I missed everything today. I had a run in with too much work and never was able to manage a ride to the actual facility. Anyways, I spent the day productively reading and teaching myself all there is to know about the new bodypaint interface in Cinema 4D and wirefusion. Wirefusion is great but in the end I realized that the VRML exporter in Cinema 4D just doesn't cut it. Like no PLA for one. Looks like I'm going to stick to maya or go ahead and write a plugin.
Even crazier still I actually met Mr. Jesse Forrest Fabian in Second Life. Unfortunately, I forget to take a snapshot of the moment. We built , we smoked, we laughed.
This site seems to be going the way I want it to I just need to have more time to add more features and promote it. Winter break will be here soon. I am actually thinking of turning this into my thesis project somehow. Its a tie between this and VR and VR is just to damn elitist for me.

Well after all that I just heard the startup chime and I think it was a postive outcome for the computer surgery.

While in the middle of updating the site and working on some wirefusion stuff for my class, my brother stopped by in need of a hard drive upgrade for his iBook 500 mHz. It came with a 10.0 GB drive but he needs more space for a movie he is working on. I decided to give him my old drive figuring it was a snap to replace. Well, it took about 4 hours so far and the drive looks like - well like this picture



So here we are with his computer completely taken apart.

I spent a lot of time working on the code this weekend. There are lots more features. You can now upload images to our server. The page then gives you the address of the image and the code you would need to display an image in your journal entry. It also gives you a thumbnail and a way to delete the images stored in your directory.

Now you can also stay logged in thanks to cookies when you are updating your journal and you switch to view your journal. There will be many more features in the next month. Hope you enjoy.

I discovered that my tongue is bigger than anyone at my house right now. . . I hope that counts for something!!

For once I am truly disapointed in my students. Not the intro level ones either. Its my advanced class. I am so upset at the lack of effort my advance students give. They are seriously not trying and I am not sure why. Maybe they are overwhelmed by the possibilities of 3D design. However, I think that they are just unorganized. Some of them have projects that are really well thought out and well designed. For example, this one guy modeled an original iron toy train and another made an airplane that is a replica of a biplane - a couple other nice ones too. As for the others, I am especially sick of people coming to class without their homework and expecting that I do it for them or worse yet tryoing to do it in class while I explain something new, they will never get jobs once they graduate.

You may ask why am I writing this. Well, I got this offer for my students to create some 3D web presentations for the Wirefusion site. I think this is a pretty big honor and yet I am kinda of nervous accepting with the kind of crap some people are handing in.

I am not afraid to accept the situation where I become one with the machine. Sometimes I even welcome it, with the idea that it quickly bridges the gap between me and the collective knowledge the internet holds. I spend way to much time interfacing with machines in a primitive mouse/keyboard way and would love the opportunity to merge for convenience. However, I remain reluctant to accept a cyborg future for myself. My fear is not based on losing myself or being dominated by the machine's will but rather being dominated by the humans that make the machine which would allow me to be a cyborg.

An aspect often overlooked when discussing the role of the machine in the modern human condition is that the machine itself embodies only what the creator of the machine considered relevant. A machine is a reflection of the will of the individual programmers and engineers. This becomes a serious problem when we are dealing with ethics of internal computing. Even if the argument is that machines will be able to create themselves in the future without humans being involved. There is still the aspect that the original machines which made the machines, which in turn made the newest generation of autonomous machines are still dependent on the original design specification created by the humans in power at the time of the original machines creation.

What may seem even more terrifying for woman is that men created the computer languages and hardware structures that we use today. Granted there may be many females in the field today but the field itself was created by a the will of men. Future machine that will be considered for the creation of cyborgian humans will be based on the history computer sciences. The languages that program them may be new but will definitely be based on what languages were in the past like C or java - all languages built by men. Thus the machines must innately reflect a male perspective. The nature of future cognitive computers will definitely have a very masculine way of thinking unless there is some major intervention by woman thinkers. This leads to a situation where men inscribe their cognitive ideals onto a chip. Which is then implanted into a woman, where she begins either to function and think like a man or how a man wants a woman to think, being dominated by the male ideal - or does not accept the chip. Thus being evolutionarily left behind in the cyborgian transformation.

Machines, can be easily dominated by the malicious intent of a select group of people in power. Email servers for example, a society shifting machine that practically replaces the need for transportation in terms of messages and information. However, add "carnivore" and it becomes reminiscent of Big Brother. The issue being that the people creating carnivore, do not see it as infringing or unethical. They see it as "justice prevailing over the evil terrorists." What happens when the people in power, the ones who create programs/machines such as carnivore make the machines that may be someday implanted under my skin or in my brain.

Most importantly, It is easy to believe that the producers of these machines and programs that would directly interface with the human are going to be profit driven. They therefore would directly have interest in raising your purchasing drive. Today's machines can feed humans information, but there is no guarantee that information is true. Because of the physical separation between man and machine we can chose to ignore information that we perceive to be incorrect or of malicious controlling intent. For example, an advertisement for pornography on the internet. Who is to say that once we accept this information into an internally related machine interface that we will retain the ability to reject information. Once the gap has been bridged between man and machine, there is nothing stopping the influence of micropropandga.

Will we just be converted in buying machines - or slaves of the remaining humans who created the interface.

Lastly, even if you exclude the possible unethical agenda of the cyborgian interface creator, there is still the issue of computer viri. A computer virus of machine that may regulate your motor control and/or breathing, and or cognitive control would be a source of outside control by a third party. For example, a hacker could program you to carry out his/her murderous wishes. Also, viri could be made o shut you down. In the end I fear the influence of the human in the creation of the cyrborg n the same way I fear George Bush in the creation of a global democracy;

So, i think that my there.com avatar is really too fancy for me. Check him out. He isn't half as intesting as my second life Avatar. What do you think?

By the way my avatars name is apfeljung, the same as the second life one. IM me sometime if you are there.

I changed the elmwood banner to celebrate version 1.2. I also got a screenshot of the new "temporary" jeans I textured for there.com. They 80's style ripped but cost me $4 to fabricate. Its kind of a rip off in there. This whole scenario is rather ridiculous in that I would proably never spend $4 on a pair of jeans in real life. As a matter of a fact, while discussing over dinner, the three of us realised we had not bought any new clothes in two years.

I gave in and bought an American Airboat for $20. I figured that it really suited my nationalist patriotism and it picks up all the ladies