Blog (page 29)

The last couple of days of hot, sunny weather in London have got me thinking about holidays and doing so put me in mind of Ben Goldacre’s crowd-sourced collection of Nerdy Day Trips. As Ben says,

I am a very big fan of nerdy day trips, from Sea Forts to abandoned nuclear bunkers,dead victorian racecourses, roads that are falling into the ground, narrow gauge railwaysthat take you to a power station, wherever. I like decaying infrastructure, terrifying modernity, and enthusiast-run museums with 6 pages of small-font text explaining every exhibit (looking at you, Bletchley Park).

So he started collecting them on a map and asking anyone with a suggestion not yet on the map to add it. There are a few obvious ones here like Down House, former home of Charles Darwin, and the Greenwich Royal Observatory. But I reckon most of these are places that only locals would have heard of – and some of them may well only be known to locals who live within half a mile or less. (Case in point: I reeled off a list of about a dozen spots from around the country to a group of my colleagues – all of whom grew up in the UK – and only one person had heard of one of them.)

Here’s a sampling of places you will find on the map, places which will almost certainly appeal to any person with nerdy proclivities and quite possibly to non-nerds as well.

Cresswell Crags in Nottinghamshire – the earliest British cave art, some of it dating back nearly 13,000 years ago.

Flag Fen Archaeology Park in Peterborough – see a 3,500 year old perfectly preserved Celtic wooden monument and explore a reconstructed Bronze Age village.

The Seaford Museum in Martello Tower no. 74, East Sussex – the museum contains, among other things, “collections of domestic appliances covering the first half of the 20th century, office machinery from early typewriters and copiers to computers and a particularly large collection of radios and television sets.”

Cragside in Northumberland – country home of Victorian inventor Lord Armstrong and the first house in the world to be powered by hydro-electricity. The house is full of gadgets, and there’s a huge adventure playground for the kids.

The Electric Brae in Ayrshire, Scotland – a mysterious place where cars roll uphill!

The Ossuary at St Leonard’s Church in Hythe, Kent – 2,000 skulls and 8,000 long bones, all nicely piled in the crypt.

The Williamson Tunnels Heritage Centre in Liverpool – an labyrinth of tunnels built by eccentric philanthropist Joseph Williamson during the first half of the 19th century.

The Needles Battery on the Isle of Wight – built in the last half of the 19th century as a defence against an invasion by France.

The Birr Castle Telescope in Co Offaly, Ireland – the largest telescope in the world when it was built by the Third Earl of Rosse in the 1840s, where the spiral nature of galaxies was first discovered.

Have a look at the map on Ben’s site to find places closer to you (at least if you’re in the UK or Ireland) and if you know of any other “nerdy day trip” destinations that aren’t included yet, add them yourself!

Dentsu London are developing an original product called Suwappu. Suwappu are woodland creatures that swap pants, toys that come to life in augmented reality. BERG have been brought in as consultant inventors, and we’ve made this film. Have a look!

Suwappu is a range of toys, animal characters that live in little digital worlds. The physical toys are canvasses upon which we can paint worlds, through a phone (or tablet) lens we can see into the narratives, games and media in which they live.

Dentsu London says:

We think Suwappu represents a new kind of media platform, and all sorts of social, content and commercial possibilities.

Each character lives in different environments: Badger lives in a harsh and troubled world, Deer lives in a forest utopia, Fox in an urban garden, Tuna in a paddling pool of nicely rendered water. The worlds also contain other things, such as animated facial expression, dialogue pulled from traditional media and Twitter, and animated sidekick characters.

The first part of this film imagines and explores the Suwappu world. Here we are using film to explore how animation and behaviours can draw out character and narrative in physical toy settings. The second part is an explanation of how Suwappu products might work, from using animal patterns as markers for augmented reality, to testing out actual Augmented Reality (AR) worlds on a mobile phone.

We wanted to picture a toy world that was part-physical, part-digital and that acts as a platform for media. We imagine toys developing as connected products, pulling from and leaking into familiar media like Twitter and Youtube. Toys already have a long and tenuous relationship with media, as film or television tie-ins and merchandise. It hasn’t been an easy relationship. AR seems like a very apt way of giving cheap, small, non-interactive plastic objects an identity and set of behaviours in new and existing media worlds.

Schulze says:

We see the media and animation content around the toys as almost episodic, like comic books. Their changing characters, behaviours and motivations played out across different media.

Toys are often related as merchandise to their screen based counterparts. Although as products toys have fantastic charm and an awesome legacy. They feel muted in comparison to their animated mirror selves on the big screens. As we worked with Dentsu on the product and brand space around the toys we speculated on animated narratives to accompany the thinking and characters developed.

In the film, one of the characters makes a reference to dreams. I love the idea that the toys in their physical form, dream their animated televised adventures in video. When they awake, into their plastic prisons, they half remember the super rendered full motion freedoms and adventures from the world of TV.

Each Suwappu character can be split into two parts, each half can be swapped with any other resulting in a new hybrid character. Each character has its own personality (governed by its top half) and ‘environment’ (dictated by its bottom half). This allows the creatures to visit each other’s worlds, and opens up for experimentation with the permutations of characters personality and the worlds that they inhabit. It’s possible to set up games and narratives based on the ways that the characters and their pants are manipulated.

This is not primarily a technology demo, it’s a video exploration of how toys and media might converge through computer vision and augmented video. We’ve used video both as a communication tool and as a material exploration of toys, animation, augmented reality and 3D worlds. We had to invent ways of turning inanimate models into believable living worlds through facial animation, environmental effects, sound design and written dialogue. There are other interesting findings in the exploration, such as the way in which the physical toys ‘cut out’ or ‘occlude’ their digital environments. This is done by masking out an invisible virtual version of the toy in 3D, which makes for a much more believable and satisfying experience, and something we haven’t seen much of in previous AR implementations.

We all remember making up stories with our toys when we were young, or our favourite childhood TV cartoon series where our toys seemed to have impossible, brilliant lives of their own. Now that we have the technology to have toys soak in media, what tales will they tell?

It’s my turn on the blog rota this week, and so it’s my turn to let everyone know of interesting things that have been floating around the office mailing list.

I really liked this old video explaining how differential gearing works.

Nick found this – the result of someone taking Deutsche Telecom to court to gain access to 6 months worth of mobile phone usage data.

Andy sent us this video of juggling Quadrocopters:

And we also liked this Quadrocopter combined with a Kinect sensor.

Jones sent around this series of photos from BBC4 documentary ‘Around the World in 60 minutes’. As the Space Shuttle Atlantis nears the ISS, hexagonal lens flares appears on the screen. Superb.

Finally, Matt Brown sent this video of the original animation references from Prince of Persia.

Caveat: I’ve not actually read either of these books so I can’t personally recommend them, but both of them came to my attention this week (thanks to National Public Radio in the US) and seemed like books that might be of interest to BERG blog readers.

How did Leonardo da Vinci and Jules Verne predict the future with such accuracy whilst so many others – such as IBM, The New York Times and the US Patent Office – get things so wrong? And what lessons can we take from their successes or mistakes to help us predict the world of 2100? Such questions are addressed by Michio Kaku in his new book The Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (published in the UK by Allen Lane, May 5th 2011).

Read an exerpt from Physics of the Future here and if you have seven minutes, listen to the interview as well where Kaku talks about telepathically fried eggs, identity recognition contact lenses, invisibility cloaks – the technology for all of which already exists, he says – and the fact that in 100 years we’ll think about chemotherapy the same way we now regard bleeding with leeches.

The second book is Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science by Lawrence Krauss (published in the UK by W. W. Norton & Co, April 12th 2011).

With this volume, Krauss, himself a physicist at Arizona State University and author of The Physics of Star Trek, has written a biography of Feynman (1918-1988) that focusses on his science more than his personality and, in doing so, touches on nearly ever major scientific development of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Listen to an interview with Krauss (or read the transcript) from NPR’s Science Friday here.

^ roland.TB-303.schem-3 by rafael_mizrahi

My first time doing weeknotes, I’m terrified. Here we go.

It’s Matthew Irvine Brown’s last week at BERG. We’re going to give him a proper send off at the end of the week, but before that he’s working on getting Denise up to speed with what’s been going on, and making sure all of the bolts are tight on the things he’s been leading. We’ll miss him a lot.

Which leads us into Denise‘s first inclusion in weeknotes. She’s been spending a lot of time learning about Weminuche with Matt Brown and Nick, and has also been getting stuck into some awesome things SVK related and getting up to speed of where we are. She’s also been out of the office with Jack looking at good things that we can’t talk about (yet).

Matt Jones has been working with Jack on new project Uinta, doing a bit of behind the scenes planning for SVK, and helping me out with Dimensions 2. He’s off to far away lands next week with Jack. It’s very quiet when he’s not in the office.

Jack is working with Timo on a couple of projects, speaking to lawyers and is away doing workshops with Matt Jones next week.

Timo is working on Haitsu. We’ve had a few sneak peeks and it’s fantastic. He’s also been sketching some things for Chaco.

Darling, Nick and Andy have been locked in Statham for most of the week, cranking hard on Weminuche and showing us incredible things for Friday demos that make us smile a lot. Nick’s also been working with Timo on Haitsu. We’ve been communicating with them by sticking post it notes on the windows.

I’m continuing work on Dimensions 2, getting a bundle of things together for Friday. I’m also keeping an eye on SVK things with Denise and Matt Jones as they start to come together.

Kari is working her usual magic, keeping the office ticking and making the stuff behind the scenes work. She’s also been working on the logistics of SVK for when that launches.

Finally, Matt Webb is out and about for a lot of the week talking to people and making things happen, and hiring people! (We’re looking for people to join us, if you hadn’t seen it before).

That’s week 303. A lot of exciting things going on, and a lot of change.

Update on Thursday 31 March: We’ve been contacted by some great folks! So we’ll stop accepting applications for these particular roles on Sunday. But please don’t let that stop you getting in contact if you’ve got something really special! We look at all CVs and portfolios, even when there aren’t any positions open, and keep everything on file for when there are.

So, we’re looking to grow a little!

BERG’s a small design studio, just nine of us at the moment. We’re always busy, researching and developing media and tech for a wide variety of companies. And we work on our own stuff too.

And I’m looking for a couple of folks to join the team.

First, a project manager. We’ve never worked with a project manager before, so a lot of this is about you being a great fit with the room. But we also know we’re a bit scatty and divided between too many projects, so we’re ready for a cracking communicator with top-notch organisational skills to manage development and delivery across the whole studio.

Second, a creative technologist. You’ll be working on new and existing projects, in small teams and alongside other technologists. You’ll be a self-starter, pushing forward development using your own good product instincts. And you’ll have different technical skills and itches to bring to the room too, ones we don’t currently know we need.

If either of these positions sounds like you, download the job descriptions here.

If it sounds like someone you know, please do pass this on!

And then send your CV with a cover note to Kari at ks@berglondon.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. We’re planning to interview in early April, and make decisions soon after.

Friday. Links.

Look at this make-up to hide from facial recognition.

Matt Webb linked to this Transform game, that’s fun and reminded me of his Argos discovery of a Postman Pat that transforms into his van. There’s even a Fireman Sam that transforms into Jupiter. “Watch as Fireman Sam converts from Jupiter into a robot hero next door”.

It takes a while not to be freaked out by this barbie jewellery, but once you’re over that, it’s really nice.

XKCD shows the scales of radiation doses.

But my favourite thing from this week was shown (and explained) to me by Tom Taylor next door.

The above graph is showing the effects of the “Asimov’s Nightmare” algorithm on the markets. These are discovered algorithms by a company called Nanex who have a Market Crop Circle of the Day.

1980s people were asking this question. The band Daniel Amos wrote a song about it:

Video by lonzo625: “A video I put together in the 1980’s for the “Rocket Packs” song by Daniel Amos. It’s a reminder of the visions of the future seen in sci-fi movies and books in the 20th century. FYI…that’s Lenord [sic] Nimoy (Mr. Spock) at 3:30 in an actual Rocket Man serial appearance.”

Words and music by Terry Taylor, ©1984.

^ Denise Wilton by matlock, on Flickr

I’m so happy that Denise is joining the studio as Creative Director.

She’s been one of my favourite designers for such a long time, and has incredible instincts for product strategy and voice, service design and user interface across both digital and physical domains.

Her understanding of community and systems to support them from her time at both b3ta.com and moo.com is second-to-none. The depth of craft and care she brings to work is awesome.

She’s also a lovely illustrator, for instance this treatise on robotics:

I think we first met through Cal Henderson and Tom Coates who were working with her at Emap way back when, but – I got to work with her and really understand what an incredible designer she is back in 2005, when she help me design and illustrated a game/toy I was making as part of my research into ‘Play’ at Nokia Insight & Foresight, with Tom Hume and our friends at Future Platforms.

Twitchr was defined by Denise’s beautiful work and art direction. Her dedication to detail she displayed on its design and the playfulness she pours into every one of those details is something I can’t wait to see her bring to our work at BERG.

Welcome onboard, Denise!

It’s a nice day today.

I’m sitting in the small back room of the BERG office. Four of us (Nick, Matt B, Andy and I) have set up shop in here to get stuck into Weminuche for a little while. It’s a room to get immersed in the project – the walls, whiteboards and desks are covered in thoughts and experiments.

On Monday there was a clean, empty desk where Tom usually is. He’s gone to be a games designer, a beautiful fit. But already we have a new human to boost the studio back up to a cosy over-capacity. Denise is new BERG! (Proper welcome post coming soon). Denise is one of the many people I knew of and admired long before I met them or had any career of my own, but have never told. We went to have a welcome lunch in the sun today.

Matt J and Jack are away doing boss things in far away places. Instagram tells me they are still eating.

Matt Brown, as well as drawing things for me to make, as well as lining everything up for the SVK launch, is mind melding with Denise before his life is packed into boxes and flown to Cupertino.

Alex is taking the work the two of us have done on Dimensions 2 and moving it to the next level, along with other SVK bits and bobs.

Kari is handling all this arrival and departure of staff, smoothly as ever.

Andy is working on things that I can’t figure out how to describe without breaking secrets. He’s also breaking keyboards.

I was unconvinced about week 302 when it started – I couldn’t find a single good thing about the number 302, there was a bit of unwell hanging in the air and I got a rubbish hair cut. But now the windows are wide open, the weather is perfect, Scrutton Street feels homely and we have a Denise! It’s a nice day today.