Here’s the first of a series of TED videos I’ll be posting that I found when I went looking for advice on decision making, motivation, and happines.

This one is from Dan Pink about the problems associated with standard economic incentives.

He speaks mainly about business, but I find that it has applications to education as well as personal motivation.

I was going through an old sketch pad.  Here’s my copy of an 1897 Gustave Courbet self portrait.

That’s how it goes, doesn’t it?

The start of a new story.

You write some notes, partial-ideas, and a whole lot of nothing.  Give up and watch tv, go to a movie, or play video games telling yourself that it’s “research.”

Then, hours, days, or even weeks later, you’re starring at a whiteboard half full of a bad outline that goes nowhere.  When you sip your drink, wondering if it’s too early to go to sleep, and

SNAP

There are the characters, the conflict, and an outline suddenly in your head.  Now it’s race to get it down on paper before it evaporates from you forever.

From here on, it’s a question of craft – the ability, the sheer skill, to plane out this rough idea into a story – but man, do I ever hate starting a new story.

This is somewhat analogous to what television writers call “breaking the story,” and it has a well known rule of thumb:

You break the story, or the story breaks you.

An excellent summary.  Click for the full image.

From BoingBoing.

A Nice Flow Chart

It is the 100 year anniversary of the first air-to-ground radio transmission.

The message? “Roy, come and get this god damn cat.”

From BoingBoing.

Canada wins its first gold medal on home soil.

I’m glad that this little piece of business has been taken care of, so Alexandre Bilodeau can go back to obscurity.  He’ll be remembered only briefly in some Canadian version of Trivial Pursuit that no one wants, but that everyone will feel obligated to buy.

I can not wait to play this game.

Heavy Rain is in the same style as XBox game Indigo Prophecy, which blew my mind.

What set Indigo Prophecy apart from other games was its cinematographer engine.  Rather than a free floating camera, it would actually pick camera angles for you.  This made the game look much more like a movie.

I finally got a chance to play the demo the other day.  Great stuff.  Not as much with the camera cuts, but that could have just been a result of the environments.  What really stood out for me was the voice acting and the Quick Time Events.  Some people don’t like QTEs, but I think they’re great.  They are integrated seamlessly into the environment, so they’re not as distracting as they used to be.

The games story is supposed to be truly fantastic, and it looks like we may be on the verge of interactive story telling.  From the PS Nation review:

We’ve all heard the proclamations about the truly immersive interactive story, but Heavy Rain is really the first one to actually deliver.

Comes out February 23.

Nikke’s got the scoop.  Daredevil is set to be rebooted with David Scarpa (The Day the Earth Stood Still) writing and former News Corp number 2 Peter Chernin producing.

I can think of no better summary of my post university life than these two comics, which you can click on for full size versions.

From Amazing Super Powers and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, respectively.