Gamercamp and ZED.TO This Weekend

Gamercamp 2012 is this coming weekend and it’s looking like the best camp yet! Tonight they are doing a halloween screening of Ace Attorney.

I’ll be running a workshop from 2-3 on Saturday about board games and Board Game Jam, so if you’re new to board games you should come check it out. See the schedule for more fun things happening at Gamercamp.

Also this weekend, ZED.TO is having their climactic event on Friday and Saturday. It’s looking like it’s going to be the most intense interactive theatrical experience to ever be staged in Toronto.

A Special Message from ByoLogyc CEO Chet Getram from ByoLogyc on Vimeo.

To catch up on some background of the ZED story be sure to check out the web comic.



October 31st, 2012 by Adam

Morality Quiz and an Overview of Popular Religions

YourMorals.org is a website setup to encourage people to, you guessed it, test their morals. It’s comprised of a series of quizzes designed by the team of psychologists behind the site.

The site is a very American take on morals, they also don’t appear to know the difference between sex and gender. I just did their introduction quiz and it comes as no surprise that I don’t fit into either of the (pathetically) only two options Americans have to vote for this November. Nowhere did it ask if I thought it’s worse for society to only have two choices for popular political affiliation, the world is more complex than blue vs. red. Oh well.

On the self compassion test I passed with flying colours, go me! Some of the quizzes are just fun to take and they are backed up with further resources to find out more about the results and where to research it. They also have a way to setup groups to see the values of an organization like a classroom.

For members of my class please join a group by clicking here.

If anybody knows of a similar moral study designed for global citizens (or even just Canadians) please share in the comments below!

On a similar thought to morality, there is religion. If you’re looking for a very brief overview of the plethora of religions out there then you may want to check out the Big Religion Comparison Chart. Of course, this is really a high-level overview and like YourMorals it links to more information online for you to peruse. Prior to looking at the chart I had no idea that Unitarian Universalism was thing, although I’m sure I’ve seen their logo before.



October 30th, 2012 by Adam

Get to Know Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the field of research that seeks to create intelligence through machines and programming. The term of ‘artificial’ has always troubled me because I don’t think there’s anything inherently artificial about the idea of intelligence. Perhaps synthetic or manufactured intelligence would be better. Or, perhaps I’m just being pedantic.

Anyway, I wanted to jot down some interesting things online about AI and how to learn more about (other than actually, you know, going to school for it). In particular, this is not about epistemology or anything of the sort, it’s purely about where to get information on mechanical and software based AI.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence “is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.” They have a collection of resources from their conferences, additionally they produce AI Magazine.

IEEE even has an annual Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games. Their archives is filled with slides and other information from the speakers, the 2012 conference just happened in September and already a lot is online.

If you want to dive right in to the world of AI and start producing your own version of intelligence then take a look at Stanford’s Introduction to AI which still has stuff accessible online. The creators of the course have gone on to create Udacity and now offer the AI course there.



October 29th, 2012 by Adam

Philosophy in 90 Minutes

Need to get up to speed on a key philosopher? Well, you’re in luck as someone on YouTube has created a playlist of audio recordings covering the life and thinking of a few philosophers. You can listen to Philosophy in 90 Minutes here.

Here’s the one I was keen to listen to on Hegel:

I still feel I don’t fully understand Hegel, but that seems appropriate given that it is Hegel after all.

The following philosophers are covered in the playlist:

  • Plato
  • Aristotle
  • Aquinas
  • Descartes
  • Spinoza
  • Hume
  • Rousseau
  • Kant
  • Hegel
  • Shopenhauer
  • Kierkegaard
  • Marx
  • Nietzsche
  • Wittgenstein
  • Sartre


October 26th, 2012 by Adam

You Can Now Study Skyrim at Rice University

Rice University is offering a course titled Scandinavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim in which students will explore how real Scandinavian tales and history influenced the game. It looks like a fun course!

My big question is if they’ll address my favourite Icelandic tale about the necropants.

This course has two goals. First, it introduces students to fantasy as both psychological concept and driving force in gamer culture; and second, using these paradigms, it considers how and why medieval Scandinavia serves as a locus of modern Anglo-American fantasy. To these ends, students will read selections from Old Norse and Old Icelandic sagas (in translation) as they play different quests within Skyrim. While the course begins by identifying moments of intersection between the worlds of the sagas and of Skyrim (inclement environments, supernatural figures, mythologies), the course is not in any means meant to map the former onto the latter. The purpose of establishing these connections is to then consider how elements of medieval Scandinavian culture have been taken out of historical milieu and literary context, morphed into unfamiliar shape, and appropriated towards other fantastic pursuits. We’ll consider the political saga of Skyrim, with its emphasis on Empire and rebellion, as pursuits made possible by way of Scandinavia in order to think through what Scandinavian fantasy worlds are really about and why they resonate with contemporary Anglo-American culture.



October 24th, 2012 by Adam
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