thunderbird six

A conversation with psychology Honours thesis students Lindsay Page and Celia DiMicoli about their thesis research, and the whole thesis project. Oh Skye, just turn the tap to the right... Music by Less Than Jake and Pat Robitaille.

An interview with independent game devlopers/producers Jonathan Blow and Kelee Santiago. Kellee "...was born in Caracas, Venezuela and grew up in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia. At the age of 18 I escaped to New York City. I danced, clowned, performed, and scared my parents a lot. I traveled (and continue to do so) around the the world. At the age of 24 I became delusional and thought moving to Los Angeles was a good idea. Now I design and produce video games." Kellee's company developed the games flow and cloud, two innovative and fascinating games, and they are developing downloadable content for the PS3. Jonathan may be best known for his game "Braid." For many years he wrote the Inner Product column for Game Developer Magazine. Blow is the primary host of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop each March at the Game Developers Conference, which has become a premier showcase for new ideas in video games. In addition, Blow is a regular participant in the Indie Game Jam. We discussed how they got their starts, the indie games industry and the perils of doing a four person conference in skype and how many damned edits you have to do (OK, Dave just thought about the last one after the fact...) Music in this episode is from Skinner and Tenpenny Joke. Oh, and we got a gizmo message from Russell!

GLyn and Dave sat down via skype with Cory Doctorow of boingboing. Cory Doctorow is a blogger, journalist and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is in favor of liberalizing copyright laws, and a proponent of the Creative Commons organisation, and uses some of their licenses for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, Disney, and post-scarcity economics. Doctorow moved to Los Angeles, California in mid-2006 from London, England, where he worked as European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for four years, helping to set up the Open Rights Group, before quitting to pursue writing full-time in January 2006. (Upon his departure, Doctorow was named a Fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and now teaches at the University of Southern California) He is a frequent public speaker on copyright issues. (The above two paragraphs are from Cory's wikipedia page, just thought it sensible to cite our sources when talking to Cory...) As you would probably guess, Dave, Glyn and Cory talked copyright, DRM, and hockey. OK, not so much hockey. Music in this episode form Jamie Strange and Gone For Good. Thanks so very much Cory!

Cayenne Chris Conroy of the Tekdiff podcast talks comedy with Dave

Glyn is back and better than ever. Well perhaps he is just the same... Glyn and Dave sat down at the SpeakEasy for a pitcher of Rickard's Red and a list of the Top 12 Tech Stories of the Year (compiled by Dave) and the Too 12 offbeat tech stories of the year (compiled by Glyn). Google was mentioned, so was youtube and a guy with like 1.8 m arms. Music in this episode from Quickie with Movie Star Soldier and Sinking Spells with October.

From FuturePlay, the guys from the Log2N team talk about how to win a game design competition. We featured their video back in the summer, well they did well and made Algoma U proud! They carried away the awards for most innovative game and for best team leader. If you are interested in game design, you will love this episode. Music in this episode from Anti Flag and the Descendents.

Well perhaps we at T6 are doing this ass backwards, but what the heck. In our last episode Dave interviewed Clint Hocking at Futureplay. Well, as usual Dave takes his little MP3 recorder everywhere (as his students know...) and of course Clint's keynote at Futureplay was recorded. Well after some audio work on the file it seemed ready for prime time, or at least, ready for podcasting.... Clint is a visionary, and if you are a designer or an aspiring one, you have to listen to this talk. Music in the episode by Bubble and CCA. Both of these songs have been featured on Dave's Lecturecasts.

From FuturePlay 2006 an interview with Clint Hocking. Clint has been working for Ubisoft in Montréal for five years. Most recently he worked as scriptwriter, lead level designer and creative director on SPLINTER CELL: CHAOS THEORY. Before games he worked in the web industry and experimented with independent filmmaking while earning a masters’ degree in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. He lives happily in Montréal with his fiancé and his dog. Dave and Clint talked about the future of game design and the fact that games need not just be fun, they could also be what Clint calls 'engaging'. There is a whole other market out there beyond the 18-34 year old males. Clint is working on a project currently for Ubisoft, but Dave could not get it out of him. Perhaps Sam Fisher knows.... Music in this episode from The Rantings of EVA and Battery Life.

Marc Pelletier of Futures in Biotech from the twit.tv network joined Dave over skype. Marc and Dave started off by talking a little bit about hockey, they are Canadian after all, and then moved on into Marc's career as a graduate student at McGill and now his position as a postdoc in the Physiology Department at some school called Yale... Marc is doing bleeding edge biotech research at Yale and he and his colleagues will one day allow us all to live to be a thousand. OK, I made that part up. That said, biotech is moving so fast that you never know what is coming around the corner. Not only is Marc a top notch scientist, he is also the host of the twit.tv podcast Futures in Biotech with the legendary Leo Laporte. Each week Marc and Leo interview different scientists in biotech and allied fields. From the twit.tv website: "Explore the world of genetics, cloning, protein folding, genome mapping, and more with the most important researchers in biotech" Thanks a lot Marc, that rocked. Music in this episode "You Don't Need an iPod" by Uncle Seth and "Toys on a Shelf" by A Step Beyond.

Dave sat down with Algoma U library director Ken 'Kenny' Hernden. Ken and Dave talked about how librarians have to be super tech savvy, how they have to understand everything from linux to RSS feeds and how the library is about information, not just books. Sounds geeky, which of course, is why Dave and Ken get along.... Ken shared his opinions on DRM (aka copy protection) and the imprtance of the free flow of information. They also talked a little Battlestar Galactica (I said they were geeks...) Music on this episode "For Fiona" by No Use For A Name and "To Be an Angel" by Uncle Seth.

Episode 38, or Season 2, Episode 1, take your pick. Yup, we're back and as good or better than ever. Episode 38 features an interview with Quebec film producer Bernard Lajoie. Bernard was one of the producers of the Oscar winning 2000 IMAX short film "The Old Man and the Sea." Dave and Bernard talked about how Bernard got into the biz and what lead up to the Oscar winning 200 film. They also talked about the future of film and media in the youtube era. Bernard figures that distribution mechanisms like youtube will allow for more democratization of film making, which will help more people get their art out. That said it will get more of all art out, good and bad. Bernard was way cool to sit down with T6 and we thank him a lot. Merci beaucoup mon ami. Music in this episode is from www.garageband.com Songs featured are 'More' by Amerikan Made and 'First Semester Freedom Fighter' by Hell or Highwater. Special appearances from this episode by Isabelle, Maddie and Noella.

In the final of our three part mini series on Second Stage, Dave and Isabelle talk to and listen to Big Wheel and the Spokes. These guys are a funky blues power trio, if that makes sense. They are really tight and, of course, are local. In their interview outside of loplops they talked about file sharing, the reason people do music in the first place, the issue of steroids in music and the challenge of playing original music in a small(ish) city. The guys are a lot of fun (though it is hard to tell about Frank and Cliff as Jay does not oft let them get a word in edgewise....) and T6 encourages you to go pick up their new CD "Barley Soup for the Funky-Ass Soul" (mmmmmm soup). Thanks guys. Look for more from blogelation soon.

During the Second Stage event at Loplops on July 14 Craig West stepped out back with Dave and his (Dave's) shiny new portable MP3 recorder. Craig and Dave talked music, media and the effects of online distribution on music. Craig is one of the founding fathers of blogelation and a member of the band Startlefish. He describes their music as Pink Floyd meet the Police, but grittier. Now matter how you describe it, the music is great. You will hear two tracks from Startlefish during the episode.

Episode 35 was recorded at Loplops in Sault Ste. Marie on Friday July 14, 2006. Curt o'Niel of Betterthancrabs.com fame along with Craig West have set up an alternative media empire. OK, it is a loose affiliation of some bloggers and a podcast. The group is known as Blogelation. All of us are out of the Sault Ste. Marie area and the first event that was covered, indeed the impetus for starting blogelation was the Second Stage at Rotaryfest. The second stage features original music from local bands. So, why did we record the episode at loplops rather than outside? Well err umm err the second stage blew over in a gust of wind. Seriously. Happily we were able to relocate to loplops. This episode includes two tracks off of Chris Belsito's new CD Fade Dissolve.

Dan Misener from Collective productions and Dave sat down over skype to talk about Jim Dupree, Enthusiast, the Canaries and the future of podcasting. Jim Dupree: Enthusiast is quite simply the funnies show on the interwebs. The vidcast follows the trials and tribulations of Jim Dupree (Misener) who is enthusiastic about different topics every episode. Enthusiastic, yes, knowledgeable, no..... Dave and Dan talked about the future of content being delivered through RSS aggregation as Dan's production partner Tristan Homer would say, and decided podcasting and vidcasting are not nearly as big as the people you see at meetups think they are. Their discussion then moved to the realm of music. Dan is the bass player in the band the Canaries. Oddly enough, Dave plays bass. Even more oddly, they share the same birthday, June 23.... ENjoy. And Thanks Dan.