Intelligent Artifice

Chef Owners Who Work The Line April 11, 2008

First a dance video, now a cooking story? Yes.

Here is Shuna Fish Lydon, in her own inimitable style, telling a story about a day at work, ten years ago, cooking at the French Laundry.

Finally Eric says something that makes us all look up from our minute, detail oriented tasks. “You heard me, get off the line, all of you, I’m going to show you how to cook.”

[…]

“Stand over here, I’m going to show you how to put out this table, I’m going to show you how to cook, how to work like a team, how to put out just one ticket.”

And then he did. He cooked every single course, by himself, with not another soul on the line touching sauce pots or spatulas or garnishes. He jumped this way and that, gracefully, using every part of his body, talking, admonishing, telling, teaching, showing, explaining as he went.

It was the most amazing thing I ever saw in a kitchen.

There’s more. It’s a good read (lol @ “I didn’t know what I was doing, I was drunk when I opened that restaurant”). A meal at the French Laundry looks like this - she’s not talking about frying some schnitzels here.

Does this have anything to do with games? Of course it does. I recognize many things. You may see other ones. If you don’t see any correspondence, you’re not thinking hard enough about what you are doing.

I previously linked to Shuna’s blog here and mentioned Thomas Keller here.

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Nice viral ad March 4, 2008

I didn’t realize it was an ad until the end. Even if the ball is CG, it’s still cool.

(Thanks, Cyberwoo!)

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AAAAAAAAA! February 21, 2008

AAAAAAAAA!

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Shawn Blanc interviews John Gruber February 19, 2008

This may be of more interest to me than to you, but I enjoyed reading Shawn Blanc’s interview of John Gruber, the writer of Daring Fireball. They talk a lot about writing on blogs, the evolution of Daring Fireball and Mr. Gruber’s writing style, etc. I found this interesting as a blogger, less so as a game developer.

(Via Brent Simmons.)

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Inside the U.S. Navy’s Armed Robot Labs February 3, 2008

Wired has a small article about the U.S. Navy’s armed robot labs. Even though on some level it makes no sense to say this: This is good inspiration for sci-fi settings.

The Navy’s MDARS-E is an armed robot that can track anything that moves. Told that I was the target, the unmanned vehicle trained its guns on me and ordered, “Stay where you are,” in an intimidating robot voice. And yes, it was frightening.

I found it striking, although not truly surprising, that development in robotics has mirrored development in game AI, at least in the sense that having a robot navigate through a space was solved a while ago, and now people are trying to make robots that cooperate with humans. (The games industry still has the edge in making robots that act against humans.)

(Via Boing Boing.)

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Frozen Grand Central February 2, 2008

Improv Everywhere, a New York based group that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places involving thousands of undercover agents, recently organized an amazing prank in Grand Central Station. The idea is simple, but the effect is stunning.

(Via Boing Boing.)

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Pre-registration for PAX 2008 has started January 31, 2008

It is unlikely I will ever be in the US at the same time as PAX is held, and even more unlikely I will ever fly over just for PAX. So why am I blogging about it?

Gabe wrote a particularly nice post about PAX 2007, and it reminded me how large and positive an influence he and Tycho have, what with Child’s Play and PAX, where gamers can come and feel good about being gamers. And they achieve all that while appearing to remain nice, down to earth guys. Plus they make a damn nice comic. Kudos to them.

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How Goldman Sachs made money from the sub-prime mortgage crisis January 28, 2008

Last year, as I am sure you have heard, there was some trouble in the U.S. sub-prime mortage market. Lots of financial companies on Wall Street lost billions, except Goldman Sachs (WSJ article, Guardian article). Bloomberg.com columnist Michael Lewis draws an interesting conclusion from this:

I can’t think of another example of a big Wall Street firm saying so clearly through its trading positions as Goldman Sachs did over the past year that it thinks the rest of its industry, including its own people, is a bunch of idiots. They have obviously designed their firm to take into account their idiocy — without ever having to put too fine a point on it.

(Ironically, making billions while everyone else loses money may actually get Goldman Sachs in trouble.)

This has very, very little to do with games, but I found this a fascinating story. I find it interesting how industries and big companies deal with situations like this. (I may find this a lot less interesting if civilization collapses due to this, but well, we’ll deal with that when we get there.)

(Via Kottke.)

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Steven Poole’s “Trigger Happy” free for download January 13, 2008

You can download Steven Poole’s book “Trigger Happy” for free from his website, as a CC-licensed no-DRM PDF. Yay!

[…] I thought I’d try an experiment, and give away for free an “ebook” version of my first book, Trigger Happy, with no “digital rights management” whatsoever. It’ll work on anything that can read a PDF.

Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics. It was first published in 2000; this is the revised edition with the Afterword written in 2001. […] The book is offered under a CC license, for a limited time only. I’m not sure how limited that time will be, so grab it while it’s hot.

Thanks Steven.

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Creative meetings January 8, 2008

Teller - he is really called just ‘Teller’ - of magician duo Penn & Teller is working on a production of Macbeth. A Macbeth with stage magic, and Grand Guignol effects, and the intended aim of scaring the audience witless. I haven’t been this excited about a play since I heard about the theater version of His Dark Materials (which I sadly never got to see).

Here Teller talks about the origin and goals of the Macbeth project. But here he talks about the first design meeting. Two things about it struck me:

There is nothing in the world that I love more than creative collaboration. And to be in the presence of these amazing artists, all joyfully planning how to scare the pee out of an audience with a four hundred year old horror story, well, the only word I can think of is ecstasy. Plain and simple. Ecstasy.

To work together with other creative people on planning and designing a great project, on creating an experience for an audience, that is an amazing feeling. When everyone’s goals align and obstacles fall away and there is a chance - even a tiny one - that this project might become reality… that is a wonderful feeling. Moments like that make it all worth it, together with rare moments of praise for something you worked on (like when I met someone recently who happened to be a big fan of a game I worked on).

I bounded back to my hotel in the chilly air and couldn’t fall asleep for the next four hours. I’d been looking forward to this meeting for forty years.

This is kind of depressing. Or isn’t it?

(Via Neil Gaiman.)

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