Of New MacBooks

Well i bought one! And an ipod touch. I must admit im very very pleased with both!

Of MacBooks and Yays

Well my new computer is on the way.  I bought pretty much what I posted a couple of days ago.  Except I went for a 2.2 CPU and a better motherboard and a 9600gt graphics card instead of the 8600gt.

Also, Apple have finally sent out the invites for a Notebook centred event next Tuesday!  The new macbooks are coming!  Sorry Didi, you can keep warning me away but I really want one.  I still refuse to become a mac fanboy though.  I plan on triple booting it with OSX, Win XP Pro and Ubuntu.  As long as I have the HDD space.  Otherwise I'll have to leave off Linux :(

Still I'm excited, I love spending money :D

Of Students and Computers

Well it's back to being a student for me.  I start my final year on Monday and I am actually looking forward to it!  Going to be doing some exciting things, first week into one of my units we build a 3d model and then go on to textures and animation!  I am, however, going to miss the money of working full time.  But I'm sure I'll cope!

Unfortunatly though it's made me realise I am in need of a computer upgrade.  I have no money but I need one, so trying to keep it to a low, low price.  I'm stilling buying a Macbook (just waiting for the new ones to be released) but I need a good desktop as well.  At the moment I'm looking at something like:

2.4Ghz Intel E2220 Dual Core

2Gb DDR2

GeForce 8600GT 512Mb

360Gb Barracuda HDD

All for about £280.  Which I don't think is too bad really.  Any tips from anyone though?  Coupled with a MBP I think I should be alright.  That way I'll have a powerhorse no matter where I am!

Anyways, sorry I'm not updating.  I just don't have much to say these days!  Plus no one reads this... so whats the point?

Of The Bucket List

I've briefly mentioned The Bucket List before. I said it was one of the most beautiful films I've ever watched. To be honest with you I think it pretty much is the most beautiful. I don't care that it's fictitious and not based on a true story. It's an incredibly powerful film and I urge you to watch it. I think I can say with almost certainty that the ending will hit you. The film will make you laugh and possibly cry, it's close to perfect. The acting also is spot on from Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. So go watch the film! Any way you can. You won't regret it.

Of A Random Fix

I've been having problems recently with Photoshop crashing when I try and open to documents at once.  It's really very annoying as you can imagine.  I've just done a quick Google on it and found a fix.  If you have a networked printer set as the default change it to an un-networked printer and it solves the problem.  Well I've tried and it and it does indeed work.  That has to be one of the most random fixes ever.

Also, if you are wondering why I haven't posted my disappointment on Apple not announcing new MacBooks last week it's because I died a little inside... no wait, that is making me sound like a Mac FanBoy!  Noooo!  It's because I didn't see any point as if they had the Intertubes would have died from the amount of blog and forum posting Fanboys would have been doing over new Macs.  Thus it seemed fairly obvious to me...

Of Letting You Rock

Well today is the day of Apple's iPod/iTunes announcement"Let's Rock". While I'm not doing any cover of it, obviously, check out Gizmodo for live coverage on their live blog. As many other people around the world are hoping I am also hoping that they also choose to announce the new macbooks today rather than later this month or even in October. I really need a new laptop and I have definatly decided to get a macbook pro. Annoyingly though because of time difference I shall have to wait until tomorrow to find out what happened as it won't happen until 7pm (ish) here in the UK and then I am out tonight and thus shan't have the intertubes!

On another note I've just come across this, Tikitag. Looks like a great use of RFID tags, which I must admit I am a fan of. Once the kits come out I may give them a whirl if they stick to the $50 for a starter kit.

Of Fibrrrrrre

So today I got forwarded an awesome story. Bournemouth is, apparently, going to be one of the first towns in the UK to have a fibre networked throughout the area. Hopefully I can get hold of it once it's all installed. I'd love a full fibre connection! I'm hoping that Virgin will be one of the ISP's to pick it up once it's been installed... as I get my connections from them. Anyway, here's the link if you want to know more.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39413758,00.htm?r=5

Of Mythbusters

I watched the Mythbusters Moon Landing episode recently. Damn interesting program indeed. Basically they were busting certain aspects of the landings that some people think are fake, etc. They made some good arguments against things, also busted a few things (such as non-parallel shadows from a single light source).

However, as there would be, some people are saying that it's all a load of pants. I'm not really bothered about whether we went to the moon or not really. My answer to why we haven't been back in 40 years? Health and Safety. That ruins everyone's fun.

Of Beautiful Days

Well I got back from the Beautiful Days festival on Monday. It was just a weekend affair, Friday to Monday, and what a weekend it was! Friday started lovely, nice weather, excellent opening set from the Levellers, awesome cider and a goodnights sleep ready for Saturday and Sunday. Then it rained. Oh boy did it rain! The beautiful green grass soon gave way to an endless sea of mud and people changed from (in some cases) not wearing much to donning bomb shelters to stay dry.

However, the rain and mud and wind didn't stop an amazing weekend. There were some amazing bands playing such as Seth Lakeman, Xavier Rudd, Supergrass, Idlewild, Flogging Molly (yays!) and the Levellers. The comedian Ross Noble also had a stint on stage and I must say he was incredibly funny.

Sunday was a little better weather wise until the evening when it started raining again. Though thankfully no where near as hard as the Saturday. The finishing acts were Idlewild, Flogging Molly (the best performance for me) and the Levellers (best for Claire) and it was a fantastic way to end the festival. Flogging Molly and the Levllers got everyone dancing and the atmospher was simply fantastic. Even three inchs of liquid mud couldn't dampen (no pun intended) everyones spirits.

However, we did get stuck in the mud trying to leave the car park Monday morning. For about three hours! While the festival did provide tractors to tow people out and we waited an hour for one to come our way, it never happened. So we enlisted some help (Thanks to the first guy, you helped push a silver Civic) and we managed to get about half way down the field. Then we stopped and a chap from Plymouth and myself helped aload of other cars escape before getting ourselves out. So thanks to him and his girlfriend (or just friend? (Who was Australian I believe)) for helping us our there as well!

All in all it was amazing and I am definatly going again next year, though maybe with a group of friends instead of just Claire and I. So we can make some more noise!

Of Books

Well I've pretty much decided on getting a MacBook Pro. Only I have to wait two months or so before I get one because I want to wait for the new versions that are supposed to be coming out. It just sucks that I have to wait and that there is no information on them yet. However I can only hope that the spec's go up and the price goes down. Obviously looks of the thing will be sweeeeeeeeeet but I just wish I didn't have to wait to buy one. I really really want one.

Of Silence

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a sad day. My Toshiba Tecra M4 laptop has died. Please hold a minute's silence for it.

Thank you.

As to what happened... well I'm not sure. Was working fine one day, not booting the next. I hit the power switch, get a second of HDD activity then nothing. I don't get the Toshiba boot screen or a POST, just a black screen. I've had it apart and checked all connections. Disconnected and reconnected the the RTC battery. Made sure the power connections are ok. But it seems to have died a strange and mysterious death.

I can't even find any info on the intertubes on the problem or how I might fix it. And I refuse to pay stupid prices to get it repaired, just doesn't seem worth it for a two year old laptop that's completely outdated really now.

So it's laptop hunting time! If I'm honest I have my eyes on a MacBook Pro, but we'll see what we can find! If there are any suggestions for mid range laptops then please let me know. Needs to be more than capable of handling web design software, image editing software and some gaming once in a while. HL2 level.

Mmm MacBook...

Of Design Block and Stargates

Whoa, I'm on Season 8 of Stargate SG-1. Never watched all the way through before and it's soooooo good. Can't wait to watch Atlantis and the new films, The Art of Truth and Continuum. I guess by watching all this it does kinda prove that I am a geek. Still, I can live with that.

On other breaking news. I have a complete design block. I have several websites I need to come up with a design for, including my own, yet I can't find anything. I try and design and it just looks terrible. I look around for inspiration, and I'm finding some fantastic stuff, but no lightening blots are striking me with amazing ideas. And that just sucks! Ah well, I'll just keep trying and I'm sure I'll find something eventually. It's what happened with version 4 of WindFall, I went through several idea iterations before I found something that worked. Maybe it will happen again!

Of Websites

It's amazing. I start talking about setting up a web design company with a friend and all of a sudden I get a few offers given to me! I'm not complaining, just surprised! All fairly small ones, but then that's what we need at the moment until we are ready. We haven't even got a design of our own at the moment so we have a lot to work on.

So hopefully we can get these done and looking good and working well and then we have a few sites under our belt and something we can show then hopefully we can get some more to do and we can make some monies! Yays!

I'll update as and when with the progress of our company. I may even document what we go through to get up and running, what it costs etc. Might be interesting for anyone else who is thinking about setting up a company.

Who knows if it would be any use or not but I'll do it anyway and then I can just carry on getting ignored by the majority of the intertubes like I do anyway.

Yays.

Of Simply Noise

Today I read a post on LifeHacker about the website SimplyNoise. It's a white noise generator that you can listen to through you browser. At first I thought it would just be annoying and low and behold it was. However, after listening to it for a few minutes it's become quite soothing. It's really very strange that such a rough noise, you might call it, can actually become soothing and nice to listen to. I have some chill out music on in the back ground as well. Currently Caradmar - No More Sleep running of Last.fm so all in all, this morning isn't feeling that bad even with the shite weather outside!

Jump to: LifeHacker
Jump to: SimpleNoise

Of Many Things

I've been told to get my arse in gear and start posting again on here. I was going to do some quick photo posts the other day but phone (SE K850i) has died on me and is currently being repaired by small monkeys with large tools. And thus I haven't been able to do it. The phone I have been using is my old Nokia 3410! It's about 8 years old or so I think. I can't remember when I bought it!

Moving on though, the things I were going to photo-blog about are...

I have the new Final Fantasy! Crisis Core for the PSP. It's fantastic and I was going to take a couple of photos of it because I have the limited edition version which comes with a hardback artwork book. Fantastic game, completed it in 21.5 hours so not anywhere near the length of the full games, but it is for a hand held console. Still, it is amazing and I recommend playing it.

The second thing I was going to blog about is the new sculpture the university has erected in the library courtyard. It's... reflective. The entire thing is chromed up apart from a couple of stone looking touches. I will grab a couple of photos at some point and post them. I actually quite like it and it's better than the other lumps of rusty metal that are plonked on the front end of the university.

In other news I have been racking my brains for a new webdesign company name. As I blogged a little while ago, someone else is using WindFall Designs now so I'm having to change. A friend and I are going to team up as we are good at different things. He's a much better PHP, etc coder than I and I'd like to think I'm a better designer then he. So fingers crossed, working together we may actually get somewhere!

Now, I hope this satisfies my friend Richard (the one who told me to get my arse in gear) and if he doesn't comment then I shall break out my l33t hax0r skillz on his pasty white ass.

For now... bai!

Of Wow and I Want One!

I've just seen a video that has utterly blown me away. It's a video of Cisco's Telepresence technology.



Oh yes, the presenter is talking to a hologram in real time. I have got to get me one of these!

I would love to know how it all works, what projection technology is used for a start and what recording equipment are they using on the other end. When I have a spare 10 minutes I'll do some digging for it. Unless anyone can point me in the right direction?

What would be awesome is if Bournemouth Uni would get one of these... oh no they won't because they've stopped using Cisco's experimental stuff now! ARGH!

Of More Videos

I present two awesome videos from cracked.com. I'll warn now, not for the little ones really. Bloody funny though.

The Internet Party -- powered by Cracked.com

Internet Party 2: An Intervention for MySpace -- powered by Cracked.com

Creepiest Blind Date Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

What's Worse Than Getting Caught Watching Porn at Work? -- powered by Cracked.com

Of Definate Last Days

Well today really is my last day of placement! I can't believe how fast 40 weeks has gone by. From now until I finish I shall consider myself a proper member of staff and as such I feel I deserve a payrise and a bigger desk...?

Last two days have been pretty slow however. The myBU stuff is just tinkering really. Copy one item, delete another. Create a folder here, pop a link in it. It's pants. Easy pants too. I want to be working on a project again!

I've also finally managed to get a decent stripped down copy of Windows running as my secondary OS on my laptop. Dedicated to Steam of course. I've also got a virtualised version within Ubuntu now using VirtualBox. Works really well, it's just a shame it doesn't have USB support and everything I've tried so far hasn't worked. Still, I'll keep looking. Maybe I'll get Didi to have a look when he gets back from his placement. I also have Lucy Lui as my wallpaper looking rather seductive. She is hot as hell. I would certainly like to meet Miss Lui!

Of Last Days and Rolling On

Well today is my last official day of placement. A whole 40 weeks. It's gone by in a blast. So henceforth this blog will start to become a little less work orientated and a little more about my ramblings.

Actually I thought I would just check that today is my last day and it turns out it's not. It's Tuesday. Ah well. Close enough.

As work goes it's been pretty quiet, Andy has had the last two weeks off so I've been a little lonesome. Though I have started hanging out with Kristen a little more. We are the only young people left her now really. Our 'Under 30's Club' is very exclusive!

The myBU project I'm working on is still plodding along. Apart from the e-dropboxes the placement area is completely finished. Started reworking the rest of SM Students now. This is my life for the foreseeable future. Tinkering with myBU units. Oh the Joy. I shall dance the Merry Jig of Joy later. Maybe even the fabled Jolly Jig of Joy. It all depends on how Joyful I feel.

Still, I am pleased I have a job here over the summer. It's good money and while it might be a little on the easy side and repetitive it beats the hell out of Tesco's and I get to work with some great people. It will be a shame when I have to leave and go back to being a Full Time Student again.

On a more awesome note, I finally got my new phone the other day. An SE K850i. It's damn nice. The only problem I have with it is the camera can be a little odd in certain lighting conditions. But otherwise, it's a pretty solid phone. And it glows. Blue no less.

Of My Remotes

Model: Theo
My first lolcat

Of Videos

I wanted to share a couple of videos with you today, bit random but I think you will enjoy some of them.

First, the Gamespot review of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. I have this baby on pre-order ready for when it comes out at the end of the month. I can't wait.




Second is something that.... well it just confuses the mind really. I'm not sure when it came out but... it's just shocking. They seem to have gone back to their old ways...



Most people, I imagine, have seen a "quarter bouncing" video on YouTube. The ones where the nerds bounce coins off tables into shot glasses? This one is awesome. I think it's real. Can't see any video editing, but then with the low quality you can get away with it easier.



Enjoy.

Of Ubuntu and Whiteboards

I apologise again for not writing much. I can't say I've been very busy but I can't say I've had the time to sit and blog either, it's all been a bit odd. I've been doing the sort of work that doesn't seem to take much time but seems to take all your time. Very odd. Still, at least I'm doing things!

So work update is pretty much same old. MyBU stuff. Finished working through the dissertations, now it's just sorting out the names and then getting the new area sorted out and ready to roll. Then, or maybe before, I have to sort out some e-dropboxes for the placement area. No that's not dead yet. Also got to have a few meetings and do some IT Inductions, fun fun.

Not working on projects any more which sucks big time but still got the write ups to do for them. Which sucks even more.

Still, happy days I now have a white board in my room thus allowing me to scribble to my hearts content in an array of colours limited to Black, Red and Green.

Finally on my personal notes, I've decided to take on Ubuntu as my main operating system on my laptop instead of "i want to be a geek today" OS. The only reason I am keeping Windows is to play Steam games as I haven't been able to get it to run under linux properly. Managed to start up HL2 but it ran far too slowly. But still, one day who knows? Maybe we shall all be able to play and run what we like under what OS we like. One day.

Of GPR's and Soul Destroying

Not posted in a while so allow me to summarize what I have been up to. Not a huge amount. This week kicked off with the placement briefings for the second years here at SM. That's going ok, after doing the myBU inductions at the start of the year it's a piece of pie now. Plus it takes me like two minutes to do.

However I have received a little criticism from two people who shall remain nameless in case an angry mob decides to hunt them down. I've been told that I wasn't positive enough. See, it's hard to be positive about things when you know that it's not going to get used a lot. I mean, I take pride in all my work, even this. But it was incredibly easy to set up, easy to populate and now I know, because I hate myBU too, that hardly any of the students are going to use it simply because they won't think they need it. They have the hard copies of everything and even if they lose them they will only go hunting for another copy if they think they need to.

So how can I be positive? At the end of the day, I'm showing them it's their and making them aware just in case.

Other than that barrel of laughs I've been playing with another large barrel of laughs, dissertations. I've been given a little stack to go through (electronic versions) and take out all the pictures, etc that haven't been sourced properly or aren't needed. Soul Destroying. And just crap to be honest. I'm an IT student, not a typing monkey. If I knew that I didn't have to do it I wouldn't. But we need to keep our jobs don't we? Still it's not taking me too long to do them and I only have a few left, though those few are PDF's so I'm having to convert them to DOC's first. Honestly, why can't it be specified to hand in in both formates? Bah.

Finally, Half Life 2 is awesome. It's taken me a long time to play it (3 years...) but I have finally bought it and wow. It's completely amazing. I think it's an almost perfect game. The graphics are spot on, the physics are amazing. Voice acting is good. And the episodic releases after the main game is a brilliant idea. It's only of those games where you need to know what happens after the main game ends. We can only hope (and pray, we have to pray) that Ep.3 comes out fairly soon!

Then of course we will be waiting over half a decade for HL3 of course... hahaha.

Btw, if you don't get GPR it stands for Gordon Propelled Rocket. It's an achievement in HL2:Ep2.

Of Future and Work

Good news, found out yesterday that I've had my contract extended until the 31st of August! Which is good, plenty of money over the summer which hopefully means I shall be able to put some money aside to fix my car and go on holiday. I need a holiday.

If I hadn't of gotten the extension then my placement would have finished on the 16th of May. 40 weeks has gone so so quick. Just can't believe it. Ah well, at least they like me enough to keep me on. Hopefully I can play my cards right and get a part timer here next year as well. Then I can avoid places like Tesco and no offence to any one who works there, I already have, and I will not be going back!

The placement site has gone very well. It's pretty much finished now, if not finished. Just a couple of tweaks and rewording here and there. First placement briefing next Tuesday with students so that should be fun. I can show them exactly how useless it is. Nah, it should be fairly useful and if I'm honest I wish DEC had something like it for us. But never mind eh.

Anyways, thought I'd share the good news with the bouncers that come on this site because of my misleading tags and Google's amazing ability to put me on page one of a search.

Of Road Rage and Disappointment

Wasn't even 9am when the excitement of today started! I was sat at the head of some traffic at a junction this morning, got a little room in front of me to roll into the road I was joining. So fat man in the passenger seat of his Mrs's car has noticed this, gets her to beep at me and then starts flapping around at me trying to get me to go forwards. I don't take well to suffocating walrus's flapping around at me so I middle fingered them. She just sort of ignores it and rolls her eyes, but he sticks his thumbs up at me then decides to get out the car. Comes storming up to my passenger side only to find me smug in my knowledge that I have central locking. At which point he starts kicking my car and I roll away smoothly. All in all, I wish I had gotten their bloody license plate and I would now be taking it to the cops and also posting it on here. Still, never mind. No harm done though I really hope he hurt his foot. At least he will have used a few extra calories today.

Now with some disappointment, talking to Andy yesterday it looks like I won't be able to help him with this web project he's looking at getting. Because it would be too much work along side my dissertation. Which sucks big time, guess it's back to the drawing board! Luckily I did come up with a title and little idea for a dissertation, The Impact of Web 2.0 on E-Learning. Dibs by the way. I like that title, it sounds... like I know what I might be talking about...

Of Geotagging and and Maps

Andy and I have been talking about a large bid he is trying to get on to at the moment and it sounds like a bloody good project. Basically it will be a large website with maps of Bournemouth and a timeline. Thus you will be able to go back into different parts of Bournemouth's timeline and view all sorts of different things. We've been discussing how we could implement everything and what directions it could take.

We started off with the idea of a pretty large website that is constructed modularly with user accounts for putting in data, etc. Then we came up with the idea of using Flickr as an image deposit with a central account and then lots of smaller accounts for different schools and individuals to join and add to the image library. From that we could then get Microsoft involved and use PhotoSynth to build points of interest such as Bournemouth Pier. As another way of getting Microsoft involved we thought about using Deep Zoom to hold all the images that get collected about Bournemouth. Expanding upon the PhotoSynth idea we thought that you could have different photo sets from different time periods so you could see what different land marks looked like back through the ages.

From there we thought about getting local schools involved and having them start taking photos but also getting them to geotag the photos as we can pin them to the maps.
Thus it all starts to come together as a community project. Also by bringing in Microsoft and using their software we take down cost and time and also bring up the support level. Microsoft of course then get lots of advertising and a bloody good showcase for different bits and bobs, everybody wins.

I of course hopes he gets the bid because then he could employ me and help him with the research and I get something fantastic to do my dissertation on. Andy wants to take me along to a meeting about the bid on Monday to talk about everything we've discussed today and pitch it to the others in his team. I think they will agree with it, it's damn good as as long as it's built on a solid, modular framework it will be easily expandable and we can sell it on to other cities to do for themselves. If enough people take it on it would eventually become a huge, geotagged historic record of the country.

Of Models and Snow

Finally my 3D model of a hair dressers is almost complete. Just got some texturing to do. It's so easy to do it all in Sketchup. Absolutely love it. Once it's complete I'm not sure it will have a use but it will have been a good exercise. Though hopefully I'll be able to find a way to use it, maybe not as as interactive model but certainly as a show piece.

Also been doing some more tidying, etc on the placement site I've been working on. Gonna get some more work to do tomorrow, can't let me self have no work.... eh?

And finally, it's been snowing! I can't believe it! Snow in Bournemouth! HA! Though it's been odd weather for it. It's snowed pretty hard one minute then been warm and sunny the next, then snowed again. Odd. At the moment there's a light drizzel.

Oh and I've watched two amazing films recently. The Bucket List and The World's Fastest Indian. Two of the most beautiful films I've ever watched and I highly recommend them!

Of Derren Brown and The Same

This weekend I went to see Derren Brown's new live show. The only thing I can say is fantastic! It's utterly amazing to see him do it there in front of you. If you get the chance to see him I highly recommend it. I'd upload the photo I have of him signing my programme but it's a bad photo... of him. haha.

But seriously, go see the show, it's amazing!

Work wise, it's all much of the same. Getting the placement area ready for this years placement students. Going to start on the other areas that I've been asked to set up soon. And hell this is a short post! Enjoy!

Of Nothing Much and WindFall

Been awhile since my last post, simply because I haven't had much to blog about. Work is fairly slow at the moment, just been working on the myBU mini-projects. I've completely reworked the Placement area that I started on when I first started this job and everyone seems pretty happy with it so far. My time on the other, more interesting, projects has been cut down to one day a week which is a shame but at least it gives me time to ponder ideas to work on during that day the rest of the week. I have, however, moved office. It's now bigger but to be honest, I preferred my old office. I liked my little dark haven.

On a Uni note however, we have been sent through our options choices for the final year. I'm going to look at either Entertainment Systems or Internet Systems. Not sure which yet. Going to try and have a chat with a tutor or two to see what's going to be involved. Hopefully I can dodge as much programming as possible! Or at least try and focus on some internet orientated programming.

Finally, it seems that I will have to completely rebrand myself as a web designer. WindFall Designs can not go on! Every so often I Google it to see where I am and a new WindFall Design (no "s") has appeared! The copyright on the web site is from 2002 yet it's not even a full working website yet. So it looks like I shall I have to change my name. Going to try for a one worder, but coming up with a name is like trying to kick yourself in the balls. It's bloody hard. Still, we'll see. Maybe I can find the time to pull a couple of people together and make a proper go at it. Shawn is getting pretty good at coding now... so we'll see.

So for now, chill out and I'll post again soon.

Of Driving and Driving (and Silverlight and Expression Studio)

A total of 6 hours driving were spent in total yesterday. Was a damn killer, I'm absolutely shattered today. The Microsoft conference I went to though was pretty interesting. It was about MS Silverlight and MS Expression Studio. In typical MS style however, nothing seemed to be "new". Silverlight is going head to head with Flash. However there are only two things that I can see that Silverlight has that will even let it be a contender. One is it's ability to manipulate video. That is pretty damn good. We saw demo's of 6 or 7 thumbnail video clips all running at the same time and you can click on one of them, it expands, sound fades in and plays. Everything was seemless and nothing hung up. However this way done on a local machine, so I'd like to see it across the internet. The other thing that I think is pretty good is that Silverlight can take in XAML code and just use it. There's nothing else to it. This is their biggest plus point. XAML is an extensible mark up language (the A is for application) and it does look great how it works straight into Silverlight.

My problem however, is why do we need another solution for web apps? We have Flash. It's an industry standard and it works. Adobe are making excellent advances with Flex and AIR towards better online apps than what Flash (the program) can produce and people love it. I was talking to a bloke there yesterday that was singing AIR and Flex's praises. He was only there so he could see if Silverlight had anything to offer. His opinion? Not really.

Silverlight also can't (yet...) do "real" 3D work. Flash can, if you don't believe me then check out a previous post about Papervision 3D. It can do "fake" 3D and granted, it does it nicely. All the effects and animations are all very nice.

However.

My problem I guess is that "A" in XAML. Application. My view of Flash is that it can, and does, everything from an annoying advert that draws your attention to it by showing you boobs, to fully working amazing websites with forms and shiny bells and noisy whistles. But Silverlight seems more directed at apps. In this sense I don't think it will be competing with Flash (app) rather Flex and AIR. These are the tools that seem to be aimed at Flash apps now. And they are doing it well. Silverlight might be easy with it's XAML -> Deployment thats all you need. But Flex and AIR seem to be the ones giving you better control in a language formate that makes sense to a developer.

Oh, I said on of the D words. Developer and Designer. Normally two separate things, you either have a head for code or you can make designs look just so. MS have other ideas, they feel that they can unite the Designer and Developer as one. By using their new Expression Studio. Designs are exported as XAML, coding is (shockingly enough) in XAML, thus allowing you to code and design everything yourself. Personally I feel that's a huge mistake. They are two completely separate jobs.

However, for a proper design and development team I can see that passing the XAML from one Studio program to the next without losing any information or having any conflicting issues is something that every D&D team would love. This showed at the conference when a talk was given by a man named Tricky. He, apparently, could not code in the slightest and only did design work. He designed something and then passed it straight on to the coders. And this set up works, its a proven set up.

But what does Expression look like? Think Dreamweaver and Illustrator. Then there is a media encoder/re-encoder (which actually looks pretty impressive but think something along the lines of Premiere just not as much functionality, but still good!), a media organiser and finally a program called Blend that brings everything together.

Oh and they are all in a black, shiny theme.

Finally I want to talk quickly about my day today. Had a meeting about sorting out the placement area, went pretty well. Got plenty to do over the next week or so. Which is defiantly good. This is such a long post I just can't type any more! I'll blog some more about Silverlight and Expression when I try them out.

Peace.

Of Slowness and Dexter

Well the past five days or so have been pretty slow. Waiting on some meetings and things at the moment so we can get some projects within myBU going. Once they start I think I'll be pretty busy, I can see it being a slow ball effect to be honest. It's gonna start slow but I definitly think it will get bigger and bigger till I'm flat out haha.

Good news though, after all the trouble with taking on extra work that I didn't want nor think I could handle properly. I've now found out that I don't have to worry about any of it. Which is excellent. I'm pretty pleased with how I handled it. Sorted it all out through my new line manager and hey presto I'm free and clear. To tell the truth I was getting pretty worried about it so this is a hell of a weight off my mind now.

On a final note. Dexter. Oh. My. God. What a hell of a show! If you haven't watched it yet then I suggest you do. It's utterly excellent. Some awesomely hot chicks in it as well. Ha... hahaha. And a shocking amount of blood as well haha. Anyways, watch it, it's awesome.

Of Sketching and 3D

Not much has happened since my last post. Still waiting to find out the details of my new tasks. I have, however, found out the true extent of what it is I am supposed to be taking on from someone else. A lot more than I was originally told. A lot of stuff I am also pretty uncomfortable taking on. But you don't want to hear about that. You want to hear about what I've been sketching. In 3D.

Google Sketchup. Wow. I'd heard about it before and seen a few of the 3D models people have created using it and put onto Google Earth. But I didn't realise how simple it is to use. It really is fantastic. In one day I've learnt how to do a fair amount in it and also built (almost finished) a house as well. All the small things they have put in it to make it easy and quick to use is just outstanding. Some ideas can be a little odd to get used to, especially if you have used other 3D programs before. But it's got an extremely easy learning curve so you can pick it up in no time.

The amount of detail and what you can create with it is excellent. There are also plenty of ready build components (by the community) that you can download from the Google "3D Warehouse" such as sofa's and chairs and cars and all other manner of things.

If you haven't tried Sketchup then I highly recommend you do, even if you aren't into CAD or 3D modelling. Just try it. Make a 3D model of your monitor just to try the program, it's simple amazing!

By the way Google, you can pay me if you like for brown-nosing Sketchup so much.

Why am I trying it out though? Because you can map photos to the models you build and thus Andy is hoping we can build some 3D, photorealisticly textured models to use in our virtual projects. I just love playing with it!

Google Sketchup

Of Moving and New Bosses

For those readers who found this article looking for Ubuntu related things, please skip to the last paragraph. However, please read everything! You might enjoy readying about me bitch about my day!

Today I've found out that I am to move office. In some ways it's quite sad. I've grown accustom to being surrounded by archive boxes... kind of. I can hope that my new office will be slightly bigger, but that is really only a hope.

Not everything is peachy with this however. I have also found out that Andy is no longer my boss. I have a new one. I'll be honest, I'm pretty annoyed about this. I only have a few months left of my placement and so I feel that, really, what is the point? Again, I can only hope that it won't make my placement crap and have a completely pointless end to it. And again, this probably really is only a hope. I get the feeling that I will end up doing mostly admin work with the odd project thrown in because Andy has already bought my time. If it does turn out that they want me as an admin monkey, needless to say I will be going to my placement advisor and kicking up some good old fashioned shite.

Some of you may think that this is slightly immature and I have to accept that at some point all jobs have crap parts. While this is true. This isn't my "job" per say. This is work placement and I should be doing something (and this is a quote from our tutors) "relevant to the course". Correct me if I am wrong but making sure that unit handbooks are uploaded under the correct area doesn't exactly have much in common with, say, Java.

So my small collection of faithful readers, I am pissed off. I will find out tomorrow what is to be done.

On a side note, I seem to be getting a lot of hits from search strings to do with Ubuntu. Namely something along the lines of "whats better; gutsy gibbon or feisty fawn?" To answer this question, gibbon is the better. The latest build of Ubuntu is excellent and I highly recommend it. It really is a pleasure to see interest in Linux building.

Of New Rooms and New Sites

Well today, and the rest of this week, I have been (and will be) creating new rooms for mySC. It's time to get it all linked up and ready to do. I'm tempted to create a whole new floor plan that's a little better than the current one. I'll have to see how much work that could be! Might not be worth it if it's going to take me a day to re-script the Flash side of it. Still, once we have rooms it's only a matter of filling them with the content that is every so slowly appearing. It's like watching a glacier move. You can't see it happening but when you take your eyes off it and look back, you can see the difference.

So over the next few weeks I'm hoping to almost get it wrapped up and push it out into a beta test with students! Now that I think about it, that's kinda scary. I mean it will basically be an internet application/game that I have created, on my own, being used by what is essentially "the public". Scary. Yet, it's also a good scary. That even if it doesn't go past the Beta, that's still a pretty good accomplishment. Would be great to have some feedback from students as well. Defiantly something to look forward to!

And on to the personal notes. Been looking at what phone to get next. Again. Last time I looked I got it down to either the SE K850i or the LG Viewty. However. SE have no brought out some new Cyber-Shot phones. Namely the C902. I think I might as well forget about the LG, the camera isn't supposed to be good. Where as the K850i sounds like a pretty solid phone, typical of SE. I love my current SE (K810i) so another SE is a good choice... I hope. But the C902 looks pretty wicked. Almost exactly what I want. Bloody good camera phone with a touch screen. Still a few more months before I can upgrade, so one can only hope.

Finally, I've been working on version 4 of WindFall Designs. I haven't blogged about this before, but WindFall is my ever so tiny venture into web design. I love doing it and it's what I would like to do as a career. It can be found at;

http://www.windfalldesigns.co.uk

Version 4 is looking much better than the current version 3 and it will have a lot more functionality as well. This being a CMS backend to manage it and a customer area... not that I have any at the moment. Anyone want a bespoke website and extremely completive prices? Email admin@windfalldesigns.co.uk NOW!

Another project I have started with a friend of mine, it was his idea... I sharn't take credit for it, is Another Bored Night (.I don't know the extension at the moment). Basically it's going to be a mash up website of places to go and things to do when you are bored. I'm currently designing the look of it, so keep your eyes peeled over the next couple of weeks. I really hope it takes off, should be some fun.

And so... comment on me post or go read another or bugger off and reading someone elses. Enjoy!

Of Waiting and Overness

Well the wait seems to be finally over! Content for mySC has begun to come through at least. It may just be a few pictures for the moment but it's a start. I've even had an idea for an Olympics room!

I'm thinking of doing a 3D render of the Olympic rings, maybe try for a wide angle shot looking up at them. Then have hot spots on the rings to link to different areas of sports, etc. Maybe a link or two to a blog or three. I'll have to crack out a copy of Cinema 4D or borrow a machine at uni and use 3DS Max. Yeah... my pants are liking this idea...

Of Reflection and Growth, Part Deux

I thought I'd take another look back and what I've done so far on my placement. I know for definite that my technical skills have grown a lot. I can do more in Flash than I could before placement. But I have also learned how to forge better people relations and how to work better with people. An odd statement... but something that I imagine will go well in the logbook!

I've said it before but doing the logbook in this blog formate has, in my opinion, helped with reviewing and reflecting on not only what I've done but also how I've changed.

I guess the point of placement is to give you an insight and experience in the work world. And this placement has certainly given me that. As I've said, working at the uni has forced me to interact with a lot people than I have had to in the past. Even working at somewhere like Tesco's isn't the same sort of interaction because here people are asking you to do things for them that are essential for them to do their job as well as the other way round for me asking people to do things. A Tesco manager asking you to restock a shelve isn't exactly essential, except for making sure he/she gets their bonus.

So my skills have improved across the board really. People skills and technical skills. And coffee drinking skills. Bloody important them. But seriously, most of my technical skills have increased. At least the important ones to me. Web related stuff for example.

Well, enough self analysing. It's getting depressing. Enjoy analysing me!

Of Boxers and Pants

A war started at skittles Monday night. A war between men. A war between boxers and pants. What was better? What gave better airflow? What gave better skittling skills? These were questions that were asked. Questions that were fought over.

The battle raged intensely for several hours. Insults were thrown as skittles were torn asunder by big, wooden balls. Cheers went up from respective sides when spares were made. Cries of despair were heard when floppers were narrowly missed.

However, there was one man who stood alone. Apart from the rest of us. A lone commando. He declared that being a commando allowed everything to breath. The flow freely. He faired well for his efforts.

In the end no one was certain of the outcome. Who had won? Who was the champion of the under garment or lack there of?

To this day we do not know. All we do know is... the war is not over!

So we put the question out to you - what is your chosen side?

Of Presents and Putty

Well done even more admin work this week. Starting to suck pretty bad now. Gonna try and get a move on with more project work next week. However we are still waiting on content which is holding us up a little.

On the personal side though, I ordered Claire's Valentines present the other day and recieved it today. Hopefully she'll like it! I also ordered some of that Silly Putty. I used to have it when I was little. Tis kewl. Theres a magnetic version of it now. However I couldn't get my hands on it! :(

Of Rebuilding and *insert second topic here*

Well it's been slow for me last few days of work. Nothing really going on except the never ending admin work. Still waiting to get content for mySC so we can start populating it. I think we want to start a proper beta test at the end of the month. So while we wait for that I spent some time last week rebuilding Andy's old computer that he has passed on to me. I've not set up a computer to log on to a domain before. Along with setting up networked drives, etc. it's been a good learning experience. While I'm not saying I didn't know how to map a network drive, setting it all up to fit in with the uni procedures is the different part.

Because it's been a bit slow at the moment I was unable to fill my second topic list! I've always been able to think of something, even if it was a personal note. However my personal life has even slowed up for the moment. Still winning skittles, in case you wanted to know. Still going to the pub! So, with this small addition I shall leave you. Hopefully something will happen for me to write about. Like a small sub-atomic explosion caused by some weird reasons all happening at the same time that would normally be completely missed but instead vaporises part of the library.

Of SeaDragon and Photosynth

Last Friday I had my first placement visit from my Placement Advisor. It went well. Very well indeed. Not only from the point of view of my placement but it also turns out that my advisor is leaving his current job and moving to be the "enterprise" manager of the Uni. He also has contacts with Microsoft and was even in the meeting where Linda Hole tried to get hold of a MS Surface box for us to play with.

During my meeting with him we got talking about the Virtual Projects I am currently working on and when he went to talk to Andy about me they got talking about it all. And it seems that we may be able to work with MS on something after all. They recently bought up some software called SeaDragon. Which, if you haven't heard of it, is a technology that allows super fast streaming of data across a network no matter the amount of data you are handling. In basic it turns it is only downloading the data that can be seen on your screen, which is a fixed amount that will never ever change. This means that it can handle a huge collection of image files, for example, all high resolution and you can zoom in and out of them and scroll all about.



The video shows, incase you can't have audio or you haven't seen it, 800 high resolution images being streamed across a network at roughtly 500Kb/s (Bits not Bytes). That works out at, if the images were all 20MB in size (118 Megapixel images here), roughly 15.625GB. At it streams it pretty damn smoothly. To me, thats pretty special and my hat goes off to the guys that created SeaDragon.

However, MS have now bought this software and used it in their new product which is currently in development called Photosynth. This is, in my opinion, one of the best things MS has produced in a long time and if they market it right and release the program at the right price could be a killer app for photo professionals. I can see a multitude of ways to use it, which I won't divulge in case MS reads this and nicks them!

Basically Photosynth takes a whole host of images from an image library, Flickr for example. These images are all of the same thing. Lets say of the Eiffel Tower. It then looks at all these images and starts mapping them out in a 3D space so you can then move around a model of the subject in question and as you move over an area that has a photo it fades in and you can see the object from that angle. You can then move to another side and view another photo. Zoom right in to seem some detail and then zoom out and on to the next photo. It streams all the data of the net using the SeaDragon technology and thus makes it smooth and a pleasure to use. I personally think they should put in the ability to view a collage of all the different photos to create a 3D model that you can move around as at the moment you can only view one photo at a time. If they could try and map the photos to the 3D frame Pho creates that would be great.



So, Andy and I are looking at getting into contact with MS and seeing about getting our hands on Pho to play with it an maybe be one of the first Universities (or companies?) to use it for a practical use. Fingers crossed!

My personal touch for today is how to get around the blight that has stopped the non-US listeners of Pandora listening because we don't live within the US. And this is, globalPandora. It seems to be a touch slow, but that might be because I'm currently logged on to Last.fm at the moment. But it does indeed work, and with no adverts!

Of Web 3 and Digital Camera's

Andy has been looking at Web 3.0 stuff today. He tells me that we are going to move towards online desktops and applications. And that this is a good thing. I disagree at the moment. Broadband speeds are still too unpredictable, some people still don't have it. Until it has been rolled out across the country to everyone and the speeds are reliably in the 4mb region I can't see any practical use for online desktops and and full application suites.

Don't get me wrong, Google Docs and a few others are working very well indeed and they offer fast usage with reliable storage. But what's the point of putting it all together yet? But then I suppose progress has to start somewhere. And who knows, with the push of such things maybe it will make ISPs make their services better.

However, I must report something sad now. My Sony Cybershot DSC-P200 has broken. Somehow the screen has shattered. I shall blame it on Mother. So I've been looking at new camera's today and have pretty much decided upon the DSC-H9. Looks to have everything I want in a decent size gadget. How I am also looking at new phones (LG Viewty). So many things to buy, so little money. But that's an old cry from most of the people isn't it? Peace!

Of Fat and Work

Been back at work for just under a week now. Last week was as quiet as a grave so I didn't have anything to blog about. This week however everyone is back so it's work time!

Andy has asked me to start writing a case study on blogging for our project. Personally I'm going to write about how I feel about blogging and what I find it useful for. But how do you guys find blogging? Is it useful for reflection? Or do you just use blogs for a diary? Or maybe you just read them and not write one. Let me know! It would be extremely useful and interesting to see your thoughts.

Personally I've used it as a diary of my work placement as part of the assignment this year has been to keep a work log of everything. But I've also started to find it incredibly useful as a reflection tool. For example, when I've had a meeting I've blogged about how I felt about it. What was good what was bad. Then a few days later I've read the post and then reposted about the meeting. How I'm feeling about it after a few days to think about it all. It's interesting to see the differences and being able to comment back to yourself is great.

So there we are!

On a personal note, now it's time to lose the Christmas fat. Anyone else got a spare tyre? Still, that's what Christmas is all about isn't it? Eating yourself stupid till the point of feeling slightly ill?

Andy's Beard Watch Update: It's gone again! Every time I don't seem him for a couple of days it disappears. Maybe that's because it takes a couple of days to shave off with a diamond edged razor.