Ponderance

Up and Onward…Confessions Of A Super Hero is very funny. For example:

Gamma Girl and I got hooked up on my last mission. She and I go way back. I knew her when she was just Alpha Gal (just kidding Gammy). Normally we all do our own thing, as there are a lot of egos that need stroking and not a lot of ’spirit of cooperation’ going around. But we recently started a program to get to know each other better. Basically it is only because of that misogynist Brave Man and all his wise cracks to the woman on the team. First, any guy that waxes his chest has no basis for criticizing any woman. And what Super Hero wears cologne? And Hi Karate at that. Can you even buy that stuff any more? And I gotta say, Super Hero’s with Tom Selleck-esque mustaches are just creepy. Anyway, before this turns into a rant, suffice it to say that ‘hostile work environment’ has been the topic of much conversation.

Read more. All very The Incredibles meets Watchmen! [Via Aki]

It has been far too long since anything new by Joss Whedon graced the TV screen, and nothing new seems planned yet. I guess I'll have to settle for Serenity, emerging from the ashes of Firefly ... ON THE CINEMA SCREEN! The new trailer is here, and it looks amazing! River appears to have come over all Buffy-like (ie girl-warrior), which we could see hints of in the TV series, but I'm sure will dazzle on the silver screen! Folk in the US can enjoy Serenity from September 30th, while those of us in Australia will have to wait until November 10th. Grrr.

EA Games has partnered with the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television announcing the Sims 2 Student Life Movie Contest. The competition is essentially a short-film competition for machinima makers which, in itself, isn't unique, but the USC's School of Cinema-Television is one of the globe's most respected film school's and their input in the judging adds a certain respectability for machinima. I suspect the competition also shows that machinima will start to appear in academia more and more as the increasingly diverse tools that game designers are embedding for machinima-makers allow more and more creativity and flexibility for the budding digital filmmakers. Machinima, I suspect, has a bright future! As a budding academic, I can't wait to bring machinima into my teaching (even if that is a few years away...).

As the prequel Star Trek series Enterprise reaches its final few episodes before closing up shop, the producers of Star Trek and Paramount have finally cottoned onto the podcasting phenomenon and joined in. On Friday US viewers watched "In A Mirror, Darkly" which takes the franchise back into the infamous (and fan-loved) mirror universe where the Federation is rather evil! To accompany this foray, episode writer Mike Sussman and web editor Tim Gaskil offer a commentary podcast to increase your fannish viewing pleasure. While I've not seen either the episode, nor heard the podcast, it's great to see Trek's producers finally engaging with their fanbase.

Sadly, as Enterprise wraps, one wonders if the fans had been listened to earlier could a fresh injection of energy (and maybe a few changes in the production team) re-vitalised a series which perpetually struggled to live up to the Star Trek name?

At least the Battlestar Galactica team seem to be getting things right!

How geographic and informatic spaces intersect to create maps and a datascape or terrain is one of the more difficult conceptual areas in terms of information cartographies, but the Searchscapes in Manhattan Project has attacked that very problem. Their artistic and algorithmic answer: a geographic map of Manhattan island overlaid with towers representing the amount of data returned via Google for specific addresses of stretches of streets. Check out a couple of examples:


These datascapes are very engaging ... and New York looks just as intimdating as an information hub as it does in terms of steel and concrete! [Via we make money not art]

The geek in me just can't get over how nerdily cool these are ...

Check out the PacHat! [Via BBoing]

According to Australian IT, terms have now been agreed for publishing giant Adobe to buy-out Macromedia! So now photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Premiere and Acrobat are all owned by the same giant coroporation! I wonder what changes this will have for the future of the products of the two companies? I can imagine Adobe Photoshop Elements being hybridised into Macromedia Flash MX for a super-sized motion graphics package that has more precise drawning and manipulation tools than Flash currently has, and more animation ability that Photoshop currently enjoys. Of course, I imagine that would take a rather long time to learn to use (he says recently having embarked on the teaching Flash to students!). More likely is an Adobe Mega-Suite with everything needed to publish in any format, in any medium, with any style of graphics, still or moving!

Update: Jason Kottke has a lot more on the merger here.

Not only are blogs in the mainstream now, but if these comments from Rupert Murdoch of all people are any indication, bloggers are driving the changes in big media, not the other way around:

The digital native doesnt send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.

At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy ? chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we cant vouch for the quality of people who arent regularly employed by us ? and bloggers could only add to the work done by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve. So long as our readers understand the distinction between bloggers and our journalists, and so long as proper safeguards are utilized, this might be an idea worth exploring.

To carry this one step further, some digital natives do even more than blog with text ? they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well.

Read the rest of Murdoch's speach here. [Via Tim Blair]

Okay it's been a week since I've blogged so I thought I should say hello and reassure anyone reading that I am indeed alive and well in Hong Kong. Teaching here has been a fascinating experience so far, and I have to say there are some very creatively-minded students doing some amazing work here. However, I'm not going to write an entry about the culture per se, but rather something far more frivolous ... Hong Kong and coffee.

While Hong Kong may be famous for Yum Cha (literally "drinking tea") or tea culture, it is also a major player in the coffeeshop franchise wars. While there are many Starbucks to be found, the other major player here is Pacific Coffee which could very well be called 'the Starbucks of Asia" were it not for the fact that Starbucks is here, too. There's a Pacific Coffee about 2 minutes from my hotel, so I've taken the opportunity to thoroughly sample their range of coffee and I've got to say, they're pretty good. A caramel latte is a great way to replace any idea of breakfast with just a huge coffee, while their macchiatos have a very respectable kick to them (their range of doughnuts can be quite appealing if you're probably going to miss lunch, as well!). Every Pacific Coffee store also has at least one (usually two or three) free internet-accessing PCs, as well as free wi-fi, so the combination of caffeine and computers is alive and well! The other coffee shop I've really enjoyed here is the far less know Zambra Coffee. I think the shop was set up with franchising in mind, but may have been locked out by the two big players. However, I gather from chatting to their barrista that they supply coffee beans far and wide across Hong Kong, so they're definitely doing well. My oversized Caramel Latte from Zambra last Saturday morning was lovely, and had more of a distinct taste then the coffee from Pacific or Starbucks. Yes, Hong Kong is definitely a caffeine-fueled culture (tomorrow I hope to find time to try coffee from a few of the smaller coffee shops I've spyed down the smaller roads in Wan Chai and Admiralty).

For those of you who are suddenly worried that I'm too focused on franchise-style coffee to the exclusion of the many cultural experiences Hong Kong has to offer, fear not, there are other stories to tell. Indeed, yesterday the two tutors working on the same courses I'm teaching at CIDP while I'm in Hong Kong took me out for a drink at Hong Kong's Fringe Club which seems as lively an arts centre as you're going to find. It's in an historic building which is almost a century old, and is right in the middle of Central on Hong Kong island (and I'm told be reliable sources has the cheapest happy hour for miles around!).

On the off chance anyone wants to know, I'm currently in Hong Kong doing some teaching at HKU:Space's CIDP.

On the flight there today, I saw the most amazing little island just before hitting the Hong Kong coast. It was almost all coastline, and filled with its own lake ... a bit like a swimming pool in the middle of the ocean! (Apologies for the quality of the picture - taken through the double glass of a plane window doesn't really do the island justice!)