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January 30, 2005

a happy new year

2004, what a year. It first found me working in a skyscraper in Tokyo, took me to the suburbs of the city later, flew me to Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and moved me to Italy. Took me back to school, woke me up for the first time and made me fall in love twice with the same woman. Got me to the beaches in Uruguay and ended in the green lawns of Argentina. now I'm back in Ivrea, looking forward for another great year. Yes, do expect more activity here, there is a ton of ideas and projects in the pipeline. Let's rock 2005!

August 25, 2004

sayonara nippon!

I'm sitting now in my couch, half my appartment is already packed but it still feels like I'm just beggining. After 6 amazing years in Tokyo, I'll be finaly making the big move next week. Starting this september I'll be pursuing a masters degree in interaction design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy. Yup, that's why the silence for the past month. It's been a little bit crazy, trying to finish with all my projects at work and catching up with local friends who, who knows when I'm going to see next. Giving up your work life to go back to school is not an easy task, and specially when you have an overseas moving ahead it might be a little bit stressing. There's so much stuff that I have to get rid of! But I'm really excited about this. Suddenly having so much time to be able to work on my own projects sounds so nice. Plus, Italy! my grand grand parents where italians but I've never been there before. Will have to learn italian, though probably jumping from spanish it shouldn't be that hard. So I'm leaving japan on September 2nd, headed first for Ars Electronica in Linz, where I'll be speaking a little bit right next to Lawrence Lessig in the Prix Ars Electronica Forum on September 6th. Hang out there for a couple of days, and later catch a train to my new home in Ivrea. This friday, I'll be having a small sayonara party in a bar in Omotesando. If you are reading this, YOU ARE INVITED. We start at 9pm with an excellent deal of all you can drink belgium beer for 1500 yen! drop me a line for directions mail[AT]marcosweskamp[DOT]com And for the rest who can't make it, well, expect a ton of stuff to come. I'll be renewing the site soon, still have the phidgets projects on the work, newsmap screensaver is almost out there, and a slick graph visualization engine are on the way. So, keep an eye on this feed! * update! due to the overwhelming ammount of people comming tonight I had to move the location to a bar in Ebisu. Still happening at 9pm. map over here. see you there!

August 15, 2004

ciao italia!

Finally got settled down in my new *huge* apartment in Ivrea a couple of days ago. (it's at least 2.5 times bigger than what I had in Tokyo!). Going through school orienation now and getting some survival italian lessons. Classes start in two weeks. Unfortunatelly my mail client cought fire with a virus some days ago and Norton Antivirus destroyed my inbox where I had mail piled up for the past 5 months. I have no idea how that bstrd got through. (arrrgh!) I'd kindly like to ask everyone who hasn't got any reply from me for the past days to resend your email. sorry fot that:)

July 25, 2004

Sayonara Nippon!

I'm sitting now in my couch, half my appartment is already packed but it still feels like I'm just beggining. After 6 amazing years in Tokyo, I'll be finaly making the big move next week. Starting this september I'll be pursuing a masters degree in interaction design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy. Yup, that's why the silence for the past month. It's been a little bit crazy, trying to finish with all my projects at work and catching up with local friends who, who knows when I'm going to see next. Giving up your work life to go back to school is not an easy task, and specially when you have an overseas moving ahead it might be a little bit stressing. There's so much stuff that I have to get rid of! But I'm really excited about this. Suddenly having so much time to be able to work on my own projects sounds so nice. Plus, Italy! my grand grand parents where italians but I've never been there before. Will have to learn italian, though probably jumping from spanish it shouldn't be that hard. So I'm leaving japan on September 2nd, headed first for Ars Electronica in Linz, where I'll be speaking a little bit right next to Lawrence Lessig in the Prix Ars Electronica Forum on September 6th. Hang out there for a couple of days, and later catch a train to my new home in Ivrea. This friday, I'll be having a small sayonara party in a bar in Omotesando. If you are reading this, YOU ARE INVITED. We start at 9pm with an excellent deal of all you can drink belgium beer for 1500 yen! drop me a line for directions mail[AT]marcosweskamp[DOT]com And for the rest who can't make it, well, expect a ton of stuff to come. I'll be renewing the site soon, still have the phidgets projects on the work, newsmap screensaver is almost out there, and a slick graph visualization engine are on the way. So, keep an eye on this feed! * update! due to the overwhelming ammount of people comming tonight I had to move the location to a bar in Ebisu. Still happening at 9pm. map over here. see you there!

February 22, 2004

MAX Japan 2004: The aftermath.

It's finally over! Had tons of fun, luckily after all, everything went well. I had been in the office since sunday night, almost without sleeping trying to finish with some work that has to go live tomorrow night. It was then wednesday night, and I hadn't really started yet to prepare the slides that I was going to show the next day, plus one of the projects that I wanted to show was not finished yet. I went to Dan's place who helped me with everything all night. It was around 5 in the morning that we runned accross a killer bug that no matter how hard we tried we couldn't isolate or fix. Sun came up, the conference had already started in Shibuya and we where still trying to work that out. So unluckily I had to decide to stop right where we where and show it as it was. I got on a train and runned all the way to the Cerullean Towers, got into the preparation room and finished with all my slides around 1 hour before our presentation. I realized then it was more than 60 hours since the last time I slept. I was so high on coffee that the time my turn came on the stage I never realized what was really going on. I think the room was almost full. Luckilly the presentation went pretty well, Yuji gave first an intro to coldfusion, and then I showed 3 projects that relly heavilly on it. I showed habitat perspectives, socialcircles and newsmap, a project that I hope I will be making live this week. When we finished a lot of people came to tell me they loved my presentation. wheew! they liked it! That was the best thing I could hear. At night we had a meeting with the coldfusion usergroup where Mr. Forta, JD, and B. Purcell had to listen to our complaints. After finally got the opportunity to talk to JD personally. Wow, what a charismatic person. It's like just by talking to him he'll somehow sweep out all your stress. And that's what he did to me! The next day during the general session it was time to show a little project I had been working on for a while: remote driver 2. This time I got my tablet PC, pluged a couple of servos through USB and runned the whole thing on top of an RC car chassis. Of course had a webcam on it, and through Flashcom I was driving it wirelessly from the stage. I'll be publishing more about this in the coming days. Thanks to everyone who was there, friends, coworkers, coleagues and everyone at macromedia for your support, and miles, miles gracias to everyone who came to see us. If you have any questions or suggestions, or even just to say you where there, please drop me a line [ mail at marcosweskamp dot com ] (sorry comments are still offline) I'd really like to hear what you thought about it. I hope I'll be having some time this week to publish my slides and all the new stuff. 見に来てくれた皆様へ：本当にありがとう。そんなにたくさんの人たちが集まってくれるのは全然思ってませんでした。 何かご意見でも分からないことがあったら是非、メールください： [ mail at marcosweskamp dot com] ( at & dot を"@","に変えてくださいね：）「私見に行ってましたよ」でもいいので。 スライドなどはできる限り今週中にアップします。 では、また合いましょうね！

August 15, 2003

back from holidays

Never had better times. Siggraph was a blast, this conference was a real eye opener, too much to see, feel, experience, learn there. Though the conference lasted 5 full days, I only spent 3 days there. Why? well I'm still asking myself that. I had thought 3 days would be enough and I could enjoy 2 more days at my parent's place in Argentina that way. Well, Argentina was real fun too, never had so much meat and wine in my life, but unluckily the party at Siggraph seems to have started on the 4th day. Though I was able to meet up with other friends over there, participants of the web graphics category, Branden, Joshua, Grant, Robert, they where all having their presentations the last two days. I was really looking forward to meet them all. Well... bad planning, I promise I will do my homework and check the conference schedule first next time before planning.

July 25, 2003

off to the other side of the pond

It's almost 5 in the morning and I'm almost ready to leave for the airport. Will be heading first for 4 days at Siggraph in San Diego and beeing that almost half way home(!), will be making another frog leap with final destination of Rosario, Argentina where I'll be taking almost 10 days off at my parents place. Yahp, it's a long way to the other side of the planet... and got plenty of entertainment (loads of laptop juice, 4 books thick as bricks, plenty of paper, pencils, everlasting kindegarten crayola set, and my view master), but hey haven't been there in almost 3 years. I'm so excited!

April 02, 2003

Back Home

I finally arrived home last Monday and I'm still trying to overcome jetlag. Cherry blosoms are on it's best which helps overcome the sadness I had for leaving San Francisco. I had really, really good times over there. My friend Tori worked her best to make me feel at home. And man she did a good job; I never wanted to leave! FlashForward was a blast. Had tons of fun and really enjoyed hanging out most of the time with Sean Voisen. Sean is an excellent dude, really humble guy. He was able to put up with 3 days of listening to me go crazy, without ever punching me in the stomach for nonsense talk. Was able to meet up also with the Dura Brothers - which was really nice too. They are both very cool guys. The conference? Awesome, this was my 3rd FF and it was definitively the best so far. The most outstanding moments where: * Kevyn Lynch's keynote: packed with new stuff coming from the mothership * Dave Yang's and Collin Mooks OOP sessions: very interesting to see how they both aproach design patterns in different ways * Grant Skinner's Film Festival: because he really deserved it. * Sam Wan's presentation: I love his style, very very clear, but sofisticated at the same time * Phillip Torrone's gadget marathon: very very cool. * Thomas Wagner: games in flash never looked better * Vas Sloutchevsky's interfaces: When we thought branded flashy interfaces where dead, here come Vas to probe we are all wrong. * Eric Natzke's closing: reverences to THA man. What I missed from the conference: * Dave Yang's Q&A: OUch! I'll never forgive myself for that! Sean told me it was excellent, just both of them and a bunch of other people from Macromedia, including Nigel Pegg, discussed in a very friendly atmosphere the future of AS. Would love to hear from them more about what happened there! * Robert Penner: Had so many questions for him. I know he was supposed to speak but somewhere sometime before the conference, his session was canceled. * Branden Hall & Joshua Davis: I know the dynamic duo has been one very bussy with work, and the other learning how to be a father, but I really missed them not showing up on stage

March 04, 2003

...and the winds of change blow again

Today was my very last day at work. What was really cute is that on the way home, walking up from Shibuya with all my belongings strapped to my shoulder, it slowly started snowing. Puffing my first cigarette of the day I raised my collar and quickly went through the 6 months of my stay in that office. I feel a little sad for having left the place that had been so much promising - my first day was one of those moments - but that excitement slowly started dimming with time. People there are all really talented, but somehow I never felt part of the team. Still, I am really thankful to everyone of them. Well, next comes some really good news, and I am really really excited about it - and I mean it this time. stay tuned:)

August 04, 2002

New winds blowing

Wooha, that was a long time between updates! Well, there's been a lot going around. I was super busy with my job but luckilly I could overcome my workaholism and take a break in Mexico for two weeks. New winds are blowing in Tokyo again; before leaving on my trip I decided to move forward with my career and take the tough decision of leaving DentsuFUSE, where I got to meet the most amazing people ever. For the following month I'll be freelancing here, and really looking forward to get a full-time possition anytime soon. So, here we go again, there's a lot of new plans, I'll soon be adding here an even more updatable blog section, probably focusing on MX technology. (you've GOT to have a blog these days huh?) Also Planning to give away a set of Flash components, and a lot of source code. Got to pick up painting again too. I have a couple of comissioned works that are almost half a year late already:P Whish me luck! Love to all.

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