10/25/04 04:31 - ID#31353

Finally I have another Advisor

Dr. Halavais agreed to be my one of my thesis committee members. I am so excited about the opportunity to work with someone who is truly interested in my topic of study. I guess this means I am really going to end up graduating and possibly enjoying writing my thesis.

He wrote: What an exciting project. Yes, I'd be happy to serve on your
committee, and look forward to talking with you about your work.

Now I just need to decide between asking Trebor or Loss for the third member. I will have to start working on the paperwork now.

Permalink: Finally_I_have_another_Advisor.html
Words: 102
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/22/04 11:35 - ID#31351

My Day and the Email Code

Today was a rather action packed day. I woke up about ten minutes before I had to take Terry to work. I was feeling kind of low because I was stressing about this stupid Safari javascipt bug and about the imap module freaking out after the transfer. The imap module is the part of the site that reads the emails that people send it from their phones or other places.

Since the upgrade, it hadn't worked with attachments which had to end soon because I am getting my new sidekick which can mail voice recordings to my journal soon. It was the only part of the site PHP code that I did not program entirely from scratch and it was killing me to try and fix someone else's crappy script.

I decided to just sit down and address the issue straight up starting at line 1. Within two hours I had a perfect working solution that is well commented and also helped me understand exactly how the imap_fetch_structure(); function is structured in PHP. I love PHP

in case it is not obvious. So now you can email images to your journal from any picture phone again or even from your desktop computer!

This was the exact reason for the little lull in my journal. Without being able to send images from my mobile I was always sad. Hopefully life will get better now.

Permalink: My_Day_and_the_Email_Code.html
Words: 238
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/22/04 11:38 - ID#31350

Eduardo Kaks

Eduardo kaks came to speak at UB today. He was an influencial member of the early digital poetry movement. You might think you haven't heard of him but he you probably have. He is most well known creating alba the green glowing bunny

. This is is his website

He talked a lot about one of his latest projects called genesis, where he came up with a system for translating a bible passage from genesis into morse code and then into a DNA structure. It's all documented on his site

. Then bacteria were impregnated with the dna sequence and are then exposed to UV light via interaction over the web. You can mutate the backteria yourself here

.
Afterwards the bacteria is collected and the translation process is reverted so that the mutated bacteria end up saying something in english.

Most of his new art address issues with transgenic art and "genetic modified reality Â© " (I am coining that phrase which as of this moment is not found on google.). It's not really so much what the art itself looks like or does but that it makes people talk about the issues. I can respect that yet he seemes like a high price "intellectual prostitute." His work is flashy, seductive, trendy and expensive. I mean that in the best way possible. He is famous and wealthy - I would trade in a second.

Permalink: Eduardo_Kaks.html
Words: 253
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/23/04 07:04 - ID#31349

Hodown Visit

So now that I got my cell-phone to work with my journal again, I can update with some photos (e:lilho) 's birthday visit. There arn't that many as I was not so motivated to take photos when I couldn't send them right away but here they are.

Basically it involved eating and chillaxing [search]chillax[/search] We had pigwings for the first time at fat bob's, I will write a review about it sometime today. They looked like giant 8ozchicken drumsticks but we really some port cut. They cam with tasty homemade chunky blue cheese sauce. I would suggest them to anyone who likeboth pork ribs and chicken wings.

Permalink: Hodown_Visit.html
Words: 115
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/23/04 07:14 - ID#31348

Package

I love my new CD, weel I haven't actually heard it yetbecause I'm not home and my car doesn't have a mp3 cd player but the package itself was the cutest thing ever, I especially liked the ransom note, it's good to see people using it.

I'l put I on the radio later today. Thank you (e:twisted) , you are the best.

Permalink: Package.html
Words: 64
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/23/04 08:18 - ID#31347

I think I found a third member

I think I finally found a third member for my thesis committee which means I can hopefully start to move toward the graduarion process. He wrote this paper

called Blogs and the â€œSocial Weather" on blogging which I found on the net.

Here is the letter I wrote to him for historical evidence of this phase of my graduation.

Dr. Halavais,
My name is Paul Visco and I am a graduate Student in the Media Studies MFA program at UB. My thesis project is centered around a blogging community web site that I created for the Elmwood Strip (

) community of Buffalo.

I have been looking for a third faculty member to join my thesis supervision commitee and Shawn Rider from media Studies pointed you out as someone who would possibly be interested in my work. Below is the official description of elmwoodstrip.com which has been around since June of 2003. We currently have ~170 members, with a total of 5809 journals and 2817 images uploaded. The users have written a total of over one million words and numerous friednships an intellectual engangements have been formed via the site. The site was recently reviewed in the Buffalo News' link section.

I was excited to hear that there is a faculty member at UB who is interested in this type of online community and research and who could push me in the rght direction for the written portion of my thesis. I am finishing my third year of study and would be graduating either in June or September of 2005. If you are interested I could meet anytime next week to discuss the issue further.

Sincerely,
Paul Visco

Permalink: I_think_I_found_a_third_member.html
Words: 285
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/23/04 08:42 - ID#31346

Virtual Reality User Test

While at school the other day I found this poster requesting user's for a Virtual Reality test for Josephine Anstey's

Interactive Virtual Reality Drama The Trial The Trail. I made the 3D models for the environment and rendered this image so it was exciting to see it hanging up.

Here

. are some links to renders from the latest scene I worked on

[size=m]Want to test out VR?[/size]
If any of you are interested in testing out virtual reality, you get to wear motion trackers and 3D glasses, then click on this link

Permalink: Virtual_Reality_User_Test.html
Words: 115
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/24/04 04:22 - ID#31345

New Icons

Here are some renders of the new icons [inlink]news,520[/inlink] I modeled before they got shrunk down to mini-icon size. I am thinking about going with that rounded plastic look for a while.

Permalink: New_Icons.html
Words: 39
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/24/04 10:12 - ID#31344

Tasty Sushi

(e:southernyankee) , (e:matthew) , (e:terry) and I hit Toronto up for an evening of magic on the town. We started out with at a fanc-tastic sushi bar complete with fried green tee ice cream desert.

I has yellow fin, salmon, tuna, clam, squid, spider rolls (soft shell crab), shitake sushi. Then miso soup, then seaweed salad. MMM tasty.

Then we headed off to babylon on church street for some high end martini's. I has chocolate sunday.

Permalink: Tasty_Sushi.html
Words: 79
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/24/04 04:25 - ID#31343

Surfing the journal with the print icon

It is so much quicker to surf the journals using the printer icon found at the bottom of any journal. There is now a prev and next button on it so you can quickly surf throught them without much formatting overhead. I may add colors tonight.

Permalink: Surfing_the_journal_with_the_print_icon.html
Words: 46
Location: Buffalo, NY

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