I know I’m a little late to the party (only 32 more days!), but I finally started my 2014 World Cup sticker album. Progress is slow but steady, and you can track it here.
Panini World Cup Brazil 2014 sticker album
Heartbleed Bug t-shirts
Chances are you aren’t quite sick of hearing about The Hearbleed Bug just yet. But you will be soon. While it’s still relevant and if you hurry up, you can be the coolest nerd around by wearing a new Hartbleed Bug t-shirt. Three classy designs available, way more severe than #gotofail, only at The Heartbleed Bug Unofficial Store.
Capitol 10K
HONK!TX in the Park!
Points to Jaramillo for letting us know about HONK!TX 2014 Festival of Community Street Bands a week ago on Saturday.
I had never heard about it. We made it to watch a few things at Spider House. It was great. Here’s a couple of videos.
D20 Brass Band play music from The Legend of Zelda.
Double Rainbow!
A few minutes ago, as seen from the office right after some hail.
Illya Kuryaki and The Valderramas @SXSW
Last SXSW 2014 post. Argentinian duo Illya Kuryaki and The Valderramas was in town. Since they don’t sing in English, most locals have no clue who they are. I credit my coolo shaking skills more to them than I do to Miley.
The concert was at The North Door. Great venue: Excellent sound, good pizza, short lines for beer. The rest of the lineup for the night:
- Los Petit Fellas: I missed them but was told they were very good.
- Rebel Cats: Odd Mexican band than plays 50s rock. Rarely do you see a bass being abused so badly.
- División Minúscula: Reasonably well known Northern Mexican band that play indistinct generic rock.
- Porter: Guadalajara based electronic rock. Lead singer seems like a nice guy.
Enough, cellphone videos from my excellent vantage point:
Jaguar House (IKV):
Coolo (IKV):
Peggy Sue (Rebel Cats):
SXSW Start-Up Nation Israel Showcase & Networking Event
Not quite done with SXSW-related posts just yet.
Myself (lead writer of this blog), Louise Kahn (lead singer of Terry Poison), Albert (lead singer of his shower), Jason (not a singer but quite a dancer), Anna Landesman (SynthGuitar and B-Vox). Photo-bombed by Jeff (lead founder of Vonage).
In the middle of SXSW Interactive, right before the music festival begins, I went to this event organized by the Government of Israel Economic Mission and Israel Bonds. There was food, drinks, music, and a bunch of interesting start ups showing off their work.
Israeli band Terry Poison played after the event. Really good show… the singer climbed on to every wall in the bar in her heels. Very daring.
SXSWeros
Read: “South by South Westeros”. Hahaha, get it? (their tag line, not mine). If you don’t get it, then you probably don’t watch HBO’s popular TV series Game of Thrones. If you don’t watch it due to its premise (dragons! fantasy lands! magic!) I don’t blame you, but I guarantee that if you can get past your prejudices, you will like it.
In any case, HBO has put together a Game Of Thrones Exhibition and they brought it to Austin for SXSW.
What they did is take props from the show, which are impressively detailed and well made, and put it all up on display as if it were a museum. It’s very cool to see for fans of the show. It’s also very sad that you never ever see a line this long in order to get into a real museum.
They also had a replica of the iron throne that you could sit on and have your photo taken (wait time: 45 minutes) and an Oculus Rift powered Wall of Ice elevator simulator (wait time: 180 minutes) that look unbelievably cool. Unfortunately for the reader, I did not wait in line for either.
Oculus Rift
This SXSW I finally got to check out a toy that’s been on the top of my “toys I want to try” list: the Oculus Rift. Remember those terrible and unplayable virtual reality games in the nineties? They sucked, right? Not this one…
The state of virtual reality today is equivalent to the state of tablet computers a few years ago. Many people thought it was a great idea and kept building them failed – but failed (Microsoft Tablet PC). Eventually everyone gave up on it: “nobody wants tablets”. Years later, technology catches up and someone (Apple) tries again and finally gets it right: iPad. Turns out it was a good idea from the beginning, but no got it right.
Do the people at OculusVR able to do it right?
Yes, or at least they’re very close. In summary: goggles with cellphone screen in front of each eye and gyroscopes/accelerometers, all connected to a powerful computer. The computer creates left-eye and right-eye images to match what you’d be seeing. OculusVR already shipped hardware development kits and a lot of people are creating games and demos.
The demo I tried, unlike most which show computer generated 3D surroundings, was of a pre-recorded performance of a musician. It puts you on a chair inside his studio. He walks in, sits down at the piano, and starts playing. You just sit back and look around… at the piano, at the apartment, at the dog next to you.
It was weird: when you put on the headset, you are suddenly in a room larger than the one I was actually in. I tested a newer 1080p prototype of the Oculus Rift. The screen door effect was notable and the pixels still obvious. I suspect that even at 4K you’d be able to see the pixels, although they’d be a hell of lot less distracting. If I moved my head quickly, the image would ghost and fall slightly behind.
In spite of all this, it was amazing. This is truly revolutionary and the first time virtual reality is done right. This is definitely the future: video gaming, video conferencing, streaming live performances, etc. Just give Moore’s Law a few more years…
(apologies for the vertical video, the videographer was promptly fired)
SXSW Gaming Expo
I attended the SXSW Gaming Expo on Saturday. The highlights:
Lots of Oculus Rift demos with insane lines. More on this in a future post.
A very cool Dallas-based company Captured Dimensions makes a room-sized 3D scanning rig.
They can take your picture, digitize it, and then 3D print figurines, or holograms, or whatever. A 3D printed figurine of Marcos would make an excellent addition to The MKX® Gift Shop, wouldn’t it? I was tempted to make one but I think prices will drop quickly as this technology becomes more commonplace.
We cannot forget that SXSW is, after all, in the heart of Texas. As such, two things can’t be avoided – even in a Gaming Expo: guns and Jesus:
