archive 2007 March
Games: rewiring your brain, for better or worse. 19 Mar 07
tagged Gaming  

Germans postulate what countless nights of playing Mario Kart DS before going home have made me suspect:
If you’ve been obsessed with PGR or Gran Tourismo lately, German psychologists think you should be extra cautious next time you get behind a real-life wheel.
Study: Racing Games Cause Real Car Crashes, from Wired

It would have been more meaningful to observe actual drivers as part of the study - I for one resist the urge to collide with every glimpse of yellow in the rearview mirror, even though I’m sure it’s that bastard Wario trying to take first place from me.

Some more positive observations - those trigger-finger reflexes can come in handy (ugh, no pun intended):
Neither years of training nor number of surgeries performed would predict performance on the laparoscopy skills test. Past gaming and current skills, in contrast, would. Those who had never gamed took significantly longer to complete the skills test, and had an error rate of roughly 1.5 times that of regular gamers.
Unreal Surgery: Gamers score on laparoscopic surgery tests, from Ars Technica

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Photo munging in Processing 08 Mar 07
tagged Processing, Site  

Playing with the pixel data of one of the photos used in chaotic.terrain (more on that, still forthcoming). Click stillshot to see cropped video, or download the source (bring your own photo!).

I had started this as an in-class demo, and then had fun with it.

After a long hiatus and recent demise, this blog is back up and running on all but IE. Sorry folks, I’ll straighten it out when I get the chance.

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