Another Restaurant Idea

A couple years ago I posted about my restaurant ideas. This is something I often talk about, a fun little hobby of mine that could become a business one day, although probably not before I retire from what I really do. This summer I came up with another idea I wanted to mention.

It would be a train themed restaurant. The waiters and waitresses would be dressed as conductors and would take your order with a whole punch like on a train ticket. The food would all be delivered to your table by model trains that run on a series of tracks throughout the restaurant.
Keywords:Ideas
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Art of the Can

Last night I went to an art opening for a show called Art of the Can. PlayMotion has done a bunch of work for Red Bull (yes, the energy drink) over the last couple months. They've hired us to run PlayMotion at a number of events and parties they have sponsored. Just last month I completed a PlayMotion game that Red Bull sponsored in the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore where you fly over the Baltimore harbor which we build a virtual version of. It is a simulation of an event they sponsor this month called Flugtag or "Flying Day" which is a competition where people make flying crafts and see how far they can get when pushed off of a ramp in the harbor. Because of this relationship, they are always sending us cases and cases of free Red Bull and they invited our whole office to the private opening party for this art exhibit that has come to Atlanta. Art of the Can is an exhibit of lots of sculptures made out of Red Bull cans. There was some pretty neat stuff there, everything from jewlery and clothes to dragons and guitars. The party was packed and it was a lot of fun. Although only a few other people from work went, I brought a date and we had a great time.
Keywords:Art | PlayMotion!
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NextFest 2006

URL: http://sparkyb.net/pictures/gallery/2006-2007/NextFest/
This post is a little late but better late than never! If you are a regular reader of this space you might remember my post about NextFest last year. Well this year the event was held in New York City September 28-October 1. I went back with PlayMotion again.

It was a trying setup but a personal victory. The week before I had to manage the packing of the equipment since our main hardware and installation guy was already travelling for 5 other installations. Three others set out on Monday morning in a van with the equipment. On Monday Jeremy and I had to get the software ready. The addition of a last minute feature to allow us to run all of our stuff twice as wide (different aspect ratio) that we normally do made the task difficult and I didn't get home until about midnight and still had to do laundry and pack.

When I arrived after only one hour of sleep and met the van, our space was not nearly what we had expected or what we needed. Since there was no one there who was responsable for our previous dealings with NextFest I took charge and began sorting out the mess. It was an incredibly long day. Despite the number of requests I had, all of the show production, event center, and union staff were very helpful. I was extremely pleased that my way of dealing with them, sympathazing and thanking them profusely, worked out quite well. After two days of setup we had all the equipment working.

Quasi the robot, who I worked with a lot at the ETC, was originally invited to apply to exhibit at NextFest but was not accepted.

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Keywords:PlayMotion! | Travel
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Meet Splash! the first interactive fountain

URL: http://sparkyb.net/pictures/gallery/2006%20Summer/
Wow, my journal went empty for four months. I'm sorry about that everyone. I was really busy and with stuff that at the time I couldn't talk about, so it kind of reinforced my posting laziness. Let's see if I can do a quick recap before I write the next 3 or so posts about just the last few weeks of awesomeness.

In May I graduated with my Masters of Entertainment Technology. That means I'm done with school for good! In my job dilemma I decide to try my hand at freelance consulting (more on that later) rather than take the full-time offer I had. For the summer I had a consulting job, along with my designer friend Lenny, working on the worlds first interactive fountain in Atlantic City.

Thinkwell Design and Production was hired to create a fountain show for The Pier at Caesars, a new mall being built on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. They created two seven minute shows that play on the hour combining music, lights, and tons and tons of water (19,000 gallons). It is really spectactular. However, to fill the rest of every hour, they hired Lenny and me from the ETC to make the fountain interactive. It had a library of 3 games that it will attempt to play with unsuspecting guests. For starters, when you walk around the egg shaped fountain, the water will follow you. This project was a lot of fun, had a lot of ups and downs, was a lot of work, and was overall a crazy, busy, exciting, once-in-a-lifetime summer. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to talk about the project until we were finished, otherwise there would have been all sorts of stories in this space about corrupt New Jersey state employees, annoying mall patrons, trips to Ocean City to play mini-golf, fountain jets named Gustav, the best and worst hotels, and much, much more.

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Keywords:Summer | Jobs
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Thought Repository » October 2006