Kuala Lumpur

This time next week we'll be in Kuala Lumpur... I can't wait... especially looking forward to the hot humid climate as it's freezing in Cardiff at the moment.

We'll be going to lessons at Lim Kok Wing for 2 days a week, me and Mei will be going to Interactive Design 1 and Web Technology. For the other 3 days we'll all be going to work with Mygo Solutions and will be set a brief to produce a Flash game. We'll also be taking digital video cameras and hopefully producting a documentary of our experiences.

Boomerang Meeting

I went to visit Boomerang this afternoon to discuss my work placement with them that starts in March. We had a chat about the projects we'll be working on, the main one being for the Urdd Eisteddfod at the end of May. This sounds really exciting as it involves working with video content for the web, interactive tv and mobile phones. There will also be work for Bandit which I'm looking forward to.

S4C Placement

I'm currently working in the New Media department at S4C. Me and Mei have been updating the Rownd a Rownd site and are starting to develop a game based on Fifi and the Flowertots.

I also visited Green Bay today and met John Geraint and the team. I'll be joining them for a 3 month work placement in June so it was a great opportunity to introduce myself to them and get an idea of what interactive/new media projects I'll be working on.

Mindplay Conference
www.mindplay.org.uk
London Metropolitan University, Friday 20th January 2005

We had a very early start and made our way down to London for the day yesterday. The event was a one day conference on digital media theory, culture, practice and play. Jon Dovey's opening keynote speech set a very academic tone for the event, focusing on the theory of play. After a much needed coffee break we chose to see Andersson & Brecevic's presentation of their interactive video installations. Men Falling Down was first exhibited in a shopping mall in Stockholm on a portrait-hung plasma screen. When someone walked up to the screen a sensor would trigger their movement and cause the man to fall down. They had also created a similar installation titled Women Who Turn Around, I think you can guess how that worked.

In the afternoon we listened to Professor Pat Power's paper on the neurological nature of playfulness. He attempted to explain how play nodules in the brain are stimulated, although his paper failed to stimulate mine as it was rather heavy on theory.

Streaming Media Training
Jon Stethridge, Unique Media

Today Jon Stethridge from Unique Media based in Bath came to teach us about streaming media. It was a really valuable day, I now understand the difference between progressive download (not really streaming) and streaming from a media server ('real' streaming). We learnt a lot more about encoding settings for web and looked at different encoding software (Windows Media Encoder, Cleaner, ProCoder and Premiere). We discussed the pros and cons of the different video players (Real, QuickTime, Windows Media Player and Flash). We also learnt how to set up a live webcast and for a couple of minutes anyone in the world could have watched us live in the Cyfle office (although the stats seemed to suggest it wasn't that popular an event).

Flash MP3 Player

After a hard week's work I've completed my Flash MP3 player. The best thing about it is that to change the tracks in the playlist, you just need to upload different MP3 files the the server. It uses a script to find the album, artist and title data from the MP3's id tags. A PHP file then gets this data and writes an XML file that Flash looks for. Thanks to Steve Nelson for his MP3 player tutorial. The player is designed as a possible addition to the Bandit website, so the graphics are in keeping with their brand logo.

Happy New Year!

After a lovely Christmas break I'm back at the Cyfle office in Cardiff Bay for a couple of weeks before starting my placement at S4C. We've been given the freedom to decide on our own brief for the next week's project. I've decided to set myself the challenge of producing a dynamic Flash music player using PHP. I haven't used PHP previously, but i'm hoping the ASP skills I learnt last year will help me out.