IT’S HERE!

After months of hard-work, planning, restructuring and a general makeover, our school gets to host CODE Live for the next 18 days. The Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition is a fantastic opportunity for us students to mingle with some of the world’s foremost digital artists, while also being able to volunteer for the production behind it (i.e. something cool to add to the resume).

The student projects from our Building Virtual Worlds class last semester are slowly rolling out too. Team Kobayashi Maru moved their awesome sign outside near the student parking lot on launch night, while Team Digital Bridge ran into a number of delays with the printers and can only poster the city today, the second day of Code Live. No biggie – it’s just tough getting anything done in this city with VANOC taking over.

As for our team, CHLOE, we’re frankly not sure what’s happening. We think we know where our light-step social game is going to be set up (the hallway by the washrooms on the ground floor), but for it to work in this new locale, there are ramps and rails that have to be built, a TV that has to be installed and some QA work that still needs to be conducted – at least a solid weekend’s worth of work.

Maybe we’ll have it all done and up by the end of Code Live, or maybe – if the school decides to make it a permanent installation – we can take our time and get it up properly. At this point, I’m inclined to push for the latter.

Because for now, a number of us are pretty busy with our industry projects, working on our online portfolios, and today, helping Digital Bridge go around the city and poster ads for Code Live. We’re each taking 60 posters and heading out in teams, with the idea of plastering all four corners of Vancouver.

Not a lot of fun, but for our efforts we each get tickets to a Code Live DJ event the night of Feb. 13 (Modern Deep Left Quartet) – and as everyone knows, the way to get a broke graduate student to do something is offer them cool, free stuff.

We’re all trying to get together this weekend to watch the Super Bowl as well, and I’ve yet to find someone to take on a friendly bet with me. So here, in blog form, is my prediction. The New Orleans will cover the spread (-5) and beat the Indianapolis Colts 34 - 31.

Another prediction? I will be punchdrunk on chicken wings and nachos by the third quarter.  God Bless America.

Nick Lewis is a 1^st year MDM graduate student. His hobbies include football, fantasy football, and fantasizing about football.