Geek Gestalt

San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum throws a pitch during a motion capture session for the 2K Sports video game Major League Baseball 2K9. Lincecum is the cover athlete for the game and the 2008 National League Cy Young award winner. Click the image for a full gallery on the motion capture event.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

NOVATO, Calif.--Sports Illustrated magazine called Tim Lincecum "the freak," and for the motion capture specialists at 2K Sports, getting a good computer model of baseball star Tim Lincecum's unique, and violent, pitching motion presented a special challenge.

Last month, Lincecum, a diminutive 24-year-old whom you would never pick out of a lineup as a superstar ballplayer, won the National League Cy Young award, given to the league's best pitcher. The same day, the San Francisco Giant found out that he'd been chosen as the cover athlete for Major League Baseball 2K9, 2K's hit baseball video game.

Lincecum was on hand at 2K's motion capture facility, about 30 minutes north of San Francisco, for a day of performance: dozens of individual pitching and batting moves that the technicians would lead him through, one by methodical one, all to be used in the new game and all so that the Lincecum character would look and feel like the real deal.

For me, this was not entirely new territory. I came here last May to cover a very similar event, the motion-capturing of Rick Nash, the cover star of NHL 2K9, 2K's hockey game. In September, I also spent an afternoon at Industrial Light & Magic, watching the technicians there put my colleague Kara Tsuboi through the paces of the motion capture experience that Robert Downey Jr. went through while he was filming the blockbuster Iron Man.

So while the specifics of mo-capping a baseball pitcher like Lincecum differ in some ways from what's required for a hockey star like Nash or a movie character like Iron Man, much of what went on Tuesday was familiar ground.

As with the Nash and the Being Iron Man events, Tuesday's activities began with Lincecum donning a spandex suit and technicians placing a series of reflective markers all over his body. These, explained Johnathan Rivera, an associate producer for 2K Sports, are designed to capture and reflect the light from 56 mo-cap cameras spread throughout the facility so that the computers can record the minute movements of the actor--in this case, Lincecum--as he moves around. This is then translated into a 3D model of his skeletal structure that is used as the base for his in-game avatar.

At 2K Sports, everyone talks about the so-called "signature style" that they build for the real-life stars of their games. Essentially, said motion capture coordinator Steve Park, this means finding the stars' unique and specific motions and movements, ones that would be very familiar to their fans, and building them into the games so that when the fans play the Lincecum character, for example, they recognize his explosive pitching motion and can easily distinguish it from the more pedestrian motions practiced by dozens of other, less stellar, pitchers.

Park admitted that much of what he and his team were doing Tuesday was the same as what I'd seen them do for Nash. But he explained that mo-capping baseball plays does differ in some material ways.

For one, each of Lincecum's moves--and he would perform dozens of them--was a quick set piece that took just seconds and which covered a very small, specific piece of ground.

A computer model of Lincecum during the mo-cap session.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

To be sure, Nash's movements were also set pieces, and lasted just seconds, but they tended to be more free-form, one technician told me.

So the mo-cap team had set up a short pitching mound covered in markers that were meant to be used by Lincecum for specific foot placements for his myriad moves.

"The foot placement is actually pretty important for us," Park said, "for getting the right blend pose."

The blend pose, Park explained, is what happens when the technicians take different recorded motions and blend them together to create a single, smooth move for the game. Because much of what baseball players do looks very similar, even when differing in one way or another, it's crucial, Park suggested, to be able to create smooth blend poses.

It was important that Lincecum's many moves be spot-on, so that the end of one move would look similar enough to the beginning of another--say his wind-up blending into his follow-through--that they could be combined in the game without any jerky transition.

Hockey moves, said Park, are much more free-form and free-flow, and while building an NHL game also requires accurate blend poses, he added that it was much more important when shooting a baseball player that the player hit his foot placements precisely.

That's because, Park continued, baseball motions are very segmented and specific, whether someone is pitching, catching, or swinging a bat.

For Park and his team, having Lincecum be the cover star also was challenging for another reason: while they've done baseball games for years, Lincecum was the first pitcher they've featured. And that meant figuring out how to capture the pitching motion, something that is more important with a player like the Giants star, who, despite being stellar as a college player, scared off many of the pro scouts who watched him play.

"The quickness of Lincecum's small body is what scared off most scouts," wrote Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated last July, "that and what has become something of a trademark, a tilting of his head toward first base in the early phase of his delivery. The scouts equated his body speed with violence. That assessment, however, is akin to watching the Blue Angels air show team and not seeing the precision because of a fixation with the implicit danger. Lincecum generates outrageous rotational power (see video below)--the key element to velocity--only because his legs, hips, and torso work in such harmony."

Or, as the magazine reported, "The normal stride length for a pitcher is 77 percent to 87 percent of his height. Lincecum's stride is 129 percent, some 7.5 feet."

So for some of the mo-cap technicians, the best part of bringing in someone like Lincecum was the opportunity to be able to build a digital model of "The Freak" in motion, something that they see as a very cool piece of digital data.

All of which is to say that even if the mo-cap guys at 2K Sports had had experience with a pitcher, Lincecum would still have presented a singular experience for them.

That said, Park explained that, in fact, pitching is actually easier to mo-cap than hitting.

That's because batters have very distinctive stances that begin with "waggles," or nervous tics they express with their bats, as well as differing stances that can be wide or narrow, depending on the player.

And because Lincecum does take the occasional turn at bat, the mo-cap guys had to film him hitting as well.

I asked Park how many other major league players they bring in for the creation of their baseball game, and he said that, in fact, the number is very small.

"Part of the problem is that our development cycle is actually during the baseball season," Park said, adding that the players are contractually prohibited from doing the kind of extracurricular work that Lincecum was doing Tuesday during the season. "I don't know what our goal is...but it's always a challenge for every sport."

This means that while 2K Sports will bring in a Lincecum or a Nash as their cover athletes, in order to capture their signature styles, most of the players in the games are actually represented by actors, guys who have played their respective sports at probably a high amateur level, such as college, and who can be trusted to look like they know what they're doing.

Back at the 2K Sports mo-cap facility, Lincecum has taken the "mound," and is now warming up for his session.

Soon, he's ready, and after a brief introduction in which Park explains to the gathered crowd what, exactly, is going on, Lincecum begins his series of moves.

Right away, though, he's having a bit of a problem with some of the reflective markers they've put on his baseball glove, which keep flying off during his violent motion.

That's not a problem for the third shot, though, one in which Lincecum is supposed to stand idle on the mound.

He does that, standing totally still, until the director yells, "Cut."

Lincecum grins and asks if it was a good take.

As the crowd laughed, the director fired back, "More emotion."

But once Lincecum continues with actual pitching motions, he continues to have problems keeping the markers on his glove, meaning that after each shot, a couple of techs have to run out and put them back on.

Finally, he's done with his pitching moves, and now it's time for him to pick up his bat for the hitting shots (see video below).

The biggest laugh of all came when the director announced that Lincecum was going to hit a home run.

"He's going to hit a home run, which is the first time in his life he's ever done that, including Little League," said Johnathan Rivera, an associate producer for 2K Sports.

"Thanks," Lincecum said sarcastically.

After all the shooting was over, I asked Lincecum--who, by the way, is a big video game player and is currently spending his free time with Gears of War 2--what it was like to be featured in Major League Baseball 2K9.

"It's a one-of-a-kind experience for me," Lincecum said. "That's stuff that kids dream about all the time...You see yourself in the game, and you're like, 'That's me. That's me out there, except in video game form.'"

San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum throws a pitch during a motion-capture session for the 2K Sports video game, 'Major League Baseball 2K9'. Lincecum is the cover athlete for the game and the 2008 National League Cy Young award winner.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

NOVATO, Calif.--We're about to see Tim Lincecum, the 2008 National League Cy Young award-winning pitcher, go deep.

"He's going to hit a home run, which is the first time in his life he's ever done that, including Little League," said Johnathan Rivera, an associate producer for 2K Sports, who was standing near the pitcher, explaining what he was about to do.

"Thanks," Lincecum said sarcastically.

The San Francisco Giants pitcher was here, at 2K Sports' motion-capture studio on Tuesday, because he's the cover athlete for the publisher's forthcoming Major League Baseball 2K9 game, which is slated to be released in the spring, just before next year's season begins.

And now, after about an hour of throwing all kinds of pitches for the mo-cap cameras, he's got a bat in his hands and, according to the script, it's time for the long ball.

Lincecum prepares for the mo-cap session. His suit is covered in reflective markers used to create a skeletal image of the subject's movement.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Of course, he's not swinging at real pitching, but he takes his swing, and it looks good. It's possible to imagine the ball soaring off Lincecum's bat and clearing the fences, even though he's a pitcher by profession.

For me, this was my second trip to 2K's mo-cap facility, after visiting in May for a similar session in which pro hockey star Rick Nash was filmed for NHL 2K9. But I'm actually a baseball fan and could pick out Lincecum from the crowd, whereas Nash had been an all-new face for me.

Lincecum, however, is tiny, at least as far as pro athletes go. If you didn't know which one he was, you would not have been able to tell he was at the top of his sport.

But once he was covered in reflective markers and began throwing pitches in front of the mo-cap cameras, there was little doubt. The kid--he's 24 years old--has a scary smooth pitching motion and throws heat (see the video below).

To be sure, much of what went on here today was familiar to me, having been at the Nash mo-cap session. But according to several of the people involved in putting this session together, shooting mo-cap of baseball presents specific challenges that other sports don't.

I'll explain all of that in a full story I'll post tomorrow, along with a photo gallery. So stay tuned for that.

I've just emerged from a brief visit to the 19th century (via a storm-driven 36-hour power outage) and among all my other experiences and impressions during this odd weekend, none was more powerful than an extremely visceral understanding of just how fragile our modern infrastructures are.

This all began when, just as I was about to run out of my Sausalito, Calif., house on Friday morning, I decided to do a quick e-mail check. Oddly, there was no Internet connection, and after a cursory check to see why, I realized that our power was out, a condition that had taken down my Internet service and home phone--which comes in via Comcast cable.

It was no wonder. Outside, fierce and heavy winds and rain were blowing trees nearly horizontal. But I thought it would be a brief outage and, giving it little mind, I ran to catch my bus into San Francisco.

Because of strong winds and heavy rain, hundreds of thousands of Northern Californians lost power beginning Friday. Some are still without power on Monday.

(Credit: PG&E)

For more than 20 minutes I stood in the full force of the wind and rain, getting soaked to the bone, wondering where the bus was. Finally, I pulled out my cell phone and called Golden Gate Transit to ask what was up. There were no buses running through Sausalito, I was told, because the town's downtown was "flooded."

I slogged home, unsure what to do. I figured perhaps I could go work at a nearby library or cafe, but it quickly became clear that power was out not just at my house, but throughout Sausalito and in much of the Bay Area. All told, I found out later, something like 1.2 million people throughout Northern California had lost power.

But it wasn't just electricity that was unavailable. In addition to no buses running through Sausalito, sections of highway 101 and the San Rafael Bridge--a major connector from Marin County to the east side of San Francisco Bay--were shut down due to wind-driven chaos. In addition, ferries weren't running and, to my dismay, I discovered that once home, my cell reception was extremely intermittent, far worse than usual, a condition that made it impossible for me to get online via Verizon's EV-DO like my colleague Rafe Needleman did during his own time without power.

Left with no way to get to work--driving really didn't seem safe--and no way to get online or make phone calls, I stayed at home where my wife and I huddled under blankets for most of the day, trying to figure out what to do.

Now, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. Our experience was pretty mild--we were able to do some modest cooking and make coffee on a propane stove, and we had some battery-powered devices so we could listen to music.

And my wife and I are both veteran campers, so we know how to survive without the amenities American homes offer. And yet, the whole experience was strangely debilitating.

It was also very clear after just a few hours of this just how easily broken America's infrastructure is. It's not that we--or others in similar circumstances--would soon starve or freeze to death. But it was striking just how poorly the system was able to handle what, for many parts of the country, was really not a very serious storm.

What was even more clear was just how reliant we all are on energy--specifically the energy that comes from the grid--and how few options there are for most middle-class Americans.

To be sure, there are plenty of alternatives to electricity from the grid, but from what I know of them, they're not easily available to people with modest means. For people like myself, it feels very much like the only option is to buy electricity from fill-in-the-blank power company, in my case, PG&E, and that I, and most Americans, are stuck using nonrenewable energy for most of the things we do in our daily lives. That really must change, as we all now know.

Which brings me to one complaint I do have about how the power company handled this "crisis."

On Friday, I called PG&E to try to get an estimate of when the power would come back on. At first they told me it would come back by 11 a.m. the same day. That hour quickly came and went, all with no electricity.

That evening, I called again and was able to use their automated system to find out that there was no available estimate. However, the automated system informed me, for those customers who had been without power for 24 hours or more, there was a separate toll-free number to call to talk to an actual human.

Well, that was fine and dandy, except that it hadn't yet been 24 hours since the storm knocked out power throughout the Bay Area.

On Saturday, I called the number again, and for the second time, the automated system told me no estimate was available. But I was waiting for it to tell me the number to call if power had been out for more than 24 hours. I now qualified.

This time, however, it said that for those without power for more than 48 hours, there was a special number to call. How handy for PG&E that no one was yet without power for that many hours. Typical for a utility that declared bankruptcy in 2001 in the middle of one of California's worst-ever energy crises while its corporate parent was hauling in billions in profits from the outrageous price hikes we were paying for power.

By Saturday, my wife and I were kind of at a loss. We were still able to make coffee and, thanks to some dry ice purchased from a nearby market that stayed open with the help of generators, we had saved most of our perishables.

One thing was odd about going to the market was the sense of cultures mixing: those with power and those without. The store had blocked off its freezer aisle and was offering limited services, but it had received a regular delivery of bread from a bakery in Berkeley. And in the checkout line, I overheard someone saying what I had been thinking since soon after this all began: This would all be just fine if we could just watch movies.

Hearing this woman say what I was thinking made me feel guilty. As crises go, this was pretty mild. Yet, because of the systems we're used to, we're often left with few internal resources to know how to handle a loss of basic infrastructure. It's not something to complain about, but it's a warning sign that when a real crisis hits--a major earthquake, for example--it is painfully obvious that our way of life will be abruptly cut off. Just look at what happened in New Orleans or in Southern California during the fires there last fall.

Finally, late on Saturday, as my wife and I were contemplating what seemed like the reality that it could be a couple more days before the power returned and that we might have to spend a few hundred dollars on a hotel room, the lights came on. Just like that, with no warning. In those first few minutes, it seemed so tenuous, like counting on the power staying on was foolish and unwise.

Yet stay on they did. Thousands in the Bay Area are still without power at the time of this writing, however, and another fierce storm is expected Tuesday, so who knows what will happen then?

All in all, this was an eye-opening experience for me. I realized just how poorly prepared I am for dealing with something like this, and I have way more knowledge than most due to the time I've spent camping and being far off the grid.

And what it tells me, and what is probably abundantly clear to everyone else, is that we either need to confront our unpreparedness head on, and right now, or risk being cut off from the world for much longer than 36 hours if something really serious ever happens. And if the latter is how it goes, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

Be careful if you decide to take a peaceful after-turkey stroll through San Francisco's Dolores Park Thursday evening.

That's because you may find yourself in the line of fire.

Well, not "fire," exactly, but very possibly in the sights of those taking part in the third-annual Thanksgiving dodgeball gathering there.

On Thursday evening, San Franciscans are invited to play dodgeball in that city's Dolores Park. Bring a ball.

(Credit: National Amateur Dodgeball Association)

This is one reason I love San Francisco: People just get together for the most silly and fun things. They do it with the barest amount of organization and everyone comes out and has a great time.

It's like that for zombie marches, for wild pillow fighting, for Pee-Wee Herman Day and many other events.

And sure, other cities, like New York, boast similar energy. So, I guess I just want to celebrate the kind of people and places that make it possible to feel like you can get together with a bunch of folks you don't know and play dodgeball in the park.

So if you do happen to be wandering by and come across the game, consider joining in. You won't regret it.

Either way, it seems like a fantastic way to work off all that food. Game on.

One of the most frequent methods used in containing oil spills is the deployment of booms, as seen here after the November 7 oil spill in San Francisco Bay.

(Credit: U.S. Coast Guard)

Just under two weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk here at CNET when I saw a bulletin online that a ship had hit the Bay Bridge. The bulletin was very short and to the point, and really just said that there was no structural damage to the bridge. We laughed about it for a few minutes and moved on.

I didn't think more about it until the next morning when I logged onto SFGate. There, I read that, in fact, the damage that had been done by the so-called Cosco Busan accident had been to the extremely fragile ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay estuary. It turned out that 58,000 gallons of highly toxic bunker oil had spilled out of the ship and into the bay. And already, the article explained, dozens or even hundreds of shorebirds were being found covered in oil, and many were expected to die.

Well, this is old news now. But what may not be known is how small a role high technology is playing in the recovery of this spill or any of the many major spills that happen regularly around the globe.

It turns out, as I wrote in a full story on Tuesday, that the cleanup and recovery community is pretty much married to the same industrial equipment and methods it has been using for oil spills for years, and that with a few small exceptions, software and cutting-edge communications equipment are not really involved.

I suppose I don't really know myself how such technology could be implemented, but it seems, in this day and age, that there must be ways to do so.

One example, it seems to me, is to find ways to utilize technology to better locate the oil to be cleaned up.

As I wrote in the story, I was told by one specialist with the California Department of Fish and Game that one of the major ways being used to locate the oil is to fly over the water with airplanes and helicopters, trying to spot it visually.

One of the chief methods used by oil spill cleanup workers to identify the location of oil slicks is to fly over affected waterways. Here, U.S. Coast Guard Pacific strike team chief Jonathan Grimes flies over the San Francisco Bay on November 12, looking for oil and checking out cleanup work.

(Credit: U.S. Coast Guard)

But another expert I talked to for the story said that bunker oil rapidly sinks to at least a foot below the surface of the water and is hard to spot from the air.

This is a partial explanation for why there are still tens of thousands of gallons of this poison floating around in the waters here, killing birds and endangering other wildlife, and why some say it could take 10 years for the area--one of the most important estuaries in North America--to recover.

And this is just one spill, and not a particularly large one when you consider that much, much bigger ones happen all the time.

Of course, the bigger problem to solve is stopping the oil spills in the first place. Why anyone allows single-hull ships to carry oil as cargo in open water, for example, is befuddling to me.

But that's a problem for another day, I suppose.