From Twitter: VR meeting spaces

If Virtual Reality (VR) is to become successful/popular/widespread, it will meet the “needs” of online communication. Something like AltSpace VR will provide a social space similar to instant messaging, facebook messages, hangouts and so on. The implications of doing so are worth studying, as we merge our human self with the machine in an “alternative” universe which exists solely through binary code running on computers somewhere on the internet.

Week 2 – reflections

This week, I *think* I’m starting to get a feel for how the course is working as constructivist activity: We’re learning by “doing” to a certain extent; we’re given relatively minimal guidance whilst still being observed; we’re using community to bolster our understanding; and we’re being asked to reflect on our past experiences with an aim to realisation that what has gone the week before was the correct step.

Reading and commenting on other blog posts has been a great motivator. IFTTT has been demotivating.

I’ve posted about core readings because that gives me some grounding. It is a recognisable action carried on from IDEL assignments and blog posts. There is comfort there. I have blogged about technology, VR particularly, because all this talk of reality, augmentations, cyborgs… and I have it sitting right in front of me. Next week, I will attempt to conduct the entire #MSCEDC activity from within “virtual reality” via my HTC Vive (At least those actions which would normally happen for me on-screen). We’ll see how that goes.

I struggle with the concepts that are put forward in some of the papers. I am a pragmatist learning about post-humanism; semantics; cyborg manifestos (which I’ve yet to read). Part of me doesn’t care as long as I can produce something at the end of it. Part of me is also massively intrigued, at least about my own capacity to understand and decode.

If anyone else has access to a VR device, let me know. Perhaps we could meet up in Altspace.

From Twitter: More IFTTT tinkering…

It takes up time to set up, but I hope this works. Perhaps a “manual” cut and paste is as quick in any case?

From Twitter – Feedback loops

I’m not sure how to resolve the feedback loop here thanks to IFTTT’s apparent lack of conditional logic (am I missing something?) But I will try to go in and delete these types of posts. Feedback loops, now where did I read something about those in the course readings…. Time to leave the screen for a bit.

No available means to edit CSS, or add plugins?

It’s a shame we don’t have more access to our WordPress installation. Part of the “fun” is the plugins!

Also, the CSS. No means to edit the CSS.

The sludgy green colour is not of my choosing.  I stick to this statement no matter how many pairs of trousers I have in my wardrobe that are more-or-less the same hue.

 

From Twitter: still ironing out the kinks of IFTTT

I’m sticking some of these together now.

From Twitter: Virtual Reality Classrooms?

If you can get your preferred platform, system, device in the classrooms around the world then you stand to gain financially. So why not talk up your investment’s future.

But it also works both ways. Will education demand the technology?

From Twitter, with love… not.

I like when technology works. I like it a lot. But at the moment, this is not working reliably. Subsequently to the tweet below, I now have to enter into each post and setup the IFTTT twitter URL as a link via the WYSIWYG and then update the post. But it only works if you click the WYSIWYG link button and then press submit. Any other click between the two, and the tweet will not embed as this one here:

From Twitter: Twitter Meta

Last week, I created an IFTTT applet to draw together people who were using the #mscedc hashtag on twitter. It worked! It’s useful, because I can follow the people and keep up with their tweets.

IFTTT WordPress -> Twitter (and back again….)

Can’t say I’m enjoying using IFTTT at the moment. I’m sure I grasp it. It just lacks enough hooks to make it really versatile. Or perhaps I don’t grasp it, and it requires problem solving on your own. I have made a living largely reliant on not being slow on the uptake when it comes to “new” technology, so I don’t like to be beaten. Turns out that the reason I couldn’t get my tweets to display in a reasonable acceptable aesthetic manner was because of the WordPress template.

Now I’ve sorted that, the IFTTT feed from twitter isn’t updating my blog.

Meanwhile, I’ve added an IFTTT applet which posts “blogpost” category WordPress entries in to Twitter. Which will create a single feedback loop, unless I can find the “If this then NOT that” equivalent…..

 

Virtual Cinema

A comment on Eli’s blog around this image which I hastily crafted in Photoshop to illustrate my point regarding a sense of nausea induced by movement on-screen that’s either jerky or not within the viewer’s own control:

I ended up watching this piece of youtube content:


What I took note of was the three camera points, which is not uncommon in VR youtube content, but worth pointing out

  1. The “experience” shot, i.e. what is being viewed (in 2D) by the person who is viewing it in 3D within the headset
  2. The headmounted display’s external view, from a camera in or on the device (e.g. the HTC Vive’s built in front-mounted camera)
  3. and a  fixed shot of the play-area

When using VR, we are augmenting our own ability. To see what our normal vision would let us see. But we’re also cutting our own body off from stimulus that we can physically touch. Nevertheless, watching someone using VR, certainly brings to mind thoughts around the organic merged with the physical. It will become normalised. I was recently asked “Do I feel silly wearing it”. The same person tried VR and realised how “feeling silly” just doesn’t come in to it. Assuming VR is not a passing tech fad, and Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3412017) would have VR placed on the “slope of enlightenment” having passed through the “trough of disillusionment” already, that’s got to suggest that it will become more mainstream than it is perceived currently. I wonder if anyone looking at the video and thinking the person looks silly perhaps has not yet tried this form of VR and can’t project themselves in to that person’s position.

 

Base Image sources:

Occulus Cinema : http://tinyurl.com/zgbfutw

Screenshot taken from “Eli’s EDC Blog” : http://www.eliapplebydonald.co.uk/course_work/week%202/week%202_player.html

Comments on Mathew’s Blog and From Twitter

Open means open, and you can take advantage of opportunity to discuss, or not…

“cmiller
JANUARY 29, 2017 AT 4:11 PM
I read your post twice and skimmed it several times, went out for some fresh air, then came back to it with a cup of tea, before committing to this comment. I don’t have an existing field of studies to draw upon to make more sense of it than I do. I’m not a scholar by trade, but I embarked on this MSc to learn, and I am interested in what you write because I can feel it scratching away at my brain, even if it’s beyond my initial attempts to unlock its meaning or access the background it comes from.

Continue reading “Comments on Mathew’s Blog and From Twitter”

from Twitter: another togethertube session

from Twitter https://twitter.com/c4miller

From Twitter: More togethertube.

IFTTT – If “MSCE” + “Important” THEN “put in work calendar”.



from Twitter https://twitter.com/c4miller

Ninefox Gambit [spoilers] and Embodied Virtuality

I not long ago finished a book I was gifted at Christmas time. “Ninefox Gambit” by Yoon Ha Lee (2016) . I really enjoyed it, nice and short, fast paced and an interesting, alien culture. I tend to read a lot more books at this time of year. When it’s dark, cold and wet outside, and you’ve just got back in from a surprise snow storm during your dog’s evening walk, the fire is burning and the comfy sofa awaits…. There are spoilers in this post so please do look away now if you plan to read this book and do not like to know the ending before you start.

Continue reading “Ninefox Gambit [spoilers] and Embodied Virtuality”