Another one from Paparazzi: gesture and speech controlled TV, courtesy of JVC….
Archive for the 'fiction' Category
I can’t start to tell you how important the movie 2001 has been in my life. For a start, my parents went to see it on their first date. Then they took me to see it when it was re-shown at the cinema in the early 80’s…I must have been about 9 or 10. It completely fucked with my head. Pretty much ever since then I’ve been a fan of both Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke. It’s a weird feeling to know now that neither of them are around…
Heh.
If any of you have read the extract from my short story Paparazzi, you’ll remember a couple of the characters communicating with each other using something called a ‘Voice-Free Choker’ - a neck band that picks up nerve signals to the larynx and converts them into text or speech. Well, this morning I stumbled across this video at New Scientist of someone demonstrating what appears to be exactly that technology:
Of course I’m not really claiming to have thought this up - this system was developed by Texas Instruments - but the first I heard of the concept it was being touted by NASA to be built into the spacesuits for the probably-never-going-to-happen first manned Mars mission. The demo here shows it being used to make a phone-call, but I envisioned it being used for in game communications and for when privacy is needed in public spaces. Of course if it can convert ‘thoughts’ to speech it can also convert to text….handsfree SMS texting, anyone?
Very cool.
Because I’m trying to curb mine. Though, to be honest, it’s proving to be hard this morning.
The reason? New images from Zack “300″ Snyder’s big screen adaptation of Watchmen splurged across c-space as I jacked-in this morning. And man, shit. They look alright.
In fact, they look a bit fucking better than alright, if you ask me. Yeah, teh internets are aflame as usual with the screams of disgruntled fanboys…Night Owl isn’t fat enough, Ozymandis looks too young…and they might have a point. But in the images’ defence, we don’t have any context. The story spans decades, and these could be grabs from flashbacks.
So far everything I have seen about the film looks visually spot-on. Perfect in fact. So why am I trying to not get too excited? Well, because Watchmen never was purely about visual spectacle. It’s about plot. And characters. And doing things with narrative that can’t be done on film or in books - things that can ONLY be done in the medium of comics. And it’s long…I mean, where the hell would you start cutting stuff to fit it into 120 minutes?
Plus, does anyone else remember being excited when the first images from the fucking Judge Dredd movie came out? I don’t think I need to say any more…
So i’m preparing myself for it to be a fuck-up. It’s the only way of avoiding disappointment. Anything else will be a pleasant surprise.
See all the images over at the Watchmen Movie website.
Here we go…the first 2000 odd words of my latest story ‘Paparazzi’, hopefully for your enjoyment. Let me know what you think in the comments section…
I can’t put the full thing up yet because of the aforementioned possible publishing deal, but if you want to read more or are interested in publishing it yourself, let me know.
OK… so I said I’d post one of my stories up, but I’ve had to put that on hold for a little while. Actually looks like I might have some interest from a publisher (!), so until the details of that have all been sorted out I can’t put anything up, for obvious reasons. But stay tuned…
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