17 June 2008

spore creature creator

It's been years since I first read about Spore. I downloaded a few videos of the game in action. I saw Will Wright talk about the new game and how he saw it to be revolutionary. It was enough to excite the geek in me.

The game is to be released this fall (September 7th, to be exact), but today the demo version of the creature creator is available for free download. Clive Thompson for Wired has a nice little hats-off to the game. I'll have to wait until tonight to try it out. Work comes first... heh.

I'm fascinated by parametric modeling, music, texturing... anything really. And that's what this game employs (yes, even the music is at least somewhat parametrically generated).

For now, we just get to play with a very limited set of tools for the creatures.

05 June 2008

canstruction


canstruction
Originally uploaded by Archigeek
I spent about 5 hours last night with coworkers and friends constructing a giant version of a Hungry Hungry Hippo made out of canned food. This is part of Canstruction, a national food charity by architects, engineers, and others in the building industry.

Links to pics over there -->

04 June 2008

gang keynote


So Jeanne Gang gave the keynote speech at UofI's latest architecture graduation. Of course, I'm no longer at the school, but I read the speech here.

I can't help but feel that students at their graduation, ready for their first jobs, don't need more people giving them misty-eyed interpretations of the field of architecture. Yet, that's what Ms. Gang does. However, I agree with her highlights of architecture education as a producer of multifaceted people.

My friend, an architect and graduate of the UofI added these comments:
[Architecture] is a practice (at least in America and to a lesser extent in Asia) that is dominated by the money driven developers... very few of us get to work on projects that are not. ...Architects will become saviors of our built environment once the greater population finally realizes just how important architecture is to our physiological well-being, and our built and ecological environments, and force the developers of this world to adjust to what the architects believe is right as opposed to what the dollar says is right... but in our culture of consumerism, common sense is way ahead of architecture at this point...

Architecture is truly under-appreciated in America. I hope someday that may turn around. Until then, I'll sit on the engineering side of the coin.