I keep calling the Kinect a slow-burning revolution and using the phrase “that’s the future”, often in the same thought. Here’s a cool example:

As much as I am trying to switch to Sony, Microsoft has an amazing platform in Kinect+360. I just want to see them pushing “a gestural interface in every home.”

Via fucking everywhere:

The technology used to do it was from the 1860s, but GOD-DAMN that’s a good execution: digital media and the godhead. What happens when you’re recorded so much and so often that the camera really does absorb your soul? If violence and media are inherently intertwined (McLuhan) does the media TAKE your soul? Violence/media killed Pac, and now resurrects him through his recording art — the informational traces he generated moving through reality.

We are all recording artists now, because everything we do is recorded. Digital media, maybe, ARE the Eschaton, the strange attractor at the end of time trying to immamentize itself.

And Tupac’s Idoru is the first upload.

I’m just getting into Terence McKenna (via Joe Rogan but I’d heard about him before). Here’s his 1984 The Psychedelic Society:

If McKenna was around giving speeches today I think he’d be super famous. In the 80s this must have sounded really sci-fi — today I think his ideas about networks are totally like groovy man.

Here’s the output of one of my latest experiments, plugging the kinect’s depth map into the depth map of a fluid solver. Then I realized I could also plug it into the velocity map of said solver. I suppose this needs a video, and I’ll see if I can get one, but here’s a screenshot.

The turbulence in the bottom right of the left image was caused by the motion of me pushing the screenshot keys — the end of the couch I am sitting on is dipping into the velocity field, causing ripples in the virtual fluid. All of this is in Processing (read: a subset of Java), a “sketching” language for blocking out software systems quickly.

Since writing UI specs is boring I’ve been using Mixel for rapid UI prototyping:

The inability of the program to conveniently do text is a huge selling feature — it forces you into the grossly practical: what does it look like? I am thinking of getting Simple Physics to prototype with too — I heard it can do springs.

Thinking of gestures for menu access… Slide discs in to pause.

I just got the iPad 3 — or what Apple now calls “the new iPad” to help curb version inflation — and signed up for Netflix. So far the device is pretty awesome and the service lacks known content. This is a problem I am having with ebooks too — if you try to consume content legitimately it often turns out to be either inconvenient or impossible. Piracy is a far better user experience, even taking into account the viruses and porn.

But I wanted to watch some light horror, and Netflix Canada does have the complete X-Files. The key is to skip all the episodes about the never-ending alien conspiracy and just watch the moster-of-the-week stand-alones. Here’s the list from Wikipedia.

Happy Easter long weekend! Hmmm, I wonder if they have American Horror Story… Nope!

The game I’m on right now was announced at PAX this morning:

“We are extremely excited to work with Twisted Pixel in bringing splosions to mobile devices,” says Iron Galaxy C.E.Bro, Dave Lang. “Ms. Splosion Man has really deep gameplay that is born from deceptively simple controls, so it’s a great game on any platform.”

The Mint supposedly wants devs to help it build a national e-currency. Unfortunately they’re suggesting it be used for oldbad ideas from the 90s, like paying for news stories with microtransactions:

Here’s the challenge. The prize? $50k in gold bullion (y’know — because e-currency can’t be trusted).

Via Julius.

Maybe Citizen’s United was a good thing. This reddit-based PAC, “test PAC” (slogan: “Please ignore.”) is going on the offensive against a politician who supported SOPA (I think this is via Maddow):

Maybe the Libertarians are right. Maybe total deregulation is the answer. In the past people couldn’t organize (inter-)national protests in their spare time, and now the regulatory framework is extremely permissive — streamlined, even: a one-page form and you can accept unlimited anonymous donations and do whatever you want with them (in terms of political media).

And now that the legal system’s been pwnd the raving hordes of grown-up /b/tards have no compunction about raeping the loophole, powertroll-styles.

All media are messageboards, but the spokespeople aren’t used to the public responding, or to having a real conversation. People have been writing on the Toronto subway ads — I assume because there’s no “comment” feature but felt marker. It seems the New Aesthetic is going global, organically — the digital way-of-being intrudes into what was once reality and transforms it.

Placeholder architecture: testPAC. Y’know — for bootstrapping a real online society.

Congrats to my sugar-pie Jill on crushing the ethics exam her pro college requires of all inductees. It’s scored relatively and she got about 2.6 sigmas — or over 98% in normal person talk apparently I don’t speak normal. It was 91st %tile on 1.7 sigmas.

Silly Jilly: I told you so