Something really impressive that Max can do it tracking, with the right amount of time, effort and the correct use of objects of course. The tracking is a bit… skittish at best but that is probably due to a poorly lit environment for the task and also the fact that a poor quality built in webcam is being used.
Here are the results
Today there was a workshop on the Jitter and MasMSP combination allowing viewing of video and changing of colours. Learning more about Max and the fact that it can handle graphics in an external window (which can be placed on an external screen / projector.
A comment from Christian had indicated that Processing may be unnecessary as Max can handle graphics. So although a few days were spent connecting the two programs, it might not be used. Interesting to know how it can be done though.
Here is a screenshot of the Max window creating a gradient.
I was browsing around my RSS feeds tonight after having substantially hacking my wordpress theme (comments welcome) and I game across some Gears of War 2 info. So I started looking at YouTube and found the video below.
Gears of War 2 will be using the updated Unreal 3 engine and the following video shows what that can do when applied to Gears of War 1 levels, characters and objects. It looks INCREDIBLE! I am really looking forward to this release… but I think Call of Duty 4 and Grand Theft Auto IV should tide me over until it comes out.
I have just got back to my parent’s house and found a bird had made a nest… in a parasol on the patio. Couldn’t resist in taking a few photos. I did scare the bird away, and it hasn’t come back yet… ooops.
Click the image to view the full set in Flickr.
I am now using Lightview to test it compared to Lightbox 2.
On the plus side it looks a lot prettier (if that were possible) and its transitions are sleeker. It has two key features that Lighbox does not… It has the ability to have a slideshow in the same screen with the click of a button and is very smooth. The other is that it scales the image to fit into the browser window. This was a major problem for me with the last project’s slides as they had to be 1024×768 (for some reason).
There is a downside though, depending on how large the image is the scaling process can cause a lot of artefacts and is completely useless with text (like a slideshow for example). As if you’ve zoomed out in photoshop… the image is very pixelly. I recommed re-scaling all images to a max of 800×600 (which I will be doing with my slide show) to make the most of the progam.
Oh and its also in one handy little package that you upload to the plug-ins folder in Wordpress :D
Here it is on the Wordpress site if you want to test it out for yourself.
My flatmate Jeff came running into my room last night shouting about fire breathing. I thought he was joking but he actually was fire breathing. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to take some photos and learn about quickly capturing great pictures in uncontrollable lighting. It proved very fun but there is some work needed to be done on my style.
Anyway, here are the results. Click the images to view the full set in Flickr.
Today the subdomain http://shoutbox.craigdennisonline.com was setup and a fresh install of Wordpress was thrown in there. Now each member of the group their own login details and shows as posting separate entries. This is a great way to show some sort of gauge of what people have contributed.
This remains a personal blog detailing the overall progress of the project and the subdomain will chart the research and individual contributions.
So far so good.
Whilst searching the interweb last night trying desperately to find a way to block google’s ’sponsored links’ within its gmail system, I came across a brilliant little add-on for firefox that does that plus much more! It’s so simple too.
Its called ’stylish’ and essentially overwrites the existing css of the page by using !important. So to remove ads its as easy as finding out the container’s name and setting it to display:none !important;. Easy right? Well actually it can be quite hard to find the names of what you want to change… thats why there is a dev community that has done it for you at http://userstyles.org/
All you do is install the ’stylish’ add-on for firefox and then search the site for the pages that people have changed. So I searched for gmail and found hundreds of mods for it from simply removing ads to re-colouring the whole site. There are a few nice little applications that are web-wide (like the google ad blocking) and some that are only site wide (I have changed the colour of the Facebook header).
The great thing is, you can write your own or edit existing ones and preview all of them before saving them. Even then its a simple toggle-on, toggle-off system.
I recommend this for every web developer.
Both of the concepts but forward were selected to be produced but an executive creative decision was taken and the concept being built is ’shoutbox’.
There is a problem with the concepts selected for the fete in that they have all been developed by the ‘regular’ people that attend lectures and seminars. This means that it will essentially be an individual project as the ‘creative directors’ will not be able to rely on many others turning up, knowing what they’re doing or even caring.
Hopefully it will go well never the less.
Here are the slides for the concepts chosen to put forward in tomorrow’s presentation. There are a few videos that can be shown along side these and links can be found at the bottom. Further research links will be added as research is conducted.
