Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Woo. I am win person. There is an obvious b3ta vibe here...
Trophy

I won an actual trophy last night for winning a Master Sytem Olympic Games Barcelona 92 100m Sprint Competition with a blistering speed of 9.76 seconds at another SoC social. As I said, Woo!

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Some of the GENIUS ideas thought up over this weekend in the Skiving Scholar Public House (where I seem to have a direct mental link with the Gods whenever I drink in there):
360' Film: For use online through Flash or Director by stitching video together and scrolling the sprites, or flicking layers. For use in a physical space by projecting inwards onto hanging sheets or screens arranged in a circle, with the audience in the center. Would work better with individual sections to the screens, but would be cool if the video were stcked, then played onto a continuous circular screen. Should work nicely with 8 cameras all filming outwards at 45' angles of each other. May have nice implementations in the filming of battle scenes, (where laser shows could enhance the effect by shooting lasers where bullets or arrows, or lasers, should be into the audience space,) sporting events, (especially Tennis, or maybe Boxing,) and of course, Porn.
"Talk to the Hand" Dolls: Girls dolls can't have 'kung-fu grip' so how about a "Talk to the Hand" motion? Could also be used as merchandising for the above Porn site idea.
I'm sure there was more. I'll have to go in there more often, and take a pad.
I also forgot to mention, the application for Full Sail was sorted out last weekend, so we are just waiting for their reply.
I completed, (well I think it is complete,) my paper for the Cultural Industries Redefined conference. It will be a "spoof" seminar on business practice. 'Consumerism from the other side of the counter.'
Chris, my brother, also went to New York with the school for the week and got back last night. Lucky git ;-)
Just been trying to plug away this week really. I went home last weekend for St. Valentine's Day, but the rest of the week was business as usual. This weekend has been cool though, with the MLA Placement Students all coming back to sign up for their modules for next year. That has meant a busy weekend of watching football, bowling, gamecube and drinking :-). They are all off home today so it is time to get back to work.
I've got a lot more content for my final project, in terms of theory, such as papers, quotes and other research being carried out in the area etc. I have also done a little more to the Calculator ROM, whch is now much more efficient and number entry now properly works. All that needs doing now is adding functionality to the command buttons, such as "+" and "=", to which I have made a start. I think I'll make that my priority for today, with the website being updated too, hopefully, to include the new theory in an arrangment suitable for my presentation, and the new ROM. After that, I think other examples of functioning content, in Flash or Director, should come next, to support a learning scenario on a field trip. But thats a bit further down the line.

Thursday, February 12, 2004

Ah, just found it! "The number of videos MTV plays dropped 36.5 percent from 1995 to 2000, but ratings are up 50 percent over the past four years." (Written August 2001, the 20th Anniversary of MTV.)
My take on a quote from MP3Newswire.net:
"Apple's iTunes Music store [could] become the MTV of Online track sales."
What, less and less music, eventually being swamped with forgettable presenters, adverts for mobile phone ringtones and logos, before moving into TV programs, rather than the music it was meant to be presenting? Great.
(I found that quote whilst looking for the stat that says how much less music MTV actually plays now, if anyone has it.)

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

I'm getting more famous every day. Got my name on Radio 1 on Sunday (they read out a text I sent in to Wes on the Chart Show on my way back from the airport.) Today Dave Wiltshire pointed this out to me: http://www.arch-os.com/projects/wap.html or view the project here: http://www.arch-os.com/wap/ (note that the actual WAP address is http://www.arch-os.com/wap/i.wml if you want to look on your phone.) i-DAT has somewhat bodged the posting of the project, (in typical fashion) but it still works.
Last night I didn't play football, but instead went to a SoC social, which was OK, but there was also the X-Box £10K Challenge in Scream, in which I failed quite miserably (Project Gotham Racing 2, one go at 2 laps, fastest time of the night wins,) being about 9 seconds off the pace. I did get a nice X-Box Torch Keyring. May be eBay fodder later. I would post a picture, but its difficult to find reliable storage to go with this blog that is likly to be available to me for much longer than a few months. Thats because the Full Sail application is now going ahead. Should be starting at the end of August.
In the meantime, I just got back from a project meeting with Dan Livingstone again which has given me something to focus on. Shame I have to do other work as well though, since it keeps throwing me off.

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Hello all. I'm now back from Ski-ing and had a proper bo time, (thats a good thing.) Bit sunburnt but it was a good laugh, even if the last day was hard work on Blades (short 'trick skis'.)
My X-ROM was waiting for me when I got back, finally. I'm going to try putting something on to it later on.
The Imagine Cup Stage 2 started while I was away, so I only have until Saturday to do something for it, (coding a .NET application to their specification for a mobile device.) I've got no chance really, since I've only just started learning C/C++ let alone .NET. I'll have to have a better look at it later on, but I don't think I've got the time to spare.
Time to get back to work.