my away time digest

10Jun09

I recently started this new blog, determined to write an average of 3 posts a week and now I have my doubts again about whether I can keep it up. It happens all the time, it’s like in a marathon when you hit ‘the wall’.

Anyway, I am now on holidays, at least for a few days, and I’ve spending my time reading magazines, books and of course browsing online. And here are some of the things I’ve read about (and learnt about):

Mercator vs. Peters Projection: Since the 16th century and up until very recently the most accepted world map was drawed using the Mercator projection, this is, a quite distorted vision of the real area of continents. For example, Greenland looked very similar in size to Africa, when in reality Africa is 14 times bigger than Greenland. This is a typical world view of the colonial times. This projection is also used by Google Maps.

Peters projection

Peters Projection in the other hand, it shows a more accurate reflection of the world, at least in terms of area. However, America and Africa look considerably big for our Western-oriented / Europe-centric culture. These are interesting facts as even nowadays most world maps are still based on the Mercator projection.

During my flight, I was reading Esquire magazine where they had a full article about Jason Rohrer and his videogames creations. His first game was Passage, what he described as a ‘memento mori‘ game, where the player has to make life decisions and death is impossible to avoid. He has been praised by industry experts as the only one capable to create a game that triggers emotions in the player. He even cried while first playing the game and has now been recruited by Steven Spielberg to work with him in the development of a new form of gaming. I am now about to play Passage (it only takes 5 minutes) and will write about it.

Then, these 2 past days I’ve been finding little tiny things that have made me smile. For example, today “My Milk Toof” has got me over 10 minutes smiling and I’ve been sharing it with friends. It’s so cute and refreshing.

It’s a great comic about 2 milk teeth that wander around the house and out. And that’s all for today really.

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Tags: jason rohrer, mercator, my milk toof, passage game, peters projection, videogames, world view