Here I am

Things are pretty bad on this here blog. Not only did I move it from rndparty.com to jeffcrouse.info/blog with no notice, breaking many of the images in the process, but I haven’t updated it in several months. And unfortunately it’s too late tonight to to any real in-depth posts. But I did want to add a teaser about what I’ve been up to – mostly to encourage myself to write more on these topics this week – a week that I am trying (and already failing) to set aside for documentation. In reverse order:

1. Test Party 2: BoozBot and Murder Mystery – This Friday, the 30th, was our second Test Party. I will talk more about Test Party later, but suffice to say, we (Dave and I) are now committed to having a monthly party where we showcase the stuff we (and maybe some select others) are working on. This time around it was BoozBot (no documentation yet), a robotic bartender with remarkably lifelike conversation skills. He was – I won’t hesitate to say – a huge success. The Murder Mystery party was fun – dressing up and drinking with friends always is – but the actual mystery part was kind of lame. It was your typical murder mystery, called Four Deuces. I’ll give a full recount of it in a later post.
2. Teen Mashup Workshop at The Change You Want To See – This was a workshop organized by Andrew Patterson and Eyebeam, hosted by The Change You Want To See collective in Williamsburg. Dave and I were asked to come help a group of teens think about and build a party around a audio visual mashup performance they were going to develop one Saturday last month. Unfortunately, no teens showed up.
3. New Jeffcrouse.info site. I’ve updated my site to put more focus on the images and movies. I like it, but I don’t think it’s the most usable site in the world. I want to make an iPhone version – just to see what the iPhone development process is like.
4. Test Party 1: MadLips Karaoke and You’re So VIP – I admit, I was very scared that no one was going to come to this party. Half of the people who RSVP’d dropped out at the last minute, and we had like 4 people on the list. But then, somehow, like 30 people ended up coming by. MadLibs Karaoke was a hit, and even my hastily thrown together “You’re So VIP” – which was a sad shadow of what it was supposed to be: a 1-person VIP room where lucky individuals would be invited to go if they were cool enough. Once inside, the VIP would be praised by outsourced “praisers” in India.
5. Dirt Party @ Futuresonic – Manchester is a great town.
6. ABSML Turbulence grant – Yes, A BullShit Markup Language has received its first grant. Hopefully one of many.
7. Eyebeam Mixer: Anywhere But Here – We’re close to having a video about this one, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.
8. Inside the Artist’s Studio with James Chimpton – With Steve Lambert. The first (followed by BoozBot, of course) or what I hope will be a series of comedic, robotic “puppets” with varying levels of automation.
9. Invisible Threads @ Sundance – There is lots to say about this one. I’ll need a whole post. It was a pretty amazing experience.

I have to write about all of these things, and it’s a little intimidating. I think I’m going to have to sit myself in a cafe somewhere, put on headphones, and just write until I can write no more.

Unrelated Future Plans

1. I’m considering committing to adding one entry to Uncyclopedia every day for 100 days, similar to my 100 days, 100 stories project that I did in college.
2. What ever happened to Sunday Night Mixes? I should make a new one.
3. I wish I could arrange it so that, as I was walking down the street, people would be launching themselves into the windows of buildings from street level like a bunch of frogs. This kind of sounds like an Improv Everywhere project.
4. I wish I could pass a law that would make it illegal to have a job where your primary function is to make money by moving other peoples’ money around from one place to another. Seems this would solve lots of problems.
5. Travel Time (HopStop) Map – I dropped this idea at a random presentation to Greenpeace last Monday. The idea is that there is a huge map projected on the wall, and after specifying your travel preferences, you point to a place on the map, and the rest of the map would warp around the place where you pointed based on how long it would take to travel there. I will make this in OpenFrameworks
6. Overheard In New York Machinima Podcast – Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but I have had so little time to check on my Second Life island that my connections/rep there are probably all gone.
7. ReplicateMe.org
8. Inspired by Mr. Lambert’s collaboration with Prof. Duncombe, I want to write a book with a collaborator.

If you (my 5 friends who read this) are particularly interested in hearing more about any of these topics in particular, let me know and I will push them to the top of the list. I’m TOTALLY PUMPED to write more.