Richard's blog
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Using canvas and multi touch
I'm excited about the possibilities that touch screens and multi-touch screens will give us. I'm also interested in HTML 5 and making something that will work accross a variety of devices whether they have a touch screen or just a mouse. To play about with both I'm currently making a colouring book app that will work on an iPad, a desktop computer's browser and hopefully any other touch enabled phone browser.
<Canvas> is a new HTML tag that is part of HTML 5. It acts like a drawing … [more]
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Sending XML to an ASP.NET MVC Action Method Argument
I read a great article recently by Phil Haack on sending JSON to an action method. This was very timely as I wanted to do exactly that in the REST API I've been created for a video hosting website. However, I wanted to make it work with XML as well as JSON.
Phil Haack creates something called a JSON value provider, so I followed his example and created an XML value provider. I've used it on two projects now and it's worked a treat. I thought I'd share it with the world in the hope that it will … [more]
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Microsoft Webcamps
Last weekend I went to Microsoft Webcamps London: a two day event mainly about ASP.NET MVC and a little bit about the Entity Framework. It was a two day event mainly aimed at Microsoft developers who'd not used .NET MVC before. I've done a few MVC projects now, but there's always more to learn and it's always good to meet other people doing similar stuff to you.
The first day was a series of talks by Jon Galloway and Christian Wenz. The talks were excellent and even though they covered a lot of … [more]
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Newcastle to London bike challenge
My friend Dave and some of his colleagues from TH_NK are doing a very impressive bike challenge. They're cycling from Newcastle to London in aid of Breast Cancer Campaign. They're going to do this over 5 days.
Inspired by this I've decided to do the same, well sort of. I'm going to cycle the same distance, but over 30 days and I'm going to cycle where ever I feel like. I'm just doing this for fun, but if you feel like sponsoring anyone, please sponsor Dave and his gang.
This is also … [more]
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Sketching logos
I've been thinking about the logo for my new site. Here are a few of my ideas:
What do you think? [more]
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Running on alpha
This is going to be my new web site. Nogginbox.co.uk will be the new online home of Richard Garside. But, it's not quite ready yet.
This site is running on a new CMS called Orchard. Orchard uses ASP.NET MVC, a server side technology that I've been using a lot lately and have found to be very effective. Orchard is only in alpha at the moment, so it's really early days. It's Open Source and being developed by Microsoft; strange, but true. I think it shows a lot of potential and I'm … [more]
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Apple are b@st&#ds and Adobe are $k€w%d
The iPhone and iPad were criticized for not allowing you to show Flash content. Adobe hit back by developing an export to iPhone feature that promised to turn Flash apps into iPhone apps. This was due to be released soon in Flash Creative Suite 5. I was really looking forward to it. As a developer I’ve found the learning curve for iPhone development very steep; the provided tools are lacking and not as good as many other development tools. Programming for the iPhone feels a bit like … [more]
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Lots of little Facebooks
The web is a world of unlimited choice and unlimited possibilities. So why does everyone choose to use Facebook? Why is the web dominated by a few big companies?
I watched the first part of the BBC documentary The Virtual Revolution yesterday on iPlayer. They made the point that:
When there are no rules, there is nothing to stop those with huge resources dominating everyone else.
Google is obviously the biggest at this point in time, but Facebook is also massive. I don’t really … [more]
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Motion tracking with Flash and ActionScript 3
I'm working on a Jam Jar Collective project at the moment that involves projection and motion tracking. This is a little tester app that hooks up to your webcam and follows any movement it sees. Press 'Start webcam' to have a go. You need to have a webcam and your computer will ask your permission to use it.
This motion tracking app was made using Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3. You can download the source code if you fancy tinkering with it. [more]
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Snowbots
The great thaw is upon us now and these snowbots are no more. I've loved the snow, in particular, making stuff out of it. The snowbots are one of my favourite creations. There were a collaboration with the very fine snow artist Squirrel. He created the one on the left, but is also responsible for the eyebrows on mine. We made them while at January's Open Coffee and it was brilliant fun.
You can see more snowbot photos on Flickr. [more]
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Looking forward to Leeds Light Night 2009
Light Night in Leeds is a great event and I'm really looking forward to this year. Partly because I'm a little bit involved, but also because some of my friends are doing really exciting stuff there this year. The talented Andy Sykes (aka ‘Hexjibber' for some reason) will be using FriiSpray at Ha Ha Bar to create audience generated animations that will get shown on the Big Screen in Millennium Square. I will be there helping him set up FriiSpray Virtual Graffiti and if possible … [more]
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In Brighton and ready for dConstruct 2009
I love Brighton and I loved dConstruct last year when I came for the first time. So it was hugely exciting to get an unexpected email inviting the Jam Jar Collective to come and show off FriiSpray. The Jam Jar Collective are a group of geeks and artists interested in making interactive stuff and FriiSpray is an interactive graffiti wall that we made. The rest of them couldn't make it down, so my good friend Dave is helping me instead.
I always like to see behind the scenes, but when I … [more]
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Using ImageMagick to make a composition of square thumbnails
This isn't a very exciting post, but it took me ages to figure it out, so I wanted to write it down somewhere.
I wanted to use a one line ImageMagick command to:
Take four pictures
Resize, centre and crop them to be square thumbnails
Arrange them in a 2 by 2 grid
Here is the command for ImageMagick on Windows:
convert -size 300x300 xc:transparent -page 150x150 ( "image1.jpg" -gravity center -resize 150x150^^ -extent 150x150 ) -page 150x150 ( "image2.jpg" -gravity center -resize … [more]