Kickstarter Campaign: Earth 2 Hub App

Hello reader, I hope you don't mind me mentioning this but I've recently got involved with an amazing group of people - namely the team at Earth 2 Hub which is all about giving a platform to new/futurist science and tech, which explores ways to bring nature and humanity back into harmony.

They've just launched a Kickstarter campaign for the development of their new app, which looks amazing. I helped to do some of the filming for the video and am really looking forward to seeing how the campaign comes along. If it takes your fancy, or you're interested, please do check it out here.
There are some really awesome rewards in it for backers, and having backed a few Kickstarter campaigns already, I can honestly say the rewards really work here in terms of giving back in kind. While campaigns offer up 'thank you, you're amazing, you get a digital copy of xx', (which I'm not knocking by the way, each to their own capabilities), as a backer, we kind of want cool, worthy stuff in return and this campaign won't disappoint. Major kudos always goes to Frank and Melissa, the co-founders behind E2Hub and Mark Raimondeau who never ceases to amaze with all the visuals and graphics around E2Hub.

Ok, so on a less 'selfish' note:
At the moment, Earth 2 Hub are generating some amazing content but the whole platform - and the entire vision of bringing earth and humanity together through sustainable means - is produced entirely voluntarily. I've had the pleasure of writing for them and attending some exciting, futurist events. What's more, they embrace new tech entirely and I think it's such an amazing space to be in. It would be great to back such thoughtful  and inspiring ventures - and yes, I essentially write all this because the whole concept behind it all is very dear to me.

Also the APP looks like it's going to be a real corker - while the details won't be finalised or known yet as it's yet to be developed, you can definitely see that it's being thoroughly thought out. (You only have to visit the E2Hub website to see how good it looks and how much it's followed). As an Android phone owner myself, E2Hub can surpass the initial funding so we mere mortals that do not own an iPhone can enjoy it. But for now, it'll be great for the target goal to be reached! Lastly, there's hardly any futurist apps out there, so it will be cool to get behind something so unique and pioneering and that will fill the gap.

...Whoops and Stumbled On...Plot and Logic get the finger in Star Trek: Into Darkness

Egads, reader, it's been awhile since my last post (typically then, I posted 3 times in 1 week - what up wid dat?) So alas, I did not keep the momentum up, as they say. 

Anyhow, the main reason is that all writing time (the precious hours one hoards when one gets back from work) has been dedicated to polishing off me manuscript! And I don't want to break THAT momentum. So yeah, apologies. 

'My mistress picks me over a social life!'

Also, on a lamer another point, I'm not sure what my next post should be on. So of course, reader, I do what any respectable blogger does and hijack another's post and link to it for your perusal. 

It be about the new Star Trek film which I must say I enjoyed but found it farcical in terms of plot and sense. And of course, the amazecakes peeps at i09 have documented the EXACT monologue that went on in my head during and after watching the movie: *headscratching* 

Kudos goes to http://thesnowolf.com for posting this
uber cute and distracting pic! Taaaw!

Some choice bites that made me laugh out loud, I mean LOL, several times (tried to pick ones that wouldn't reveal too much but, just in case...):

**You're now entering the domain of SPOILER ALERT Sam**

[Taken from Star Trek Into Darkness: The Spoiler FAQ]

*I have an English accent for no clear reason!*

Look, I know Star Trek is science fiction, but hasn’t Trek always at least nominally tried to get science right? Shouldn’t a Star Trek movie give the tiniest shit about such things?

One might presume.

UGH.

Yeah. You know how the first movie was all about Kirk’s journey from a rebellious kid to a more mature leader of men?

Yeah?

Well, we’re doing that again!

...

I think it’s nice that in this day and age, a white male can still be cast as an Indian played by a Mexican. White men really have come a long way!

...

NO DON’T YOU SAY IT

— Spock —

NO GODDAMMIT DON’T YOU SAY IT

— Spock yells —

AAAAUUUUUUUUURRRRRRGRGGGGGGHHHHH

“Khhaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn!”

F**k.

So yeah, that's my excuse for not writing a proper review on the film! (Also, aside addressed to J.J. Abrams himself, DUDE, enough of the light flares?!!) Peace out.

Star Trek: Into Darkness OST - Opening Track

Sci-Fi London Opening Night: Screening of Byzantium

I was most graciously invited to the opening night of Sci-Fi London 2013 by Frank of E2Hub fame to see Byzantium. I'd been holed up for the last few weeks making sure I was writing everyday after work, so I guess I didn't mind breaking the routine. So I dragged myself out to remedy my deprived social quota (like when you play The Sims  and your sim's social meter is in the red?)

I have good hair* and also I'm having fun...right?

(*colour tones may differ from actual hair colour)

Obligatory Storm Troopers at a Sci-Fi event

So, about the movie: Byzantium. It's brought to us by the director of 'Interview with a Vampire' which I can't really remember, other than realising that little girl in there was Kristen Dunst. Byzantium benefits from having a strong cast, (if you disregard how utterly ridiculous our Gemma Arterton was in Prince of Persia) but alas, the union of good director and cast does not a strong film make.

Obligatory Red Riding Hood hood needed to denote alternative gothicness
Courtesy of http://theartsyfilmblog.com/

You are now entering the domain of *SPOILER ALERTS* Sam

WINNINGS:

1. I appreciate that it was a completely different take on the vampire story and mythos and it focused on a mother-daughter dynamic. So, it's not what you expect at all, which is so refreshing because let's face it, vamp stuff is so overdone right now; we're continually force-fed blackened and charred fodder and forced to nod our heads. (Also, it wasn't what I would call your typical sci-fi - if it hadn't been screened at the Sci-Fi London, I wouldn't have tagged it sci-fi. But then the genre is hard to pin, sort of gothic-esque? - good or no? Not sure...)

2. The opening chase scene was pretty riveting - this wasn't Daniel Craig leaping about doing parkour shit or whatever but a prozzie running through buildings, in her trainers! +10 points. 

3. The cast - everyone played their parts very solidly. 

4. Pretty scenery and sets - I know I should elaborate here also but yeh...

FAILS: 

1. It was tres slow and lacked any real sense of pacing. It was as if the movie was a dying a slow death after that one chase scene. There were too many lingering shots of Saoirse Ronan - she's got that interessant face but please, there's only so much of her vacant stares you can handle.

2. Confusing jumps between times - this essentially just makes you realise it's a movie about unveiling the origin of our MCs' predicament, slowly and achingly drip fed. It did relay the sense of elongated time as vampires who now live 'forever' - unless someone machetes your head off with a Byzantium blade - or wire/floss?

3. Over cooked moments - the blood waterfalls for example and the 'telling' of how becoming a vamp gives you a new vision through new eyes but not really showing that? I think the filmmakers thought mystery and prolonged anticipation (and heavy handed voice over) makes up for lack of clear story and motivations of characters.

4. General plot or character choices... leading to:

What the hay..?! moment:

Why, if you were a prozzie all your 'mortal' life til the point of near death, would you choose to remain in said profession after being given the gift of eternal life? Really, truly, there has to be a better way.

Why I'll never get vamp flicks:

When are people, sorry badly written characters going to GET over themselves? The end, in which lanky dying boy is taken to Isla de Muerta (I've named it that because so many questions are just gleaned over in the movie) to become a 'sucrient' - why does everyone relinquish humanity?!! You're going to need to drink blood - one drink, one drink - for the rest of endless time. Reconsider my friend, reconsider. (sure I get it's like drinking water after an insane thirst but still...after 100 years, it'll get old...) Also, think about your parents!

And why don't modern vampires just raid some blood banks? Or do they need it warm, 'fresh'? They can warm it up themselves, non? Have mulled blood? *shudder* Just got an image of a flamboyant vamp swirling a wine glass filled with blood, sniffing it. "Vintage blood from the Bordeaux region? Excellent."Or perhaps to break from the mundanity of how he consumes his 'aqua vitae', he makes a blood sorbet?

VERDICT: 5/10

Lesson to be learned: Don't go out to fill up your social quota, chose writing every time :P

So not appropriate but what the hay! The Sims 3 Music

Stumbled on...Genius GIFs to celebrate 'Mean Girls' Anniversary

Screen Crush have posted a wonderful piece on 'Mean Girls' which is SUCH an iconic film for me and definitely one of my all time faves because the script is so funny and timeless and it brought Tina Fey to my attention (one woman who I kind of aspire to like but unless I inherit some sort of witty/funny gene, I dunno...I may fall short of the mark).

Anyhow, the fine people at Screen Crush have geniusly put together a whole load of GIFs, capturing some of the best moment/lines of the movie. I've gone ahead and selected a few of my faves.

All time fave moment!

To see the full post with the amazing GIFs, clickety click here. 

Alas they forget one of the best moments, 'You can't sit with us!': 

Thank you, Tina Fey, thank you!

Camp Myth - now as an iPad app!

This is a plug for a writer friend, reader but bear with! Said writer is the fabulous Chris Lewis Carter, author of the Camp Myth series, of which the first book is out to buy from Amazon either in paperback or e-book (- and yes I'll be yawn-somely predictable and recommend you purchase the paperback - the wait for delivery is worth it, if only to see the fabulous cover art and illustrations in their print form). I wrote about when the first book got published as I was a happy backer of the Kickstarter project.

Anyhoo, Chris has worked with developers and in the trend of all things digital tech, he gives us the shiny app - a visual novel which works very much like a story-led game on the DS, not unlike Phoenix Wright or Hotel Dusk (see my post on Phoenix Wright mashup with My Little Pony - oh yes, reader, it exists and it is better than your imagination can conceive).

The Camp Myth app is available for iOS, so boo, not for Android but it's ok, I downloaded it on my sister's iPad. The story follows the main characters you're introduced to in the book series - adventurous fae, Felix, the nerdy cyclops, Argee and the feisty kitsune, Moxie. We follow their shenanigans during their time spent at a summer camp for mythological beasties, earning merit badges by doing some pretty dangerous tasks. Oh yes, you read right, reader. It is tres jolie/amusee -?? Gah, forgotten my French. The lack of proper protection for these kids embarking on fatal missions is reminiscent of the Harry Potter series.

 The look and feel is very nicely done and it's cool to see the character coming along as we're treated to seeing more of the Camp Myth world and more of Felix, Argee, Moxie et co - and their witty repartee. As the story goes along you get to make some choices but as you should know by now, reader, everything comes back to the story. It's engaging and sweet and I want to read more. Either you can unlock the next parts of the story by purchasing them for a small fee or wait for the release date. I'm going old school and throwing faith in the 'anticipation makes the experience sweeter.' I love the series feel and appreciate the drip feed approach - consider me hooked!

For a superior, legit review, click over to what Tapscape had to say. 

To recreate the cutesy video game style music with a flash of adventure, for your ears: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Hyrule Field

You need something to hold in your hands: the brain's connections to writing and reading

This post is technically a write up of one of my entries in my Morning Pages diary. Don't know what 'Morning Pages' are, reader? For shame! You need to look it up in the seminal The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (of which I've only read two chapters but yeah, that's my problem, not yours).

The need to post up what I ended up writing (splurge of the 'waking' brain) was propelled by a brilliant online article about the brain and the written word, vis a vis reading on paper/page as opposed to reading on screen. The subject began churning in my mind after watching a video that displayed how a school in the US still put high priority on the children learning cursive writing and not just using tablets. The video also showed a professor of linguistics arguing that nostalgia alone is not a good enough reason for children being made to write with pen and paper.

Image provided by http://www.aotearoaeditorial.com

I've always had the notion that there is something integral about the act of writing out by hand with a pen on paper. When I really want to arrange my thoughts and get serious about forming a structure, I revert (sorry, wrong choice of word), I gravitate to paper and pen. And I know it has little to do with the notion that it is some sort of fanciful, wholesome craft, it's something natural, obvious and the brain likes it (backed up by the article I reference below - 80% of students of University of Mexico 'preferred to read text on paper as opposed to on a screen in order to "understand it with clarity".') 

Anyhow, here's what I penned in said diary on the issue (somewhat fragmented and not quite polished, which I think better illustrates how ideas and language 'flow' - a word my English teacher forbade us from ever using - from one to other, an effortless continuity) :

Do not forget the importance of brain, hand, pen and paper, a seamless line of action, one that is a low energy act with a high satisfaction rate; little or next to no resources are needed - no draining of electricity, no charging, no Wi-Fi, no pulling at any source of physical energy. All that is needed is the simplest of tools in hand. Scientists should recognise the importance of acts and crafts, so many activities, that work or require a tool in the hand - sculpting, cutting, sewing, cooking, surgery, drawing, engineering, gardening, carpentry, fishing, archery - anything that requires an implement to create and form something, fundamental to our brain waves, to the unfolding of a creative vision. How many times do we find it so hard to get something down on the screen? No one computer tool does it all perfectly. You have to chop and change. But the tool in hand, the paper, the tangible material, eliminates that initial halt/barrier, it begs that the activity happen right away; the unfashioned parts of wood that need assembling, the allure of the blank page, the sketchbook that is clean and ready for your drawn expressions, experiments, developments.  

I enjoy going to graduate shows and picking up the sketchbooks to see how they develop; the penmanship itself is like the map lines of the artist's mind and expression. None of that can come across quite so vividly and immediately on the digital screen. Sure, there are many amazing digital creations, digital paintings etc, but they don't give you a glimpse into the 'workings out'. For my own coherency, I have all my notes that I've written on pages in the digital space. Anyone, in theory, could view them. But there would be no fun that way because they are alone arranged for me. You would switch off from this somewhat blah display of digital notemaking, revisions etc. However, if I were to put on an exhibition, where my sketchbooks, illustrations and notebooks were on display, my 'workings out', it would be a story in itself, it would have meaning. It would give you a sense into the process, into the madness of the craft. Like with maths, you may get the end answer but everyone knows the accomplishment comes from the 'working out of it all', the language of the brains' processes and comprehensions, making those connections between this and that, elements strung together so that you align x with y. (I definitely feel dumber since leaving uni and I definitely don't connect up knowledge quite like I used to because there's little sense of an actual 'space' in which this happens).  

So please give students this indelible craft, this necessary act that gets the brain warmed up. Don't deny them the joy of how their brain truly works, how they truly tick. That way they'll have material, a retrospective that allows them to realise their own improvements, their evolution. You simply cannot track that through digital means. You cannot lay it all out and really see. 

After writing all of this, I was struck by the idea that reading is an actual physical activity, it's not just creating images in our minds, it goes beyond. And lo, I found this article from Scientific American, via one of my fave blogs, Forever Young Adult.

'...evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension. Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done. A parallel line of research focuses on people's attitudes toward different kinds of media. Whether they realize it or not, many people approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper. 

"There is physicality in reading," says developmental psychologist and cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University, "maybe even more than we want to think about as we lurch into digital reading...

Understanding how reading on paper is different from reading on screens requires some explanation of how the brain interprets written language. We often think of reading as a cerebral activity concerned with the abstract—with thoughts and ideas, tone and themes, metaphors and motifs. As far as our brains are concerned, however, text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit. In fact, the brain essentially regards letters as physical objects because it does not really have another way of understanding them.

Poetry to plug the holes

I'm not really one for poetry, I kind of skated around it for years, thinking it required some other kind of intelligence to pen. Now it's what I do when I can't think of anything else, an ice-breaker in the otherwise awkward catch-up meeting I have with my on-going writing projects, projects which just sort of stare of me and ask "Soooo..."

(HAD to include this image I found when I typed in 'poetry is hard')

I was flipping back through one of my notebooks (has a pretty cover but not too pretty that I can't bring myself to write in it) to see how long I've been jotting my morning pages when I stumbled on this crude little creation:

IN COMPLETE FAITH 

———————————————————————————————

With complete faith

I take this step, 

I make this leap,

I strike out in a sea of mist. 

No beacons light the way;

I become my own light, 

Shining bright enough to make day. 

In complete faith I am guided

By my own words and will, 

Running, no fear of standing still.

In complete faith, 

I take this step,

I make this leap, 

Even though the ground

Has ceased to be,

I now float or fly 

As is meant to be.

I don't actually have a good one for this, (I was shocked to realise my last two posts didn't even include them! Oversight!) So instead I'll fix on whatever I was listening to as I wrote this: 'Our House Below' - Cecile Corbel from 'The Secret World of Arrietty' Soundtrack