Jan. 16, 2011

I have started a new blog here which is basically just images straight from my phone. I figured out the fastest way to get things from my eyeballs straight onto the internet. It goes like this:

  • Take photos with phone.
  • Email photos from phone to an address on my server, which forwards:
  • To a gmail address, where it goes to Google Buzz.
  • To a special Wordpress email address which posts the pictures to the blog.
  • The Wordpress thing also posts the pictures on Twitter and Facebook.

What I love about this was I didn't have to write any code to make it happen, but it still uses open source components and my own server. It's also ridiculously convenient which is very important when you have a newborn. I don't have to rely on some horrible corporation (they are just some of the end-points where the stuff arrives). I am a pretty huge fan of things which involve writing less code.

If you like images, feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed. I promise it won't all be photos of my wonderful daughter. :)

Now I am going to post some drawings I scribbled.

PS Here is another cool internet thing someone did for selling stuff on the internet without writing any code. It came from Warren Ellis' blog.

PPS another thing is what I am reading and sharing on Google Reader, which is here.

Sept. 23, 2010

Android music panel 1

Android music panel 2

Android music panel 3

Android music panel 4

Hope you enjoyed these drawings of my ultimate music-making dream setup. My apologies to anyone using a screen reader.

May 30, 2010

This 3d printing stuff is addictive.

April 24, 2010

I am taking part in the Ludum Dare #17 48 hour game challenge this weekend, and hence taking a bit of a break from Infinite8BitPlatformer programming this weekend. Follow me on the competition blog if you're interested! I will be releasing all of the sourcecode from my game at the end of the competition.

Incidentally, I have fixed up many of the Infinite8BitPlatformer bugs that were reported during the pre-alpha, and had some more great contributions from Crispin, such as a spray-can tool for in-game editing and some fun levels. Also last week I finished a bunch of tweaks, features, and bug fixes on the PodSixNet code, so next on the agenda is the multi-player code. Hopefully I'll be able to fit that in around the contract work I have on next week. Exciting stuff!

Anyway, back to the competition.

April 6, 2010

Only one of the little robots that I designed survived the 3D printing process. This is because of my inexperience in designing for 3d printing. As you can see from the one that worked out, many of the connecting struts were almost too thin to be structurally sound, and this was the case in the other ones I sent off for printing.

Nonetheless there is something deeply profound and kind of humbling about holding this delicate little robot in my hand. I've spent my whole life creating virtual things - computer programs, graphics, music - and now it is possible to use the exact same skills to produce something who's physical structure may well outlast that of my own. Walking through Roman ruins earlier this year I realised that there is something about hard physical matter that is so important. Seeing a marble carving of some guy's face which has outlasted his original face by so many thousands of years really drove it home.

Last year I also read "Matter" by Iain M. Banks and although it didn't grab me as much as some of his previous books, there was an interesting argument about virtuality from one of his characters. The essence of the argument was that we don't inhabit a virtual universe overseen by some creator or creator race because any sufficiently advanced entity or culture would not allow the terrible things that can happen to sentient beings in our universe, to occur. It's sort of a meta-ethical argument saying that we can't be anywhere other than at the top of the stack of turtles, if the ethics of highly evolved intelligences are always consistent.

On a related note, this blog post makes the case that in software development the execution of an idea is much more important than the idea. I have come to believe that this is true in general. Because we now live in this highly populated and deeply connected age, ideas have become cheap. Real things, done things, executed things, are better than virtual things and ideas.

This decade is going to be fascinating because of the increasing protrusion of the virtual into the real and the modification of the real by the virtual. Bring on the self configuring household ornaments built of programmable nanotech, such as a flower which has as many petals as there are emails in your inbox.

Virtual things are ok, but real things are better.