Interesting story about the studios being unhappy that Dish Networks latest “best in class” PVR allows the user to skip ad’s which have been recorded. Research has previously showed that fast forwarding ad’s can actually increase recognition of the last ad in a series of the commercial break. The story is featured on PaidContent and the BBC.

May 25, 2012 Hardware

An interesting article in Lifehacker about a fault with the Liquid Damage Identifier in Apple products which can give inaccurate results which means you could argue this is not a accurate indication of moisture damage.

February 1, 2011 Computing, Technology

I came across this very cool variant of Tetris which replaces the blocks with European countries. I think this is a great learning tool and was impressed with Schmitz’s ability.

January 21, 2011 Computing, Education, Games

The man behind all the WiiMote hacks and then the Microsoft XBox Kinect is leaving Microsoft for Google on some special projects. More can be found at the Engadget article.

January 19, 2011 Computing, Programming, Technology

This is a nice example of Arduino and working with LED’s by Todd Moore

January 16, 2011 Computing, Design, Programming

I know this is an old project however I have only just spent some time checking it out. It looks like the starting point for We Feel Fine and explores data in similar ways with specific focus on online dating. You can see a video of the project here.

January 15, 2011 Computing, Technology

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

I just watched the documentary on Arduino (Micro Controller) which details the history of the project and the people who got it off the ground. It was interesting to see the figures of how many boards have been sold and the volume of traffic to the website. I think Arduino is more in the main stream then I originally thought. I have done a 2 day course with Tinker.it (now seems to link to the Arduino blog) which I found as a great intro, and here is one of the reactive interface experiments I did using processing and Arduino.

The “command | shift | period” combination toggles hidden file visibility in Snow Leopard thanks to LifeHacker

September 18, 2009 Computing

Arduino Processing LED Brightness Test from thepikey on Vimeo.

So I went to the Tinker.it course on Arduino today which was a interesting experience. The class was a small group of around 10 people with a mix of backgrounds. There were 3 guys from an Electrical Engineering degree which I thought was quite strange as surely they would know this stuff inside out but actually I did learn quite a lot for them as they were keen to press on with some complex stuff. I did manage to get processing interfacing with the Arduino kit which was my goal so now I am pretty happy to make some interesting projects with physical computing. I saved some videos of some of the sample projects and stuck them on Vimeo.

  1. Knight Rider LED Example
  2. Processing LED Brightness Test
  3. Light Sensor Test 02
  4. Light Sensor Test 01
  5. Simple Button Test

February 23, 2008 Computing, Programming

theweb5

I have been doing a lot of research at work recently and have had to adopt a lot of advanced search methods to get what I was looking for. In order to do this I returned to the search master Fravia and went through my notes and watched his lectures again to get back up to speed. The image above is from a lecture Fravia gave at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication and it details his idea the only 1/3 of the web is indexed by search engines meaning that there is a huge amount of material on the web but is not accessible via search engines such as google & yahoo. I have included links to 3 of Fravia’s lectures if your feeling like you would like to learn how to search more effectivly!

  1. Recon 2006
  2. Recon 2005
  3. Ravensbourne College 2004

February 1, 2007 Computing

1 3 4 5 6