying attention at a conference or sitting on a dive boat, recovering from the last dive.

The idea of disconnecting appeals to me more and more every day, but I still have a fear of missing out on something important. I rarely give my phone number out, so people can’t call me urgently. I feel there’s an expectation on me to be constantly online, just in case. Am I going mad? Perhaps!

Although I have no holidays planned until the beginning of next year, I might try and organise a short trip for this year where I’m completely disconnected. I will actually have to leave the city or it’ll be too easy to keep the phone on. There’re plenty of holes in Optus’ mobile phone network – I shall have to find one to visit.

Library RSS in action

Posted on May 23, 2011 by mpfl

This is the second post in a series produced for studying purposes. Not quite what I post normally, but I imagine it will let you see a different side of me.

I’ve been a fan of RSS for quite some time. I’ve loaded up all of my news feeds into Google Reader and it’s the primary way that information is fed to me on the Internet. Although reports of the death of RSS at the hands of Twitter and Facebook are somewhat exaggerated, I’d like to think that I’m going to keep using Google Reader because I like to curate my own content. I do read links posted on Facebook and Twitter, but the vast majority of what I consume comes through Reader.

I have to admit, my use of RSS is quite vanilla. I load up a feed from a web site and leave it at that. So, for this post, I explored a couple of examples where the use of RSS is a little more dynamic.

The organisations formerly known as TAFE in Western Australia use a joint catalogue. That catalogue has a simple “New Books” function that lets you browse, well, new books (and, of course, new non-book resources). Once you’re looking at a particular list of new books, you can access an RSS feed that will deliver these books right to your browser.

How can this be handy to libraries to improve their services? Well, a “New books” feed would be great in letting people keep track of what their library has for them, without having to go into the library to visit the new books display. The RSS is also entirely automated, so Librarians won’t have to manually email out their new acquisitions.

Another nice use of RSS is a vanity feed. By using a service like Yahoo Pipes, you can grab a LOT of feeds and filter posts by keyword. This is particularly useful if you just want to find out what other people are saying about you or your organisation. Of course, you need a somewhat unique name to be able to pull this off – mine is an excellent example

Vanity feeds can also be useful for libraries. Admittedly, this would mostly benefit larger libraries that actually do generate buzz on social media and/or websites. However, it could prove to be an invaluable source of feedback beyond the paper feedback form.

Getting the shot

Posted on May 5, 2011 by mpfl

So the whole photography thing is going pretty well for me. I’m getting more comfortable using full manual mode on my camera, although I’ll sometimes stick it back in aperture priority if I’m feeling lazy. I’m also starting new styles of photography – I’ve run out of animals in the zoo that I want to take photos of!

Recently, a very good mate of mine had a track day on Barbagallo Raceway. He was learning various techniques to handle his motorbike on a racetrack and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to work out various techniques to take photos of people moving very quickly.

I took well over 1700 photos in a single day – I even needed to swap memory card because I filled one of mine up. I experimented with all sorts of different settings and then I finally managed to get it!

I was specifically after that horizontal motion blur while keeping the subject in perfect focus, to give the impression of speed. I had borrowed a lens that had a special image stabilisation mode that would encourage the blur. I also close my aperature riiight down and set the shutter speed quite low. Those 1700 photos paid off! This was one of the last I took that day.

New page!

Posted on April 19, 2011 by mpfl

So I realised that I’m slowly starting to build up a portfolio of papers and presentations. It would be a good idea of keep a list of them somewhere for people to have a gander at, right?

Right!

Page will be updated whenever people think they want to listen to what I have to hear.

Experimenting with tagging

Posted on March 7, 2011 by mpfl

I’m an incredibly lazy person, so I very rarely add tags to posts. One of my arguments is that I think intelligent computers should be making contextual links between my posts, not me!

I’ve installed a WordPress plugin called Auto-tags that uses a couple of APIs to automagically extract tags from text. I’ll leave it running for a few posts to see how it goes.

I’ll also see if I can confuse it with some pineapples.

Social Networking for Information Professionals

Posted on February 28, 2011 by mpfl

This is the first post in a series produced for studying purposes. Not quite what I post normally, but I imagine it will let you see a different side of me.

Some of you may already know that I’ve returned to study this year in order to upgrade my Graduate Diploma in Information and Library Studies to a Master of Information Studies. I’ll only have to do four units, so I’m going to grit my teeth and try to study two units per semester while working full-time.

One of the units I’m studying is called “Social Networking for Information Professionals”. This might come as a surprise, since I already use social networking sites quite heavily. In my defence, however, I don’t really do much in terms of social networking for work. Sure I use Twitter and LinkedIn, but that’s mostly for professional networking.

Everybody has their own way of defining social networking. For me it’s the use of websites for two-way communication between me, my friends and other contacts that I’ve collected on the various sites I use. These social networking sites encourage sharing your life and allowing others to comment or other forms of feedback. Most sites tend to have a particular focus like exercise for RunKeeper or travel for TripIt. For a list of the sites I use the most, head on over to the About page.

All things considered, what I’m hoping to learn from this unit is some innovative ways of using social networking to engage with clients. Social networking is easy when it’s for me, but there’s more things to consider when I’m doing it on behalf of a large organisation.

Tristeza

Posted on February 4, 2011 by mpfl

Welly welly welly. Looks like the motley crew I assembled managed to secure the first place we applied for. It’s a lovely three bedroom town house in Como, around the corner from Hero’s Pizza. It has all sorts of awesome things like a large lounge room and a spa in the rear courtyard! I’ll be moving there on the 12th of February, so I imagine there will be some sort of house warming in March after we’ve all settled in.

Of course, every share house needs a name. Given that my house mates and I are all qualified librarians, I was thinking of something pertaining to that. “The Library”? Maybe, but the nightclub of the same name in Perth is rather terrible. Maybe “The Bibliothek”? Or even “The Bibliotheque”. It depends if we want a German or French twang to the name. I’ll have to discuss this with the others, I imagine…

I’m a little sad to be moving away from my pad in South Perth, with its city glimpses from the balcony and proximity to the foreshore. The new place will be much more awesome, however. More space for partying, a couple of house mates that will keep me on my toes and let’s not forget the aforementioned spa.

Seeking house/flatmate

Posted on December 15, 2010 by mpfl

My lease is up in mid-February. Although I currently enjoy living alone, it makes more financial sense to live with someone. Therefore, I’m writing this post to seek a housemate to establish a new share house.

Who am I? I’m Matthias, a single, vegetarian, 29 year old young professional that works at a major educational institution. I’m an unapologetic nerd and enjoy watching myriad TV shows, playing Dungeons and Dragons and playing with gadgets. I also cycle a fair bit, as I don’t own a car.

Who am I looking for? I’m looking for another geek-like person to establish a share house in a very central location. It would be nice if you were vegetarian, but that’s not essential.

What do I bring to the table? I have a full house’s worth of furniture including a 40″ LCD TV, brand new fridge, washer, microwave, kitchen stuff, and an XBox 360. I also have a robotic vacuum cleaner called Tyrell.

What sort of house am I after? I want to live very centrally in a nice place. Ideally, the word “Perth” will be in the name of the suburb. I imagine the rent could be up to $500/week, so we’d divvy that up fairly. This means, of course, that it’s unlikely that we get a place that allows pets. Since I have my own furniture, I want an unfurnished place.

Caveats? I’ll be the first to admit that I hate cleaning. A potential house mate will need to be willing to pay an equal share for a cleaner to come around every fortnight. I also don’t like quibbling over bills and who downloaded more or whatever. All bills are to be split down the middle 50/50. Of course, if you’re the kind of person that leaves the air conditioner on ALL THE TIME I will kick up a fuss.

I can handle all that, what’s next? Drop me a line! If I don’t know you, we meet up for a beer and discuss our bad habits so we don’t need to find out what they are after we move in together.

Life is much better down where it’s wetter

Posted on November 10, 2010 by mpfl

… take it from me!

As different aspects of life take over, I find it difficult to find the time and energy to write posts for this blog. I must admit that maintaining three blogs, Facebook and Twitter makes it feel like I’m repeating myself sometimes.

All that aside, the purpose of this post: scuba diving is awesome.

I learnt how to dive on my recent trip to Cairns. I sincerely hoped that the exposure to diving there would result in a lifelong hobby and I’ve recently made that happen by signing up to upgrade my dive certification to Advanced Open Water. Furthermore, I’m going on a night dive tonight off the Ammunition Jetty at Woodman’s Point here in Perth. I’ve only been on one night dive and I’m extremely glad to go on another one!

There are many things about diving that really fascinate me. The first is that I’ve always loved being in, around and under water, but was never really good at swimming (I failed Grade 3 swimming several times before my parents stopped sending me to swimming lessons). The feeling of serenity and weightlessness when being underwater is very calming.

Secondly, diving introduces you to a whole new world. The animals you see down there are completely different to the ones you see topside. Fish will let you get a lot closer before running away, as well. I imagine that humans are a smaller perceived threat.

Thirdly, I can combine it with the other new hobby of mine: photography!

I’m really keen to go diving regularly and I’m stoked that I’ve finally managed to kick myself into doing some in my own city. Only going diving when you’re on holidays can make dives few and far between…

My next trick is to sort out how I can easily take dive equipment to dive sites on my bike. I’ve just ordered a versatile bike trailer and I’m hoping to design a method of pulling ~50kg of dive equipment without it coming to grief on a sharp turn or when I have to brake suddenly. The added bonus of getting a bike trailer is that I’ll be able to carry a carton of beer home on my bike