03.21.08
Posted in shiny, technology at 7:04 pm by coldclimate
I bought a wiiMote a little while ago because, well, they looked fun. No other real reason. Here’s how I got it up and running with my favorite programming environment, processing.org
Firstly, you need to make your laptop have “blue teeth” luckily my iBook came with these coloured nashers, which I’ve not really used and now wouldn’t be without. The wiiMote talks via these blue teeth to the iBook, so long as it has something to connect to.
Step in Darwiin, which is a wiiMote client. Install it, turn on the teeth, and press 1 and 2 togehter on the wiiMote and it just connects. Wave the wiiMote around in the air and you’ll see the wavey coloured lines representing it’s 3D velocity. It just works out of the box, which is nice.
There is a Darwiin version which rolls in OSC. OpenSoundControl is a protocol for communicating with devices. One nice feature is communication via TCP/IP, so a device can be connected to one machine and controlling another.
This also means that if you get a library that talks OSC, it can communicate with devices it cannot natively speak to, and such is the way with processing. Get the OSCP5 library and processing can now commuicate with Darwiin.
So far so good. Add in the WiiController class (included in the oscp5 download), and you’re ready to rock (and roll, lets not forget pitch control). Now you can access what the wiiMote is doing simply with wiiController.x, wiiController.y, and wiiController.pitch.
This was a good start, but moving a dot around the screen wasn’t that exciting. Poing however, now there is an adrenaline rush. So, crack open the collision detection, switch all the mouseY’s for wiiController.pitch (with a scaling factor) and bobs you uncle, you have wiiPong.
Permalink
01.08.08
Posted in business, shiny, technology at 1:04 pm by coldclimate
In the last week I’ve come across some brilliant tools to make my digital life easier, so I throught I’d better share. The Refresh Newcastle group put me onto some, and Google did the rest as and when I found I needed something.
MAMP
I do most of my development work on a php/mySQL stack, and normally I do it here on coldclimate, which is all very well and good, but it has all the problems of working remotely. Latency, need to be online, slow debugging, the potencial for a rogue piece of sql to drop my comments table etc, so some local development area was needed. My iBook has a local copy of Apache, and PHP installed, but installing mySQL was a ball ache, and upgrading to php5 looked like a nightmare. Step in MAMP, and all in one install which is easy as pie to get going with, but where each item in your tech stack is separate, meaning it’s much much easier to install upgrades, downgrades or even have multiple installs at the same time. Out of the box, it works a treat. (Mac only kids)
CodeIgniter
Following on from discussions about Ajax development kits, I was pointed to CodeIgniter, which is a php framework. MVC based (as all good code is in my book), I was knocking up a blogging site from scratch inside an hour as a play thing. Impressive, and means you can stop rolling all your own libraries. (Cross Platform - php based)
Musorg
Having set about getting my music collection under control I needed a method for batch editing mp3’s ID3 tags. Under Windows I use Tag and Rename, and it’s ok, but slow. On my Mac I’d just use iTunes, except then I’d need to import all my stuff into iTunes etc. ball ache city. Step in Musorg, which lets you pick I directory, and easily edit all your tags in one go, or file by file, quickly and easily. Remember to hit save before moving directory though! Once all the tags are sorted, I can throw the files as the Synology Cube, and forget about them. (Mac only)
jQuery
Another framework, this time proving aJax functionality quickly and fairly easily. I’m yet to really get going with this yet, but I’m hoping to use it and CodeIgniter to get my next project up and running quickly. (Cross platform - browser based)
coComment
Another handy tool born out of dicussions on the Refresh mailing list. I woke up with an idea which I hadn’t the inclination nor talent to write, so posted it up to see if anybody fancied a go at it. Somebody pointed out it existed already (always a good sign). coComment is a Firefox plugin which keeps track of all the comment you post on blogs, so you don’t loose track of where you said something and makes finding peoples replies easier. Now coComment+Google reader +rss = perfection. (webbased)
Sharepoint
Yes, I hate virtually everything about Sharepoint’s ideology and methodology, but once I got down off my high horse and stopped trying to have full control of the code it generated, I was able to get so much more done. Much as I don’t like working in it, if you use it in a completely point and click manner (even abstaining for FrontPage if possible) with some good templates, somebody with no technical experience can have a website with document stores, chat rooms, message posting, blogs and a wiki up and running in a few hours, which is quite incredible really. Yes, the code it generates is vile, portable as a breezeblock, fugly as mutant pug dog and only works on IE with a fixed screen resolution, but in a corporate environment with browser monoculture and fixed machien builds, this doens’t matter. It just works. Scary. Getting off my high horse was like biting off my own tongue though. (Microsoft only)
Permalink
12.25.07
Posted in shiny at 8:51 pm by coldclimate
Check out the amazing amazon discount thingy. Shiny shiny for discounted money, oh yes.
Permalink
12.14.07
Posted in shiny, technology at 12:19 pm by coldclimate
BBC iPlayer is available on Linux! Sing and dance! It’s making programs available in Flash, but it should work! Yay!
Permalink
12.01.07
Posted in interweb, shiny at 9:10 pm by coldclimate
I really love indexed, teeny tiny bits of genius on index cards.
Permalink
11.23.07
Posted in interweb, shiny at 11:05 am by coldclimate
I’ve been using and writing for trustedplaces.com for about a year now, and I love it. Its really cool to be able to post up your own stuff and have people feedback to you how they found it, and it can be dead handy for finding places to eat in cities you’re not well versed in (especially London) rather than wandering out and into places on the off chance (not that this isn’t good at times too).
Anyway, they’ve just been rated number 1 travel website on the Times Online, which is super cool. I have to admit, I don’t thingg of them as a travel website so much as a food site, but them again they did get behind me going to New York and get people to add places they’ve been to there so I had a blooming clue. Trip Advisor made number 2, thich is an excellent site too, I always use their reviews to find hotels.
Permalink
10.09.07
Posted in randomosity, shiny at 8:00 pm by coldclimate
xkcd + firefly
Permalink
10.03.07
Posted in shiny at 9:50 pm by coldclimate
Congratulations to my wife (sic) for being voted “Cameraphone Photographer of the Year“
Permalink
09.28.07
Posted in randomosity, shiny, technology at 4:41 pm by coldclimate
He does not fear the health and safety Nazis!
He is a geek and proud!
He makes and burns things!
His Secret Life of Machines remains my favorite ever peice of TV.
Whom else could say “The ‘wind’ is spouting fire to start the windmill going. The sails formed a giant catherine wheel. Note the rocket powered pets below the telegraph poles. The windmill opened out during the 10 minute show to reveal a tiny living room with me and Andy Plant dressed as Barbie and Ken. We fed the rocket propelled pets, which shot in from the sides, and then everything caught fire, including the working TV set.”
Permalink
Posted in interweb, shiny at 12:21 pm by coldclimate
I love the work being done by the crew at Guerrilla Gardening. In a world of red tape, beurocracy (spelling?), and health and safety, surely planting up waste ground and “social spaces” is a great thing? The planting that goes on in social spaces is generally terrible. If I see another greying bank of scrubby bushes, untended and unloved. Get out there are replace them with something interesting!
Permalink
09.13.07
Posted in shiny at 7:08 pm by coldclimate
Yes, this got me very excited. Very. “In a couple of weeks the BBC World Service will be recording a dramatisation of ANANSI BOYS, starring Lenny Henry and Matt Lucas”
Permalink
Posted in interweb, shiny, technology at 2:55 pm by coldclimate
Lost from the net for a little big of timne, CatCam is back! Follow Mr Lee’s adventures.
Permalink
08.08.07
Posted in interweb, shiny at 4:14 pm by coldclimate
One of my favorite songs, both in content and colour, is The Elements by Tom Lehrer. I aim to learn it at some point:
There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium
There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium
There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium
There’s sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium
These are the only ones of which
The news has come to Ha’vard
And there may be many others
But they haven’t been discavard
Permalink
Posted in interweb, shiny at 4:14 pm by coldclimate
One of my favorite songs, both in content and colour, is The Elements by Tom Lehrer. I aim to learn it at some point:
There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium
There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium
There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium
There’s sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium
These are the only ones of which
The news has come to Ha’vard
And there may be many others
But they haven’t been discavard
Permalink
07.20.07
Posted in interweb, shiny, technology at 6:25 pm by coldclimate
As if perfectly timed with my rant this morning aboutiTunes and the need to be able to tag mp3s, here’s an interesting diagram about “the cycle of hype” around tagging. We are entering the phase whereby tagging stops being attempted to be used as a silver bullet, and slowly finding what its really good for.
Permalink
06.28.07
Posted in shiny, technology at 8:37 am by coldclimate
I very much doubt that it is energy efficient, as microwaves eat electricity, but if solar or wind power could be used to drive this device which turns plastics back into lliquid hydrocarbon mixes (aka. oil, petrol, fuels) then maybe we can avoid the situation which was detailed in Alien where oil was being trucked onto the planet from other planets for the production of plastics and pharmasuticals.
Our relience on oil is terrorfying.
Permalink
06.19.07
Posted in shiny, technology at 12:27 pm by coldclimate
This is great to see - the Tate’s website for the How We Are exebihion, using Flickr to backend it’s photos - meaning you can see the EXIF data on how the photo was taken fro some of them. Fabouls use of technology (and some shiny photos too).
Permalink
06.18.07
Posted in randomosity, shiny at 7:10 pm by coldclimate
I’ve just signed up for lovefilm.couk (3 months free! rockin).
Now - what should I watch? Please elave your recommendations…
Permalink
06.16.07
Posted in interweb, randomosity, shiny at 12:59 am by coldclimate
For so many reasons, not of which I can easily put into words at 1:48am, I love Heatherwick Studio nd the work of Thomas Heatherwick. It reminds me of the crazy brainstorming sessions I used to end up participating in when I worked for a small landscapers, and over the course of lunch, the aftertoon and dinner, we would thrash out a crazy idea into something amazing. From LED lighting rigs in gardens to goldern ratio plantpots, they felt like some of the most productive times of my life.
Permalink
05.13.07
Posted in randomosity, shiny at 1:31 pm by coldclimate
My old flatmate has just pointed out that if they ever made a Starwars Wii game, give lightsabre duals, it would be… AMAZING!
Permalink
« Previous entries
