boxel

I’ve just finished testing the main app of phone2fone which is the file share/swapping app. I’ve just got the game to finish off and the freecycle version to do. I’ve been looking at WURFL which essentially is an XML file containing information about the capabilities and features of most of the mobile phones. There are loads of different features that can be checked, so many that I’m worried about getting distracted with it. I think I’m gonna use it just to check that the device can upload files and maybe look at it in more detail at a later date.

Handed my dissertation in today. We got there over an hour before the office opened which gave the staff there a bit of a smile. It was all a bit of an anti-climax really considering all of the work I’ve put into it. Still that’s another deadline gone – just the project left.

Who Begat Who: The link between hacking and Open Source

We’ve now finished our short film and we’re pretty pleased with the end result. So pleased that we’re even thinking of doing more! Having 2D characters within a 3D environment was quite a challenge in the end but I think we managed to pull it off. All of the animation, lighting and effects were done within Unreal Tournament as was our intention from the very beginning. The only things that weren’t were the images which were made using Photoshop and sticking the individual scenes and soundtrack together was done using Premier.

You can see the end result by clicking on the link below and if you fancy having a play with our set, you can download that as well.

Watch “Once Upon A Time” 8.9MB

Download set

Download critique

After the excitement of Camden, we’ve decided to make a slight change and make hood and her boyfriend indie kids. We’re still having red so that hood stands out but we’ve had a thought on the sound track and have a couple of tunes in mind whose lyrics would fit in really well with the film. For example, the Gossip’s “Standing in the way of control” has a nice ambiguity about it coz you don’t know if it’s about the boyfriend controlling the girl or if she is controlling him by knowing that he will freak out by her turning up late. So anyway, as the tunes are of an indie nature, it would make sense if the people were the same. Hopefully it won’t take us too much time to sort them out.

Jamie, Chelle, Chelle’s mate Kelly and I went up to London last week for the Camden Crawl, a 2 day indie music festival around the pubs and clubs of Camden. We all met up outside the tube, got our wristbands which would let us in to all the gigs and then found a pub to plan the evening. I really wanted to see The Damned who were headlining at Koko at the same time as Ash were doing the same at the Electric Ballroom. Apart from that, I didn’t mind who I saw. So Jamie and I went down to Koko first and saw I Am Kloot and Hadouken! before heading up to the Electric Ballroom to see Jack Penate and Air Traffic. Those 2 were excellent and if you get the chance to see them then you must. I then left Jamie and Chelle to watch Ash and headed off to see The Damned. They started off with Love Song, ended with Smash It Up and did Eloise somewhere in the middle. They didn’t do New Rose which was a shame but still a cracking gig. Then it was back up to the Ballroom to get the update on Ash before having an early-ish night.

Next day after a sausage and egg sarnie and a coffee, we had a wander around the shops until we could get our programmes for the next night’s gigs. Kelly had tried to get into see Amy Winehouse in the Dublin Castle but couldn’t coz it was completely full. As Travis were playing there that night, Chelle and Kelly decided that they’d spend the whole night there. As much as we wanted to see Travis, Jamie and I decided that The Charlatans might be more our thing so we in turn decided to spend the evening down at Koko. Whilst there we saw Hot Club De Paris who were good, Kitty, Daisy and Lewis, Marvin the Martian and a bit of Tom McRae. The bit I got to see was on the telly in the upstairs bar while I waited for a barmaid to serve me. There were only 2 other people in front of me but she managed to take a full 30 minutes to serve and pour their drinks before coming to me. Considering I only wanted 2 bottles of cider, she still manged to get them into 5 glasses! But, whilst waiting I bumped into Matt Bilson who is back from his travels. The Charlatans were excellent, when they did The Only One I Know the whole place erupted. They definitely know how to put on a gig.

After some food, headed back to their hostel to spend the night watching telly and chatting before getting the first train home. The crawl was brilliant. If I went again, I would try harder to see more bands coz there were a couple of others I’d like to have caught.

My Crawl photos on Flickr

So we’ve just finished the entrance to Libertine, the club where hood meets her wolf. The neon sign looks pretty good even if I do say so myself. But the thing I’m really pleased with is getting the red light to spill out onto the pavement.

I’ve now finished the basic platform for phone2fone and have moved into testing phase. The browser that comes with Sony Ericsson phones seems to be behaving itself. The layout of each of the pages, the accesskeys and the way the pages render are all as I was expecting. Even the Openwave browser that some phones (Samsung for example) have seems to be working but the Nokia browser is acting a bit strange. The accesskeys don’t work which is a bit of a pain but not the end of the world. The main problem I’ve got with it is it seems to insist on selecting the first radio button on loading a page. Whilst this might not appear to be a big problem, it does make searching all files available for swapping difficult coz the file type “MP3″ is always selected. I was gonna add some browser checks but as you can’t specify “unchecked” with radio buttons that seems a pointless exercise so I’m gonna add something about it in the help section for that page. I’ve also noticed that with the numbering system within individual pages, the “back to the main menu” option is never 0 and I can’t see a reason why – yet another Nokia quirk.

So, back to the testing. I’ve got the basic file swapping to work and the rejecting of requests although I might change it to put in a reason. I have noticed that the signal strength needs to be up to maximum for the uploading of large videos to work. I appreciate that to get to the server, the file has to go over radio waves and thru’ the phone network before getting to the phone2fone server but that doesn’t stop me from being ever so slightly vexed about it

I’m hoping to get this first lot of testing finished in the next couple of days before finishing off the game and then starting on the recycle version which is gonna be similar to freecycle. After that, it’s the admin area and the main “normal” website to do. Sleep is so over rated.

No, I’m not gonna tell you a story, that’s gonna be the title to our film. Coz it’s loosely based on a fairy tale we thought it would be appropriate.

Today has all been about making the club where little red riding hood meets her bloke. As it’s underground, gone for an industrial look as you’ll see below. There’s an entrance off to the right, the bar in the forground and the DJ booth and dance floor in the background. I’ve been playing about with lighting, trying to get the right shadows and also to try and make the people dancing not too prominent. Coz all the action with hood and the boyfriend is likely to happen near the bar, we don’t want the dancers to distract the viewers. I think there’s still a bit of work to be done with that plus the people I’ve used are only temporary. Also, I need to put in the stairs from the ground floor entrance otherwise the first step in will be quite a big one

Been busy working on the set of our film and the street has now turned into a small town. We’ve added more streets complete with pavements and lights and it’s starting to look pretty good as you “fly” around it. I’m now working on the club and Jamie is sorting out the characters. As usual with us, we don’t have a name for our film. I don’t think our usual style of adding the word “thing” will work this time.