Blog posts from June 2011

I’m at FooCamp, and I’ve brought a copy of SVK fresh off the press to show some of the folk here.

The Make space at the O’Reilly HQ has Greg Borenstein showing the possibilities of Kinect-hacking, and we were playing around with pointing the UV torch that will come with SVK at the Kinect sensor… and found it punches a hole in the point-cloud of depth-data that the infra-red structured-light of Kinect senses…

It’s quite a striking ‘sensor-vernacular’ image, and my folk-physics explanation of it (at midnight last night, after some Lagunitas IPA) was that the UV was cancelling out the IR – but it might just be that any LED torch light source might have the same effect – just blowing out the sensor – can’t find anything online as yet…

I’m away from my physics–punching colleagues who would put me right in short-order I’m sure (as probably, someone here at Foo will today) but if you have any thoughts…

Update from Greg in email:

For the record, my bet is that the torch’s universe-whole punching power came from its plastic sleeve. Things that are reflective tend to do that by bouncing the IR back directly at the Kinect and giving it a blind spot. Check out the hole where Max Ogden’s eye should be in the scan we made of him last night:

Max wears glasses and his lens’ reflection caused this.

You can actually do wickedly clever things with a mirror and the Kinect to pull different bits of space into the depth image. It’s like being able to cut-and-paste space. For example, Kyle McDonald is trying to use the trick to scan all sides of an object at once.

I like using it to make wormholes…

It’s an extremely busy week here, so I’ll keep this weeknote short and sharp.

On Monday, Alex, Denise, Matt and Timo went to witness the first SVK comics coming of the production line at Pureprint in Sussex. They returned to the studio a bit wide-eyed and delirious, and not just because they had to get up at 7am to make the journey out of London in time; the comic looks beautiful, and we can’t wait to get it into people’s hands.

There’s now a flurry of activity from Webb, Denise, Simon, Alex and myself around how we organise the logistics of warehousing, shipping, labelling and packaging, and all of the other pieces of the “selling physical things” puzzle.

Webb is taking a well deserved break, and by now is refueling his brain in the Mediterranean sun. Just before he left, he took to the stage at the Serpentine Gallery for a discussion with Mark Leckey, and has also been strategising on longer term goals for the company.

Joe started off the week in self-imposed quarantine, but pulled through and is now back with us, thinking around and feeding ideas into our Chaco work. Conversely, Timo’s now out of the office now, but spent some time filming the initial SVK print run, and we should hopefully see that released next week.

Simon and Andy have been on other aspects of the Chaco work, working with our external suppliers, and generally project managing the heck out of things, and in a similar vein, Kari has been chasing suppliers, and tending to the many HR and finance tasks.

Jones is off to FOO camp, but not before looking at potential studio space for us to translocate into, and working on sales documents with Jack and Webb. Jack has also been swapping between our ongoing Chaco work, and with his Facilities Manager hat on, fitting one last desk into our existing space, ahead of our new arrival. More on this subject next week!

That is week 313.

If you’ve heard of artist Royal Robertson, chances are you heard of him the same way I did: via Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan’s most recent album, The Age of Adz, was inspired by Royal Robertson’s art and features one of his pieces on the album cover.

Robertson (1936-1997) was born and lived most of his life in Louisiana. He left school at age 13 and in his late teens apprenticed as a sign painter in the western US. Later in his life, when his wife of 19 years – and mother of his 11 children – left him for another man and took all their children to Texas with her, he descended into paranoid schizophrenia. He declared himself a prophet and began to record his visions in his paintings. Frequent themes in his paintings included spaceships and aliens, futuristic cities, Biblical and religious references, numerology and misogyny, the latter apparently spurred by his wife’s betrayal.

In this video, Sufjan Stevens talks about Robertson and performs “Get Real, Get Right” with some of Robertson’s images appearing on the screen behind him.

As we get closer to shipping SVK, there’s a bit more appearing about it.

Matt ‘D’Israeli’ Brooker, our incredible artist and co-creator is interviewed in the pages of the Judge Dredd Megazine this month.

Alongside insights from the man himself about working with Warren, the technology and techniques he employed to illustrate SVK – there’s a bit of a scoop…

…in that there’s a sneak peak of his awesome cover art for SVK…

Another Friday, another round-up of the various things that have been flying around the office mailing list this week.

Core 77 are running a feature on visualisations of The Metropolis in comics. Part 1 is all about the night:

Simon sent this around – a video from the camera mounted on each of space shuttle Endeavour’s rocket boosters:

Timo sent around the trailer for producer Amon Tobin’s live tour:

Matt Jones sent around Olafur Eliasson‘s latest exhibition ‘Your rainbow panorama‘ – a 360 degree viewing platform ‘suspended between the city and the sky’, which looks incredible.

Denise pointed us to this (via @antimega), a wonderful video of dust devils lifting plastic sheets from strawberry fields:

Finally, as the sun’s out here in London and music features fairly high on our agenda at 6pm on a beautiful Friday evening, Matt Webb sent around this video from Brighton based duo Rizzle Kicks – a superbly produced video, and quite a nice track as well. Enjoy!

Icon magazine asked us to contribute to their monthly “Rethink” feature, where current and commonplace objects are re-imagined.

We continued some of the thinking from our “Media Surfaces” work with Dentsu, around how retail receipts could make the most of the information systems that modern point-of-sales machines are plugged into…

A little quote from our piece:

We’ve added semi-useful info-visualisation of the foods ordered based on “what the till knows” – sparklines, trends – and low-tech personalisation of information that might be useful to regulars. Customers can select events or news stories they are interested in by ticking a check box.

We think the humble receipt could be something like a paper “app” and be valuable in small and playful ways.

Read all about it in this month’s Icon #97, available at all good newsagents!

A library is many things. It’s a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It’s a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books—the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go. Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together—just the two of you. A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

E.B. White in a letter to the children of Troy, Michigan, on the opening of their public library.
via Letters of Note

SVK is at the printers…

Here’s what several thousand ultra-violet torches and comic bags look like, which will join with the printed book imminently.

If you haven’t signed-up yet, you can at http://getsvk.com.

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Stand-by for action!

So, week 312, and we’re into the first week of June. We’ve got a very full studio this week, so a lot of weeknotes… here we go.

It’s Simon’s first week here! He’s our new Project Manager, and has been getting to grips with everything we’ve got going on in the office – having lots of meetings with everyone to work out where we are, and working some magic to get us all in order. This is a good thing.

We’ve got Tom Stuart working with us for a few months too. He’s currently working on turning Dimensions 2 into a real life thing, which is totally fantastic to watch as it grows and develops. He’ll be working on a few other bits for us in the coming months.

Matt Jones has been working with Jack & Timo on various aspects of Chaco, keeping an eye on Dimensions 2 as we make progress, and speaking to a lot of people old and new for various projects.

Denise has been working on the production and operations of SVK, which is tantalisingly close to being an actual product in the world. She’s also been working on various bits and bobs for Barringer which continues to bubble along nicely. It’s so nice seeing people smiling at the things on her screen.

Joe finished work on Uinta last week, so we went to the pub. This week he’s got his head stuck into certain aspects of Chaco – drawing a lot and looking at nice books… it’s already looking very, very interesting. That’s why I love this place.

Kari is working on what we now know as ‘the usual’… which turns out is a massive, important, complicated list of things that keep the office and the company running, and us all sane. She also baked some cakes for Simon’s first day on Tuesday which were pretty tasty.

Matt Webb’s been chatting to Simon a lot as we start to hand over project management to his capable hands. He’s also catching up with Dimensions 2, and doing a sterling job keeping us as a company running along.

Nick’s been speaking to a lot of people about Chaco and working with Jack, Timo & Andy on the next few weeks, and working wonders with Availabot & Weminuche.

Jack’s been working on Chaco with Timo, Joe and a few others, and with Timo on a new bit of work.

Andy’s been working on Chaco as well, doing a lot of wrangling with hardware manufacturers, and prodding people about PCBs.

Timo’s also been working on Chaco… doing a lot of prototyping and design exploration which is looking incredible. He’s also been working with Jack on the upcoming bit of video work.

I’ve been working on a couple of last bits for SVK, and getting back into Dimensions 2 – working with our researcher and Tom to help pull everything together, and a bit of Chaco. I also popped out on Tuesday to the LCC for my last session on the project I set some 2nd year FdA students, which I’ll hopefully be writing about on here when it’s all handed in.

James has been working on various aspects of Weminuche in the back room with Nick, Tom and Andy – which I hope we’ll see in our Friday demos. He’s also got a snazzy new pair of trousers.

That’s week 312. A busy studio, a bit of sunshine, and a lot of work. All is well.

So I’m terribly pleased to announce that this week we are formally joined by Andy Huntington. We’ve known Andy for many years and began working with him as “Schulze & Webb” on the Olinda project. More recently, for the last year or so, he’s been designing and prototyping products with us.

Andy’s joining us as a Hardware Producer & Designer. He’ll be shifting between the design landscape and the dark pit of component sourcing, board design and manufacture. No doubt he’ll rub shoulders with Nick too in embedded software stuff. Initially his focus will be split between physical prototyping on Chaco and internal new product development on Barringer.

I first knew Andy during our studies at college. I sat at the next desk. Much of Andy’s work is around design of sound installations and musical instruments. I can only hope that his indentured servitude here can pay back a small percentage of the psychic debt he incurred at college during the development of his tappers project.

tap tap tap……..

tap…

tap..

*solder solder*

tap tap tap…

I still wake up screaming from the taps.

He’s a great force and I can’t wait for him to punch products into the world.