I feel sooooo old
Posted: 30 March 2006 Filed under: Ramblings | Tags: music Leave a commentApparently it’s 30 years ago today that the Sex Pistols played the 100 club in London. Not that I was there obviously, I’m not that bloody old but I can’t beleive it was that long ago. It doesn’t seem that long since I bought Pretty Vacant, or The Clash. Christ, I was younger than my son is now. I’m gonna have to dig my old singles out this weekend and have a bit of a pogo……if my legs and back will hold out that it is 🙂
Shameless plug
Posted: 29 March 2006 Filed under: Ramblings | Tags: award, sms Leave a commentRight, Jamie and I have been working on this mobile phone application for well over a year now. Can’t say too much about it at the mo but we’ve entered it into all sorts of things including a competiton run by the BBC for this year’s Milia but to no avail. However, we’ve kept plugging away and now it’s paid off. We entered the Business Idea Challenge run by the Uni and we’ve made it thru’ to the next round out of 86 entrants. Not bad for a pair of Janners!!
Gooner chum
Posted: 22 March 2006 Filed under: Ramblings | Tags: football Leave a commentI heard from an old mate of mine earlier in the week. I’m pretty rubbish at keeping in touch with people. I keep meaning to, even if it’s just to send out crap jokes and to say hello but one thing leads to another and before you know it, it’s 6 months later. So it was good to hear from Nick. On the plus side, he’s a shit-hot db guy and unix SA – why he’s still in that dead-end job I’ll never know – on the downside, he supports Arsenal. I know it’s a cross that someone has to bear but he’s a nice guy (so he used to keep telling me) and he deserves better than that. I mean Grimandi for God’s sake!!
But, you’ve gotta admire his devotion coz he’s got a blog up and running about them – Arsenal2day. And if you’re going to Florida and need somewhere to stay, check out his parent’s villa – Starlight Villa.
New switch
Posted: 22 March 2006 Filed under: Critical Context Leave a commentLike I said before, whilst we were in Sheffield we had a wander round the shops and I saw a Maplins so thought I’d pop in and get my poho photo mos relays. I tracked down an assistant and asked him about them. He knew exactly what I was talking about and didn’t dismiss me as some sort of southern nutter. After a bit of searching around and looking thru’ their catalogue he suddenly remembered that they don’t stock them anymore and they sold the last one just before Christmas. Teriffic. I was about to leave when I had an idea so asked if they did a switch that makes the circuit when you press and hold it down but breaks it as soon as you release it. (Notice the use of terminology there, I think if nothing else I can now talk pidgeon-electronics). And they do!! So I bought one and it even fits in the hole where those carbon-tipped switches are supposed to go so it looks as though we’re back in action.
Lovebytes
Posted: 22 March 2006 Filed under: Ramblings | Tags: exhibition, festival, film Leave a commentSo, me and Chelle went up to Sheffield yesterday to visit Lovebytes. It was an early start for me as the train left at 06:20 with Chelle joining it at Bristol but from the stuff we saw it was definitely worth it. Unfortunately most of the events didn’t start until the day after we were there but we still saw some good stuff.
First up was q3apd which is a Quake 3 machinima thing that uses elements of the game to produce a realtime soundscape. I tried to capture the sound as well as take loads of photos but I’m not sure if you’ll get much of an idea of what it’s about from listening to it. Next up was JuneBum Park’s videos. First was Advertisement which shows giant hands manipulating buildings to produce and advert. Next was Parking which again uses giant hands but this time to move cars around. Finally was Puzzle which shows an overhead shot of people sat at tables but they move around like a giant kid’s puzzle.
After them was Dwelling by Hiraki Sawa. I really loved this. It’s a black and white video of planes flying around a flat. In and out of rooms, around the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. I’m not sure if this was the inspiration behind it but when I was young and used to make model planes, I used to hang them from the ceiling of my bedroom and I immediately thought of that when I saw it.
The Showroom, where all of the above is shown, has a bar so after taking loads of photos, we paid it a visit and decided to have hot white chocolate. They have got to be the BEST in Sheffield, if not the world. Marsh mellows and shavings of white and milk chocolate on top of hot white chocolate – fan-bloody-tastic!!
After drinking them, we went along to Workstation so see Time Slice. Essentially it’s the same video sliced up into columns and rows. Quite interesting and the 2nd one with people in was the most effective in my opinion. It was stange viewing this coz it was in the reception of Workstation and it felt like we were intruding. I half expected the receptionist to come over and tell us off for taking pictures but she didn’t seem bothered.
So it was then onto the Millennium Galleries to see Bit-Scapes. This is a video installation that runs over 3 screens with the same footage on each. The first is untouched, the second is then slightly manipulated with the 3rd being completed manipulated digitally. You don’t really get the effect unless you stand back and can see all 3 at the same time but unfortunately with the screens being in front of a large window, you do get a lot of reflections which spoils it a bit.
And that was basically it. Apart lunch and a wlak walk around the shops, all that was left was a visit to Access Space. We’ve been to a talk by James Wallbank at Fave last August so as we were in Sheffield it felt wrong not to pop along and have a look. It was quite an impressive setup with everything running on donated kit and using Open source software. Lovebytes was shwoing showing something there but it was later in the week so we were gonna miss it. I think they thought we were slightly mad having come up all the way from the South West just for a day so at least we brightened up their day.
All that was left was another hot white chocolate and then catch the train home. We collected loads of leaflets and handouts and our heads were buzzing with ideas following on from the stuff we saw. Lovebytes is definitely worth a visit and I think next year we’ll go again but later in the week so that we can see more stuff.
Listen to q3apd
Clip of Advertisement
Clip of Parking
Clip of Puzzle
1st clip of Dwelling
2nd clip of Dwelling
3rd clip of Dwelling
Link to my Flickr photos
More toys
Posted: 19 March 2006 Filed under: Critical Context Leave a commentEvents went against me today so I wasn’t able to get along to Maplins for my photo mos relays so I’ll try and get along there tomorrow. But I did manage to visit a car boot sale and bought a couple of toys to have a go at hacking. I got a phonetic alphabet teacher, a keyboard (I know, a bit obvious but I think I could do with something obvious) and a furby. I found this site for hacking a furby so hopefully I can do something to it, even if it’s only to accompany the Simontron.
Box
Posted: 17 March 2006 Filed under: Critical Context Leave a commentI’ve just had a look at Simon trying to find where I can hack the circuit board and I’ve noticed another wire has broken off. Everytime I take it into uni, it gets damaged in some way. I think come the time of putting everything together I’m gonna need to make a box and fix things to it to protect them.
Min-height hack
Posted: 16 March 2006 Filed under: Useful stuff | Tags: css Leave a commentI’ve just learnt a good hack for min-height. As you’ll know min-height is one of the few things that IE gets right and Firefox doesn’t. So, this little trick below sorts it out. If you want a box to have the minimum height of 200 pixels but to expand when more text is entered, then give tihs this a try:
min-height: 200px;
height: auto !important;
height: 200px;
Switches
Posted: 15 March 2006 Filed under: Critical Context Leave a commentI had another meeting with Bill from the Electronics school yesterday. Following on from the method I think I’m gonna use now with all my different components, I wanted to find out how I could find out if the switch had been pressed or not. It doesn’t look as though it’s gonna be as straightforward as I had hoped. The switch has a piece of carbon at the bottom of it (see the photo below) which when pressed against the black squiggly line (sorry for the technical term there) in the gold patch (see the 2nd photo) completes the circuit and makes the bulb glow and the buzzer buzz. Bill reckons if I didn’t want the bulbs to glow as well it would be fairly easy to do what I want but the bulbs are complicating matters.
He suggested that I get 4 x Photo Mos switches, 1 for each switch, then hack into the circuit board to connect them up and then in turn connect them to my wiring board or to the pulse circuits – which he suggested would be the better option. So, another trip to Maplins is needed which is fine but the hacking into the circuit board is gonna be interesting.
Winds of change?
Posted: 14 March 2006 Filed under: Critical Context Leave a commentStill can’t get the buzzer to buzz – this is starting to be a bit of a recurring theme. Thanks to Pete, Bob and Bill from the Electronics school, I’m not sa as down about it as I was a couple of weeks ago. What it does mean though is a bit of a re-think on the roles of the components that make the Simontron up. Originally the Simon was gonna be the key. It was gonna send signals to the PC via the Wiring board which in turn will remember and “play” the sequence of buttons pressed back to the Simon. Now though, with the generating of the sound being done by the pulse circuits board the Simon will have less to do. The buttons will still need to be pressed and the lights will still need to flash but I think the Wiring board will now be the integral part. For example if blue has been pressed, something will need to control which sound is played and I think using Wiring to control it is the answer.
Ask me again in a couple of days when I’ve tried to connect up a test 🙂