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Pi or Die : Help me Figure this One Out

Published on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 by Reuben

Ok, so I just got back from a week’s vacation in Cape Cod with my wife, kids, and extended family. One of the upsides (and downsides) of having a father who’s a mathematician is that we tend to pass the time on the beach waiting for the ice-cream truck, thinking about weird things, some of which become hard problems that obsess us and spawn heated debate.

Here is the current one. My father mentioned that a friend of his, a Hungarian mathematician, had performed a public “feat of mental strength” by reciting 1000 sequential digits of Pi. Since Pi’s digits are probably random (read this classic Richard Preston piece about renegade mathematican brothers, the Chudnofsky’s for more), this represents a truly staggering feat.

So, I ask, imagine the following scenario: You have 1 year to prepare to recite the digits of Pi. At the time of your recital, an explosive device is wired to your head (we need some drama for motivation) which will detonate if you halt or make a mistake. Can you devise a method that makes the task acheivable? Please describe. I will weight in with my (and my Dad’s) thoughts, as the process unfolds. Please help — this is a really hard one. If we really come up with a good idea, I might just commit to doing it (without the detonation device, of course )

Posted in Reuben's Thoughts | 10 Comments »

Ja’mie King (pronounced “Jah-may”)

Published on Friday, August 1st, 2008 by Mat

Mockumentaries are, in their own way, a genre of the virtual worlds and alternate reality games that we specialize in. For North American audiences, I suppose that Christopher Guest’s work or “This is Spinal Tap” are among the best-known examples.

I love this stuff. Mockumentaries count among my favorite “practical jokes” because of their delicate blend of absurdity and plausibility. As a kid, I used to torture my long-suffering mom with stories involving a special mix of ridiculous bullsh*t (i.e., a neighboring county being colonized by menacing Druids) and detailed, realistic elements that would leave her very unsure as to whether or not my stories were true. Making the little details boringly believable - dropping the name of local city councilperson or mixing in some mundane real-life issue with the story - made it hard for her to separate the narrative wheat from the chaff. My mother saves a very unique kind of exasperation for these moments (confession: I still do it, albeit rarely). Oh how I savor her all-too-visible temptation to believe me, along with her knowledge of my mendacious ways…

So I was pretty thrilled to stumble upon the work of Australia’s Chris Lilley, and I apologize if I’m behind your surely very steep pop cultural curves, dear readers. He has been rocking Australia - and global premium cable audiences - since 2005 with two great mockumentary TV series, We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year and Summer Heights High. Lilley does all the main characters in both shows.

It’s the kind of humor that has us laughing at our own ostentatious self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and petty mean-spiritedness, but does it all with a huge and very sympathetic heart. It’s also a really interesting snapshot of contemporary Australian pop culture. It’s all great, but my favorite character by far is “Ja’mie King” - she is in both series. She’s summed up by Wikipedia as a girl who “lives in the North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, but was born in South Africa. Ja’mie is a 16-year-old girl and has sponsored 85 Sudanese children for Global Vision (a fictional organization parodying World Vision), which gave her the National Record. Due to her work of raising money Global Vision decided to make her the ‘face’ of their organization. Ja’mie also does the 40 Hour Famine twice a week which she says not only helps raise money but ‘keeps me looking hot.’”

Ja’mie’s not a bad person, she’s just really, uh, confident and/or self-absorbed. You can find her all over YouTube, but if you have very delicate sensibilities about, well, all the things people get sensitive about, consider yourself warned.

Posted in Mat's Thoughts | 2 Comments »

Randy Pausch, 1960-2008

Published on Monday, July 28th, 2008 by Mat

Several current MoU employees and alumni had the good fortune to study under Randy Pausch at Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. Pausch has become widely known over the last year for his “final lecture” delivered on Sept. 18, 2007. This was a very affecting - to say the least - presentation in which he urged his students to treasure and protect their sense of childlike wonder. He also spoke of his love for his wife and kids and the curiosity that essentially drove him forward in life. Dr. Pausch gave the presentation because he had recently been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He died this past Friday.

We became familiar with Randy before there was a book or a segment on Oprah. A couple of our colleagues, former students both, had heard of his final lecture through the CMU community and encouraged us to watch it streamed live from Pittsburgh. We had no idea it would become such a sensation - credited with helping people move on from divorce, choose life over suicide, or escape from abusive relationships - but it’s hardly surprising.

It so happens that Randy was one of the world’s pre-eminent experts on what The New York Times called in his obituary “computer worlds that students could use to create games. [His students] were learning sophisticated computer skills. His annual virtual reality contest was highly anticipated, and work on virtual reality by some of his students won them the chance to experience weightlessness on an aircraft. They then used virtual reality techniques to mimic weightlessness.”

The technical and creative skills that Randy taught are at the heart of our virtual worlds industry. What a pleasure it is to work in a business defined by thinkers motivated by wonder, curiosity, whimsy, and imagination. I personally treasure my sense of childlike wonder and think that losing it to cynicism, emotional exhaustion, “sophistication,” or anything along those lines would almost be worse than death itself.

But let’s not take ourselves too seriously, because life is short. After learning that his lecture was being compared to “Tuesdays with Morrie,” a popular book about wisdom its author gleaned from a dying college professor, Randy told USA Today he “didn’t know there was a dying-professor section at the bookstore.”

Posted in About Millions of Us, Mat's Thoughts | No Comments »

Better late than never, right?

Published on Monday, July 28th, 2008 by Lyra

So, I must apologize for not posting this sooner… things have been a bit crazier for me than I’ve anticipated over the past couple of weeks!

I wanted to post a BIG thank you to Phaylen Fairchild, Evie Fairchild, Kit Maitland, Stampshady Grimm & all the other hard-working folks at New Media Cinema for their participation in the first of what I hope will be many mini machinima festivals - MMFs? Need to come up with a better name than that! But back from that little digression, we had a really nice turn out on and audience participation was so fun… I really appreciated it when they would give me a hard time for starting the wrong segment!

Of course I was so frizzy frazzied that I didn’t get any screenshots, but I snagged the gorgeous picture from Evie and defaced it horribly, just to celebrate our Divathon. Phaylen made me do it! Thanks to everyone that showed up, as well! I really had a blast and I hope you all did too. I know I’m very much looking forward to their next project, Ctr-Alt-Delete. From their blog, “This hyper-tech new series from the team that brought you DiVAS follows the high octane adventures of Jonas Darcy, a man whose consciousness was exiled to virtual reality and his code wizard sidekick, Noir.” Can’t come soon enough!

I’m also looking forward to our next MMF installment - I’ll announce what it will be before too long, and I swear I’ll come up with a better name for these things! Hoping that all of you are enjoying your lovely summer, winter or whatever it is where you are!

Posted in Lyra's Thoughts, Machinima, New Globe Events | No Comments »

Interesting article from io9 on the “Argument Against ARGs” (with some kind words for our work)

Published on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 by Blair

This article from io9 is an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of Alternate Reality Gaming campaigns and how they work (or don’t). Many of the points they make are things I think I agree with, specifically about relying too much on puzzles and schwag and not enough on compelling storytelling.

Here’s some key quotes:

Lost is running an ARG at Comic-Con this week where the fictional Dharma corporation tries to recruit new employees, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles had a tie-in ARG that was quite artful in which employees of the Enitech Corporation discover a camera that takes pictures of the future and predicts the rise of the machines.

One reason I liked the Sarah Connor Chronicles ARG so much was that it actually functioned as its own, compelling story. It was almost like the Heroes webisodes – stories set in the same universe as their parent story, but shorter and with a lower budget. The Dark Knight ARG, on the other hand, felt like it really was just advertising with a few perfunctory interactive bits thrown in.

Well I’m glad the author dug our work and I can’t complain about having our project called “artful.” He makes some good points and I’m glad this discussion is going on now. ARGs are walking the fine line between art, entertainment, and advertising, so it’s important to start pushing these questions out there.

Seesmic Conversation #1: Future of Online Content

Published on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 by Reuben

Join the conversation here . I’m with Tim Kring, creator of Heroes today and Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary Pictures who made Batman the Dark Knight. I’ll have them weigh in .

Posted in Reuben's Thoughts, Seesmic | 1 Comment »

Looking Back to December 2006: Roadcast with Mark Wallace

Published on Friday, July 18th, 2008 by Reuben

I started a tradition back then, when we were 6 months old. I used to record a call with someone interesting for the length of my drive to work. This one with Mark Wallace, which dove into Taxation of Virtual Transactions and Second Life’s population and economics, was awesome. BTW, back then Mark was writing the blog 3Pointd.com . He’s now the CEO of a very ambitious and cool company releasing something revolutionary soon.

I ended up only doing 7 of these Roadcasts. Here they are.

Posted in Reuben's Thoughts, Roadcast | No Comments »

Video of the Week: The Black Knight with Playmobil Figures

Published on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 by Reuben

This is close to my heart because my son Theo turned 4 this week. His grandpa bought him a Playmobil Castle, which only took me 4 hours to build.

Anyway, with all the interest in kid’s virtual worlds recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what a kid imagines as they’re playing with toys and dioramas. Maybe something like this if they’re lucky. It’s such an epic that there’s also a “The Making of Barbarian”, which is also done in stop motion animation with Playmobil figures. Genius.

Posted in Reuben's Thoughts, toys | No Comments »

Divathon!

Published on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 by Lyra

If you haven’t heard of the obscenely popular machinima short series called “Divas“, then you my friend have been missing out. Now, you could rush over to the site to check out all the episodes, or you could join us on Friday night for a 3 hour marathon at the New Globe Theater! We plan to stream all six episodes back to back and have a Q&A session for all machinimaists (is that a word? help me out!) out there. Best of all? Phaylen, Kit & Evie have agreed to allow an exclusive to this event: a preview of their latest project! There will be schwag, hot ladies and lots of laughs. While I’m all for going out on a Friday night, I highly urge you to stay in this weekend, dress to the nines and join us - it’s sure to be divalightful!

Friday, July 18th @ 6pm SLT – Millions of Us, New Globe Theater! IM Lyra Millionsofus if you are having difficulties finding the place!

Posted in Lyra's Thoughts, Machinima, New Globe Events, Upcoming Events | 1 Comment »

Millions of Us Work on Playstation Home Showcased at E3

Published on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 by Reuben

As reported by Virtual Worlds News in March, we’ve been working to create spaces for Playstation Home the last several months. Today, we got a little shot of excitement, as SCEA CEO Jack Tretton gave a sneak peak of HOME and our work. Nice job all. I think I heard applause at 1:57. . . . .

[Edit 7/16] Here’s a better copy of the video from gametrailers.com.

Posted in News, Press Coverage, Reuben's Thoughts, Sony HOME | 1 Comment »