Floaty!

A floating cat. We, at Thumbmonkey, officially approve of its awesomeness.

2 comments January 22nd, 2010

“Internet Eyes” – Redefining gaming… by a lot.

Have you heard about the UK’s newest game, “Internet Eyes”? It utilizes their preexisting CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) system in a way only Orwell could have imagined. It’s the talk of thousands of journalists, bloggers and civil liberties activists throughout the UK, and has become an increasingly popular web buzz topic in America, too.

During a research project, “On the Threshold to Urban Panopticon?”, conducted by URBANEYE, coordinated by the Centre of Technology and Society at the Technical University of Berlin, it was estimated that the UK is home to approximately 4,200,000 cameras – one for every 14 citizens.

Internet Eyes is a web-based game set to launch next month. Visitors to the game’s official website can play for a prize of up to £1,000 ($1,627) by watching live streaming video from various, “secret” locations and reporting possible crimes. Winners are determined based on a points system (highest scorer wins), where users accrue points which are awarded based on the “accuracy” of their reports. Prizes, or “awards”, as the company prefers to call them, are rendered each month.

Any business or organization which is in possession of a property where a CCTV camera is located may participate in the game by offering their video feed for viewing on the site, and also contribute directly to the success of the game by being determining factors in how “accurate” each user’s crime reports are.

From the official site: “The camera owner will… feedback (rate) the result of the alert. Their feedback is converted into points and entered into a Viewers monthly league table. At the end of each month the highest scoring Viewer will receive the reward money; this could be split in the event of a tie.”

Also from the official site, crime “events” which may warrant reporting include:

* Shop lifting
* Anti social behaviour
* Burglary
* Vandalism

In more recent news, the company behind Internet Eyes, known only as “Internet Eyes Ltd” (despite some research effort on my behalf, I cannot seem to find more information about the company), is eyeing (no pun intended) Australian citizens, because of their difference in time zone, to monitor its presented video feeds during the late night hours while the number of UK viewers may drop.

Information used in this entry was pulled from dailymail.co.uk, news.com.au, urbaneye.net, wikipedia.org and the Internet Eyes official website.

2 comments October 15th, 2009

Lucid Dreaming – “Reality” re-defined

“Did you ever have a job that you hated and worked real hard at? A long, hard day of work. Finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes. And immediately you wake up and realize… that the whole day at work had been a dream. It’s bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.”

This quote is from the movie Waking Life, one of my all time favorites. If you’ve experienced this, or any other kind of unpleasant dream (and i’m betting you have), you likely know how depressing it can feel. It’s real emotion resulting from an “unreal” experience. In many cases, we react to our dreams the same way that we do to real-life situations. We might wake up feeling especially happy, hopeful, determined or let down. When we come to the realization that our emotion exists only because of a dream, we make the effort to immediately alter our emotional state. This is because we come “back to reality” and reason tells us that the feeling is now void.

Our brains are largely unaware of the difference between dream scenarios, and real-life scenarios. This is what makes it possible for people to become so terrified in their sleep that they can scream, flail their legs in attempt to run, punch and kick, and even wet the bed out of fear. Basically, it explains all of those dreams you’ve had throughout your life that you absolutely swear on your life were real. Your brain thinks it was real.

This is where lucid dreaming comes into play. If your brain thinks your dreams are real, why should you not soak up as much of the potential delightfulness of your dream world, as you do in your waking world?

“You got to be able to ask yourself, “Hey, man, is this a dream?” Most people never ask themselves that… when they’re awake or especially when they’re asleep. Seems like everyone’s sleep walking through their waking state… or wake walking through their dreams. Either way they’re not gonna get much out of it.” – Waking Life

From Wikipedia: “A lucid dream is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that he or she is dreaming. When the dreamer is lucid, he or she can actively participate in and often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem extremely real and vivid depending on a person’s level of self-awareness during the lucid dream.”

Most people have experienced an episode of “going lucid” during a dream at least once or twice, without even consciously attempting to do so. Achieving a state of lucidity intentionally, however, can be difficult. But, it is possible, and very worth the effort.

What’s the benefit? Well, my best answer to that is that the benefits are infinite. It all depends on how you, personally, define benefit. If you’ve always wanted to fly, you can train your dream-self to fly around all night long (and keep in mind that dream world time feels much longer than waking world time). If you’re a pyromaniac, you can set fire to anything you want without any repercussions what-so-ever. Want to walk on water? Make it happen.

Lucidity is best achieved calmly and naturally, so truly, the easiest way to learn how to lucid dream is simply to think about it often. Desire it, and eventually, it will happen. I’ve had good luck with keeping a dream journal in the past, too, which can be very important. If you have a lucid dream and forget it upon wakening, what’s the point?

Here’s a link to a great podcast on lucid dreaming (click). I’ve listened through it myself, and I highly recommend it.

Enjoy the podcast (best listened to before bed) and happy dreaming.

Add comment September 17th, 2009

Question Everything……. and see District 9

Hello once again,

This post is entirely politically-based, though leaning toward neither the right, or left and incorporates what might be described as a “Question Everything” kind of mentality, just as a heads up!

If you find yourself occasionally questioning the behavior and motives of politicians (don’t feel bad, we all do it. It’s practically an American prerequisite), and you’re in the mood for a good laugh, read this post from one of my favorite blogs: “Free Whitewater. If you replace “Whitewater” with your town/city/state i’m sure that you will find the post to be equally as applicable, and entertaining.

Whitewater is a small town in Wisconsin (just West of Milwaukee, and approximately two hours south of my hometown) and the blog is based entirely around one individual’s desire to formulate a peaceful movement protesting against the increasingly negative impact the local government is afflicting upon the citizens.

Small blurb from the blog: “You have lived in Whitewater, Wisconsin for years, perhaps your entire life. Despite your affection for this beautiful city, life in our small municipality leaves you uneasy. You find yourself increasingly convinced that something is distorted in the politics and culture of our city. Rest assured: You are not alone…”

The blog has seen it’s share of hardship (from what I have heard, and particularly from those who are largely opposed to the freedom of speech) since it’s inception in what I believe to be 2007, and is published anonymously under the pseudonym John Adams. It’s a really excellent read and I have a great respect for anyone willing to speak their mind. Hope you enjoy it, too.

P.S.- Toooootally unrelated, but I saw District 9, and it was not at all what I expected for it to be, but I would still recommend seeing it! It’s worth the 10-or-so-bucks. Also, I finally started playing Fallout 3, and I am completely addicted. I am sure you will see a post from me in the near future regarding my progress in the game.

Peace and such-n-such,

Katy

Add comment August 27th, 2009

StumbleUpon Niftyness including Kitties, Monsters and other things!

Hello hello from Katy on this fine hot-as-eff-but-slightly-less-hot-than-yesterday… day! I would like to take this opportunity to entertain you now with…

I can honestly say that I was becoming somewhat bored with web browsing before I started using this site. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it works like this:

- You set up an account and choose your interests from a giant list that has everything from gaming to American literature to the paranormal, aaand more.

- Install the StumbleUpon toolbar to your browser of choice (Firefox for me), and hit “Stumble”!

- Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ll spend 6 1/2 hours digging through hundreds of websites, games, articles, etc that are perfectly suited to your personal interests. Categories I seem to Stumble on most often: Politics, online games, psychology, video games, alternative health, arts, conspiracies. Yeah, i’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist, soooo what?

- You may choose to “Like” pages that you Stumble on if you enjoy them, and this will add it to your Favorites (which you can view any time while logged in to StumbleUpon). I find myself logging in frequently to refer back to stuff that I really liked. You can also rate and review pages, too, but I don’t really use those features because i’m lazy.

Click on the images to view each site! Enjoy!

Above: Learn how to spell DEFINITELY.

Above: Artist’s renditions of children’s drawings!

Above: Have you heard of binaural beats? I won’t vouch for this site, in particular, but the concept is pretty awesome.

Above: “ZoomQuilt”. You’ll have to see this one for yourself. One word: “Trippy”.

Above: Video of some nifty transformers made out of cigarette packs and other completely random things.

Above: A kitty cat that uses public transportation!

Add comment August 20th, 2009

Random

Rather than go into Champions Online again as that’s what I’m currently playing (the beta anyways), I thought I’d share some random links I’m enjoying at the moment.

Watch one of the best television shows ever, The Prisoner, online for free.

Damn you cat, I’m going to circle you if it’s the last thing I do.

5 cats that look like Wilford Brimley.

James Gunn has rounded up quite the collection of freaky animals and fish.

Simple and addictive: Crush the Castle.

Add comment August 18th, 2009