Lynda is a video training provider for application like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash, Adobe Dreamweaver, 3ds Max , Adobe Fireworks etc.
At the site you can find extremely useful video tutorials for each application. The tutorials consist of Quicktime videos with narration and exercise files. The legal ways to have theses tutorials is to buy them through the official site and, in no case, you should download them illegally from torrent sites.
It's a great help, especially, for semi-pro or, even, pro applications.
According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite): "Most historians of video games also hail Spacewar!, coded by students working at MIT in 1961-62, as an important milestone in the development of video games. Spacewar was developed on the experimental PDP-1 operating system which allowed multiple users to share the computer simultaneously. Spacewar could be played as two-player game involving warring spaceships. However, none of these early programs were consider to be important or worthy of further comment at the time."
During a trial starting Wednesday, shoppers in London will be able to buy Underground tickets and newspapers with a wave of their mobile phone.
Hundreds of people have been given special handsets fitted with a built-in credit card and an Oyster card, the device used to pay for train and bus tickets in London. When the phone is passed over a scanner in stations or shops, money is deducted from the mobile phone as payment, the trial's organizers said.
People can spend up to 10 pounds at a time at selected shops and cafes, including cafe chain Coffee Republic, alcohol retailer Threshers, and book shop Books Etc.
Wireless transactions are common in some countries, such as Japan, where consumers already use mobile phones to pay for everything from burgers to train tickets. Organizers say that if the six-month London trial is a success, the scheme could be extended to include bigger payments, more shops, and concerts and plays.
Those taking part will receive 50 pounds (about $103) worth of Oyster journeys, 60 pounds off their O2 phone bill, and 200 pounds to spend with the in-built Barclaycard. The companies behind the trial include Transport for London, mobile-phone firm O2, Barclaycard, Visa Europe, and Nokia. (source: Reuters)
Generative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes.
According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite): "One of the most influential mathematicians working with numbers was Fibonacci, who described number series that have fascinated artists ever since. These so-called Fibonacci Numbers - (a series such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987) have influenced a whole range of artworks from sculpture to animation.
More recently artist and animators have found the mathematics of fractals and mandelbrot sets to be useful in describing organic structures such as the curve of a sea-shell.
A number of artists have explored the opportunities made available by computers running generative programs. They have used fractal and Fibonacci programs to generate artwork. These techniques are now available and are used by animators and website designers."
Generative Music
"As Michael Nyman notes:
"Experimental composers are by and large not concerned with prescribing a defined time-object whose materials, structuring and relationships are calculated and arranged in advance, but are more excited by the prospect of outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process of generating action (sounding or otherwise) , a field delineated by certain compositional rules." (Nyman 1999:4)".
Performance Art
"As I mentioned in an earlier lecture on cyborgs the artist Stelarc has explored the relationship between the body and machine in his work. In the Bio-Robotic Choreography work (2001) he developed an ‘insect-like robot” and explored human/machine interaction. As the project notes on the Arts and Humanities Data Service website notes:-
“The robot served as an extension to the human body, enabling the participant to experiment with alternative kinds of choreography. The robot's mode of locomotion, its direction and speed were controlled by the shifting of the human participant's weight or torso movement” (AHDS 2001)."
Stelarc (born Stelios Arcadiou on June 19, 1946 in Limassol, Cyprus to Greek Cypriot parents) is an Australian performance artist whose works focus heavily on futurism and extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centered around his concept that the human body is obsolete. Until 2007 he held the position of Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He has two daughters, one of whom (Astra Stelarc), has continued in his footsteps as an artist.(source: wikipedia.com)
Queen - Heaven For Everyone video clip feat. Stelarc
You can also visit Dr. Stewart's webpage "Betwixt and Between"and in the section "cybertext", you can find very good examples of generative art, using flash graphics. Furthermore, I searched for examples of generative art and I found some interesting video installations. So, I created a playlist on YouTube and if I find something else, I'll add it to the playlist. The playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BBC01E0E25ECCFF0
Hypertext. Does it change everything? Is it the end of books? Here are some cultural characterisations of books and computer-mediated texts (Stewart. 2006:57&74):
Cultural characterisations of books
* durable; * bounded; * fixed; and * finished.
Cultural characterisations of computer-mediated texts
"...hypertext fiction was building on a recent literary tradition in which there has been considerable interest in non-linear writing."
Is this post, and every other text, non-linear? Probably, yes. It, probably, is non-linear in space since the reader can be redirected to other pages and other texts through links,photos and videos. Even if someone does not think that the term "non-linear" can be used in this occasion, I believe that the computer-mediated reading experience is completely different than the real reading experience. A book has a structure, a beginning and an end. Hypertext has a more complicated structure (which can be edited and changed anytime) including digital "crossroads" (links, videos and photos). What about beginning and end?
Hypertext has a beginning but the end seems absent. The end isn't absent; it's not unique. In every hypertext we have the opportunity to define which part of the text is our ending, so we have many endings in one text. When reading a book, the end is defined by the last page and the back cover. Hypertext allows us to read selectively what we want and place our own full stop wherever we want.
Another question. I can find Dr. Stewart's notes at Blackboard Academic Suite as hypertext. From there I copy-paste some parts of the notes to my blog, using the opportunities that hypertext offers. If I print these notes in 4-5 pages, have I transformed hypertext into a simple "linear" text? Personally, I think yes. When I read Dr. Stewart's notes online, I have the opportunity to use the links, to watch videos related to the subject or read related articles. Therefore, my reading has not a specific structure. When I print the same notes, I cannot use the links so I am, just, reading 4-5 pages with a beginning and an end. If hypertext is printed, it loses some basic structural elements and, then, it gets a different form. What is a cybertext? According to Dr. Stewart's notes:
"a cybernetic system that generates a different sequence of signs every time the work is experienced" (Ryan 1999:16) However, It is important to recognize that cybertexts do not have to be computer-mediated, for as Espen J.Aarseth noted:
"A cybertext is a self-changing text, in which scriptons and traversal functions are controlled by an immanent cybernetic agent, either mechanical or human." (Aarseth 1994: 71) In his seminal work, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Aarseth recognised that the ancient Chinese text the 'I Ching' is an early example of a human-controlled cybertext. He also regarded tarot cards, runes and other divinational texts as early human-controlled cybertexts. Typologies of cybertext
The majority of Aarseth’s book deals with computer-mediated cybertexts. He provides a fascinating typology of examples, such as:
First of all, iPod Touch is great (i know that maybe in 2-3 months something else will be greater but that's the interesting thing with gadgets). I went to Apple's Regent Street store in London and I gave this thing a hard time! Very nice characteristics though the keyboard is a bit annoying (we can't have everything!).
