I have always insisted that I would never live in the suburbs. I want land, dammit, not a backyard the size of a postage stamp. But living in my new place in Chicago has taught me the virtue of suburbia: no shared walls. My idiot asshole upstairs neighbors like to come home and blast inane repetitive music over and over and over again, and apparently their stereo is located directly above my workbench/desk. Tonight when they came home and fired it up, I snapped and actually screamed, “Shut up!” It didn’t do any good, of course. I was this close to going upstairs, pounding on their door and throttling the living daylights out of that idiot. I swear to God, why is it so bloody hard to find an hour of peace and quiet anywhere?
I’m also this close to using technology to return fire. I am contemplating obtaining an array of cheap, yet very very loud, speakers and mounting them to the ceiling, aimed straight up. I will then wire these speakers to GarageBand, concoct a completely dissonant rhythm, set it on infinite loop, start it playing and then head off for a weekend in Wisconsin.
Miserable bastards.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
