Eve online, the flying in circles simulator
During a bout of insomnia the other night, I decided to take a look at eve online. For, you know, research purposes. I didn’t have much fun though because, unfortunately, somewhere during the process of creating their massively multi-player online sci-fi universe, the game designers forgot to add any video game into it. As far as I can tell, the game consists of:
- Fighting; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at another ship with your blaster ray
- Mining; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at a massive rock with your mining ray
- Salvaging; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at a shipwreck with your salvage ray
- Computer hacking; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at a computer with your computer hacking ray
- Deliveries; watching your ship fly itself while… actually this one doesn’t involve ray guns
The game does have a couple of things going for it. Firstly, in the future everyone will apparently use Icelandic Króna as the galactic currency, which is cool. Secondly, it looks quite nice.
Dissertations are tricky
I’ve spent the weekend with my brow furrowed (furrowed, I say!) rewriting the abstract of my dissertation. The new title, which I’m sure will change at least one more time, is:
The London Underground diagram is to London, as [blank] is to the World Wide Web.
As I tried to explain to the guys this morning, the dissertation is about interactions with ‘objects’ — digital or otherwise — and how our strategies for dealing with those objects affects our experience. Which is to say, it’s still about how awesome the London Underground diagram is.
Project triangle
The project triangle places my work in the area I think I’m working in, and positions it relative to other work that I’m going to steal appropriate bits from. Michel Gondry and Liam Lynch aren’t on there, but they sort of sit just outside of the bottom right corner.
Time paradox
We watched the film Déjà Vu (under the pretext that it would be useful to help us think about space) and ended up having a massive argument about time travel afterwards. There was actual shouting. Spoiler time…
Denzel Washington’s character goes back in time to prevent something that happened four days ago and manages to get himself killed in the process. By saving the day though, he gives himself no reason to go back in time in four days time to stop it from happening. Which is where it gets confusing. The film mentions branching realities, and Luke is happy with that explanation. Adam and me however, have a problem with it. The problem is that one reality causes the other to exist, and the reality that is created prevents the previous from happening. At which point a time paradox causes the universe to explode.
It’s all explained in this helpful diagram (which is a recreation of the one I drew at the time).
Helvetica neue
Only just noticed; they changed the R. It’s slightly less phallic!
Precedent presentation
Talked for a few minutes about my current thinkings on Helvetica and Space to a group of slightly confused / hideously hungover first years. It went alright; they didn’t really know what the hell I was going on about, but that’s ok. I made a rather nice keynote presentation for the occasion, of which you download a pdf version if you are so inclined. You won’t be get the nice transistion effects though, so just shut your eyes and think of Steve Jobs instead.
The hunch I’ve been having is that type, especially Helvetica, can have an effect on space as much as a person can; in the right context. The fact the capital R allegedly looks like a penis isn’t particularly relevant, but it makes for a good slide.
