Memory glasses

Another quick post to show something I saw whilst on holiday. CK sunglasses with a built in USB flash drive, which is embedded into the right arm. I saw them on sale at over £100, but I didn't overly like the glasses design. This didn't stop me from seriously considering buying them, to live out a fantasy spy role in corporate espionage, then I realised this may involve running so didn't get them. Still at least ideas like this would stop me loosing my USB stick. J!

Avengers movie

This is just a really quick post because to me this is the height of coolness, yes i'm a geek, but the teaser site for 'The Avengers' movie has just become live after its comic-con announcement. All the stars from Marvels latest film 'Iron Man 2' are present, along with those from upcoming 'Thor' and 'Captain America', and also Mark Ruffalo is replacing Ed Norton as the Hulk. For me 2012 can not come quick enough. J!

Bad Guy design

This is the final design of my enemy for Little Jay. I decided on using similar colours as I did with my other designs, to add connections and continuity through the brand. As I also couldn't think of a name which I liked I decided to settle on Bad Guy, as this sums up the character, but allows me the opportunity to change/reveal a new name at a later date. J!

Cloud city

Above is the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles (LEMV) which will be built for the US Army within 18 months and ready for operations by early 2012. It will cost £350m, with the contract awarded to American military contractor Northrop Grumman, one of the world's largest defence companies. It will be able to stay in the air for up to three weeks at a time and provide what designers describe as an "unblinking eye" of surveillance for forces on the ground, transmitting data without any delays. The skin is also made up of a mixture of tough materials and Kevlar, being able to withstand most small arms fire.

Using my love of comics as a reference point, I predict that it won't be long until we see fully fledged sky bases in our skies, like the Marvel Helicarrier (below). All I can say is bring on the Iron man armor suits. J!

PSP (but not as you may think)

I don't want this thread to be purely about computer games, and I am aware of what I said in my previous post about the PSP, but I feel I must tell this tale.

As I mentioned in my last post I recently went on hol with my wife, however we have very different ideas of what makes a great holiday, but as we only had a limited budget she had her wish and we went somewhere hot with a pool. I knew it would be great to spend some quality time together, but I did not want to just sit in the heat (honestly, like roasting a hog!) so I decided to invest in a PSP to take with me. I did not use it. I was too busy enjoying myself, so like all the others I had it was going to be traded in.

However, we came back to some bad news and I found myself having to spend an awful lot of time waiting around in hospitals, and this is where I found the real joy of the PSP. It wasn't in the games but in the fact that I loaded up my holiday photos on there to show my parents, I downloaded my music and films to keep me entertained, I also downloaded a few classic PS1 games, but best of all I found that it had a comic reader similar to the motion comics on i-Tunes, so for only £1.19 an issue I could also read my favorite comics (and you guys know how much I love my comics). All of these things I did on one small machine without inserting one UMD, amazing.

Now I also know most of you are screaming "Get an i-Phone, it does all those things!", but this was £99, and you can also get good UMD films and games rather cheaply. So it was just to say that the PSP is back in favor with me, and yes it is a good games console but its' extra features are also just as good and useful, especially when I didn't even mention built in Skype, radio, attachable camera, and GPS.

Live the dream, J!

Alive

I just wanted to put out a post stating that I am still breathing and active, just had a real busy month, went away for one week but then had to go all around the UK, and spent a lot of time in hospitals (everything's fine now, I hope). Anyway that means that the time off I was going to take for planing projects has shifted to now so I won't be very active for the next month or so, but then you should check back for hopefully some cool new stuff.

Thanks J!

3DS

The other major news from E3 for me is the 3DS. What can I say, the kings of handhelds, Nintendo, batting for another home run, I know where my money will be placed.

I can't really say a lot for this other than I remember when the original DS was announced, I looked at the stats, compared them against the PSP's, added the fact that the DS's biggest game was going to be an 9yr old 'Mario' game and believed that Sony had it in the bag. How wrong was I, the DS felt right to play, it was fresh, and appealed to everyone. Yes the PSP is more powerful, and yes there are some awful howlers on the DS, but any game that Nintendo touches is like pure gold.

So imagine a more powerful DS with bells and whistles on, and you have the 3DS, and with any worries about remakes of Zelda games etc on launch, I only have to remind my self of how wrong I was with 'Mario 64 DS' to enable me to place them to one side.

I WANT ONE NOW!

Playstation Move

Ok, so E3 is in full swing, and being a massive gamer this is a very exciting time for me, more so than watching England play in the world cup.

I am not one of those gamers who only own one brand of console and feel the need to run down everything else on the market, nor am I the person who has each and every machine on the market. I prefer to own one for a period of time, play a few games on it, then swap to another if there are platform exclusive titles which appeal to me. Having said that, the current gen of consoles have now been out for a number of years, and as of last sept I have stuck with my slim PS3, with no plans of changing it any time soon. On a side note it is worth mentioning that, yes I do change consoles, but with each of the past generations I have found myself settling on the Playstation, so you could call it my favourite.

When the PS3 was launched though, I had no interest in it. I thought it was too expensive, nowhere near enough decent games to swap from my 360, and it felt a bit 'borrowed' from other consoles. But like the PS2 before, after a year it hit its stride, and with games like 'MGS4' and 'Little Big Planet' how could I not get one.

All this leads me on to 'Playstation Move'. When I first heard about it, I along with millions of others thought, "they've done it again, they've copied another company", and of course I am referring to the Wii, and by "copying again" I mean the achievements system on the 360. However just like the achievement system on the 360, Playstation copied it with their 'Trophies' and in my opinion improved it. The same must be said for the 'Move' controllers. Yes they are an extra expense, but most of you will already own the camera, and by being able to use the DualShock controller with most games as well, the cost isn't as high as first was thought. Bundle this with the first wave of games coming out like 'SOCOM 4' and 'Heros on the Move' and suddenly it becomes an affordable essential.

Finally I leave you with the thought of, if this is what they are achieving now, what will be happening in two years when developers put their knowledge together with the one-to-one tracking of 'Move' and the pure grunt of the PS3?

Time out

Just wanted to write this quick post incase anyone is following this blog and wonders why the input has significantly dropped of late. Well, believe it or not the more time off I have like now, the harder I find it to achieve things, weird I know, think it has to do with self doubt and over thinking. Anyway, I do have some ideas, but I am more of a pen and paper guy for the early stages of production, so you may not see anything appearing for the next couple of months, but then hopefully, bam, a new design with lots of cool things should rapidly start to appear, so don't give up, give me time.

Also I am creating a new thread to my blog entitled 'Cool Stuff' as I am a self confessed geek, and I constantly see things I think are cool, but my wife has given up listening and caring so I am sharing it here instead.

Thanks for your support, J!

Animated avatar

After browsing Twitter for new people to follow, I noticed some people had avatars which were animated. I was confused at first as Twitter only allows you to upload one pic as your profile picture, so how could you have an animation?

After searching around the internet I discovered that by using Photoshop you could save a series of images as a .gif or .png file, and use that as a single picture file.

To create an animated avatar simply open Photoshop and have a single layer for each complete frame of the animation, select each layer (using the shift key to select multiple frames), then with all frames selected go up to the 'window' tab on the main bar and select 'animation' from the drop down menu. A single frame (layer 1) should appear on the left side of the box which has just appeared. In the top right of the animation window box, click to open the drop down menu, and select the option 'make frames from layers', now each frame should appear individually across that box (like the original image which appeared when you first opened the animation window). The final step is to change the timings for each frame from the drop down box under each frame. Once complete you test with the play controls on the bottom left of the animation window, then when you are happy with the results, save for web like a normal gif, BUT make sure that the 'looping options' are set to 'forever' before you click the final save button.

You now have an animated .gif file which you can use, however Twitter have since stopped you from uploading animated gifs to their site, only originals now exist. As this was the reason for me to create mine I know have to figure out what I intend to do with it now, as I feel it is too good to just sit here, even if I do say so myself. J!

(Please note that the animation doesn't work on this site, this post is a copy from my main blog hosted on my main site)

Brand J! from the beginning part 9

The final piece in my online presence puzzle was the fact that I wanted to host my own blog at my domain name. I no longer wanted my blog on a different random address, so people wouldn't have to look in two different places to gain access to my full body of work. I wanted it to be in the same place as everything else, so to achieve this I tried using the download from wordpress.org but had trouble to install it as my hosting doesn't support one click install. After thinking logically about the problem I decided that I could either change the styling of my blogger blog, or I could try looking for another blog host.

Eventually I discovered that my hosting one.com allowed for a blog to be set up through them, this meant that not only would I be hosting it at my domain name, but I would have complete control over it in terms of styling as well. This also meant that I could link it into the design of my website structure, which I have done. The only problem whilst setting it up was that it did not allow for the old blog to be imported, so each of the 88 posts had to be copied across one at a time.

Below is a picture of the final blog, which completes the start up of brand J! on the web, well for the time being.

Brand J! from the beginning part 8

My portfolio page caused me the most headaches. I didn't want each item to link to another page, and I didn't want a larger block of items, which were pretty much the only two things I knew how to do. I wanted a lightbox effect, but in my style, so after many hours researching and trial and error I finally produced a working model I was happy with. However when I then tried this page in other browsers it just didn't seem to want to play, some of it down to slight mistakes I had made, but most of it down to unknown forces working against me in the galaxy. After some more fiddling though I managed to land with a version I was happy with, and which worked across all major browser types. I say all but still it doesn't fully work with IE6 due to a width:100% function in the css, but to change it for that would be plain wrong, so as a compromise I have included an if statement in the html which picks out if the user is using IE6, then warns them about these issues, as you can see in the lower screen shot below.

Brand J! from the beginning part 7

This is just a post to deal with my about page and my contact page. Both were fairly straight forward, again lots of meta data, description tags, and hidden text to help with SEO and accessibility, but on the whole I had the same header and footer across the whole site, and I wanted them both to have a comic/graphic feel that seemed professional. The biggest step here was to use a small php code so that the form was sent to my email address, making the contact form work properly as intended.

Brand J! from the beginning part 6

Now I move on to the biggest hurdle, which was designing my website to match my ideas, and more importantly making it work.

I wanted to follow convention in terms of in needed a home page, a portfolio page, an about page, and a contact form, along with my blog which I wanted to host myself at my domain name, not on another site, with a random address, like my blog at the time was.

I started with my home page which I decided early on I wanted to be something fun, I thought you go to the home page of the site, then link through to various other pages, you don't actually stop on this home hub. So I came up with the idea of Jay simply thinking, with his thoughts being the links to the other pages. Once you selected a page there was no need to return to the home page, you simply navigated around the rest of the site using the header and footer bars. It is just some fun on the front end of the site to demonstrate my ideas and skills, there is also my latest twitter feed with a link if you wanted to follow me. However to help with SEO and accessibility there is a lot of meta data and descriptions within the html to stop it just being a few pictures on a page.

Below are two screens showing the page. You can see my favicon in the address bar to help with brand recognition, and also you see in the second screen that when you hover over the link, Jay changes and has a 'eureka' pose, and the lightbulb lights up. The colour the bulb goes are all different and are carried across the theme of the site.

Brand J! from the beginning part 5

I wanted to get these two designs out onto the web whilst I was working on my new website design, as I didn't know how long it would take as I needed to get my skill level up to match my idea level, so I decided to alter my other outlets first.

I started with twitter as I was new to the site and believed it to be beneficial to change the design once rather than twice, also by having these things in place from the start and sticking with them it would help my followers become familiar with these designs, and therefore start a brand recognition. Twitter was also good as it allowed me to change the background to include my Jay character, and also my avatar to my new avatar, meaning both things were out there in the same place.

YouTube was next and was very similar, I altered my channel to match my twitter page in appearance, then finally I alter my flickr channel but was only able to change my avatar to the new version. I tried also to link back through these three sites as much as possible, and also linked back to my then unchanged site at every opportunity, with the promise of an updated site soon. I believe the old site stayed up for about 8 weeks from this point, however my designs and web address was out there, gaining brand awareness.

Below are some screens from my YouTube, flickr, and twitter pages showing my designs. Also there is a screen from my blog at the time showing the small changes I had made to it to include my avatar, and old website theme of blacks and reds.

Brand J! from the beginning part 4

With the basic designs done I set about making them a reality using Illustrator. I was pleased with the results and decided that if I could achieve that, then I could base an online presence around these two key images, and more importantly realise the potential I had in my ideas.

Below is the final design for my avatar, the design ideals have remained from the early ideas, so don't need explaining, but it's just better. It appears more professional aesthetically, and represents me as a person better with bright colours and the comic book style font. Also below is the final design for the Jay character, and a composition of the same character in various poses. He was designed to be quite simple in his makeup so that small changes in key parts would greatly change the appearance (this is what I have tried to demonstrate in the composition), I used bold lines and shapes, and this mixed with the font that accompanies him, gives the piece a real art deco feel. I tried to give him some of my physical characteristics, to make him a true online persona for me, like thaw quiff in the hair, the larger bottom lip, and the short stature. The main attribute of 'Jay' however is that he is always in grey scale. This is down to a number of reasons, firstly I love grey scale, and this is evident in my previous website design, secondly I feel it actually makes the design stand out more as it is unique, and lastly I think it makes the piece seem more professional overall.

Brand J! from the beginning part 3

However I looked at what I had done to that point, and the changes I made, and I realised that it wasn't my imagination which was letting me down, because I had some great ideas, and I asked myself, "Did I really come here, give up a good job, put my family in a worse position, to do a half hearted job?"

The answer to that was obviously no, I am trying to improve myself so my family has a better future. It became clear I was trying to play it safe, I knew I could do the basics because I had been taught the basics, and I thought if I carried on I would scrape by, but in the real world scraping by won't get you very far. Therefore I sat down with something I knew I could operate, a pencil and paper, and thought really hard about what and how I would like to present my work if the physical task of actually making it wasn't an obstacle. I knew I wanted an avatar to be an online signature, like a small stamp to say this is me, and that was what I had been working on, with the designs, before I decided to change everything. It also had to be centred around the characters 'J!' as that is what I had been using for years to end sms or the occasional email I did send, so it seemed right to carry that on. I didn't want it just for the sake of having it though, it had to mean something and be different. Also I knew I wanted a character, again something unique, which I could use instead of pictures of me, and also use as an online persona. So I started sketching.

Below are some of the sketches along with early website ideas to compliment the designs for the avatar and character.

Brand J! from the beginning part 2

At that point six months ago, I thought I was the king of the internet, well to the level at which my ability allowed me to be king, and I was happy with what I had achieved. I had put all my effort into what I had created to that point, so when we were then tasked with improving our online presence and outlets to a more professional standard, it felt like my world had been pulled out from under me.

I was already worried that I was too old, with no experience at all in this field, to try and take on this area of multimedia, so my first reaction was to say, "ok this is my level, lets change what I've got slightly, and say I've done the task"

From that attitude I came up with these design ideas and changes. They fitted in with my theme at the time, so my brand was coherent, I had joined some other networking sites like twitter and YouTube, so I was spreading my brand also.

Brand J! from the beginning

Nine months ago I shared an email address with my partner. That is it. That was all the online involvement I personally had. Don't get me wrong I would use the internet regularly to check out my favourite sites that I have mentioned in previous posts, and I love all technology, but as far as publishing and adding to the internet, I never did anything.

I have already stated that I wasn't interested in things like facebook or twitter, as any friend that I wanted to talk to, I would simply meet up with. I also think that I felt I had nothing to offer, there were people out there doing things bigger and better than I ever could, so why bother. Well I was naive and this year on this course has helped me see the light.

The reason for this tale was to highlight the point that only six months ago I got myself a facebook account and created a simple (rubbish) website, and that is how far I have traveled in these short months.

Below are some screen grabs from my first web site.

My TV Bumper V2.0

This is my second attempt at my final bumper. Not much is different from version one, just the opening few seconds.

Rather than having the normal sized front cover to the comic, with the white borders around the edges, this over-sized version keeps the audience within the scene, rather than following the white spaces, which in turn increases the suspension of disbelieve. This is only a small change bur one which hopefully adds to the piece significantly.

The final thoughts

Overall I would say the project was a success. I say this because we didn't fail anything we set out to do, and the idea worked. However if I could change two things, then I would say that I would have liked to have nailed down a final idea as a group slightly earlier than we did, and linked to that point I would have loved to have been able to have taken this project down to Union Street and test it on location. I think that if we had been able to do these things then we could have seen where our idea would have affected people in the way we hoped, then whether it did or it didn't we could have adapted the project further to suit the location and brief. However there is always a point where you have let go and say it is finished, and I believe we did that at the correct time when we had an idea then realised it effectively.

I have to say that I have learnt a lot in this first year through this module, and I also believe that as I keep saying it has helped me to think outside of the box and see that you don't need the world to achieve your goals. As a group I feel we worked well, but as with any group some people excelled were as some people preferred to follow. If I were to start the project over now, I believe that the core ideas would stay the same but I would be more ambitious perhaps, because I have a skill set where 6 months ago I had none in this area.

Below are just a few pics from the final test.

Testing project

We tested the projection using the same set up as we would on location, the only differences are that we are obviously not on location, and the light source has come from a strip light and not a traffic light. The project works in the way we planned, and outlined in the previous posts. These movies show our project working from start to finish, Ben is holding the light sensor to the light source, Luke is filming the action, and I am at the controls of the computer this is all running through. The first video below is the groups 'official' final film, which as previously mentioned was filmed and edited by Luke Mears, the second video is a video I took of the first test run. Both clearly show the light sensor triggering the mic sensor linked to the arduino board, which in turn triggers the animation of RSS feeds.

How I hacked the toy

Whilst I was changing the remote from a push button to a light sensor, I decided it would be better to document it on video, rather than writing a boring list of instructions. I feel this should be included as it was a large part of our project, and I worked hard on getting it working. It isn't the best quality video, and may not even be the best quality hack, but I found it both fun and interesting, I owe a great deal of thanks to our lectures for opening my eyes to a way of thinking that had never even occurred to me before. Anyway here is the video which I have posted on YouTube. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it. J!

The final, final, final project design

Due to some unknown blip in the space time continuum, I am entering this post now, as I believed I had already done so about a month ago. Anyway after the meeting we had as a group to establish what we were going to finally settle on, as a practical doable project idea, we all went away individually and came up with suggestions which we could bring to the table. My idea is stated in a previous post.

When we sat down as a group again certain elements, which had been present all the way through, were obviously set in stone and would not be altered. The main points were that our project was going to be projection based, it was to be based at the 'Old Theatre' location on Union Street, Plymouth, and finally it had to show the bright past of the building along with its modern tragic state. Therefore with that in mind, and everyone's ideas considered, the final project idea took shape.

Using the electronic sound machine, and modifying it so that it is activated through a light sensor, rather than a button press, the remote unit would be placed against the red traffic light nearest to the projection location. When the light turned red, it will activate the remote through the light sensor, and send a signal to the sound unit. This unit will be placed within a sealed unit (i.e. plastic Tupperware box), along with the microphone which is attached to an arduino board, to prevent or limit outside noise accidentally setting off the microphone sensor. When the microphone attached to the arduino board registers a sound, it sends a high reading (1) to the serial port. Along with the arduino, Processing will also be running, and when, and whilst, Processing registers this high reading (1) on the serial port, it will activate the projection.

The projection will consist of thought provoking, controversial, messages and text which will be made up partly by RSS feeds taken from thisisplymouth.co.uk, which show the very dodgy recent past of the building as the 'Dance Academy', it will also start and end with the famous red curtains of the theatre to represent it's great history as a theatre. The projection will last slightly longer than the light change so that people do not become bored before it ends, but also they stay long enough to miss the light change and provoke a reaction from what is happening and what they see.

Below are a couple of images which were produced by group member Luke Mears, the first is a visualisation of what it could look like at the location, and the other two are images of the unfinished RSS reader which he is working on.

Final bumper V1.0

Again just a short post and link to my final 30sec bumper about myself. It follows all the ideas laid out in the animatic, which can be found, with a description, earlier on my blog. I am very pleased with the outcome, especially as it was my first true use of AfterEffects, and was also completed ahead of schedule so that if anyone out there over the next few weeks does have any suggestions for improvements, I will be able to improve it.

Anyway I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. It can be found on YouTube, or slightly better quality on my website. Cheers J!

Processing final

Only a small post with the link to my final Processing piece which is running on my site.

www.jmmoore.co.uk/processing.html

I hope you enjoy it. J!

Sketch signing

Applets by comparison are considered untrusted since they are initiated automatically in the browser. This restriction prevents applets from doing certain things, such as loading content from a different domain than the one hosting the applet.

Due to the fact that I am using data from another domain, and that this piece will have to run from my website, I will obviously have to sign the applet. To do this I had to use 'Terminal' on the mac, in the utilities folder which I rarely visit. I had never used this program before so after doing some research online I found these two helpful resources, which with a bit of common sense made this process easy to achieve.

First off was a YouTube video on the general workings of Terminal, then secondly this forum post on the actual process of signing the sketch.

I have also included this picture of my signing just to show where the changes are that I made to make it relevant to my piece.

Processing - Back to the drawing board (almost)

After spending a substantial amount of time trying to deconstruct and understand the 'Flies' sketch, I have come to the decision that I am no longer going to base my sketch around the swarm mechanic. This was due to two main reasons, firstly I feel I haven't spent enough time with 'Processing' to be able to understand how this works, even though I could bend the existing sketch to fit my purpose, and secondly, linked to this point is the fact that to make my sketch work in the way I intended it to I would have to 'borrow' too much of the pre-existing code, and therefore it wouldn't feel, or be my own work.

So after looking back at my original idea, I wanted to find a way I could still achieve that concept with the ability level and skill set I have. I still wanted to use the outside temperature and wind speed to visualise a molecule simulation representation, and still wanted the same governing rules for behaviour, the only difference would be to replace the actual swarm mechanic with something I could achieve myself.

The substitute I settled on was instead of having x amount of particles moving around the stage, I would have them appear, and disappear every couple of seconds so that it isn't just static, and does appear animated. This is achieved simply by adding a count to the draw function, and an if statement so when the count reaches 50 it resets, with a frame rate of 25, this is every 2 seconds. Combine this with the fact that I am doing a representation of molecules, with are basically circles, the simple mechanic both works and is easy to achieve. The rules which apply to the circles is where the simulation steps up a gear.

There are four main attributes which work together to finalise the visualisation. These are, the size of the circles, the position and area these circles take up on the stage, the colour of the circles, and finally the opacity of the circles. The first three are all to do with the temperature outside. Once the temperature is converted into a number Processing can use, it then determines which conditional statement is true, and applies general settings to do with the outside temperature. There are five different possible outcomes, where the temperature between 0℃ and 20℃, is divided into 4℃ ranges, and this affects the colour of the circles, ranging from blue (coldest) to red (hottest), the size of the circles, small for cold, larger for hot, and the area in which they appear, a small grouping in the centre for coldest, and a spread across the whole stage for the hottest. These circles do not appear in set positions, within each conditional statement is built in randomisers which ensure the circles attributes stay within the conditions, but are based on the information from the arch-os and sketch setup, so that each set of fifty 'molecules' are different from the last and not just one of five animations being played.

The final condition of opacity is taken directly from the wind speed. The circles are more opaque the higher the windspeed, and the logic behind this is that even though the temperature maybe 20℃ outside, if you were to look at the circles and they were faint in appearance, there would be high wind outside which adds to the chill, and takes away from the overall temperature.

Even though this may seem overly complicated to explain, I think these attributes add to the final product, and is a much more interesting way of representing the same data rather than just having a blue circle for cold, and a red circle for hot. I wanted it to be based 'loosely' on the way molecules interact whilst heating and cooling, with the more energy (heat) they have the more they disperse. With the colouring and opacity there to add to, and reinforce some points.

The pictures below are from the sketch running and show Plymouth on a hot windy day, and on a cold day with no wind. As you can see I have also added a title, key, and some of the actual data into the sketch. This was for two reasons firstly, I feel it makes the piece look more professional, and secondly, as I have already mentioned I am very practical so I would want a key and title to understand, and show that these appearing circles have a purpose.

Processing step two and a half

Searching through some more of the sketches I found this sketch to do with flies swarming, funnily called Flies by Elie Zananiri.



I think that if I were to change the flies to coloured particles, were the input is taken from the Arch-os data rather than the mouse input, then the swarming effect that these flies display would be perfect to hang my idea upon.

Processing step two

After looking at the data types again I have decided that I would like to take the outside temperature, and the three main inside temperatures, and represent those different data feeds in the style of molecules and particles. This would show how that when the temperature rises, the particles become more energised and mobile, therefore move all over the window in a swarm like fashion, as opposed to when they are colder, where they would have less energy so wouldn't move as much and stay together.

To get an idea of previous examples I visited a site http://www.openprocessing.org/ where there is a large collection of processing sketches. By searching for swarms and particles under their tag system I found a couple of really good, but really out of my league, sketches which show what processing is capable of. First is a sketch called Gravity swarm by Claudio Gonzales. http://openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=2363



Secondly is another good example of swarming behaviour called Molecule soup by Stingingeyes. http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=8675

Processing step one

Our project brief was to take the RSS feeds from the Arch-OS system, then using Processing, take some of that environmental data and visualise this in an aesthetic way. The result must also be animated in some way, but have no interactivity.
There are two feeds, a live feed for the data at http://arch-os.scce.plymouth.ac.uk/bms_data.rss and also an archive of past data at http://x2.i-dat.org/archos/archive.rss

The first action I took was to enter the addresses into a browser to see what data types were available. There was basically data which fell into four groups, one for outside of the building, which included geographical data like wind speed and direction, rain fall, and temperatures etc. The other groups were effectively one for each of the three parts of the building, which contained data do to with the interior of the building, i.e. CO2 levels, elec use, and temperature.

I decided that the processing sketch could represent one of two things, literal data, or an abstract realisation of that data. My problem lay with the fact that I am a very literal person, and if asked to use data, I will show data. However this would not be very aesthetic, nor would it fill the brief, so I intend to produce something which fills both camps. To achieve this I propose to do a visual representation of something like a scion experiment or diagram, this will mean it is not just a set of figures, but people will also be able to relate to it. I also would like to use the exterior data due to the fact that it is to be displayed outside, agin so people can relate, and I find the data available for the outside to be more interesting.

TV bumper rethink

After finishing my animatic for the 30secs bumper about myself, I have decided to make a small change. I was quietly pleased with the outcome, and thought that the comic book styling worked well. However, if I were to use photographs from my past as planed, I believe that all the continuity of the styling would be lost, as I would be mixing both real life images with cartoon illustrations. So to hopefully improve the overall quality of the piece, I have made the decision to replace all pictures which included myself, or my wife, and use the Jay character I created, and a new character to represent my wife, instead. The Jay character has become, and will continue to be, a fundamental part in my own personal online branding and persona, therefore the final piece will also be able to become an exercise in self promotion, should the final quality be as high as expected.

Vids and Pics

Just wanted to point out that I now have my own YouTube channel and Flickr channel where people can view my work, but more importantly to get myself out there and link back to my website.

These links will obviously be two way once I have finished the redesign of my website, and both channels need to be filled out more which takes time.

Stonehouse pragramming test

A few images which show our group working together on test sketches for the Arduino board.

My toy hack

Just a small post to show some work I have started whilst NOT being in New York.
After talking through our ideas as a group we decided it would be best to have a wireless system going from the traffic signal to the Arduino board, rather than simple wires. So a cheap solution was to try and modify an electronic fart machine, which would give us a wireless transmitter and a sound would be produced which could act as the input for the Arduino.

Below are some pictures of the device, along with some test footage I made, just showing the range and parts of the device. I apologize for the quality as was done with mobile phone.

New Directions

After the past few lectures, which have focused on the Arduino boards, and new ways of looking at currently existing products and what you can do with them by breaking them down to their base components and uses, we have decided to change our direction of our group project.

The past few lectures have completely changed my thought processes, the simplest idea of just reusing existing products and technologies, and taking their uses for different purposes, frankly, had just eluded me. The example of a cheap key ring which flashes and makes a sound when you whistle, being broken down to give you a sound sensor as an input, with a light and speaker as outputs, sounds obvious because that is precisely what the technology is, I had just never thought of it in those terms before. However by changing your thinking this way and combining that thought with the capabilities of a piece of equipment like the Arduino board, you open up a world of possibilities.

The first idea involves the old theatre in Union Street and camera trickery. We still plan to use Union Street as our location, however the rig we would have needed to achieve our previous idea was impractical in every sense, including financially, and the outcome would not have been worth the input. Another reason for changing our project was due to the time of year. Our previous idea hinged on the images fading in and out based on the inputs, which were random, so by aiming for the commuter hours of between 5pm and 6pm the image may have been completely invisible due to the combination of a low input and the daylight at that time of year. So we have decided to change to incorporate the Arduino and these simple ‘hacks’.

To start this process we have decided to come up with separate ideas first, then join together as a group to use either one or parts of these separate ideas. So my idea would be to use a wireless device like a computer mouse and hack it so it acts as an input on the Arduino board. This input would come from attaching a light sensor to the left mouse button, then placing it on the red traffic light signal so when the cars stop the light input clicks the mouse and tells the Arduino board to tell the computer to start the projection for our now captive audience. To link it to our original idea of bringing the history of the area back to the present, the projection will start by displaying the famous red curtains of the theatre, these will open to reveal images which represent modern world data taken from ‘worldometers’, which hopefully depending on how it is represented, people will find these images interesting, artistic, and shocking. The show will stop after a short delay when the lights turn green, with an old fashion TV shutoff style effect back to black. This on off effect will also hopefully mean people will want to stop and wait for the next show.

Also to find out more about low tech toy hacks visit ‘tinker.it’

My TV bumper animatic

This is my TV bumper animatic. I chose to tell the story of my life so far in a comic book style which highlights the most important events that have happened. I wanted to pack in a lot but have it moving at a quick pace to hold the audience's attention, the music also enhances this effect. To me the bumper really shows what the final product is capable of being, however in the final piece I intend for all the images to be of a much higher standard, created by mixing real footage and photographs in combination with tools like photoshop and illustrator to give them a more comic/pop art styling.

First step, Twitter

The first thing that I have done is to redesign my Twitter account. I was amazed at how much I use Twitter, compared to how much I thought I would use it. The redesign of my website is a huge undertaking so will be done over a larger time, whereas to change this port which a visit frequently only needed me to have completed two elements in my new theme, but would achieve great effect.

The first part was to finish my new little avatar, along with the character which I hope one day will become synonymous with me and my work. Therefore below are the finished designs.





Shown below is that change in my Twitter account, from using a template theme and previous (amateur) avatar, to my new custom made theme with my new avatar, which will be the launching point for my new designed website. All following my new plans very closely, which a lot of effort and thought went into.