3D Printing for the Everyman

One of the coolest little doodads I stumbled across at CES was Cubify's 3D Home printer "Cube". Looks like they are listing it for about $1300, and for that you get your own mini manufacturing facility at home.  It can create a pretty impressive array of 3D designs, anything you can imagine pretty much up to 5.5” x 5.5” x 5.5”.  





Of course you can design components to make objects much larger than that.  At the show, one of the reps was wearing a chain-mail glove and a fully flexible backpack strap made out of tons of smaller pieces.  I'm imagining loads of practical and entertainment uses for this thing... lose a boardgame piece?  Just remake it.  While you're at it, make up your own board game.  Kids break off a piece of a toy?  Just make another one.


While probably too spendy still for the average consumer today, the trend here is pretty exciting for making small scale physical creation a reality for the average Joe.  I wonder how disruptive this will be to traditional toy industry, when these things get good enough and cheap enough for everyone to have them.  


Here are some other services that offer similar capabilities, mostly via uploading to them for manufacturing (thanks END Games team for pointing these out):

http://www.dimensionprinting.com/ 

http://www.shapeways.com/ 

http://www.ponoko.com/ 

How to Take over the World: Google Native Client

"Christian Stefansen, Google's product manager on NaCl, explained which kinds of applications work well with NaCl. These include, he said, hardware accelerated games, photo editing, 3D modeling, video training software, and computer-aided design. "Anything that you would classify as heavy numbers crunching is a good fit," he said."
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-57340015-12/native-client-turns-chrome-into-high-end-gaming-platform/

Besides the obvious win for gaming, I believe this will actually have huge implications for OS and software in general... imagine using "Google Photoshop" inside your chrome browser with performance as good as a desktop app, without ever having to install anything.  Your files/assets synched everywhere no matter if you work on your tablet/laptop/phone/desktop... with real time collaboration in everything.

Is Google basically setting themselves up to not only subversively overtake the OS market (by infiltrating and hijacking any OS with chrome), but also to take over the ENTIRE production/development software industry?  You can already can see it with Google Apps vs. MS Office... seems like a logical next step.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I for one welcome our new Google overlords.

A Sad Parent on the Closure of LEGO Universe

In a recent Facebook thread between former members of the LEGO Universe team, someone commented that losing LEGO Universe felt like losing a child.  My response to that was it only takes two people about 9 months (give or take with some crunch time) to make a baby.  Creating LEGO Universe involved over 250 people and over 5 years of development effort.

Hyperbole aside, those of us in the craft of entertainment creation tend to become very emotionally attached to our work.  It is anguishing to see a project fail; it is absolutely devastating to see a project that in almost every respect was succeeding suddenly get killed.

As close as a developer can be emotionally to a game, we often forget that the players that enjoy them can have just as intense of a connection to our brain children. This note from a parent of a child who played LEGO Universe makes me as sad as it does happy... happy to have created something that had such a positive effect on someone out there.

"for all of you at LEGO universe, know that you have been an inspiration to my son and he wishes on a star every night that perhaps it will be saved."

I've heard and read this sentiment many times over in person and on the internet, especially in the LEGO forums.  I will never understand why LEGO Universe is being shuttered.

I want to say thanks to all the parents, kids and players of the game who have expressed what the game meant to them over the last year.  Although it makes me extremely sad to think of the game closing and all the resulting broken hearts, it's really good to know that for it's blink of existence, it made a brighter day for a lot of people.

That's what I live for; my LEGO Universe team created some wonderful lasting memories in a few million brains that will resonate for the rest of the players' lives.  That feels like some small success to me, even if LEGO states the game cannot be a financial one--which I probably also will never understand why.

Great Moments In Daddying

Last night, I sat down for a quick game of Chutes and Ladders with Brody.  We were neck and neck until about half way and I hit a streak of chutes.  I kept getting sent lower and lower, until eventually I lamented, "Aw man, I'll never be able to catch up with you now."
To which, Brody reached for the spinner, gave me a sideways glance and reminded me, "Not with that attitude, Dad!"
So proud of my boy!

How to Defend Your Kids From Sex Abuse: Parents Please Read

This is a touchy subject (and a long post) but one worth spreading information on. With the 5 years of parent & kid research we did on my recent experience working on LEGO Universe, I've realized how important it is to spread accurate information about child safety and dispel myths that can be a dead end waste of concern for parents, or worse cause parents to not pay attention to a real risk. What better time then back to school to share this.

A few months ago I went to a little workshop on sex abuse and kids at Bal Swan, run by Feather Burkower. I have to admit right up front, I really didn't want to go. For one thing it was three hours long. I was expecting it to be a bunch of horribly slow paced cliche warnings and anecdotes that would remind me of going to church as a kid. Tangent: funny how church is so easily associated with this topic, but I digress.

Anyway, the session was actually really good and I came away feeling glad about going. While the pacing was slow, I saw a lot of parents needed to be eased into the topic at hand, there were certainly some emotional points for many there who hadn't had to confront the issue before. Getting past that, I thought Feather's approach was really sound. Her main thesis is that you can't prevent your kids from being in situations where an abuser will have access to them. Her quoted statistics say it is just too likely, something like 

1 in 3 girls are victims of some kind of sex abuse before age 18, and 1 in 7 boys in first world countries. 

Staggering stuff.

However what you can do is empower your kids with the confidence and language necessary to get out of the situation and make any would-be offender back off.

Here are the high level bullet points that I felt were really valuable to me as a dad, separated into techniques and factoids. A few of these I was definitely not doing, or falling into common parenting traps and assumptions that actually can enable an offender much more. Some of the examples are harsh, but important to understand. It may not be comfortable to think about, but its our job as parents to be strong and protect our kids. Take a deep breath and read on:

Factoids:

1. ~93% of  sex abuse happens from a person the child knows and trusts, NOT strangers, factoring in estimates from unreported.
2. As many as 47% of abuse cases are from family or extended family.
3. ~50% of abuse happens from an offender who is also under 18.
4. Estimated 88% of sex abuses are never reported to authorities.
5. Offenders can be family, neighbors, babysitters, religious leaders, teachers, coaches, or anyone else who has close contact with children. 
   1. NOTE: this does NOT mean that all of the people you interact with are going to abuse your child, the vast majority of people in the world are mentally healthy.  The point is simply that you can never predict where an offender will come from and you can't assume that because someone is in a certain category that they won't be an offender.
6. Offenders seek out children that are alienated.  They look for kids whose parents are too embarrassed to talk about sex with them.  They look for kids who need more positive attention from the loved ones in their lives.  Primarily, they look for kids whose parents just don't communicate openly with them.

A Few Techniques 

(these are geared towards younger kids as that's where my family is currently, but for older kids check out the links below):

1. Use anatomically correct language for genitals and all body parts.  Example of why this is important: little Alice tells her teacher one day, "My uncle ate my cookie last night."  Suppose Alice hasn't been taught the word vagina and Uncle has taught her this cute little metaphor.  Now the teacher may actually reinforce abuse by naively saying something like "I hope it was yummy."  Alice now thinks this is acceptable in the eyes of another trusted adult, and the offender has secured another hold on the child.
2. Practice Body Safety Rules and respect personal boundaries.  This means your kids understand every individual in the world has the right to be the boss of their own body.   Great example: Allow your kids to not give grandma a kiss or hug if they don't want to, and instead provide an alternate form of acknowledgment such as waving or just saying hi.  This lets them know it's OK to not be comfortable doing certain physical contacts, and they are in charge of their own comfort level and boundary, not anyone else.  Body Safety Rules can be summed up simply, and they go both ways-for your child and everyone else:
• Touching and physical play are healthy and important developmentally, BUT... we don't touch other people's private parts, and they don't touch ours.  With a few rare exceptions, such as we're at the doctor together and the doctor needs to examine or give medicine. Or if the child is young enough, when mom or dad has to clean them during a bath or diaper change, but only to get clean.
• We don't ever physically harm other people.  Straightforward.
• Practice giving and asking for privacy when appropriate (going to the bathroom, changing clothes, sleeping, etc.)
• We ALWAYS play with our clothes on.  At friends' houses or when we have friends or family at our house, playing naked with other people at a young age is not appropriate and opens the door for abusers.
• We don't take pictures or make movies or drawings of other people's private parts, and it's not OK for someone else to do any of those things with ours.
3. Give your child an out for authority figures, so they know it's OK to say "No" if their safety is being compromised.  This one I used to do all the time.  Example: "OK, the babysitter is in charge, so be good and do what she says."  You've just told your kid that good behavior is whatever the babysitter says, even if it's for example, to touch private parts.  Always let your kids know they can say no to any grown up or person in charge if they are being put in danger or if their body safety rules are being broken.
4. Don't keep secrets.  This one should be obvious but the language used is key.  Differentiate between secrets and surprises.  Secrets make you feel lonely and sad and nervous.  Surprises make you feel happy and bring you together with other people. Most importantly everyone knows about surprises and there is nothing to hide after the surprise happens.
5. Understand age appropriate sexual behavior.  Way too much depth to cover here, see the linkage below.
6. Listen to your kids.  Really listen.  When you converse, it's easy to dismiss your child's seemingly random comments, especially when they are younger.  Try to practice always asking probing questions in conversation with your children, get them to elicit more detail in every conversation you have.  The more they are comfortable explaining their lives to you, the more confident they'll be to approach you if something happens.

Let all the caregivers for your child know all the above and how much you communicate to your children.  

stopitnow.org is a pretty good website with a ton of more detailed information on the subject and actual references on statistics, etc.  

parentingsafechildren.com is Feather Burkower's site, where you can learn more about her background and her workshops.

If you are a parent, guardian, or care provider of children of any age, there is no reason not to be versed in these best practices.  It's never too late or too early to start empowering our kids to keep themselves safe and break the cycles of abuse.  I hope you get motivated to learn more about this subject and share with other parents, so all our kids will be as confident and empowered as possible should the unthinkable ever chance to happen.

Norway + Videogames = Sexual Predation + Religion?

Norway has had a terrible tragedy. The person behind it was clearly insane. The predictable nonsense of sensationalist mass media attempting to attach his affiliation with video games didn't take more than a day or two.

To illustrate the ridiculous nature of associating hobbies with psychosis: why doesn't "Bible Addiction" get the same scrutiny in how many child molestation cases every year? Or on a more equivalent level, remember the east coast sniper a few years back? He openly and directly attributed that motivation to scripture. Statistically speaking in fact, we should be a hell of a lot more worried about dogmatic believers of any given religion than all gamers combined, given actual crimes committed in human history, by orders of magnitude.

Maybe video games are threatening the dinosaur businesses of TV & Print? I don't know, just a thought. Got to have one conspiracy theory in here somewhere.

Back to the point: Ted Bundy was an avid snow skier. Ted Kaczynski loved camping and swore off technology. Unfortunately, broken people do many things besides commit atrocities. Some of them are going to play games, some are going to preach religion, some are going to be astronauts. Does that mean everyone else that does any of the things that the bad person did are also bad? How about we look a little deeper into this man's past and recent history and see if we can't uncover a few more lurking issues besides whatever he used as a distraction leading up to his breakdown.

Perhaps it is just part of being human that we have to constantly search for reason and pattern and connection, that we jump to such ridiculous conclusions and associations. Sometimes, maybe it's just a plain confluence of chaos. I suspect that idea is far more unsettling to many people than being able to point at something and say "yep, that's what it was, that's the reason."

On the bright side, this is the first time in my life I've actually seen several quotes from high ranking officials involved immediately dismissing the notion of video game "addiction" having any relevant part of this man's tragic story. Perhaps we finally have some rational thought creeping into global consciousness? I'd like to remain optimistic, but I'm just waiting for someone with authority and a microphone to point at Chat Roulette or maybe Spotify or whatever else is out there that is new and scary and hard to comprehend.

(ps: addiction should really be reserved as a clinical term as it applies to physical brain chemistry changes which are literally inescapable, unlike psychological compulsions which have proven to be conditionable)

How To Stop Skype Mood Messages

Do you get a chat channel appearing and notifying you there is new content called "Mood Messages" in Skype?  This has been driving me insane for like 6 months because I'll usually stop what I'm doing to look at new skype messages, since I use it for work.  So you disrupt your work flow to look at the new message to find so and so has been idle for 30 minutes.  Great.

Every time I've attempted to solve it, I'd get more frustrated as apparently there's no option for it.  I would leave conversation, hide conversation, rename it, add it as a contact and delete it... it would seem to go away for a while, and so I'd forget.  But like a bad horror movie, IT WOULD ALWAYS COME BACK!

But I finally figured it out.  Once again, Mac is to blame. ;)

On Mac only, there is an easy setting to find under Preferences->General to disable mood messages as chat.  This is the most common solution you'll find if you go googling for it.  Not much help for PC users who are seeing this problem though, right?  Because there is no such option you can find anywhere in the PC options menus.  Yet it still happened.

So here's what was happening to me: I use Skype on both PC and Mac, but it's only occasionally active on the Mac.  Like a naive pre-1990 goose, I assumed that my PC options would control my PC experience.  However, when the Mac was on and Skype was running, it had the default setting for mood messages enabled, thus creating a chat channel and faithfully broadcasting all annoying mood updates to it.  This would in turn notify the PC client I had a new chat channel, and it would download the mirror of the chat being broadcast on the Mac client.  Disabling this option on the Mac client seems to have killed it.

I hope this little nugget of info is useful.  If I can reduce just one person's urge to kill, then it was worth it!