Christmas tree
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The Canadian AI that writes holiday chiptunes
Is there no industry safe from economic encroachment by automation and machine learning? A team from the University of Toronto have built a digital Irving Berlin that can generate Christmas carols from a single image.
Quadrocopters don creepy eyes, build synthetic Christmas tree of envy (video)
First we let them play music, then they started juggling. Now quadrocopters are feeling emotions as well; namely, jealousy. One of Flying Machine Arena's dainty quadrocopters, nicknamed Juliet, was compelled to build its own synthetic Christmas tree after spying an authentic fir through a glass window. Sure, stacked bricks of festive foam seem innocent enough, but look into those ping-pong ball eyes and tell us you aren't a little worried that next year's "war on Christmas" will be the machine's war on humans. Fly past the break to see Juliet's envious construction project for yourself.
Game controller Christmas tree ornaments, minus all the plastic
If you're anything like us, you've spent countless hours of your youth hollowing out old gaming controllers for use as gigantic Christmas tree ornaments. Though these might have resulted in years of lopsided tree dilemmas, our penchant for hanging something that at least resembles our favorite gaming controllers on the tree never subsided. Lucky for us that Ponoko user "digits" shares our unique affectation, making a variety of controller-themed ornaments in a handful of different colors. For $25 (plus $10 domestic shipping, more for other territories) we can have all the style we want without all the weight that drives our tree's limbs plunging downward. Talk about a Christmas miracle! [Via GeekSugar]
GDC09: Spending time with the cruise director of Azeroth pt. 2
Mistakes of World of Warcraft Kaplan was quick to note that Warcraft was far from perfect, and he wanted to highlight some of his own mistakes inside of the design. The first mistake was the idea of the "Christmas tree effect," otherwise known as having so many quests in a quest hub that the minimap lights up with exclamation points like a Christmas tree. While players enjoy this, Kaplan wanted to say that the developer loses call control over the player at these points, as the player will not read any quest text in their clicking frenzy. There's no control over what quest leads into what or which order the player will do the quests in. The second was the internet adage of "too long, didn't read." Quest designers don't need to write a book to get their point across with the quests. He brought up that video games had a type of "medium envy," where sometimes they get too preachy with their topics. Games should be fun first, story second. Mystery also falls in this category. The story can provide mystery, but the quest log should never have any mystery to it. The quest log should always point where to go and what to do, but the overall story of those quests may provide some solution to some mystery. Also avoid poorly placed quest chains, like the Chains of Myzrael questline in Arathi Highlands. The Myzrael line was hard to find, ended up spanning 14 levels, and ended with killing an elite mob that was level 44. This quest line was a "brick wall" according to Kaplan, because most players never stuck with it. It's good to have quest chains that span content, but quest chains like this break down trust the player has with the developer. When the player runs into a chain that he can't finish with a monster he can't kill, the player loses trust in the developer's sense of guiding them to fun. He also emphasized to avoid inserting "gimmick quests." His example here was part of the Oculus dungeon where players ride on dragons. These types of quests center around doing something the client may not be able to properly handle. Warcraft was not designed to accommodate vehicles. When developers resort to putting in parts of the game that center around a gimmick, it can detract from the fun of the rest of the game. The horror of collection quests Kaplan's speech ended with an analysis of why people hate collection quests so much, and a few tips on how to make collection quests into a better experience. His problems with the quests stemmed from three areas -- dense creature population, too few of a creature to kill, and having a wide variety of items required for the quest. Having a dense creature population can put off people, especially when there's a lack of the monster required for the quest. If someone has to kill four lions for every one raptor required for the quest, then there's a problem. His other point was that collection quests shouldn't require an insane amount of items. To everyone's amusement, he brought up the Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest chain (a chain he wrote) as the exact thing a designer should never do. Collection quests should be an easily obtainable number of items, and not such a long grind fest with the hope that your required item might drop. Lastly, never have the player question why they're collecting the item required -- it should be clear from the onset. Kaplan brought up the infamous gnoll paw collecting quests, in which gnolls may or may not drop paws upon death, where obviously a gnoll has four paws and not a number between 0 and 1 (which everyone applauded at loudly). Quests should make sense and not become a gimmick in their own right. This causes the player to once again, lose trust. Most of these points that Kaplan has brought up pertain to Warcraft, but can easily be applied to any game on the market. With all of this in mind, perhaps we'll get to see some better design in our MMOs from other developers, now that we're all on the same page... of the Green Hills of Stranglethorn.
Xmas tree made entirely of SCSI drives, offers lower CPU load than IDE alternatives
Ever found yourself with 70 decommissioned SCSI hard drives and an awful, awful lot of free time on your hands? If so, and you're bursting with holiday spirit, perhaps you'll choose to do the same as an apparent sys admin who goes by the name of Trigger. He took those drives from RAID arrays destined for the scrap heap and, rather than perform the DoD wipe that would have otherwise been required, chose to build this lovely -- if somewhat askew (see below) -- "tree" from the bevy of mirrored platters within. In fact the geeky holiday decor was made entirely from the bits and pieces within the drives, the lone exception being a nut purchased for $.39, making it a far more affordable project than yesterday's OLED tree. It's impressive to behold, but given the amount of personal data within, we think it's probably more likely to spread lawsuits than cheer this season.
GE builds an OLED Holiday Tree, makes mistletoe out of disused RAM
The R&D-types at GE have high hopes for their roll-to-roll OLED manufacturing process, but it looks like we have a couple years to wait before the tech is cheap enough to really catch on. In the meantime, what do we have for you? How about some super-expensive digiframes and a YouTube video of the world's first ever "OLED Holiday Tree?" Man, we hope those "War on Christmas" people don't catch wind of this one...[Via OLED Display]
I'm dreaming of a Pac-Man LED Christmas
This "tree" definitely puts the one at Rockefeller Center to shame. Located at Nuevos Ministerios in downtown Madrid, this animated LED display features everyone's favorite power pellet abuser, Pac-Man himself. You may notice that the cherries, pretzels, and other guzzle-able items have been replaced by a Christmas tree, holiday bells, ribbons, and stars. Nice touch.To see a gargantuan picture of the Pac-Man tree (or at least a larger image than the one to your right) and some video action of it, jingle all the way past the break.
The Pac-Man Christmas tree
Finally, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde, and even old Pacster get some religious iconography happening for themselves. A creative group of X-mas-and-Pac-Man-loving cats and kittens in Madrid have created a truly festive monument to the holiday... and the video game. Check the video after the break for the whole, utility-burning display in action -- and commenters, feel free to translate.[Via technabob]
Wirelessly powered Christmas tree: when high-tech meets high-chintz
We're pretty certain we were supposed to be seeing cellphones, DAPs, and medical devices -- you know, gadgets -- rock the PowerCast wireless power system by now, but it looks like the first product off the line to include the tech is this chintzy $395 Christmas tree from Frontgate. The fake tree does indeed feature wireless power for its LED lights, but honestly, if you're moving your tree so much you need it to be wireless, you should really think about getting out of your house more often.[Thanks, Joe]
Rockefeller Center Christmas tree goes LED
It looks like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will be a considerably smaller energy hog this holiday season than it has been in years past, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced yesterday that the tree will be lit up with LED lights for the first time - 30,000 of 'em, to be specific. That'll apparently reduce the tree's energy consumption from 3,510 kilowatt hours per day to just 1,297 -- a savings that, as the AP points out, is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity consumed by a typical 2,000-square-foot house in a month. While it's not clear if it'll be used for the tree or not, the owners of Rockefeller Center also took the opportunity to show off a new 365-panel solar array on the roof of one of the complex's buildings, which is apparently big enough to lay claim to the title of the largest privately owned solar roof in Manhattan.[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
