In the past few months, a few friends have set up their own hosting company, Djangofoo, which hosts Django content managed websites.
One of them also hosts a blog dedicated to Django stuff. Pretty Amazing, if your into that sort of thing!.
Designed by me (Art directed by Davo/Arif).
I have recently been shown the wonders of scripting in Photoshop, and it seems to be making my life a lot easier, here’s a quick run down of how to do it:
1. Download and install/drag your script here:
(PC) C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop (CS or CS2)\Presets\Scripts\
(MAC) Applications> Photoshop (CS or CS2)> Presets> Scripts.
2. Restart Photoshop
3. Open Photoshop and the file you want to use it on
4. Select File >scripts.
5. Run the script
You’ll see Photoshop (well CS5 anyway) has some scripts already installed, its pretty straightforward from there.
I just got back from the SXSW Interactive festival in Texas, it was the first time I have been and it was a really good week. Some highlights for me were the panels on HTML5 Vs Flash, new interactive systems from Microstoft/Razorfish and the free drink!.
This is one of the multi-touch displays. It was really fun to play with and you can see people using them in malls and tube stations etc.
This is footage from the Frog Design party we went too:
They gave you a card which was represented by a digital star map, each time you get a drink, connect with people or get your picture taken your star gets bigger. Some guy was hooking up with everyone and he was like a supernova!.
This is a new site I worked on with Davo and James, Its built using Django for content management and Jquery for the transitions. Its a small site but a nice one. Check out the rollovers on the homepage and the artists detail and Gallery pages. www.mortonmetropolis.com.
This is the latest showreel I have been working on for Diamond Advertising. I was searching for ages to find a decent soundtrack, its weird how something like that can end up taking so long. Thanks to Davo for suggesting Poison Lips by Vitalic, which I hadn’t heard before, I love it.
I had a problem with a Russian font not appearing in a text area, although the font would work when I traced it.
The font was originally Avenir, but there was nothing appearing when I embedded the Cyrillic characters.
I tried to change it to Arial and still no luck.
The solution was changing the font to Arial Unicode and embedding the Cyrillic characters.
WOW.. Incase you missed the Gadget Show last night, there was a feature on the social networking app I worked on with Ben Dodson and the Gadget Show Team. It was awesome to see how they put the program together.
Over the past month they have had the Apps available to download, and by Day 3 we were in the top 20 Social Networking apps!. But we were eclipsed by the Biker Blast Off app which sold over 1 Million in the US!, how crazy is that?. They absolutely smashed us out of the park!. None the less, today we are No.4 on the App store free UK downloads!, which is colossal!
Anyway have a look at the app store and download it.. its great fun and FREE!
Check out the Apps Episode HERE.
Download the app HERE!.
I rarely do Batch Processing, but I find it incredibly useful when I do.
I had an issue kick up where every time I batch processed images (just basically resized them and saved them again), a “jpg options” dialog box came up.
So instead of Photoshop just batch processing 300 images I would have to sit here for every image and press “OK” for each, which kind of defeats the purpose.
The solution was to tick the “Override Action “Open” Commands” in the Automate area.
Also although I wanted to use the “save for web” options, It didnt seam to work and also kicked up the same error. So I just used “Save As”. this technique worked for me anyway.
I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to move the depth of an object on the stage in AS3 today. Its actually called Z-order in AS3, not Depth. Instead of just using the AddChild function, which put the Movie Clip on the top of the display list, I used AddChildAt, which set the depth of the Movieclip while it was adding it.
So instead of adding the child this way:
global.base.bgSprite.addChild(whiteTriangle);
where the movieclip was just dumped on top of everything
I used this
global.base.bgSprite.addChildAt(whiteTriangle, 1);
The 1 moved the depth of the movieclip to the base.
p.s. this was an external ActionScript file.
Last month I got a call from one of the producers from North One Television, asking weather I wanted to help out on developing an IPhone App for the Gadget Show. They found me through my mate Ben who has developed an app before with Phillip Parr, a lovely little metal detector you can check out here. I don’t even have an Iphone so the whole thing was a learning curve for me.
I developed the interface in Photoshop at the following sizes:
So 2 Iphone apps were developed, Social Beacon and Biker Blast Off!. Both equally awesome. Here’s some more info:
Social Beacon:
We worked on Social Beacon. The gadget show presenter, Jason Bradbury came up with the idea for a social networking tool which lets you create super quick status updates for leading social networks. I have played it as a demo and it’s SWEET!, the status updates are so funny and really imaginative.
Biker Blast Off
Suzi Perry came up with Biker Blast-OFF!. Its a bike jumping game where you’ll need to use every trick on your iphone to achieve a record breaking jump. Developed by Media Tonic.
Both apps use the IPhone accelerometer feature and are available at the app store FOR FREE!!.