Places to go...

IO9 offered up a selection of these fabulous interstellar travel posters recently. Or at least it did until the article and the link mysteriously vanished, otherwise I would point you right at them.

So instead I point you to the artist Tyler Nordgren's site which contains said glorious illustrative pieces....Which is probably the best step.

Enjoy!

Immersive Worlds

I tend to play video games like a tourist.

I like to poke about in corners, gawp at scenery, landscapes & vistas and explore to the point of neglecting the gameplay.  For some reason, the space unknown tends to pull me along relentlessly.

I recently tried out my son's copy of GTA V recently, and ended up stealing a jetski and spending most of the next hour cruising the coast before abandoning it to clamber up the mountains.

Game engines, the technology that supports the development of an immersive world environment, have evolved into truely astonishing tools.

Crytek's CryEngine, used to create futuristic shooter games, was recently repurposed by the British Library and GameCity for an Off The Map competitive project.  The winner was Pudding Lane Productions from De Monfort University who created a astonishing representation of 17th century London from before the London Fire of 1666, based on maps and British Library data.  Check out the video showcased below:

As someone with a interest in history, the ability to roam an immersive historical environment makes certain games is incredibly attractive.  Games like the Assassin's Creed series allow you to roam an 3-D representation of 15th century Florence, Venice and Rome.

Other games let you wander a fictionalized version of New York or Los Angeles, or meander through the late 19th century Mexican frontier.  The freedom to explore and the lure of immersive gameplay are what stands out, making these games and game environment a striking contrast to many games that funnel you through a experience "on rails", with no options to strike out, explore or engage the gamescape on your own terms.

Games like Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed and Skyrim provide you with a vast world, and a myriad set of directions, quests and options for the player to make of what they will.  You can follow the character's journey in Red Dead Redemption, or just enjoy the thrill of topping out over a desert rise at sunset and watching a thunderstorm chasing away in the distance.



The next time you see your kid playing a video game, stop and take a look beyond the mayhem, at the world they are careening about it. 

You might be surprised at what you find.



Coming Home....

Cmdr. Chris Hadfield is on his way back down from a five month stint as Commander of the ISS.  He has probably done more for the education, popularization and visibility of the space program than anyone in recent memory (including Mohawk guy from JPL).  Before leaving, he recorded (with David Bowie;s permission) a new cover version of "Space Oddity".   If you do nothing else today, give it a listen and take a second to marvel at all aspects of this - recorded from orbit!

Vieux Montreal

We were recently in Montreal for a Bantam hockey tournament (before their record dump of snow).

If you have ever had the opportunity to roam Montreal, I highly recommend making sure you tour through the Vieux Montreal area, in particular la Basilique Notre-Dame is well worth a look.

Pics are below, along with a couple shots of the boys hockey action.  Not a great tournament result for the team, but much fun had by all!

Place d' Armes, Vieux Montreal

Basilique Notre-Dame, interior

Rue Saint Sulpice

Basilique Notre-Dame, interior

Rue de la Capitaile

He shoots....and is robbed!

More action at the net

Rue Saint Paul, Vieux Montreal

Rue Saint Paul, Vieux Montreal

Restaurant des Gouverneres

Vieux Montreal

Basilique Notre-Dame at night

"Slow beats the time-worn heart of Mars..."

If the Olympic excitement has been distracting you, you might want to take note of this spectacular and astounding moment in history - the amazing success of the Curiosity Rover. 

Curiosity is part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a long term series of robotic exploration mission of the red planet.  Curiosity itself is a large mobile laboratory with a payload ten times that carried by previous rovers.  Designed to roam the surface of Mars for at least a full Martian year (687 days), Curiosity is equipped with 17 cameras, a laser spectrometer and sample collectors (among other testing equipment) and is designed to test the Martian soil for potential signs of microbic life.

Curiosity successfully landed last week utilizing a spectacular and terrifying deployment system that combined reentry, parachute deployment and then a final descent via a tethered "sky-crane", a new and innovative landing deployment that had never been attempted before.

Essentially JPL and NASA have landed a rover the size of  mini-Cooper on a planet more than 85 million kilometres away.

Curiosity is currently situated in Gale Crater, a massive 154 km wide crater estimated to have been created 3.5 billion years ago.  The exposed terrain of the crater will allow Curiosity a full view of the range of Martian geology, opening a window into the planet history.  The image to the right (courtesy of NASA), shows Curiosity on the surface of Gale Crater.

For a look at the surface, where Curiosity is currently, I highly recommend clicking on the link for a look at the incredible and immersive panorama that Andrew Boderov stitched together at 360 Cities blog.

Find out more at NASA's Mars Science Laboratory site.

New York, NY

Over the great bridge, with sunlight through the girders making a
constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up
across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a

wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen for the first time,
in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

I had my first opportunity to visit New York last year. 

It seems strange, given its relative proximity, that I had never had the opportunity to go.

I've visited any number of major cities - San Francisco with the framing magnificance of the Golden Gate, the bustle of Fisherman's Wharf and the intricate warren of steep and twisted hill streets; Houston, ultra modern with steely glass petro towers, arctic air conditioning, and a startling mix of affluence lying next to trailerparks festooned with rusted, wheelless cars on cinderblocks; Tokyo, the city of villages with the needle-sharp Ginza, the chaotic buzz of Roppongi and the Blade Runner ambience of Shinjuku slick with neon in the rain.

All of them are great cities in their own way. 
New York has the feel of one of those "world" cities - a city that seems to capture all the granduer, variety, complexity, density and accretion that several centuries of occupation and life leaves in its path. 

The city is a strange mix of the familiar and the unknown.  Familiar, due in part its role as the setting for countless Law & Order episodes.  New York is that staple of television and movie copland - and so the place names roll off the tongue with maddening recognition, though their true geographic veracity lies only in the imagination and often vague generalities - Battery Park, Soho, the Brooklyn Bridge, mid-town, Times Square, Central Park, Harlem... Their true location is less than the perceived map of the imagination.

The reality is one that television and media  fails to capture a sense that can only be understood through visiting - an appreciation for the sheer hubris and scale of the place.  You need to experience it, you need to see it stretch out at your feet into the humid, thick June air from the deck of the Empire State Building.  Manhatten fades into the distance in two directions, relentless in a long and langourous stretch of pavement, steel, ambition and concrete piled high upon itself, a canyonland of skyscrapers, windows, fire-escapes, water towers and rooftops, the fine details visible only through a .50 cent telescope, relentless and geometric, tidy only at a distance.

So this was New York.