I've spent the New Year so far getting ready. I'm getting ready for a vacation, only 6 days away, which will take me to, among other places, Guam, Yap, Fais, Palau, Tokyo, & Nagano. I'll be gone for 5 weeks, so the quiet pace that has been the norm for this blg will continue for a while.

I'm also getting ready for a career shift of sorts. After 7.5 years of freelance Flash & design work, I'm making the shift to an almost full-time art career (I will still be doing some consulting and choice design work on the side). So, the last month or so has been dedicated to tying up loose ends on projects and 'wrapping things up', as it were.

The next year will be a busy one. I have been lucky enough to be commissioned by the Surrey Art Gallery, along with two other artists, to produce a major interactive community art exhibition. I'll post more details once things get going - it's very exciting.

For now, it's back to work! 

 Way back in 2001, savvy internet marketers at Microsoft created a big stir with their campaign for Steven Spielberg's movie A.I. The campaign, code-named 'The Beast' used a clever combination of fake websites, e-mail messages, and even phone calls to draw people into the experience. Thousands of people played along, trying to solve a murder mystery that was loosely linked to the movie. I was carried along for a while myself, trying to get to the bottom of it all.

The A.I. campaign was so new and interesting that it spawned a new genre of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), which lived somewhere in the DMZ between truth and fiction. It seems that someone is at it again, this time promoting a new J.J. Abrams film, to be launched in 2008. A search for 'Ethan Haas' on Google will show you that the groundwork for this new ARG is already laid thick - with blogs and fake sites popping up already. Perhaps the most engaging one is ethanhaaswasright.com, which offers 5 clever puzzles for users (like me) who are willing to poke around a bit.

The puzzles are a bit tricky, but they are certainly possible. Each one 'rewards' you with a short video message from a mystery man in a ball-cap, who slowly lets you into the story of Mr. Haas and an apparently bleak future. It will be interesting to see how the new 'Haas Game' compares to 'The Beast' - i imagine if it is nearly as deep as it looked there is a fair amount of fun left to be had.

I'll be making a tour of culturally significant cities over the next three weeks. First I'll be in Athens, enroute to an unnamed Cycladic island where I'll be relaxing and recharging for a week.

After that, my girlfriend Lindsay and I will ship out for Venice, to take in the chaos that is certain to be at the Venice Biennale. I have been checking out previews of the work, and a lot of it sounds interesting, indeed. I'll try to be first in line to see Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's 'Some things happen more often than all of the time'. Lozano-Hemmer's work is interesting. Check out 'Pulse Room' - in which one hundred incandescent light bulbs are controlled by the heartbeat of the public. If anyone out there will be at the Bienalle and would like to get together for a drink, please drop me a line.

Finally, I'll head back to North America and zip straight to Minneapolis, where I'll be presenting at FlashBelt 2007. To say I am excited about this event is an understatement - it is going to be fantastic.

The result of all of this travel will probably be a few non-tech posts over the next few weeks, so you can take a deep breath and enjoy the break from all things dorky. But, just to tide you over:

Mario Klingmann has released a new and perhaps final version of his BitmapExplorer Class, which allows you to save JPG and PNG images from Flash 8+, using AS 2.0.

The Washington Post ran a fascinating article on Sunday, in which they question the effect that context has on appreciation of art. To look into this question in detail, they arranged an experiment: into a busy Washington transit station, they anonymously placed Joshua Bell, one of the world's best violinists. For 43 minutes, he played six classical pieces.

Did anyone stop and listen? Was Bell's virtuosity recognized outside of a concert hall setting? You'll have to read the article to find out.

The Post story resonated with me. For almost three years I had the pleasure of watching some very fine musicians play on Sunday evenings at a restaurant at the corner of my street. The playing was truly world-class - two of the regular participants tour with Neko Case - but passers-by and casual restaurant customers often payed little notice. I found it constantly frustrating that people were seemingly oblivious to such wonderful performances. 

After reading this article, I feel at least a little bit better.

[link from We're Not Wired Right] 

I have spent the last few months working on a new project that involves modeling a virtual economy. Building a stable system is hard work - particularly one with a lot of individuals and a lot of variables. I was very pleased to find a smart and engaging book that directly addresses some of the problems that I was (and am!) trying to solve.

In The Nature of Economies, Jane Jacobs proposes that economies have a lot in common with ecosytems. Indeed, she argues that economies are bound by some of the same natural rules that affect growth in groves of trees, warrens of rabbits, and cities of people.

The comparison of economies to natural systems is nothing new. Jacobs' approach, though, is fresh - the book comes together as a series of discussions between five fictional friends. Though it's hard to imagine a group of people actually talking the way these characters do (and what kind of name is Armbruster?), this tactic is very effective, particularly when used to explain complex concepts.

Jane Jacobs died almost a year ago at the age of 89. She was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1996 for her seminal writings and thought-provoking commentaries on urban development. She wrote The Nature of Economies in 2006.

I have a disease. I'm not sure what the clinical name is, but the syptoms are obvious enough. Every 15 minutes or so, I'm forced by an uncontrollable urge to log into FedEx.com and check the progress of my shiny new MacBook Pro as it makes it's way from China to me.

It's not a particularly serious disease, and I think I can keep the symptoms under control with enough rest and plenty of fluids, but the friendly shipping folks sure don't help in the battle. Here is the route that my shipment is taking from Shanghai to Vancouver:

• Shanghai > Anchorage: 6985km
• Anchorage > Memphis: 5024km
• Memphis > Vancouver: 3116km
• Total Travel Distance: 15125km

In comparison, a straight flight from Shanghai to Vancouver is approximately 9051km. While I understand that this strange route is due to FedEx's spoke-and-wheel model, it is quite agitating. Surely they could employ a scheduling algorithm of somekind to make this process more efficient?

In the meantime, if you'll excuse me, I have to check my shipping status...