Journals195
Newest
Arthur C. Clarke Dead At 90
2 min read
Fans of science fiction literature (or even cinema) should already be familiar with the name of Arthur C. Clarke. After all, this is the man who gave 2001: A Space Odyssey and all its successors to the world.
Clarke passed away today, 19 March 2008, at the age of 90.
Clarke was the unlikely oracle in the science world. He's credited with dreaming up the geostationary satellite (the kind that delivers satellite television or radio to us). He's given us Clarke's three rules of scientific prediction:
1.) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The third and final of these rules has been quoted and requoted endlessly.
Clarke was an author with few peers. The list of his acolades stretches for miles and includes the rank of Knight Bachelor in the British honours system.
I'd hope that many of you are already familiar enough with the geat contribution of this author to feel the deep sting of his parting as I have. If not, I'd strongly encouage each of you to take this opportunity to discover the works of the man who helped shape both science fiction and science reality.
Rest in peace, Arthur C. Clarke. You will be dearly missed.
Clarke passed away today, 19 March 2008, at the age of 90.
Clarke was the unlikely oracle in the science world. He's credited with dreaming up the geostationary satellite (the kind that delivers satellite television or radio to us). He's given us Clarke's three rules of scientific prediction:
1.) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The third and final of these rules has been quoted and requoted endlessly.
Clarke was an author with few peers. The list of his acolades stretches for miles and includes the rank of Knight Bachelor in the British honours system.
I'd hope that many of you are already familiar enough with the geat contribution of this author to feel the deep sting of his parting as I have. If not, I'd strongly encouage each of you to take this opportunity to discover the works of the man who helped shape both science fiction and science reality.
Rest in peace, Arthur C. Clarke. You will be dearly missed.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
My God, It's Full Of Stars
2 min read
If you've not heard, Arthur C. Clarke -- one of the hallowed masters of Science Fiction and an frequent unintentional-but-uncanny predictor of Science Reality -- passed away today at age 90. If you're not familiar, this is the man who gave us 2001: A Space Odyssey and its successors. This is the man who dreamed up geostationary satellites before the rocket scientists did.
Athur gave us Clarke's three laws of prediction:
1.) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
You should have heard #3 somewhere before now. This is the man who coined the phrase.
Please, if you're not familiar with his works, take the time to pay your respects.
Today is a sad day for science fiction indeed.
(Help spread the word.)
Athur gave us Clarke's three laws of prediction:
1.) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
You should have heard #3 somewhere before now. This is the man who coined the phrase.
Please, if you're not familiar with his works, take the time to pay your respects.
Today is a sad day for science fiction indeed.
(Help spread the word.)
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Press Coverage (Translated)
3 min read
So, what am I up to? Here's a bit of press coverage to lead into. It's in Norwegian, so the second link here is to a rough translation.
Gamer.no: www.gamer.no/artikler/kristian…
Translated: tinyurl.com/2cly47
UPDATE: A friend of a friend translated this to English for us. It's not perfect, but it's loads better than the machine-translated version.
KRISTIANSAND (a city)-developer makes MMO games
The fresh game developer Web & Circus works on two MMO games for young players.
Web & Circus is a new game developer located in Kristiansand. The company staff is currently of five people, two from Norway, one from Australia og two from USA.
The manager (the boss/the one main one responsible) for Web & Circus, Todd Macadangdang, says that he has found a positive enviroment in Kristiansand, and that the company have had a lot of support from the Cultiva-foundation and Innovation Norway.
- We are several people that try to make the game industry grow here on the southcoast of Norway. In Oslo you have Funcom, Artplant and so on, and we hope to build that type of industry og enviroment in and around Kristiansand, he says to Gamer.no.
Web & Circus plans to reach both the "big gamers" and the "casual" players, and co-workers in the company have broad experience from the game industry. They wish to show that they can play on the same level as the developers from other places in Europe.
The companys first project is a two-dimentional MMO-game for kids, and Todd Macadangdang says that the game can be compared with games as Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin.
This game will later on be followed by a three-dimentional MMO set in the same universe. This game will also target the young audience, and it will come with a consol-ish gameplay.
- We plan to make a massive multigamergame that is more like Disney's Toontown or Pirates of the Caribbean, says Macadangdang.
Web & Circus expects the first project will after plan be ready for betatesting around Christmas time. The offical release will happen summer of 2009, at the Comicon-mass in San Diego.
3D-project will be released in different stages, and at this time Todd Macadangdang thinks the first part of the game also will debut at next years Comicon-mass.
Both projects will be free for testing, and Norwegian as well as other international versions will be available.
Gamer.no: www.gamer.no/artikler/kristian…
Translated: tinyurl.com/2cly47
UPDATE: A friend of a friend translated this to English for us. It's not perfect, but it's loads better than the machine-translated version.
KRISTIANSAND (a city)-developer makes MMO games
The fresh game developer Web & Circus works on two MMO games for young players.
Web & Circus is a new game developer located in Kristiansand. The company staff is currently of five people, two from Norway, one from Australia og two from USA.
The manager (the boss/the one main one responsible) for Web & Circus, Todd Macadangdang, says that he has found a positive enviroment in Kristiansand, and that the company have had a lot of support from the Cultiva-foundation and Innovation Norway.
- We are several people that try to make the game industry grow here on the southcoast of Norway. In Oslo you have Funcom, Artplant and so on, and we hope to build that type of industry og enviroment in and around Kristiansand, he says to Gamer.no.
Web & Circus plans to reach both the "big gamers" and the "casual" players, and co-workers in the company have broad experience from the game industry. They wish to show that they can play on the same level as the developers from other places in Europe.
The companys first project is a two-dimentional MMO-game for kids, and Todd Macadangdang says that the game can be compared with games as Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin.
This game will later on be followed by a three-dimentional MMO set in the same universe. This game will also target the young audience, and it will come with a consol-ish gameplay.
- We plan to make a massive multigamergame that is more like Disney's Toontown or Pirates of the Caribbean, says Macadangdang.
Web & Circus expects the first project will after plan be ready for betatesting around Christmas time. The offical release will happen summer of 2009, at the Comicon-mass in San Diego.
3D-project will be released in different stages, and at this time Todd Macadangdang thinks the first part of the game also will debut at next years Comicon-mass.
Both projects will be free for testing, and Norwegian as well as other international versions will be available.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Where's Waldo?
2 min read
Gone but not forgotten, it seems. I appreciate that, I do.
Allow me to fill in the gap of two whole years for the folks whose radars I still register on. After my departure from deviantART, I did some freelance work for a while. During this time, galactose and I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Once settled, I returned to the corporate work force. First I worked for a start-up company building software for government offices (mainly local government). I was starkly underpaid, the company was poorly managed, and there was a startling lack of subject material expertise. So I left there in favor of a much better employer.
For the last 9 months, I've been working for Clayton Homes, the leading manufacturer of manunfactured homes. I was doing legal compliance work in the IT department. It's a good company, with a lot of good people there. However, I'm no longer with them either.
I left Clayton in February to sign on to a new start-up with the client I did most of my freelance work with. I can't give too much information right now, as we're still in the process of setting everything up, but I hold the position of Senior Technology Consultant. I'm working primarily with regard to operations in this project. We're in the design phase right now for a children's online game that we aim to roll out in 2009 or 2010. I'll send more detail along when I'm able.
Best of luck to everyone still out here in Green-land.
Regards,
Allow me to fill in the gap of two whole years for the folks whose radars I still register on. After my departure from deviantART, I did some freelance work for a while. During this time, galactose and I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Once settled, I returned to the corporate work force. First I worked for a start-up company building software for government offices (mainly local government). I was starkly underpaid, the company was poorly managed, and there was a startling lack of subject material expertise. So I left there in favor of a much better employer.
For the last 9 months, I've been working for Clayton Homes, the leading manufacturer of manunfactured homes. I was doing legal compliance work in the IT department. It's a good company, with a lot of good people there. However, I'm no longer with them either.
I left Clayton in February to sign on to a new start-up with the client I did most of my freelance work with. I can't give too much information right now, as we're still in the process of setting everything up, but I hold the position of Senior Technology Consultant. I'm working primarily with regard to operations in this project. We're in the design phase right now for a children's online game that we aim to roll out in 2009 or 2010. I'll send more detail along when I'm able.
Best of luck to everyone still out here in Green-land.
Regards,
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Taping The Wire
3 min read
I am told my absence from this place has been noticable. To be sure, I'm flattered.
Please understand, 2005 was a very bad year for me, as I know it was for others. I turned 24 near the end of last year and, of those 24 years, this last one was by far the worst. If you've been a friend of mine for a while now, then you're aware already of the series of events of the first six months of 2005 that threw a chill shade on the latter half. It was in this already gloomy darker half that the painful final chapters of a close friend were written, breaking those grim clouds into a tempest that would rock the very walls of hell.
In terms of literature, I've always been more drawn to the humanitarian essence of tragedy than anything else. And yet it has not been until recently that I have been forced to experience such drama so directly. To say that I have done so with poise would be a flagrant lie. These events have left me without any sense of grace, flopping around as a fish on dry land.
I feel that I am finally emerging from this storm, but not unchanged. For certain, if one had a dime each time someone wrote in their journal that they have changed, we'd all be millionaires, but I feel truth in this. If you have noticed my silence in recent times, it is not because I have been too busy to write, as was once the case. It is because I have chosen to remain silent. I have been forced to reassess the things that hold value to me - on trivial levels and profound - and much is different. Where once I valued being an open, accessible person I now have little interest. I have not posted here because I've had little desire to post publicly, here or otherwise.
The desire I once had to be noticed in public in any capacity is so greatly diminished. I will continue to use my LiveJournal, certainly, but far less frequently and much less openly. I am withdrawing from the network of communities that I once thrived within. Speaking quite generally, I am withdrawing.
If you have noticed my absence, I say again that I am flattered that you have thought of me. But I am sad to report that those of you who only ever knew me as a personality, my silence will persist.
Please understand, 2005 was a very bad year for me, as I know it was for others. I turned 24 near the end of last year and, of those 24 years, this last one was by far the worst. If you've been a friend of mine for a while now, then you're aware already of the series of events of the first six months of 2005 that threw a chill shade on the latter half. It was in this already gloomy darker half that the painful final chapters of a close friend were written, breaking those grim clouds into a tempest that would rock the very walls of hell.
In terms of literature, I've always been more drawn to the humanitarian essence of tragedy than anything else. And yet it has not been until recently that I have been forced to experience such drama so directly. To say that I have done so with poise would be a flagrant lie. These events have left me without any sense of grace, flopping around as a fish on dry land.
I feel that I am finally emerging from this storm, but not unchanged. For certain, if one had a dime each time someone wrote in their journal that they have changed, we'd all be millionaires, but I feel truth in this. If you have noticed my silence in recent times, it is not because I have been too busy to write, as was once the case. It is because I have chosen to remain silent. I have been forced to reassess the things that hold value to me - on trivial levels and profound - and much is different. Where once I valued being an open, accessible person I now have little interest. I have not posted here because I've had little desire to post publicly, here or otherwise.
The desire I once had to be noticed in public in any capacity is so greatly diminished. I will continue to use my LiveJournal, certainly, but far less frequently and much less openly. I am withdrawing from the network of communities that I once thrived within. Speaking quite generally, I am withdrawing.
If you have noticed my absence, I say again that I am flattered that you have thought of me. But I am sad to report that those of you who only ever knew me as a personality, my silence will persist.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In