new toy! steri-lite pen

i got a very cool gift recently. it is a water purifier for backpacking (in preparation for a trip to australia and new zealand next year). the coolest thing about this technological marvel is it purifies 32 ounces of water in 90 seconds!!! Previously i was looking at the MSR pens, etc. that require chemicals for water treatment, but this zaps the DNA of the bacteria rendering them harmless:

from the http://www.prolitegear.com/steri_pen.html web site:
Steri-PEN is the only portable water purifier that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to destroy waterborne microbes. Whether your source is a woodland brook or an overseas hotel tap, SteriPEN sterilizes clear water by destroying viruses, bacteria and protozoa—including Giardia and Cryptosporidium—in seconds. Carry a SteriPEN to disinfect water wherever you travel, hike, camp or trek. It’s the fastest route to pure, safe drinking water anywhere.

can't wait to give it a whirl. now i can actually drink the water in hillsboro!

Birthday Bash!

in the foreground, dave is deep in thought as he watches the DDR competition. in the background, ross flirts with kari. i think doug was watching the DDR showdown.

here, larry shows us some new dance moves on the DDR pads as he competes against jaime's feet for the grand prize!

yesterday a few of the gang (around 10 folks) came over for some amazing dinner, some cake, and conversation to celebrate my birth.

afterwards, there was a DDR (dance dance revolution)throwdown.

some crazy noobs!

this was sent to me by one of the ace game engineers in my team. its a bunch of videos shot by some guys (i think they're canadian but not sure). for hard core game geeks only: www.purepwnage.com.

kim, my former manager extraordinare, posted this crazy video.

2005 portland bridge pedal

today the gang got up at the bright and early to haul tail downtown for the annual portland bridge pedal. the basic idea is that you and 18,000 others get a chance to bike across the bridges in portland. this year was a special treat: all 10 bridges were bikable on a 35 mile journey. I’m now in a favorite local hangout downtown, stumptown coffee, licking my wounds hoping I’ll be able to walk home afterwards. each year more and more folks seem to sign up, and this year was insane with a log jam of folks at the first few bridges forcing us to walk across them :(. rides like this, with so many people so close together, especially with inexperienced rides, can be a bit more dangerous than one would like.

in one area we were supposed to ride a long section called the springwater corridor down to the sellwood bridge, but there was such a log jam we decided to jump up to the street for a little detour. it turned out to be just the right move.....we even stopped off at a little coffee shop (grand central baking) for pastries and coffee before continuing the journey!

everyone had fun, then just to add a bit of punishment decided to meet over at the lucky lab (BACK across the bridge!) for a little afternoon snack. ugh…so by the time I got home I was NASTY smelling. fun time was had by all.

on the left, the crazy line of people having to WALK the bikes across the bridge.
on the right a picture of the gang waiting for something.....

Remote Control Humans...

Emerging Technologies
Remote Control Humans by NTT
One of the absolutely coolest things at SIGGRAPH this year was in the emerging technologies area. it was a device that stimulated your vestibular system by delivering small amounts of electric current behind your ears, called galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS). And yes, it allows you to control a person’s movement. I know this because, after signing a waiver, I was able to actually try it out. first, I cleaned off the back of my ears and applied a bit of water. Then I put on a pair of headphone like devices. I was also given a small remote that permitted me to turn down the amplification of the current should it hurt. After getting into the gear, you stand up and walk forward and the staff in the booth proceed to turn you left and right while you try to walk straight. It was crazy!! the thing was, you couldn’t fight it…your body would just turn. Contrary to the ‘you will not experience any discomfort’ it actually stung a bit behind my ears, kinda like when you lick a 9-volt battery. Click here to see video of a remotely controlled person.

cool european geography game...

this was sent to me by a good friend, its a very cool european geography game:

This is fun!

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/country_europe_G2_drag-drop.swf

new photo

just sticking a new photo of me on the page...

travels to LA for SIGGRAPH 2005

the first week of August I spent in los angeles at the 23rd annual ACM SIGGRAPH conference, otherwise known as the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. a few observations of conferences: from the outside, it looks like its about going to the industry talks, and the show floor to see the latest commercial products. for me, I spend a lot more time in hallway conversations and random run-ins in hotel lobbies discussing industry and career passions than I do in the presentations. this is not to say I don’t spend time in the sessions or the show floor because there is plenty of that, but, especially at SIGGRAPH, there are many, many people to talk to about lots of issues. many of those folks are friends of mine from grad school, most of which are still in the industry to the point that we have an annual reunion at the conference.

siggraph observations at 30,000 ft: quieter than previous years, smaller show floor, felt a bit more serious than in the past. while the proceedings have grown in thickness over the years, I feel the quality of papers are still very high. the quality of the presentations also attest to that fact. one of the best was Michael deering’s paper in which he literally is trying to simulate the lower level visual system. the title of the paper is 'A Photon Accurate Model of the Human Eye' to do this, he grew an eye using some previously published work and showed the results of the simulation which grew all of the rods and cones in the proper distribution in the eye. fascinating stuff. far too much cool stuff and not enough time to read it, research it, or implement it.

the VR work is gone from SIGGRAPH, and it appears for the most part the game developers are going to GDC. for a short period of time in the last 90's, early 2000's, their was a larger crossover.

going to SIGGRAPH is always like a recharge for me, seeing just how big the universe of graphics is and how much there is left to explore!

travels to seattle for meltdown 2005

the 3rd week of July I spent in seattle for the Microsoft Meltdown 2005 conference. Seattle is a great town. since I’ve spent a good deal of time there since moving to the pacific northwest I feel very comfortable wandering about. favorite places including pike market, victrola café, elysian brewing, Bauhaus, and the asteroid café.

most interesting to me was some work by EA Research folks on ocean waves and their implementation using PCA (piecewise component analysis) able to greatly compress the dataset necessary for deep ocean simulation.