That's all here. I've copied everything to my shiny new WordPress site, and any new posts will appear over there.
Everything I’ve put here is going to stay here, simply because I’m sure bad things will happen if I delete it.
You might want to point your Feedly to http://danielthepope.wordpress.com insead ;)
I made a video for E4’s E Sting competition 2013.
An E Sting is a 10 second user-created clip which E4 shows between its shows. They’re completely random – you can essentially do whatever you want with the video you make, so long as it has the E4 logo on it. It’s a bit of fun, and of course there’s a monetary incentive as well.
When I saw the advert announcing the competition, I tried thinking about different things I could do for it. Mum suggested using the puzzle cube that was sat on the floor by the TV, and I thought that was a good idea. Ideas started flying through my head as for what I wanted the 10 second clip to bring. Solving a cube was one thing, but how would I actually get this to work well? In order to give the video a good ending, I thought I could turn the cube into a stamp.
The first thing to do was to get the E4 logo onto the cube. I measured the cube, decided on the size, then printed it onto acetate. It took 3 days just to do that because the magenta in the printer ran out and I had to order some more. Once the cartridges arrived, I had a few transparent logos to cut out.
I cut the logo up and stuck it on the cube with a glue stick.
Because the cube acts as a stamp in the video, I had to stick the logo on back-to-front.
Now, I never learned how to solve a cube like this, but luckily, my brother could. The original plan was for me to take a burst of photos above Kieran, who take the completed cube and then slowly scramble it. We’d then play it backwards to make it look like it was being solved. We gave that a go, and it looked alright, but we preferred the idea of doing this properly – recording the clip while actually solving the cube, rather than scrambling and playing it back in reverse. Many things can go wrong with that, so Kieran went away with the cube and worked out a sequence of moves which he could replicate for the clip.
Frames like this would give the illusion away if we filmed in reverse – when playing it back it would look like Kieran’s finger was pulling the cube face anticlockwise.
Filming resumed an hour later. Once the cube was solved Kieran slowly placed the cube on the tray we were using as a background. I stopped taking photos and Kieran carefully slid a transparent logo underneath the cube so that when he lifted the cube again, it would look like the logo was stamped underneath it. It took 4 takes to get the version that was in focus and without any mistakes!
125 photos were taken, which meant if I played the sequence back at 12fps, it would take just over 10 seconds. I removed a few frames from the start and a couple during the sequence to fit it to 10 seconds exactly. I picked the Disco backing track simply because it seemed right. When I added the music to the sequence, it was just sheer luck that the cube hit the tray in the background just as the sound said ‘FOUR’ – a happy coincidence.
When I showed the final product to the family on the TV, dad suggested having the E4 logo on the screen for slightly longer, and to hold a frame just before stamping the background. It was a true family effort, and I think the end result worked out pretty well!
The competition has now closed and the winners will be announced mid-august. There is a ridiculous number of entries – take a look at them here.
I've said previously that Website Of The Week wasn't going to be a thing, and I stand by that.
Certain websites produce 'feeds'. Bands, blogs and comic strips all produce feeds which people can subscribe to using a news aggregator. Every time a website updates, you get a notification. It's especially useful to get these notifications if the website doesn't update to a particular schedule, much like my blog. Before now, Google Reader was by far the most popular news aggregator.
If you are a Google Reader user, you'll be aware that Google is pulling the plug on July 1st. If you're not aware, where have you been?
You have exactly a week to make the transition from Google Reader to an alternative of your choice, and I'm going to recommend Feedly.
Making the transition to Feedly is simple - you log in with your Google account and it imports your feeds from Google Reader automatically. There's also a really slick iOS and Android app to go with it, and it also integrates with other applications, such as IFTTT.
Once you've signed up to Feedly, here's a subscription link to get you started ;)
Happy perusing!
…sort of.
Windows 8 got rid of the start menu we all know and love, and replaced it with the start screen. Although beautiful and new and touch friendly, it isn’t the same. And people hate change, apparently.
Anyway, I figured out a way to put a menu at the bottom left corner with links to your installed programmes, with no need to install any horrible 3rd party software. It sort of resembles the Programs menu of Windows 98, and it looks like this:
I wear the earphones that came with my iPod at work because of their remarkably fantastic ability of not being able to block any external noise whatsoever. They’re perfect for hearing fire alarms or people walking into the office when I’m listening to Radio 6 Music.
The Apple earphones (I can’t speak for those newfangled EarPods) are also unofficially well known for their lack of bass and the way they seem to repel one’s eardrums, hence constantly falling out of one’s ears. After a couple of years, the rubber surrounds disintegrate, making them even more likely to hop away.
Then one day, I found the bass. And blimey, they hid it pretty well. One day when there were contractors making a lot of noise replacing the fire doors, I tried blocking out the noise by pushing the earphones deeper into my ears. Then I tried rotating them in such a way that it looked like this:
You wouldn’t have thought that you'd be able to hear very much, but you can hear a lot more than when they’re in the normal position.
Unfortunately, they are even more likely to jump out of your ears like this.
Also it looks stupid.
I wrote most of this in December, but I never got round to getting these photos done. Then Christmas happened, then I got distracted by my new camera, then Spring didn’t happen, then I realised it’s been ONE YEAR since my operation, so I thought I’d better get this post published.
It might have taken a REALLY long time, but it was definitely worth it.
Feb 2008, before everything happened.
April 2012, after the braces had done what they could, and the day before the operation
April 2013, a year after the operation
Before you panic, you haven't missed my writings about any other Raspberry Pi projects. This is project number 3, but it's the first one I've actually written about.
The reasoning for Beepy came when the family were highlighting programmes in the Christmas edition of What's On TV. We used to set reminders on the TV, but it's rubbish - they only remind you if the TV is turned on.
Beepy is an alarm daemon that regularly reads a text file with a list of dates, times, numbers and words.
This "Website of the Week" isn't going to be a regular occurrence, but IFTTT sent me a text a couple of days ago, and I decided to write about it because it's pretty cool.
IFTTT stands for "If This Then That", and it is an online utility to perform a particular action when a particular event occurs.
I'll try to explain that again. You connect IFTTT to your other online accounts such as Google, Facebook and Dropbox. There are lots of different triggers that can occur. For example, every day at a particular time; when you are tagged in a photo on Facebook; or when you send IFTTT an email with a particular subject. You can add services like Yahoo weather and you can connect your mobile phone as well.
