kerimsatirli.com

Ever so often, a group of teachers at my college organize a day-long
event that’s supposed to be all about gaining theoretical knowledge. Few people are looking forward to these days and quite a few students actually “opt-out” of even attending the sessions.

A week ago, we had another one of these events, this one, geared towards Serious Gaming and all the things related to creating serious games.

I’ll be honest about this, up front, I didn’t feel like the event would provide much interesting stuff, if any at all. We had one of these “Theory Events” back in the first quarter of this year and the general consensus was that it was a waste of time.

People didn’t dislike the event based on the idea of the event, but rather on the actual execution of the event. When I attend a class, hearing, discussion panel or anything, I am there for a reason, I want to expand my knowledge. Other than talking about a few Dutch Blogs and trying to explain the concept of Dot Walking to a couple hundred students, the speaker didn’t do much at all.

Most of us had never heard of Dot Walking and normally, this would have been enough to spark an interesting discussion, however, the whole idea didn’t offer anything related to our project at all. For my part, a flash mob would have carried more educational value but alas.

So, with the bad taste from the first even still clinging to the back of my mouth, I went to attend the second Theory Event of my sophomore year:

The day was split into three (or four) parts. First, we’d get to hear a keynote from Annet Dekker, who works at Montevideo, an organization that specializes in creating time based arts.

The whole speech was more or less a showcase of her own work, mixed with work that her company created. Ever so often, a short video clip would be used to make it easier for us to visualize her creations. While she did offer some valid points, I found it a tad annoying that she limited her presentation by only selecting stuff she created.

It is natural for people to be proud of what they achieved, however, if your whole keynote only relates to your own products, you’re lacking perspective and that makes you appear a lot more biased than you probably are.

After a short break, we were treated to a movie called eXistenZ. Released in the same year as The Matrix, the movie tells a similar but not identical story.

In both movies, people use ports in their bodies to link themselves to a system that operates solely on a metaphysical level, but that’s where the similarities end.

eXistenZ is about a game, a game that is so real that players can’t tell if they are still playing it or not. Playing might actually not be the right word in this case, it’s more of an experience than pure entertainment.

The participants don’t just passively enjoy the offerings of the system, they actually are part of the (mostly linear) story.

The movie was great and I certainly enjoyed watching it, mostly because the ideas portrayed within the movie become less and less of a probability and more and more of a reality.

The ideas also kinda remind me of “Counter-Struck“, a parody of the well known game Counter-Strike. The director of the movie, a fellow crossmedia engineering student, tells the story of a player who immerses himself that much in the game, that the game starts happening around the player.

After another short break, Daniël van Gils, chief-creative-guy at KamerBlauwLicht showcased a few great Machinima movies (some even unknown to me) and tried to riddle us with the following questions:

“Is gaming art?” and “can games be used to create art“.

This was probably the most memorable part of the whole day, most certainly because I’m working on my own movie and have a strong opinion about this:

Van Gils appears to be a strong supporter of Machinima and he seems to be fascinated by it. He went as far as creating a mod for the Doom III engine that would allow him to create a live performance that was inspired by the music playing around him.

This really shows how committed this person really is towards Machinima and I have to applaud him for embracing such a new form of art in such an extensive way. Especially since most people don’t even know what Machinima really is and what it can be used for.

Tens of thousands of years ago, cave paintings were the first form of art that humans created. Today, if you’re able to acquire a piece with a real cave painting on it, you probably would be holding not only a piece of history, but also a piece of significant monetary value in your hands.

What I’m trying to say is that, over the millenia, art has evolved. From the cave paintings to the Mona Lisa, from the first sketches of Aristoteles to the Wrapped Reichstag, art has been evolving and still is.

A few decades ago, graffitti wasn’t considered art, but today it is. Sure, it hasn’t yet reached the same level of acceptance oil paintings have, but that is mostly because oil paintings have been around much longer.

A few years from now, Machinima will have gained a much larger following. In recent months, the barrier for entering this genre has been lowered quite a bit. Editing tools, for both video and audio, have become a lot more accessible and many different kinds are available, catering to novice users as well as professionals alike.

More and more companies are embracing Machinima as valid forms of marketing. Not just because it offers a low-cost alternative to expensive CG graphics, but also because it has more of an amateuristic factor to it, something that can often work in favor of the director.

All in all, this event was a lot more interesting than the first one and provided me with the questions I was looking for. The sessions made me think, made me discuss and made me talk about the ideas that were presented to us and that’s all I want.

Imagine this: every year, about 100,000 people die because they suffer from organ failure and are unable to be treated, either because no compatible organs can be provided at all, or, if compatible organs are available, they are found too late, at a time when the point-of-no-return has been long passed.

Now imagine the following situation: With todays medicine and cloning techniques, it is, essentially possible to reconstruct the genome of our genetical ancestor. The one lifeform we all derive from. This would be a huge step forward, not only would that mean that humanity has reached a level of sophistication that it’s able to, essentially, play God, but actually do good and save itself from extinction.

Naturally, you’ll ask yourself, “why bother and go back that much in time, when we can just clone a normal organ and put that in”. Being a crossmedia engineering student, I can’t completely explain this, but I know this:

First of all, there is no way, yet, to only clone an organ and not get all the other stuff that comes with it at the same time. Organs, unlike plants, cannot grow in isolation, they need the environment only a human body (or highly modified animal body, rats are used for this from time to time) can provide. Otherwise, you’ll get a “dead shell”, so to speak. A piece of tissue that hasn’t matured correctly and probably matured in ways that are incompatible with your needs anyway.

Every person’s genome is different, what works for one, doesn’t work for the other. If you’ve ever seen ER or Grey’s Anatomy, you’ll know that people who get transplants sometimes reject them. Their body deems the replacement organ incompatible with the host and therefore stops supporting (read: providing the organ with oxygen, blood and other fluids) said organ. The result can be fatal, not only for the organ but also for the host.

Luckily, there are companies out there that see the importance of providing humanity with a supply of compatible organs. One of these companies is called GENADA. Little is known about them and their website isn’t all that informative either, but from what I heard in the comunity, they got a good thing going. Something that will, if it works out, not only change the lives of thousands of people, but also will make some investors rich(er) beyond belief.

Even though GENADA tries their levelbest in limitting the amount of information that is able to leave their premises, I know of at least one account of a person who worked there and decided to start talking.

Well, literally speaking, said person didn’t start talking directly, but they found a way to channel their information too, a middleman of sorts.

They say that artists use lies to tell the truth and I have to agree. In probably every story you read, you’ll find some sort of truth. Maybe that truth is tainted by the beliefs of the author, maybe it’s not - the only one who knows that for sure is the author himself.

Either way, we do know this: there’s more and more on this world happening beyond what the public actually knows.

Scott Sigler also contributes to this kind of “game”. His kick-ass book Ancestor was first published in the fall of 2005, as an audio only book. Now, you can download the whole PDF for free, from his site.

If you’re looking for high quality entertainment, for free, go to the site, download a copy and don’t put it away. Start reading it immediately, you’ll love it. Sigler has a way of describing things in such vivid detail that you’ll feel cold sweat forming on your palms and sometimes, he’ll do his best to make your stomach turn.

I’m certain that you’ll enjoy his story and if you do, spread the word. Tell others about it and maybe even pre order his book on April 1st 2007. Show the man that you appreciate his work and show amazon.com that independent authors are a force to be reckoned with.

In the late 20th century, most people would select newspapers based on their political preferences or religious beliefs, only a small percentage, namely the (y)UPs would select a publication based on the merit they would get out of reading it.

While this percentage has increased quite a bit in recent years, it is still evident that people don’t like to break with old traditions and would rather read a newspaper that feeds them information that is deemed fit by their particular “group” rather than a newspaper that reports just because there should be reports.

If you take a look at Middle Eastern countries, you’ll see that just about every journal, gazette and in general, 98% of the publications are tainted by religious beliefs. The reasoning for this is simple: If you control what the masses believe, you control what they do.

Yes, information in today’s world is still worth it’s weight in gold and with the right information you’ll still be able to wield power over someone.

However, with everything that can be abused for personal gain, there are also some things you can do that will eventually result in something good happening (or something bad not happening).

A week ago, in a tragedy that caused a huge ripple effect in the Dutch media unfolded. A father, of reasons unknown to me, first disposed off his mother-in-law and then threw his children in front of a train.

Many newspapers, especially the ones aimed at the lower working class, described the whole event in great detail. One newspaper however decided that they’d rather not fuel the fear and hate of their readers.

De Volkskrant opted to publish an interview with an expert in the field of suicide prevention and suicide research. Said expert conducted a study about the effect of articles that discuss tragic events, like the one listed above, have on the society at large. His conclusion: the more you read about suicide and murder, the more likely you are to become victim to one of those events yourself.

His statement, of course, needs to be put into proper context: if you are a perfectly sane person, you will probably not experience any side effects, other than a feeling of sadness that will quickly subside. On the other hand, if you are a person suffering from depression and have already tried to mutilate yourself, you are a lot more likely to be affected by news reports about this kind of events.

All in all, I believe that these two publications made the right choice by not describing, in vivid detail, how the events unfolded exactly but rather only mentioning it “by the way”.

Sure, if you don’t see something, doesn’t have to mean that it isn’t there, but I’d rather not open my newspaper every day to be greeted with, yet another, firsthand account of someone killing his next of kin.

A bit more than a year ago, a famous Dutch newspaper, primarily aimed at the group of people with higher education, went forward with an idea to attract a new group of readers, namely the myriad of young professionals who didn’t have the time to read the full story behind events and only wanted a bit more than a blurb.

The publisher came up with a way to, basically, spoon feed information to their prospective, future clients and they called it NRC.next. The journalists like to think of their publication as a way to get up-to-date on what has happened in the world in the fastest way possible.

Now, a newspaper on it’s own wouldn’t really be worth the time to talk about, but NRC.next is different. They are one of the first Dutch newspaper to embrace crossmedia publishing and embrace it the right way.

Apart from the actual, printed, publication, there’s the online edition, with additional information. Many of the journalists also contribute to a platform that could actually be considered a blog. NRC.next even toyed with the idea of publishing podcasts but it would appear that that step was just a bit too much.

The best thing? Half of the web-based content is freely available to everyone, either via the browser or through a RSS subscription.

The resulting numbers speak for themselves, after one year, they are still standing strong, In a market that is very highly saturated, they managed to gain a foothold and attract an audience that normally wouldn’t bother reading newspapers due to time constraints or the lack of interest.

The newspapers distribution time is also different to that of it’s parent’s. While NRC Handelsblad is published in the evening, targeted at decisionmakers who want to relax after a long day at work and spend some quality time with the latest news, NRC.next is published in the morning and is supposed to be on your doorstep at 07:00am.

The idea behind that is simple, I figure: “if you’re the first to bring news to your reader, you win (and get paid, eventually)”, And it makes sense, if your client has a chance to get his news somewhere else, say, on the web, for free, there’s no incentive left to actually buy your publication.

While I don’t read NRC.next regularly, I’ve still been able to enjoy the newspaper for quite some time now and in fact still have the first issue at home. As a reader of the first hour, I have to say that this publication manages to amaze in ways previously unseen, in the Netherlands anyway.

So here is to you, you editors, you journalists, you bloggers, all of you who make NRC.next the great thing that it has become. I compliment you on a job well done. You’ve managed to amaze the (Dutch) publishing world, for a year already, don’t stop now.

As one wuld expect from a market leader in (publishing) innovation, NRC.next also gifted it’s readers with something very special: a 14 track CD.

The songs are a compilation from tracks published my favorite, online, music publisher Magnatune as well as from jamendo.com.

I’ve been listening to these tracks while writing this post and, like the newspaper, the featured songs are of high quality. The listing is very diverse, however, it doesn’t try to cater to all wishes at the same time but rather present the listeners with new music they probably haven’t heard before.

The whole album, free of charge, is available via this link, cover art and all is, naturally, included.

People are being influenced by their surroundings. In order to not alienate yourself from the people that you love, you’ll most probably try to fit in. Sure, some try harder than others, but all do try. That is my opinion anyway.

Most of the times, the better you fit in in your surroundings, the more success you will achieve, sometimes though, your environment can be damaging to you, your health or your future.

I was thinking about this yesterday and started analyzing the comments I received from various people in my life, people who know me or like to think that they know me. Some of them, in my opinion, are more qualified than others to “judge” me, some are entirely unfit to comment on anything.

About a year ago, someone I was spending a lot of time with at the time, claimed that I’m way too childish for my age. She deemed my behavior inappropriate and basically recommended me to “grow up a little”.

Naturally, after being with someone for three years, those claims aren’t just thoughts that were spat out in a heated discussion, but are something that managed to manifest itself over time.

Then, a few months later, when college began again, I had my second meeting with the mentor that was assigned to me. Her thoughts about me collided totally with what I’ve been told earlier. She thought of me as “way too business-focussed”, bordering the “uptight”.

It’s funny when you think about it. A person you’ve known for about three hours at the time (that is, two meetings of 90 minutes each) thinks she is qualified to judge you and your actions.

Now, I’m not saying that her opinion should be dismissed, after all, she may or may not have studied psychology and thus may very well be capable of evaluating a student’s actions and provide feedback based upon that.

On the other hand though, you have to understand where people are coming from. The first person had a personal interest in the issue. She would benefit if I’d change. The second person, according to my opinion, just tried to force her views on me. She wouldn’t gain anything if I’d become less “uptight”, other than personal gratification.

The other day, I was talking to two other people. The first one, a person I’ve been working with for 18 months now, called me a “friggin’ rockstar” and outlined how he deemed my mindset totally appropriate for the things I am trying to achieve.

He also shared some personal experience with me about how people in his (professional) environment told him to slow down, be less uptight and relax more. In his opinion, those that lack focus will always try to slow you down, not for your own best will, but because they perceive you as a threat. According to him, if you would slow down, it would give those people a chance to catch up with you, on a professional level and you’d be less competitive.

The way I see it, I have to strongly agree with his assessment. I know that I’m focussed and can be too focussed in times when said focus is needed. That however, doesn’t mean that I lack perspective. Most of all the actions I have taken in the last years are geared towards one objective: finishing college and gaining a skill set that will make me competitive on the market I am going to work on.

I see students in my college who are, technically speaking, able to achieve a lot, maybe more than me, but they don’t try to. Some of them just don’t care about being successful, some of them just lack the needed focus.

In essence, it comes down to the following: If people in your environment tell you to slow down, take where they are coming from into consideration. Don’t just do it because you value them, think about yourself first.

They may be able to distort your perception, but as long as you enable yourself to put some perspective to it, you should be able to distinguish those that are telling you to slow down so they can gain an advantage on you and those who are genuinely worried about you and your workload.