Be a Nerd, Geek and Dweeb

This past week I attended the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD), in Austin Texas. I was attending because I was one of 1200 staff and faculty members from around the country that received a NISOD award in excellence. My award was for teaching excellence. Although much of the conference was focused on administration development, such as how to make use of data such as retention and graduation rates ...
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Siggraph 2010 – Day 3

Day 3 started early, we arrived at the convention around 8:00 am to get in line for the exhibit hall, which opened at 9:30 am. Although we were very close to the start of the line everyone went crazy when they opened up the doors. Many attendees including myself made a mad dash to the Pixar booth, unfortunately they weren't giving away teapots until later, but I did get a ...
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Siggraph 2010 – Day 2

Okay so day two stared with a speaking session on "Stylized Rendering in Games" this talk discussed why some game developers stray away from photo realistic style and do something out of the box. One example was the new X-box live game "Monday Night Combat", which puts a whimsical spin on first person shooters. This game was built using the Unreal Engine and 3Ds Max. The the story takes place ...
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Siggraph 2010 – Day 1

Day One of Siggraph began at noon when I headed over to the Convention center to pick up my registration badge. The convention center is huge, and despite the fact that only a few exhibits opened today the place was full of people. The main exhibit that opened today was the Studio, which was a showcase of new technology and mini workshops on certain software applications. Although interesting many of the new ...
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