(cross posted from Facebook)
( Here is some lengthy backstory and explanation. If you want to just hear the song, skip to the bottom, and ignore my ruminating. )

It can be found here: http://www.thegeekmovement.com/Onlycoyotesawthesatellitefalltoearth.mp3

Doing this is somewhat out of character for me: I generally resist any chain-letter/quiz-meme/mini-game stuff on social networks. However, I’ve greatly enjoyed reading the lists of everyone who has done this thus far, and feel some desire to reciprocate.  I posted this on Facebook last night, but decided that I'd like it in LiveJournal for personal archiving purposes.  It's like a free LJ update, since I didn't initially set out to make this into an LJ post.  That being said, this turned into a more substantive autobiography than I had initially intended. 

I'm working on this theory that posits that I  can demarcate epochs in my life by contemplating two separate but related web browsing phenomena: social software used and web-comics enjoyed. 
( In which I reminisce )

I honestly can't remember the last time things settled down enough in my life to support a few days of lounging around the house, playing WoW, watching movies, and enjoying time with Karen, but that is exactly what this week has been like.  It has been wonderful!  Taking care of holiday and food shopping has been complicated by snow, which is currently mounded to well above our windowsills outside (pictures sometime later).  Vancouver has an 11% chance of a white Christmas, and this year it looks like we're using up several of those all at once.  Karen has been baking all week , partially because it's a lovely thing to do, and partially because it helps to warm our apartment, which has been freezing.  Earlier this week, we had nightime tempertures as low as -16 degrees celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheight for you folks in the states....which is pretty much all of you now that I think of it): we've had candles burning next to our computers so that we can thaw out our fingers periodically.

Last week was spent tying off loose ends from the last semester: I had to finish a project for my AI class, write a paper about it, and get another paper out to a conference.  Having taken care of these various details, I have been able to immerse myself in some much deserved media: I'm deeper into Stephenson's Baroque Cycle than I had previously managed and thouroughly enjoying it.  Karen and I have spent some quality time in World of Warcraft, which makes me happy, since I've been on a school enforced hiatus since September, prior to which I was on a travel enforced hiatus.  I'm contemplating ways to make WoW into research, but so far haven't been able to spin it into any papers.  I did manage to make Rock Band into research this semester, and will hopefully know if I have a publication in it by March. 

Although it has been far snowier than is usually the case this time of year, we have still managed to get out of the house a bit - we went to a holdiay party at our friend Vicki's house, where we enjoyed homemade tamales, and hours of musical jamming (I brought my accordion, but was defeated when another grad student brought her bagpipes!).  Yesterday we ventured downtown in order to catch an afternoon showing of Repo! the Genetic Opera, to which Karen had won free tickets.  Repo was quite enjoyable, although I suspect that we did not get the full experience: we were quite literally the only people in the theater.   There were things about the film I really enjoyed - some of the imagery was outstanding, Tony Head was delightful, if a bit over-the-top at points, and the songs were excellent.  I didn't enjoy the sung dialogue as much as the more self contained songs, but it wasn't terrible either.  It was clear that there were a lot of creative juices flowing in the creation of the film but I often had trouble fully surrendering to it's charms.  In some ways I think that what I found lacking most was a sense of subtlety in the lyrics, and some of the performances.  Repo had a tendency to bluster in places where it should have smouldered, if that makes any sense at all.  Still, I think that people need to see it, and I will probably be getting a copy for my collection: I suspect that it will grow on me as I learn the music.

Today we decided that we wanted a Christmas Turkey (technically Karen Decided...I consented).  Since our car is little more than a slightly convex deformation in the snow at the side of the road we set out for the grocery store on foot.  An hour later, after slogging up hill through knee high snow on unshoveled sidewalks, we have a turkey in the oven, and are about to light Chanukah candles and open presents.  Further catch-up will have to wait.  Just wanted to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season.  Love you all!

Check out this Wired article, in which they create Wordle clouds from the speeches given at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions:  http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/michelle-obama.html.

I find it fascinating.

Well, the cat's out of the bag!  I'm a Master of the Narrative Arts.  (Thankssheepwhatsleeps for the excellent post!)

I'm still pretty dazed by the last few days.  This whole experience has been beyond what I ever expected when I applied for grad school.  I can say with all honesty that my success in the last year or so has come as a surprise to me...albeit a welcome one.  It's strange to find myself blathering things about this subject matter (of which I knew next to nothing two years ago) and to have scholars whose work I greatly admire treat me as a peer...but that is what the defense felt like today.  People would ask questions, and I would talk...and heads would nod up and down (along with a few in the back who nodded down, and then nodded off.  It did go on for a bit) and somewhere in all of this it somehow became evident that I wasn't just spouting rhetorical jibber-jabber but was instead making informed points about my topic of choice.  Overly long points, perhaps, but informed points.

Given that only 24 hours earlier I couldn't string together an extemporaneous sentence to save a drowning puppy this was like some discursive Miracle of Chanukah.  Less than a year ago these ideas didn't exist anywhere except in my head...now they're in a .pdf file on a webserver!  That's huge!  I'm overwhelmed!


For those interested in reading the thesis, it can be found posted over on The Geek Movement. 

Wordle is my new favorite web-app...it creates dynamic, artistic, word-clouds from a website or blog.  Check out the above tag cloud created from my blog over at the geek movement.

Or this Cloud, created from the introduction and conclusion of my thesis:

So, the bad news first...our movie didn't even make it into the top 10 in the Vancouver Film Race. So that sucks, but we still had a good time, and made something I'm happy with, so no worries there.  (See the nominees here)

This is completely overshadowed by the glory that is "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog", the first episode of which I have just watched. It is, in a word, GLORIOUS! Seriously...go see it right now! Go!

July 15, 17, & 19 will mark the debut of Joss Wheedon's online Super Villain Musical!  (In three parts)

Yes it stars Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day (creator the the bitchin' WoW parody sitcom, The Guild)!

Yes it is going to rock the free world!

Go here for the trailer and more info.

As many of you are probably aware by now, Karen and I like to make movies for special occasions. The first time we did this, it was for my birthday in 2005. The second was for Karen's birthday that same year. In both cases, we wrangled together a group of friends and persuaded them to whack at each-other with swords for a few hours, before editing together semi-coherent narratives over the following few months. A year later, right after moving to Vancouver, not knowing anyone in town, we did music videos for Karen's birthday, using equipment borrowed from the school library. The editing process was faster, but it was still a few days of work before we had finished pieces.

Now, here we are, almost two years later. In March we participated in a 48hour film festival, run out of the Port Moody center for the arts. We won! (Read the posts here: http://mmvashnik.livejournal.com/23990.html & http://mmvashnik.livejournal.com/24263.html) We had a good time working on Take Out for Two, but Karen got really sick on the second day, and I had a lot of trouble getting along with the group, since it was mainly comprised of people I had never met before. So when we discovered that the Vancouver International Film Race 2008 was scheduled to take place on our wedding anniversary (Five Years) we jumped at the chance to put together a new team: a team comprised of people we really wanted to work with. From 10pm Friday night, to 10pm Saturday night we worked without sleep, laboring over what is probably the strangest film we've made to date.

Unlike the last local festival we did, the International Film Race is a class act...and the competition is an order of magnitude more polished. (http://www.filmracing.com/) For this project we needed signed release forms for everyone appearing on screen, signed releases from the owners of all interior locations used, and were not allowed to use any assets developed ahead of time except for costumes and sets. Unlike the Port Moody film challenge, we had only 24 hours to write, shoot, edit, and deliver a 3.5 minute film.

That being said, I am quite pleased with the film that we ended up making. It was much more of a collaboration, and everyone really pulled through for it. Unlike the last film challenge, all of the teams involved were given the same theme and the same surprise element to incorporate into the final piece, so I am very curious to see what the competition looks like. The theme we were given was GREED, and the surprise element was TURNING ON A FAUCET. I have no idea when they will be judged, and I'm not expecting to win anything, but I did have a really good time, and I made something that I think is pretty cool, so I consider it a win.

With that all said, all that remains is to screen it. Ladies and Gentlemen...The Collector:

I don't often post links to pages of interest, or news articles, but this one was too awesome not to share.

Mystery on Fifth Avenue

As promised, I have posted another portion of the thesis on my other blog.  Unlike the introduction, which is lighthearted and easy going, this methods chapter is chock-a-block full of tasty metaphors, and highfalutin terminology.   Most of my thesis is written in a somewhat conversational idiom; one of my goals was to make it accessible to people who were not immersed in the discourse of Interactive Narrative.  The methods chapter, however, is the exception to that rule, perhaps because my methodology comes from literary criticism.  I'll let you be the judge of it's readability.

http://thegeekmovement.com/blog/?p=37

As of 12:45 this afternoon I am done with the first draft of the thesis.  Rejoice!  While I still have a long way to go before the degree is done, at this point the biggest hurdle has been cleared.   Nine Days ago I posted to say that I had crossed the 60k word mark.  As of this afternoon, the final count is 81,316 words.  That's almost two whole years of NaNoWriMo, only with citations!

For interested readers, I will be posting portions of the thesis on my blog at The Geek Movement over the course of the next week.  The first post is the interesting part of the introduction.  It is the part of the thesis that depends on citations the least, and so it ought to be fairly accessible.  I would be very interested to see people's responses to this, especially as I move into editing mode.

Woot!

Writing Break
I should be writing right now (on the thesis...not on LJ), but I've accumulated an assortment of really good news from the last few weeks, and I need to document it for posterity.

Publications and Presentations - I gots em!
The journal article that I wrote on the train over Christmas has been accepted into the International Journal of Computational Science.  This is awesomeness!  If anyone is interested in a pre-print draft, there is a link to the .pdf from my webpage, under "publications".  In fact, I've made quite a few changes to the website.  Check it out.

Also new and exciting, Jim Bizzocchi (my senior supervisor for the thesis) and I got a presentation into the upcoming Canadian Game Studies Association conference in May.  We'll be talking about intelligent personalization and believability in Oblivion.  If all goes well, the paper that we produce for that will also turn into a journal article, to be published following the conference.   Woot!

In addition to these confirmed presentations, I've got a bunch of irons in the fire at the moment.  This has been an absurdly busy writing semester for me:  I wrote an article with Jim on a portion of the thesis and submitted it to the International Digital Media Arts Association (IDMAA) journal this semester.   I don't expect to hear back from them for many months, but I am hopeful that at the very least we will receive some useful feedback, even we do not get in.

I'm collaborating with Jim Biz, and another awesome SIAT faculty member on another paper, which we want to submit to  AIIDE - Artificial Intelligence in Interactive  Digital Entertainment.  If we can pull this together before the end of April I will be really excited, as it would be a chance to engage with the same community of scholars that I met in November at the AAAI conference.  I'm cautiously optimistic about this paper, but am pretty swamped with thesis writing at the moment.

Karen and I are actually talking about collaborating on a short paper for ACM Multimedia, which will be held in Vancouver this year.  Our preliminary brainstorms have been super exciting, but I don't want to blow the lid on the idea yet, since it's still in its formative stages.  Suffice it to say, that I have wanted to collaborate with Karen on something for a long time, and it is every bit as awesome as I imagined it would be.  We have the ideas for another bigger paper as well, but no real idea of where we might want to send it.

Thesis is still in progress, but hopefully for not much longer.
I crossed the 60,000 word mark on my thesis this week.  I've actually been in a bit of a writing funk since mid-March, but I'm finally starting to come out of it.  I've got about two weeks before I'm past my completion deadline, and a large chunk of writing left to do, but I'm not giving up hope on having it done within the time frame that I set for myself with it.  i am growing closer and closer to the homestretch on the first draft, which has me pretty excited.  Also, yesterday I got to write about necrophilia in the Thesis.  I challenge those of you in academia to beat that!

New research project!
One of the things that has slowed my writing down a bit this month has been the start of a new research project.  I am now a proud member of the Heritage Canada funded CAT (Creativity Assist Tools) Games project!  This means that I will be funded until next March, and will finally be doing paid research that is in my field!  It also means that I will not have to TA for at least a year, which will be a nice break, after the insanity that was this fall's TA schedule.  It's a fun research project, too: I'm going to be investigating "narrativised and embodied" interfaces for games.  This breaks down into three different stages - a literature review of embodiment and motion from various fields including dance, kinesiology, and virtual telepresence; a series of phenomenological investigations of games (ie: playing a lot of Wii games and writing about it); and lastly an ethnographic survey of game designers in Vancouver who are developing titles that use these types of interactions.  I am very excited about this, even if it has been distracting me from my thesis this month.  We have acquired a good collection of games and specialty controllers in the last two weeks that have served as delicious distractions, while also getting me off my ass for the first time in months.  Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band both can really work up a sweat if you play them for long enough.

One more for the road!
The final bit of academic news is that I have been admitted to the PhD program here at SIAT for next fall (contingent upon me finishing the MA)!  I will admit that I was reasonably confident in my chances of getting in, but the last few weeks have been pretty nerve wracking; there has been news of school budget cuts, and financial crises, and shrinking class sizes, and various other things that have been scary enough to feed any seeds of doubt in my mind.  Yesterday, I learned that most of the incoming class had been notified already, and I still had not heard anything.  Suffice it to say, receiving the Admissions letter this morning was simultaneously a huge relief, and also incredibly exciting.  As long as I pull of this MA on time, I should be able to start the PhD in the fall....Woot!

For some reason I find myself overcome with the desire to cackly maniacally a lot lately.  This freaks out my students, however, so I have endeavored to suppress the urge.

Back to work now.  

So occasionally I forget that not everyone knows what "woot" means.  Today, for instance, I found out that a paper that my supervisor and I had submitted to a conference had been accepted. 

Woot!

I said as much to him, and was met met with confusion.  "What is this woot?" he asked me.

In order to disambiguate things, I have put together the following definition.  You classical scholars, feel free to correct me on my usage.

Woot.   From the Latin: Vootus.  (wu-təs) 1. Interjection: A cry issued by the crowd at gladiatorial events when the  lions, tigers, and bears ate the captured Nubian eunuchs.  Example:  "Vootus!  The lions, tigers, and bears have eaten the captured Nubian eunuchs!  Let's go get a kebab!"  2. Adjective: A derogatory term, used when one friend betrays another.  Example:  "Et tu, Vootus?!"


Okay, so not really.  Woot is a neologism from gamer culture.  It originated as an acronym for "We  Own Other Team" but it has grown into its own word,  often used as a joyful exclamation.  It also won Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year in 2007 (http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/07words.htm)

Still, I like my definition more.  A word as useful as woot deserves a rich lineage.

First of all, thank you for everyone who sent birthday wishes and film congrats...y'all know how to make a guy feel loved, and that is a wonderful thing.  it's been a wild couple of weeks, culminating in a rockin' good time on Saturday night.  Pictures will follow later in the week. 

I had a fabulously relaxing actual-birthday yesterday - I ate leftover pizza and cake, and watched many episodes of Stargate SG-1 with Karen.  Truly, a man cannot ask for more than that in his life!

Today I have found a plethora of web based material on the quick-flick challenge.   I have had a few requests from people for links to other films in the challenge, and have done what I can to hunt down videos online.  While I have not been entirely successful, I do have a modest collection of links to share.

Something Cool News:
http://www.somethingcool.ca/backissues/031708/feature260.htm
http://www.somethingcool.ca/section261.htm
This is the guy that you see in the various interviews related to the QFC online...he reports on the event every year.  There is a goofy picture of us, and a decent write-up that highlights how whiny we sound when talking about our movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4O6CZHjY0c - This is a Making-Of documentary from this years QFC

SIAT News
http://www.siat.sfu.ca/news/2008/145/
This is the blurb that went up on the school website.  Less whiny, more polished.  Has full credits as well.

Video Links
http://www.sfu.ca/~jboileau/projects/48/before_the_bliss.html - Before the Bliss - This is the awesome musical that one of our fellow grad students made this year.  This film took second place in the contest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygxd_MsXxO8 - Untitled - This was one of our favorite films from this year.  The filmmaker didn't really follow the prompt, but the collection of vignettes is nothing short of delightful, nonetheless. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDLLAg5DzAo - Two A Penny - this film won the Student Prize, but it was good enough that we expected it to take the actual first prize.  It was made by local High School seniors, and is absolutely fabulous. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZxK7vi9-s - Hiding Out - This film, on the other hand, was one of my least favorite pieces in the entire festival.  Karen disagrees with me, but I think this piece is just appallingly bad.

That's all that I have been able to find thus far.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled thesis writing.

UPDATE -
As more Quick Flicks appear on YouTube I will be archiving them here for posterity, or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFPG595_m8U - Twilight - This is a film by SIAT undergrads, and is representative of the type of films that Karen and I saw over and over again when we taught New Media Images last year.  It's better than many of the films that were submitted this year, even if it includes the ever-popular trope of reminiscing about a dead friend and visiting her grave which appears in 9 out of 10 student films in SIAT. 

As some of you know, Karen and I participated in the ArtsConnect.ca Fifth Annual Quick Flick Challenge. The QFC is a 48 hour film festival, where your team is given an "inspiration package" containing a character, a location, a line of dialog, a prop, and a CD of music, all of which must be used to create a 5 minute long film over the course of 48 hours.

Garfield (The comic strip by Jim Davis....NOT the president) is one of my least favorite comic strips of all time. It occupies a level of dislike reserved for stubbing my toe and having to retype parts of a paper when word crashes. It is, in a word, irredeemable.

Or so I used to think.

In the last month I have encountered two re-mixes of Garfield that have completely changed my tune.

Lasagna Cat
What do you get when you combine live action re-enactments of Garfield comic strips with tributes to great  (and not-so-great) musical artists and surreal music videos? Lasagna cat is equal parts hilarity, and scathing critique of both Garfield, and the culture in which Garfield exists. It takes a while to load, but it's worth it!

Garfield Minus Garfield
This is as good as the original Garfield is bad....which makes this crazy good. Here is how it sells itself:

"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb."

Every word of this is truth. I laugh and cry in equal measure when reading through this site's archive. This is unintentional art at it's finest.


Finally, on a non-Garfield related note, here is a funny video about the Wonder Years.

Recently overheard on Google Talk: