User Generated Content Database

I once found a link in the Revver forums to the ugcDb. I was told I should register there. I followed the link, but couldn't easily figure out what it was and how it worked, so I left it, thinking I'd check it out sometime later.

As it turned out, 'later' was now. I registered yesterday and that already made it clearer to me what it's for.

First, the name. User Generated Content Database. Is that a Content Database generated by users? Yes and no. Mainly no though. It's a Database containing User Generated Content. Think about YouTube. The site itself is quite small really, just a few pages. But it's the content that makes it popular and that content is generated by users.

But one person may also have a Blogger account and a deviantART account. Of course people often use the same username, but there are most likely more people called Daedalus out there. So, if you want to know, how do you find out what one person actually made and what he appeared in?

So there's the ugcDb, which links all the accounts for one person together and even lists what the person did for the content. For example, I can appear as my avatar Daedalus Young in a photo made by Torley. I personally am in no way connected to Torley's flickr account, so I did not create his content. Rather, I am an actor in his content. So I can now be linked to that photo. Anybody interested in me (I know, I know, but it's a nice fantasy to think someone actually is) can look me up and see not only my mad art and video skillz, they can also see I can pose an avatar in the 3D Virtual World of Second Life, owned by Linden Lab, but Content generated by Users (disclaimer in the left sidebar plzkthx).

In this way, the ugcDb is much like IMDb, only not for Movies, but for online content. I think in this world, focussing more on the internet, with things like Creative Commons becoming more popular, user generated content becoming more professional (for example lonelygirl15, also on ugcDb), this database could become a very useful resource.

Their search could be improved though, if you search for my full name, I'm not found, search for my first name only to find me.

If you want, you can add yourself, but it's also possible to add other people (and works). I currently only added myself, I think it's up to everyone to add themselves. What if I add someone who doesn't want to be added?

Oh, and the cool part is you can put up a button on your blog or site :D See:

24 hours time-lapse: A day in the life

I was playing and experimenting with iMovie's built-in time-lapse function and decided it'd be cool to make a 24 hour recording with it.

I did some testing (among which a 5 hour cloud movement recording compressed to 5 minutes) and paid attention to the weather forecast as the camera would be partially outside and I didn't want rain on it. 16 August seemed to be the perfect day, so I set it all up and got ready for the recording.

I should however point out I didn't yet wanted to record 24 hours, I first wanted only the part of the day when it's actually light outside. Therefor I started the recording somewhere inbetween 2 and 3 am, just before I went to sleep, to edit out the dark part at the beginning later. The next morning (or afternoon ;) though I figured I would just let it run until 3 am to have the full 24 hours anyway. This is why it starts and ends at 3 am, rather than midnight.

After the recording it needed some more tweaking. The video initially was 48 minutes long, I squeezed that back to 24 minutes (for a technical reason: the time-lapse records frames with adjacent fields (as delivered by the camera), rather than frames with fields 30 fields apart. Recording twice as much and squeezing that back fills in the correct fields for smooth motion). This meant one second in the video represents 1 minute of the day. But 24 minutes really is too long and too boring for one shot, so for internet use I sped it up even more to its final 4:48 minutes (that's 4.8 mathematical minutes, which is 1/300th of 24 hours, so the video is sped up 300 times). I also increased the contrast in the clouds and in the shadows a bit.

I think I was lucky with the weather too, the clouds didn't move so very fast, so even at 300 times the speed you can still follow them. I personally like the part where you can actually see the sun rays underneath them most :D

The time in the upper right corner should be fairly accurate. I ended the recording at 3 am on my Mac's clock exactly, which is fed by a timeserver. The times for various positions of the Moon and Sun are taken from various internet sources and seem to be correct. Fun to see how it's light before the Sun is up and after it's set :)

Music is the song Nucleus from Epiphany, it can be found on Simuze.nl. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

So I hope you enjoy as much as I do the video 24 hours time-lapse: A day in the life! :D

I can has T-Shirt?

Yes, you can! For all the broken hearted people out there (and those feeling sorry for them), I designed this cool t-shirt. Can be printed on white or several colours dark shirts. Do check out my Cafepress shop to see all options.

[Update 23 Jul] Now also available in more Euro-friendly Spreadshirt shop.



Heart and text designed by me, drawn by hand, then modelled in Blender, blood splatter and dripping taken (legally) from [CG Textures].

My Drawing Day 08 drawing

Yes, I participated too in Drawing Day 08. The problem though is that I can't draw. But I thought, compare something bad to something that's even worse and it won't look so terrible, so I drew "The artist who couldn't draw but still participated in Drawing Day 08". It is available for everybody's joy and excitement under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license on deviantART. And of course you can see it right here on this blog!

Drawing Day 2008

Today, first Saturday of June, we celebrate Drawing Day. A day on which we remember the joy we had when we first picked up a pencil and created a piece of art. Well I don't remember my first pencil, nor do I know how joyful that experience was, but I do like this idea.

There's no real goal to achieve, although Mick Gow (who I think is head of the project) and his team are hoping for 1 million drawings to be made for the project today. That's a whole lot, especially since the number of people voting 'Yes' on the question "Will you be drawing on Drawing Day?" is at the moment I write this 9036. Of course people will work on the project without voting, but still it's far from a million. But that's ok, it's not like there needs to be a million drawings in a few hours from now or else the world will end. The point simply is the celebration of drawing.

In a chapter on sculpture in his Natural History, Pliny the Elder relates the legend of the Corinthian maid Dibutade who, when faced with the departure of her beloved, sat him down in candlelight and traced his profile from the shadow cast against the wall. Her father, the potter Boutades, pressed clay on the outline to make a portrait relief, thereby inaugurating the genre sculpturing. And from there all other Western art was born. So next time you're in a museum, just think about this, it all started with a drawing.

People can draw today on Drawing Day the traditional way, but also its digital equivalent is allowed. Art can be posted on the appropriate websites, such as flickr, deviantART or YouTube. For more links where to go and more information, do visit Drawing Day.

I may be posting a drawing later today, but if you can't wait to see other people's work, here's already a one in a million (ha!) drawing as posted on YouTube. Enjoy!



* this blog post uses a quote from souvenirlab.com.

Who really should've won

Yeah, I know, it's a good while ago by now, but I really needed to give my opinion on this matter. You see, the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 was won by the wrong country.

I don't have anything against Russia in general, it's just that their song sucked. Sucked bad. As a musician, I know what I'm talking about and I know what's good and what's terribly bad. Or at least I think I know. And therefor, I hereby announce the votes of the Daedalus Youngian jury:

1 point, Georgia (I think you could've done more with the song, there's not enough contrast now)
2 points, Greece (just put in a guitar and some more real instruments, you would've scored more)
3 points, Latvia (just because I was rofl during the performance, you can't be serious! the song still sucks though)
4 points, Armenia (could've done more with the song too, I don't like the beginning)
5 points, Croatia (nice and original)
6 points, Denmark (could've had a bit more surprises, otherwise cool song)
7 points, France
8 points, Azerbaijan
10 points, Finland
and finally, 12 points go to...

Turkey!



So there you go, ESC 2009 in Ankara, if they'd just asked me.

SLang Life ad

Ayumi Cassini made this cool video ad for SLang Life magazine. Check it out and if you haven't subscribed yet, then what are you waiting for? It's a completely free subscription, it won't cost you even a penny. So there's really no reason for you not to subscribe. Now. Well, after watching this video.



Now you can go ahead and subscribe.

Back!

You're probably wondering if I was gone then. Yes, I was actually, for a while, for the reasons listed below...

First of all, I went on vacation at the end of April, first week of May. Destination Istria, Croatia. As usual, I have photographic evidence. :P So I was gone for a week, but that still was a fun absense (for me anyway).

Second, and this is the no-fun part, I had some severe hard disk issues on my beloved iMac. I had the issues for a few months really, but they weren't so serious in the beginning. There was a tiny error somewhere on it which caused it to be extremely slow. I attempted to bypass this error by dividing the disk into two partitions, hoping I caught the bad part in one and could install OS X on the healthy half. This cunning plan backfired however, installation was not successful, every attempt at interacting with the drive resulted in a critical input/output error.

The only solution was to bring the poor machine to the nearest iCentre, to get it a brand new disk. However, as a famous Dutch soccer player once said: "every downside has an upside," as I was to find out when the Mac was back where it belonged (in front of me) a week later: they had installed Leopard on it, which otherwise would've cost just about what the repair cost me now.

I suppose that's all part of the Big Plan, everything happens for a reason, everything's connected to everything.

So, I'm back! I'm catching up to some work that was waiting with me for the machine's return and re-installing the necessary software, such as GIMP, Blender and Opera. You know, the usual software everybody just needs to have. ;) When that's all done, everything should be again like it was meant to be.

Being a Linden

Imagine you've been away for a weekend or a week and haven't been on SL. Whenever you log in again, surely you have some IMs waiting, some Inventory offers, some Group Notices. No big problem, you read it, check it all out and do what you came inworld for. Now imagine you have lots of IMs and Inventory offers every single day!

A while ago I saw a site made by a Linden with a small storyline about you being the Linden that gets a nightmare about never-ending IMs coming in (I couldn't find it anymore though, if anybody knows, post a comment). That was scary already, but it still appeared to be fiction.

So now Torley put up a video showing it's really everyday reality:

I named a mainland region!

A short while back, Linden Lab announced a new project, the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW). Of course it also got a page on the SL wiki, on which they asked Residents to come up with region names for the first large LDPW project, Bay City.

The LDPW was launched to build Linden objects and stuff with help of the Resident community. Residents can apply for a job in the LDPW as 'mole builder'. I applied too, but I don't have much work to show, so I wasn't selected as builder. I wanted t help out in any way though, so I went to think about a good region name.

I figured they'd need to name a region after the Resident mole builders, the people that work hard to get the Bay City project rolling happily. I searched Wikipedia for stuff about moles, in any of its meanings, and came up with Molesworth, a name some RL towns already have. I added it as suggestion on the SL wiki and hoped for the best.

And so a few weeks later I read they'd selected the names for the regions and found they actually used Molesworth. Coincidentally enough, I noticed they used it for the location in the city where I'd always imagined it to be. I had actually taken a Snapshot on the day of the Bay City announcement, looking towards Molesworth's future location:



From the region Barcola, there'll be a bridge spanning one 'void' region right into Bay City - Molesworth.

With Linden Labs using my suggestion, I can now say I made it into SL history! :D



(Note the Bay City regions aren't yet accessible publicly)