I’m trying to determine how universal story research is, and to what extent writers actually do research vs making everything up from personal experience and imagination. I know writing is a very individual act, however, I’d like to get a gauge on prevalence.

• Do you ‘spot’ or research locations that you think would make a great story location and photograph them for later?
• Do you use maps, streetview, record distances? (to recount traversing real-life locations, terrain etc faithfully)
• Do you record sounds (tricking streams, wind etc) to make it easier to describe later?
• Do you map out story histories? (races, major historical events etc)
• Do you map out character relationships, back stories? [+]

Leap Motion appeared on my radar back in July 2012. It’s a tiny device packed with sensors that track a virtual space of  about 8 cubic feet.

It sits on the table in front of you and looks for your hands, fingers and tools, allowing you to interact with your computer touch-free.

It’s a truly impressive bit of kit, with a tiny price tag (pre-orders are at $69.99) that’s promising to be the breakthrough technology for motion control.

I posted back in 2011 about my excitement surrounding gesture based games and the increasing prevalence of gesture as an input mechanism.

Since that time, gestures like Pinch-to-zoom have become universally understood , mostly thanks to the iPhone and iPad.

Leap Motion aims to be the innovative technology to jump forward or Leap ahead with gesture in the same way that Apple did with iOS.

With such a small price tag, they’re trying to democratise a new engine for interaction. Price alone won’t be enough to ensure this happens though, applications and games that make good use of the hardware will be the factor that makes or breaks it.

I just received my developer unit and started playing with it so I may post more on what I do with it.

In the meantime, it’s time to get ready for the future.

Feeling inspired by some of the videos on Creative Mornings, I sat down for an hour and a half and wrote a short story.
I then narrated it, audio book-style. I’d love to hear some comments, though less on my reading than on your interpretation and enjoyment of the story.