Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

“Seven Things” is a fun little exercise that seems to be rapidly spreading around under a variety of names. I was tagged (i.e. told to do this) by Andrew Wirtanen, a former coworker at CyberCamps. I don’t usually do these things, but hey, it’s Friday.

Seven things about me you may or may not know:

1. I originally went to college to become a marketer. I started my Bentley career wanting to go in to marketing, with the eventual goal of going into Food Science R&D. I wanted to be the guy that designed snack foods, cereals, and whatnot. I quickly learned that attaining such a position either requires a long trek up the corporate ladder from sales or going to school for something more chemistry-oriented. I ended up switching to Information Systems, which eventually led me to my graduate work in Human Factors.
2. I’m an avid skiier and hiker. I know my bulbous form doesn’t show it, but I do enjoy glades skiing and hiking quite a bit. I’ve never been much of a runner; as far as exercise goes, I prefer slow and steady.
3. I play electric bass. This is funny when I think about it, because I didn’t start listening to music on a regular basis until I was in high school. I’m a huge classic rock fan, and I like blues and jazz as well. My bass skills are terrible, but I love the way the instrument sounds. I should really take some classes.
4. I love heavy story-arc television shows. Think things like Rome, Battlestar Galactica, and Six Feet Under. Character development is king!
5. My first name, Kyle, means “a narrow strait or channel.” It has its origins in Ireland and Scotland.
6. I used to run a mobile device software company. In the late 1990s when Palm OS was king of the handhelds, I ran a small 2-man development shop that built simple custom-form applications. Long since defunct, a few of our “joke” applications are still floating around out on the internet. It’s an eerie confirmation of the saying “once it’s online, it never comes off.”
7. I was a dental assistant for 4 years. Believe it or not, you actually get to talk to a lot of people. They just don’t talk back very much.

Now it’s time to tag 6 more people, because I can’t think of 7.  Here they are,

1. Greg Hjelte, a former Bentley roommate/classmate. He’s currently at IBM.
2. Matt Wagner, a former Bentley roommate/classmate. He’s a Systems Administrator in Charlestown.
3. Katt Richard, my fiancee and a Support Engineer at Cramer.
4. Ryan Bedell, my brother and a game-developer-in-training at Worcester Polytechnical Institute.
5. Thomas Simmons (aka Gravecat), photographer, gamer, and philosopher.
6. Peter Horrigan, a coworker of mine at Tangoe.

The rules:
1. Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
3. Tag seven (or 6 if your name is Kyle) people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

One of the theories of perception states that we are only able to represent one object in a “stable form” at a time. This means that at any given moment, our attention and perception are only fixed on one element in our visual field. To overcome this handicap, we can direct our attention at such a speed that we can create a detailed, stable representation of any object in our visual field whenever we need to. This is known as virtual representation, because we’re not actually keeping representations of everything in a scene in our minds at once.

Virtual representation is only possible because of preattentive processing, the part of the mind that does all of the extremely low-level visual grouping. Its role is to keep everything in reach of our attention. The effect is that the higher levels of the mind’s eye see every object in a scene with a detailed, stable representation. Because only one object is truly in-focus at one time, the preattentive helps save on working memory load, processing, and bandwidth.

The mind is an amazing thing!

I’m a huge fan of Valve Software’s Team Fortress 2. Its unique, Incredibles-like art style, varied class selection, and continued updates keep me coming back month after month. I think what draws me to the title, unlike other FPSes like Call of Duty and Counter-Strike, is the face that it doesn’t take itself seriously. Win or lose, I still have fun every round that I play. The only problem with the game is that it requires a fairly decent computer to run. My desktop is a powerhouse, so it runs just fine there. However, even on my (former) Macbook Pro with a dedicated graphics chip, TF2’s performance left something to be desired. My current Lenovo X200 doesn’t really stand a chance with its integrated Intel graphics.

What’s a Team Fortress 2 lover to do?

Imagine my delight when I stumbled apon a 2D fan “demake” called Gang Garrison 2. It preserves most of the class features and maps present in TF2 (albeit renamed; the Heavy is the “Overweight,” the Pyro is the “Firebug,” you get the idea) in glorious 8-bit graphics. It even boasts internet and LAN multiplayer, with some basic hosting/lobby features built right in. I can see it being extremely entertaining with the after-hours crowds at work. The only thing it’s missing is the ability to customize the controls, as I would really prefer to remap the Jump key to the spacebar instead of “W.”

If you’re looking to give a multiplayer 2D platformer/shooter, give Gang Garrison 2 a try. It’s free!

I just stumbled across an excellent Google News visualization while reading Jenifer Tidwell’s Designing Interfaces. Check it out!