I want to create a non-profit that provides after school programs for kids to create and design video games, while also participating in contests where they can win scholarship money for college.

It seems like a smart idea, to me, but I’m just not sure of how to do it.

This is truth.  I have had this idea, in the back of my mind, that there must be a way to encourage a pro-creation, perhaps less consumerism-y attitudes in kids.  I know of so many people – yes, young people! – who are so driven to be hand-fed their entertainment, every day.  They don’t understand the value in creating, in crafting.  They hyperdigest games and look blankly at the screen when there is nothing left.

I want to offer an alternative.  I want to gear kids towards creating and solving, rather than having disks/cartridges that solve those problems for them.

Ideally, this would be a non-profit.  I would want the money coming in to go towards scholarships that enable kids with passion to create – and do so smartly!  – to go on to higher education with less stress on their parents.

Do I seem like an idealist?  I think this can be done, and can be effective.  Schools seem to be in dire need of more after-school programs around here, and in many other places.

Some bullet points on what I would probably need:

• Smart tools for creating simple games from scratch (think WarioWare DIY and Construct)
• Those who are passionate about teaching, and do it well, to help design curriculum and activities
• Math, art, computer science whizkids to help me make meaningful lessons in design
• I would love to incorporate teaching algorithms into the design curriculum… mmm.
• NON-PROFIT EDUCATION
• FUNDING EDUCATION (these are in CAPS because they are the most intimidating!)

If you have any tips, please pass them my way.

All ideas/suggestions appreciated!  We’ll also be at the STS-132 NASA shuttle launch, which should be fantastic!

I had to call tech support (nice folks, btw) to discover that low space correlated.  But seriously – why couldn’t there have been a warning on the phone?  A simple pop-up would’ve been fine!  It’s not like this is my SD space – it’s INTERNAL space.  I really expect them to keep up on that or prevent me from, uh, limiting my phone’s functionality.  Seriously.  Also, the internet cache doesn’t clear automatically… at all?  I mean, what?!  This is a phone, not a laptop, not a PC.  I expect a bit more vigilance in keeping space down and making sure that the phone is, first of all, a workable phone.

I guess that’s been my biggest complaint about the G1: it should, by default, ensure that it is always a functional phone.  I still get times where the Contact list crashes, or I can’t get to the dialer as the phone behaves sluggishly (without 6 apps running, at that, or anything non-Google running).  I understand that your memory is also a pagefile, but come on!  Set aside space for it, don’t make it my responsibility to fish around and find out that you’re suffering.  For ONCE, learn from Windows by reserving that pagefile AHEAD of time.  It’s just for this reason!

January 4th, 2008 in “Silence Theory”:

This Esquire article got me thinking [again] about the power of personal silence. There’s a gap between what people understand by what you say and what you don’t, especially whether you say anything or not.

In high school, I was a fairly depressed teenager.  Typical small-town, too-smart kid with the right classes and the wrong people. I reached a point of bubbling anger that effervesced through the day, preps and jocks in wise avoidance after a few months.   I was aggressive in indoor gym, especially with soccer and badminton.   If that wasn’t enough to strike fear in the hearts of classmates, my silence usually did it.  Nothing can communicate unfriendliness like a refusal to answer a question with a glare that could cut iron.  The mystery, though… you felt the mystery of yourself after doing this for some time as what you didn’t say left all the more to your assailant’s imagination.  I frightened myself a bit, after some time, as I realized that I didn’t have anything to fill in those empty spaces, either.

On the other hand, you can have the deepest, sweetest communications with those you love without an utterance passing.  A total 360 to the same space!

What do you say when you speak?   Are you chatty, covering up social discomfort, or filling a space that would otherwise seem too awkward to live within?   Do you use silence to strengthen the words you do say?   It’s kind of like keeping your word by not upholding promises to it unless it is of dire importance… people will know your actions or words mean business.

November 5th, 2007 in “the TECH of Jen Grier”:

Phantom limbs… a strange concept I haven’t thought of since my old studies in meditation and the supernatural. The idea that your brain has such a part in conceiving senses as opposed to a direct route of feeling from what you to touch to what you know is definitely a disturbing thought. It all seems to happen too quickly for that to be true.

The “bunny taps” really got me. The premise is that you can tap two points across a distance on your body – say your arm – and feel a tap between those points, as if the sensation “hopped” across the distance. This happens with fairly quick taps. It’s a fascinating phenomenon of sensation.

I’ve probably missed my chance to celebrate at all, as most folks celebrate in mid-April, but I have to give it a shot!  Locals, give me details!

My friend-code is 2751 3945 0117 and my nickname is Jenothy.  Please give me yours so we can start sharing games and whatnot!

P.S.: I accidentally tasted Bitter Yuck! spray this week.  Yes, the spray that is intended for CATS.  I’ve never tasted something so horrible and so difficult to get the taste out of my mouth.  Yuck for serious!  I can’t believe it doesn’t work on my cats.  Perhaps I should make a microgame about it as a catharsis.

Perhaps it will open up once I’ve submitted my own totally fresh “In Wonder” game.  (Liquid wouldn’t fit.)  I’ve also gotten into the habit of making extremely detailed sprites, which makes me wonder if I actually have some kind of artistic talent.  I’ve always thought about getting a small tablet, but I never felt justified in doing so.  I’m lucky to have many artists in my life, even for personal projects, but WarioWare asks you to make art – now! – so I’ve tried.  And tweaked.  And become obsessed with my limited palette.  And patterns.  And how to make the right shadow using the comic tools (screentones, if you know what I mean).  I slowly went from the I-don’t-care-about-art-Player who would deliberately make a blob and two spots for a face to recreating Pikachu and Ghastly for two of the last jobs in the last batch.  Accurately (as far as 32×32 or 64×64 pixels will allow me, I forget how big those were).  With shading and perspective.

I’ll see if I can post pictures tomorrow.  I’m really proud of them, to say the least.

Oh, about the actual game making:  I have started my first all-me, no-tutorial game.  It’s in a semi-realistic style.  I was thinking about making sad/serious minigames.  For this one, it’s a boy, alone in his barely-lit room, looking depressed.  I was going to make the start command “Contemplate Futility” or something along those lines (the above has too many characters and wouldn’t fit).  The music is already simple/ultra sad.  I’m not sure what the action is, or if there should be nothing (no in-game response) to do.  Just… the direct command, to the player, to empathize.  I think that’s a shocking change from the usual lighthearted and quirky tone of microgames.

Can you make a stunning emotional experience in 4 seconds or less?  …Why not?

November 9th, 2007 in “Silence Theory”:

“Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation… Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.   His anxiety subsides.   His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.”

- Jean Arp

I’ve got lots of exciting projects in the cooker, but nothing to show for it yet!  It’s a pain, I know!  I’m hoping to at least finish my Theremin project soon, but there’s no guarantee.  Also, if you have any tips for wading through boxes of memorabilia, please pass them along.  It looks like I may be moving in the direction of Greenville when my lease is up, but I don’t want to do that without owning much less, you know?  Moving is such a pain, and I hope to be the smartest I’ve ever been about the process this time.

Oh, and a certain lovely boyfriend recently surprised me with WarioWare D.I.Y.!  I hope to make a few little games that don’t stink.  I’ll be sure to share them when they’re born.

Before I forget: my time was monopolize by a crazy accident on 85 South, coming from Spartanburg to Greenville.  It took me ages to get out of it!  Just terrible!

September 22nd, 2007 in “the TECH of Jen Grier”:

Tom and I returned to Whole Foods for a second round of observation. We wanted to look into viable options for improving the system already in place for checking-out.

What I realized that was not readily apparent before:

• There are two sides! The express-lane side has five lanes while the regular checkout lane side only has four.
• The “regular speed” side was much more patient and calm. They also seemed to understand the system much better, and were generally a bit more oriented than their express counterparts.
• I was able to sneak an overhead video of the express lane! It’s a little horrible, but perhaps it’ll give some additional perspective.

I observed both this past Thursday.   You can see my results for that day on GoogleDocs.

My statistical summary of both days follows:
Average Confidence Level: 2.147
People who looked at the hanging LCD: 85/109 (78.0%)
People who looked at the sign with information on the register locations: 2/89 (2.25%)
People who looked to a staffperson for help: 35/89 (39.33%)
People who looked at the blinking register lights: 45/109 (41.28%)
Was the person disoriented with the location of the register?: 43/109 (29.45%)
Did the staff person ask the customer to take their turn?: 14/52 (26.92%)

Tom summed it up in this PDF. Some height adjustments and better use of the LCD and colors were big on our list, along with better directions for customers to the registers.

Overall, this study reminded me that even the most fabulous technology doesn’t amount to much without serious design study.  I’m glad we had a chance to check this place out!

Today, by comparison, will be spent in a rural stretch of land where my apartment is.  Occasionally, I will hear a car pass by on the road.  One of my neighbors told me that the traffic on the road was “ghastly and loud,” that living near it was nearly “unbearable.”  I had to pause, because this place has been one of the most peaceful places I have ever lived.  We are a few hundred feet from one another, I’d wager.

There are times when I miss Japan for reasons like these.  The kind of respect that people would have for strangers – for each other – was so high.  It was communicated daily in those morning commutes, even when the A/C didn’t work in the subway cars.  Regardless, you needed to respect those around you by moving little and making no sound or unnecessary gestures so everyone would keep cool in a difficult situation.  That is humanity, to me, or maybe the essence of human collectives.  Feeling that conformity for the greater good was both sublimating and fascinating.

October 22nd, 2007 in “Silence Theory”:

An intriguing topic came up in my Digital Audio Processing class at NYU: by listening to music while you study, it forces what you are reviewing to enter a different part of your memory.  What you learn can be recalled easily, but you cannot interact with it deeply because of the multiprocessing of learning and, in a sense, ignoring the music around you.Interesting.

I tried doing 60 pages or so of reading yesterday for classes that needed to be internalized more than memorized.   I did this in silence. By the time I finished, I found myself desperately craving sound, music, and change.   However, I can definitely say that what I read is well inside my brain.

The key is balance, I believe.  If you force yourself to encounter too many sensations at once, consciousness dictates that some information will be absorbed and the rest will have to subside. By trying to read deeply, you desensitize yourself to the background music…

The other day, I was working in the NYU: ITP fabrication shop on a midterm project. During the course of the evening, the hum of the shop and clatter of people created nearly unworkable conditions.  I put in strong earplugs and, to my surprise, found them entirely ineffective.   The speech of people was too impulsive – too much articulation – and that could not be numbed enough by my devices.   I gave up the moment and left until less intrusive conditions resumed.

The respect of space, in such confined arenas, seems totally lost.   When I traveled by train and subway in Japan, the unspoken law of quiet and spatial respect nearly deafened my preexisting Western cultural norms.  I was instantly subdued to the group acceptance of these two rules by the sheer encompass of them.   Somehow, we do not communicate the same understanding or observation of strong, positive social suggestions by ourselves: we need libraries or other declared quiet spaces for that purpose.  The struggle of one soldering student, it seems, does not even tip a balance to the casual many.

Are we hardwiring ourselves to be ignorant of undesired sound scapes?

Are we losing sensitivity to the natural consciousness of our sound environment?

Would a good teaspoon of silence each day regain an awareness of what we are forced to miss?

I’m glad to resuscitate these older thoughts from a grave in a PHP database.  It just didn’t seem right to copy/paste them into the Multiblog without some background and reflection.

February 29th, 2008 on “Interaction Faction”:

I own a DS Lite.  It’s a great little portable system, with tons of cool titles like Contact and New Super Mario Bros., yet there is a fundamental problem with many of these games.

Why, good people, am I unable to SAVE at any point in the game on a PORTABLE device?

What developer has the nerve to overlook this seemingly necessary feature of a gaming environment in which power off can occur at notably unexpected times?  Where shorter play time is inherent to one’s commute?

Please don’t get me wrong – I can take a good Wario Ware fix like the next gamer, but is that my only option?

Let’s look at a fairly complex game with, absolutely, the ability to save at nearly any point: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  Any turn in which you had character control, you could immediately save and power down, no questions asked, and arrive at the very same place in battle.  Did I mention that saving is always possible outside of battle as well?

The leads me, naturally, to approach the DS as another system more likely to stay home than travel for fear that I play on my weekly commute, get through a small, yet worthwhile chunk of game, but find myself unable to save when I must depart and re-engage the world we live in.  Futility at its finest.

Game developers, I beg you, PLEASE implement a save function at any time.  Yes, I’ll leave out cutscenes if you throw it on every non-battle menu.  We can even negotiate what time of battle engagement, if you like.  For other genres, this is not yet standard!

Raise your portable system of choice high!  Fight to save your game whenever you feel empowered to!

This post was for an assignment with a classmate; we were studying the behaviors of people with technology in the wild before offering up some design critiques and improvements.

From September 17th, 2007 in “the TECH of Jen Grier”:

TECH on the Road:

On my way to the city this morning, I picked up a discount pack of tickets for the Hudson-Bergen Lightrail from one of their [damned] vending computers. The touch screen is awful to see almost all of the time, and the buttons often don’t work on the number pad, forcing me to use cash instead of my debit card. (I only saw 3 other people purchase tickets as a I waited to the train. They used cash, too, and were often squinting at the screen. 9:15AM)

I jumped on the LightRail itself, which is a fabulous convenience of transportation, and without it makes my commute very expensive. (There were at least 10 people on my car, but it fluctuated often and people were moving about. 9:25AM)

I noticed the over-abundance of businessmen hunched over PDAs on the train (2 people at about 9:45AM), poking at touch-sensitive windows into their sheduled lives with a pinprick of a stylus. I never understood why something so small was intended for a demographic with large-ish hands

When I transferred to the PATH going to 33rd St, I charged up my MetroCard using my debit card. (At least 10 people used these machines within the few minutes I was there. They were doing a variety of purchases and refills, some restarting because the machine didn’t understand the order while others gracefully filled their card with ease.) More people than I could keep track of swiped their cards to get through the turnstile, but every one out of 20, I’d say, was a confused traveler who needed a moment to understand what was needed and what to buy (with gigantic luggage in tow).

On the PATH, there were music players everywhere. I wonder if I notice it more when I forget mine at home. I saw at least 15, a handful of which had the signature iPod earbuds. I brought my first-generation Shuffle with me today, too, and it immediately lessened the monotony of the trip.

When I got off the PATH at 9th St., I saw at least forty cellphone-gabbing power walkers as I approached Broadway. I’m still caught off-guard by people walking by without carrying a mobile phone: I don’t see the Bluetooth headset and I end up thinking they are talking to themselves in a crazy fashion.

Going home from my observation with Tom, I picked up a cheap pair of sandals on E 14th, and there was a cash register present to ring up my sale of exactly $5. Back in Jersey City, the big thing is to use the walkie-talkie function that some cell phones had, not unlike speakerphone. I suppose it’s easier than cradling it next to your ear on your shoulder all the time, but it seems strange to open your conversation to the public as you’re walking down the street. I only saw one person doing this today, but I see about 10 on average when I don’t have a commuting-to-NYC school day.

IN DEPTH:

I’m working with Tom on this project. We’re checking out the check-out at Whole Foods Market on E 14th St. and Broadway, up by Union Square. Their express check-out system was unlike anything I had seen before: think 5 lines, each with a color. A large LCD display at the head of the line shows five bands of color, and rolls a number down on each band periodically. That number is the register destination of the first customer in that color’s line: you see the number, go to the register, and check out. A loudspeaker reinforced the number of the next free register. This system is meant to handle a large volume of customers. However, we found that they had a staff member babysitting the front of the lines, often telling bewildered customers where to go or that it’s their turn to leave. He also ended mitigating disputes between customers who walked through without understanding the system, angering those who were still waiting.

Here’s our data so far on GoogleDocs. Some of my more detailed notes follow:

• Many people weren’t accustomed to the height of the LCD for information.
• Some customers were upset to find themselves waiting in line while a free register (denoted by a blinking light at that register) opened up, regardless of whether another customer was traveling to that register or not. The assumption, at a glance, was that the system was ineffective, and therefore a waste of time.
• The sound source of the loudspeaker was mounted high on a wall post to the right, not in the direction of the LCD. Most customers didn’t seem to acknowledge the messages it gave.
• The color/number system passes over the language barrier.
• Some people blazed through the lines to a free register with a blinking light, altogether bypassing other customers and the wait system.

Here is an overview of the assignment from the class page.

October 7th, 2007 in “Silence Theory”:

I’ve begun this blog in an effort to explore a phenomenon.  Perhaps this is more personal than universal.   If you’ve found me, I hope you find interest here.

This began with a load of laundry.

Laundromats, as you may be aware, are generally mechanism-filled spaces of suds and socks.   The audible pangs of the washer to the creaks of every drier can make the visit a session in audio pollution very, very quickly.

What I did to change that was wear a set of earplugs for the session – a serendipitous find in my bag – and took note of the immediate calm I found myself in.  The machines became more of a distant, indiscernible cloud… my tactile sense kicked up with the rumbles of rotation.  I enjoyed the distance between myself and the conversations in the room, which were beyond my business, you know?

Entranced by this effect, I tried it again on the LightRail, traveling from my downtown apartment in Jersey City to Hoboken.   A nearby toddler began to voice his upset with Thomas the Tank Engine when the plugs went in, and I was blissfully in my own, yet shared space.  Again, there was the lack of machinery (moving trains tend to squeal and gurgle) and a deadening of all frequencies, making the space seem less aggravated, less uninvitational.

On the PATH, there was a similar feeling of disconnect.  In a more dense space, there was less sense of selfness, but I was even more grateful for the separation between my ears and the metal grinding of the PATH.  (If you’ve been, you know the shrieks of the track, high-pitched and obtrusive.)

These were all instances of silence and my own stillness, however.  As I walked from the PATH station to school, I found that the earplugs themselves increased my sense of “inner sounds”, such as my breath and footstep reverberations.  I could also feel my pulse within my head, which was alarming until I realized that it was, really, just my own, and it’s been happening without my notice for many years now.  Initially, I had reservations about wearing the plugs in the city – would be too unaware of my surroundings that my safety would be forfeit?  Somehow, that was not the case.  Over the day, I had adjusted to my senses of touch and sight to accommodate for the “loss” of outer hearing, and I feel that I was acceptably attenuated to the new perception recipe I was stirring.  The other aspect of ear plugs is that, although many high frequencies feel rolled-off, the impacts of normal and loud sounds generally do make it through.  If I am in the city and a car approaches, for example, I can hear it and be aware, but it is a softer, round sound when it gets to me.  I have the suddenness without the aggression.

I am interested in a less invasive sound experience while in the city and elsewhere.  Perhaps further study will awaken the truths behind what we hear, our choices, and the outcome of our daily experiences.

*Disclaimer: I don’t recommend wearing earplugs for long amounts of time unless they are manufactured for that purpose.  It can, in the least, be uncomfortable, but poor plugs inserted improperly run the risk of hurting your ears.  Be safe, check things out on the packaging or look them up on the Web before delving into your own sound space experiments.