The Beatles Rockband Trailer
A beautiful game trailer -- was made by Passion Pictures with the Gorillaz crew, including director Pete Candeland, animator Robert Valley, and graphics by Alberto Mielgo.
(silicon valley, CA)
I'm Ben!
Home:
> San Francisco, CA
Me:
> http://www.google.com/profiles/silbermann
Work:
> http://coldbrewlabs.com
The Great Ape Trust
In celebration of my Dad's birthday, my Mom took him to the Great Ape Trust of Iowa. What is the Great Ape Trust? I'm glad you asked
"Great Ape Trust of Iowa, formerly known as Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary, is a world-class research center dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Located in southeast Des Moines on 200 acres of lowlands, river forest and lakes, Great Ape Trust is among the largest great ape facilities in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape: bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans."
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Grandma Hass
Apparently, adding a slice of avocado to any dish makes it worthy
of the prefix California. See 'california- burger, -omelet, -roll,
-salad, etc. Overall, I'm a fan of the world's fattiest fruit, and as a happy resident of California, I thought it was time to do a bit of wiki-pedia-ing to learn more. Here's the
rundown of interesting things I learned:
- All Hass avocado
trees are descended from a single "mother tree" that was raised by a
mail carrier named Rudolph Hass, of La Habra Heights,
California. Hass patented the productive tree in 1935. Tragically, the mother tree died of root rot and was cut
down in September, 2002. The Hass family naturally used the wood to make all sorts of wooden heirlooms.
- The word "avocado" comes from the Nahuatl word āhuacatl ("testicle", a reference to the shape of the vegetable). Historically avocados had a long-standing stigma as a sexual stimulant and were not purchased or consumed by any person wishing to preserve a chaste image.
- The first mention of avocados in English was in 1672 by W. Hughes, physician to King Charles II, after visiting Jamaica. He calls them "one of the most rare and pleasant fruits of the island.
- Because the avocado is a year-round crop, some olive oil plants, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, process olive oil during the olive season, and avocado oil during the rest of the year. As a culinary oil, avocado oil compares well with olive oil.
- Oh, you noticed that the avocado is a year-round crop! That's because avocado's can stay on the tree for months without over-ripening or rotting.
I also came across a very tasty looking recipe for avocado ice cream. Basically, the avocados take the place of eggs in the recipe. Definitely a weekend project for this summer.
(photo courtesy of the very talented evan blaser, facts from wikipedia)
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Family Trip to California
My Mom, Dad and sister all came out to California for spring break. We were lucky enough to enjoy great food and unseasonably warm weather. The highlight of the trip was definitely feeding 'Butch,' a retired Hollywood elephant who lives on Vision Quest Ranch in Salinas, CA.
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Quick Trip to Buffalo
I stopped in Buffalo to visit my Grandfather. It turned into an impromptu family reunion when Rebecca, Luke and Elliot drove up for a day too! Grandpa is looking better and better every day. Elliot (who just started walking) probably doubled his lifetime 'mileage' during meandering strolls in the halls at Canterbury.
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The Heist!
My favorite part of Superbowl 2009 was the Coke Heist Ad. Thanks to the incredibly talented folks at Coke and Wieden + Kennedy.
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Visualizing Your Life
A handy byproduct of sharing more personal data online is the opportunity to create cool data visualizations. Time and location are obvious starting points. 3 that caught my eye recently:
- Dipity - aggregates data from a variety of media channels and produces a nice timeline. My photos and twitter posts are plotted after the link.
- Dopplr - a service for sharing travel plans that recently let users create a very cool 'year in review'. Obama's hectic 08 travel schedule is shown. Sadly, my limited travels didn't make for a cool summary.
- Dustin Curtis - a talented graphic designer that created a biographical timeline complete with projected cause of death! As an aside, Dustin's blog is excellent.
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What I Learned from Shigeru Miyamoto
I’ve always loved Nintendo. I was first in line to watch ‘The Wizard’, I met my future college roommates playing Super Smash Brothers, and these days, Divya and I settle minor disputes over a friendly game of Wii tennis. Given the debt of fun I owe Nintendo, I decided to learn more about the man most responsible for the company’s success: Shigeru Miyamoto. When I started reading, I was just curious about Miyamoto’s life story (highly recommended). But, I also discovered that Miyamoto is full of wisdom and inspiration, especially for an aspiring entrepreneur. Here's what I learned from Mario's Papa:
Find Inspiration Everywhere
Miyamoto finds inspiration for his games everywhere, from personal experiences, to hobbies, to daily chores. He recalls exploring a cave as a child, which eventually inspired the imagery for Legend of Zelda. More recently,
“…I started weighing myself every day in the hope of becoming more healthy and I found something that was fun and interesting in that and turned it into a videogame.”
Inspiration might come in that latest TechCrunch article or from your day job, but it could just as easily come from a walk outside, a conversation with your Mom, or personal reflection.
Aspire to Create Truly Unique Experiences
Miyamoto begins his games by trying to capture a single unique gameplay experience. In describing the genesis of Mario, he explains:
“It started with a simple idea. I thought…what it would be like to have a character that bounces around. And the background should be a clear, blue sky.’ I took that idea to a programmer, and we started working on it."
These joyful experiences – playing music with friends, exploring a forest, running and jumping, raising a puppy – make Miyamto’s best games timeless and universal. His clarity of purpose lets other game ingredients (music, characters, and the technology platform itself) evolve naturally. Relentless focus on creating unique and joyful experiences set Miyamoto apart from legions of game designers toiling to produce yet another side-scrolling platform game or first-person shooter.
I find myself spending too much time worrying about the features of competitors or the latest trend sweeping Silicon Valley. Miyamoto reminded me that creating great products requires singular focus on the needs of the user, not achieving feature parity with competition.
Take Risks
Aspiring to create something truly original is risky. It’s easy to forget that the gaming community openly mocked the Wii (then known as Revolution) for its inferior processor and childish controller. Nintendo’s decision to abandon the technology arms race brewing between Microsoft and Sony was incredibly risky. But as Miyamoto explains:
For every Wii, there have been failures – VirtualBoy, the PowerGlove, and countless games now forgotten. But reading Miyamoto’s stories reminded me that if you don’t feel nervous about your product, it probably wasn’t worth building in the first place.
Listen, Refine, Repeat
Miyamoto is so prolific that it’s easy to imagine that he simply dreams up polished games day and night. In actuality, those who have worked with Miyamoto report that he’s incredibly dedicated to refining, refining, and then refining again. In a lecture to young game designers, Miyamoto advised:
"…be willing to show a game that you've created to other people and then hear their criticisms. Sometimes that can cause a lot of frustration for you. But you have to be able to take that criticism, bring it back with you, and then reflect it in the next version of the game that you make or use it to improve a game you are currently developing."
Miyamoto likely learned these lessons early in his career. In 1980, he helped design Radar Scope. The arcade game was to be Nintendo’s first foray into the US market. It was a colossal flop and thousands of machines went unsold. To recoup the cost, Nintendo’s CEO asked Miyamoto design a new game that could be retrofitted to the much-maligned Radar Scope machines. Miyamoto created Donkey Kong and the world has been happier ever since.
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