Flagons Den

Well - the uni days are long gone only to be replaced by the twists and turns of freelance web design. No more oldmanvegas (not strictly true) but now the friendly corporate face is omvdigital.

What that does mean though is I can now use this blog for it’s intended initial purpose - not as a repository for uni endeavours (to enable recalcitrant lecturers to mark work online in their pants) but instead as a journal of sorts for me. Fuck facebook status updates and my twitter account frittered out in 2008 - the only way for me is the wordy self aggrandising diatribe on a regular (though irregular) basis.

To recap - in a band (just), married (depending on how much time I spend with said band), a dad (to the question master Goldie) and a freelance designer with my own company (omvdigital). This year I have mostly been working hard and playing harder and forgetting that sleep is actually quite important.

Last week saw 5 back to back 2am to 4am finishes with 9 am workdays culminating with two gigs - and I was close to breaking. So I thought I’d better try and get it down before my double ended candle runs out of wax.

For example - yesterday:

Gigged till 4 am at the barbican Live lounge as the final farewell to our current singer Rosco - which turned out to be a packed shindig though too tired and battered to feel emotional and nostalgic at the end, got dropped to my door by the Hair Bear and slept in the spare bunk beds till 8 am when woken by Goldie. Went on a rainy Easter Egg hunt round Cremyll, came home fed dog and then went up the road to give my ex-DJ and Gert Biggun geezer Aaron’s old man Dave, a lesson on how to use an iMac with a wacom tablet to create art in Photoshop - Dave is an excellent traditional artist and musician but has MS and is becoming less able to use his hands so trying the tablet interface as a means to create art.  It feels like I’ve set him on his first tottering steps though. Fed the baby and read her stories - cuddle before bedtime - and before I know it it’s Monday.

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again. My blogging season starts here. A bit like duck hunting or fishing - but with words and concentrated perseverance. I heard a Michael Palin interview today and he described his diary keeping skills. I felt a tug of guilt as I remembered my disused and momentarily abandoned wordpress home for ramblings.

Since I have graduated I have eased off posting to the point where I have reached online stasis - so to work.

I am now a fully fledged freelancer having worked for 6 months under the banner of oldmanvegas - here - and have been working at twofour and now with the lovely onshore people on a new site for Pentillie Castle.  I have been working on a new interactive flash site for a Friendly Society (always nice to be nice) which should launch 2010 - here - and has taken a lot of work.

I am still gigging with Freshly Squeezed and I’m looking forward to a couple of tasty gigs this weekend at Chudleigh Knightons’ Claycutters Friday and the mighty Maker on Saturday.

Well - it’s been a while.  Since the last post I have graduated (2:1) - and been working full time as a freelancer which was unexpected, but welcome. Mon to Fri back at Twofour so it’s a welcome return to my placement stomping ground.

I have been mainly working on web design and Flash development - getting my hands dirty learning AS3 - which isn’t that bad it turns out and I have been creating some nice content with external classes and coded tweens :]

The band is going great guns (much to the chagrin of the wife) and taking up pretty much every weekend - which can be pretty tiring - esp as Goldie has now taken to waking every morning at 6:30 and jumping on me to sing “Row Row Row the boat” - but despite the tiredness it’s a pretty lovely way to start the day.

The inLaws have been living with us for about 3 months - and Fuch had baby number 4 in our front room on Monday night so there are 6 of them now (we are officially outnumbered). The little mite is lovely and currently nameless and I’m glad for Rhamis as the family managed to get immigration to let him stay for the birth - he has about two weeks till the end of his visa to get to know her.

Ahyhoo - I best get back to work.

But if anyone is reading this - the dissertation I wrote on the prospect of our digital future - heres a nice update on BCI - some peeps have made the first tweet via BCI to show the potential for the disabled to stay in communication with friends family and followers. Nice work.

How have I managed to get out of student mode and begin a regular 9 to 5:30 day job? It turns out the brain is elastic and can adapt itself - especially if a sensory input is broken/disrupted. I found it out here

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It feels funky..and makes me wanna get down!

I have gone through the baptism of fire with the live demo in front of my peers, and I think it went pretty well. I had quite a bit of interest about the looptop and there was a lot of people testing it out.

Mr Fox Rocking the Looptop

I kept it short and sweet, but thinking back I could have done a small performance to show the potential.  Unfortunately the video of my demo corrupted so here’s some homemade videos showing the looptop in action.

There was one other person - Jav - who was using ReacTIVision and he managed to get a whole library of samples playing simultaneously which is an amendment I need to add to the Looptop. That would give a considerably better aural arsenal and improve the soundscapes. So keep a lookout for the beta version.

What is Looptop?

Looptop is a tabletop tangible interface, which captures movement of reacTIVision fiducial markers via a webcam and MaxMSP utilises this to create MIDI sound, control sample manipulation and generate visual representation.  The captured movements are looped at 4 second intervals to create a soundscape and evolving graphical image.

The use of the looptop prototype encompasses several models – it is both performative as it allows the live creation of a soundscape and visual drawing and exploratory as the relationships between the symbols and resulting soundscapes are only discerned by playing with the markers.  The aim is to create a interactive device which allows non musicians to create a soundscape through movement capture and provide visual feedback of their movements.

Development Update

I have finally completed the project - bar a few lines of documentation.  I have managed to get all the bugs fixed with the sample playback and the fiducial markers are all mounted on foam board with the appropriate icons on the top.  The opaque glass (tracing paper) technique didn’t work as efficiently as I hoped and so I had to scrap it - which means the inner workings are visible but as this is only a prototype I’m sure thats ok.

Looptop prototype

I have made a small demo video - unfortunately the sounds from the looptop are a bit quiet (I forgot to turn up the speakers enough) - but it explains the functionality.

I have made a quick track in one take using the looptop to show the performative model - though you would need to get the full AV treatment for it to feel more of a performance. I need to hook up the patch to a projector for that. Instead - heres a screenshot of a drawing I made earlier and if you look at it while playing the track…. well you have to use your imagination admittedly.

screenshot of MaxMSP patch drawing the soundscape

Looptop track 1 Click to hear the track.

That sums it up nicely…

I am off the grid - literally speaking. I’m in a farmhouse for a week in the middle of nowhere near Honiton. Don’t try finding it…

Horshayne Farmhouse