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I met with Geoff earlier today to get feedback on my first draft and overall it was quite positive. He made some suggestions on things I ought to look at and consider doing to it like re-emphasising the whole point of my argument which I haven’t done much. And I need to check my spelling. Word keeps defaulting to the US dictionary and I keep forgetting to reset it back so there are a few “z”‘s where “s”‘s should be…or is it the other way round.

We’ve been playing about with textures to try and get the right feel for the film. Below is one of our attempts at the street that little red riding hood will walk along to get to and from the club. Apart from the sky, this is pretty close to what we want to achieve. Ignore the thin red lines, they’re just grabs from the editor and not from the film.

Last night was the official launch of Social Hacking and as part of it, I along with some others VJ’ed with the Mikro Orchestra project. The previous day they ran a workshop on how to convert a Game Boy Advance into a VJ console and use their software SQJ to produce visuals. We then spent the rest of the day practising for the performance last night. They also ran a workshop on how to use Nanoloop and the people who did that did the music.

GBA VJ movie 1
GBA VJ movie 2
GBA VJ movie 3
Listen to part of their sound check
Listen to more of their sound check

Mikro Orchestra sound check

Mikro Orchestra sound check

Me VJ-ing

Some visuals

I graduated today. As you can see from my certificate below, I’m now a Grand Master in Mobile Media. It was part of the Pirate University run by fellow DAT students. Why spend 3 years studying and get into debt when you can do it for free. Really cool idea especially as they also used free open source software. Make sure that you check out their site.

My Spaceman was Pele and I liked the way in which he controlled the play of the Brazilian team. When we visted the Torpoint Ferry, I focused on the guy who directed the cars onto the ferry. Looking at both of them, it seemed to me that they followed conditional statements; “If first car then send it down the 2nd row”. Because of that, I looked into using code to control and map your actions. From there I started to look into code poems and in particular poems written in Perl. One that I especially liked was the conversion into Perl of the Jabberwocky. Not only does it stay pretty faithful to the original, but the code is also functional. When executing and it reaches one of the warnings, the script spawns a sub-process. It’s almost as if it’s saying “I did warn you about them”. Because of that poem I decided that whatever it was that I made, not only should it read well, but the visuals and its functionality should also be part of it. I also decided to use Processing instead of Perl. Although traditionally code poems seem to be written in Perl, it has been a long time since I last used it and I am VERY rusty.

I turned my attention back to football and decided to produce something using football chants. Although to the casual observer they’re nothing more than words yelled by grown men who probably should know better, they have as much structure as any software code or poem. A 2 line rhyming chant about the Plymouth Argyle left-back and a member of the opposing side set to “La donna mobile” from the Rigoletto must surely help to prove that. Because chants are as much about the opposite set of fans as it is the match, I decided to have 2 scripts “chanting” at each other as well as random elements such as fouls or goals being scored to help to mix it up.

A short video of the scripts in action is below along with a zip file containing the 2 scripts.

Watch video 16.1MB

Download code

What do you do if you need to recruit an expert typographer? Why not place ads using the fonts Webdings, Wingdings, and Zapf Dingbats which is what agency Lunar BBDO did. 2 examples of their ads are below.

I’ve sorted out the problem with the page not refreshing when mail messages are deleted and requesting a swap, accepting a swap by choosing one of their’s and sending a reminder to upload the file are all done. I’ve still got to finish the rejecting a swap, the mechanics of completing a swap and uploading/downloading the files. I know exactly how I want to do all of them but I’ve just run out of time – still on course to have something to show on 29th though. Then it’s the admin backend, tarting up the frontend and writing the freecycle and game apps to go.

My Space project is pretty much done. I’ve got some research that I need to put into a coherent order for my presentation and film it running on 2 machines as part of the documentation but that’s it really. Or so I thought. I had this idea the other day which I think I’m gonna do and that’s to change the colours of the away chants to match the teams that sang them at us. It’ll make the “away end” more colourful plus I’d imagine the away fans would be mortified if they saw their chants in another team’s colours – I know I would.

Went to see James’ Space project tonight. His idea is about viewing the inside of spaces/buildings so he “x-rayed” the Scott building. After a couple of minor problems with equipment, I thought it all came out really well in the end. Hopefully you’ll get an idea from my crappy photos below.

So it’s all over for another year. Once again we boss Watford, they score 1 – which was a good goal I must admit – and manage to hang on to go thru’. 17 shots to their 3 says it all really. Even the laying of the ceremonial giant pasty and the Beeb and Gabby setting up their studio at our end didn’t help either. Still, we did get further than Liverpool and Arsenal and at least we’ll be able to get our revenge next season.

Laying of the ceremonial giant pasty at the Devonport End

Argyle warming up

Argyle warming up again