These past couple of days have been glorious…even for Huddersfield!

Today I’ve been sat at my desk working through some last bits of freelance, but early this aft I noticed the sun reflecting from my wristwatch and onto my wall…now, usually we get the circle-circle ordeal….but I so happened to have a 2x 3 stack of shot glasses on my desk (I’m not an alcoholic, I’m packing to move out!), which produced this rather captivating effect…

First time around I was pretty extatic about the iPhone and if I weren’t tied into an existing contract at the time I would have certainly snapped one up. But in hind-sight I’m slightly glad I didn’t, as this new 3G model really ticks the boxes for me, and with its imminent launch (11th July - I wish it could have been sooner :-(), I’ll be grabbing myself one for sure.

Apart from the 3G-ness and the GPS-ness, the thing which strikes me the most is its integration with native apps on the mac…(whoever is using Outlook with the iPhone needs a good shuv up the street)…Aside from that as I’ve said before, I can’t wait to start looking into the SDK and create some funky-ninja-style-battleship-tetris-GPS-hookup-app…..obviously!

I found this yesterday and frankly found it astonishing! But apparently there is a secret tunnel that spans under Atlantic Ocean, between London and NYC!

Rather crazy indeed and so the story goes that an artist by the name of Paul St George has recently completed this tunnel; and has opened up an installation that allows the general public to see from one end to the other. He calls this a “device for the suppression of absence” or the Telectroscope.

More info here

The piece is on display until the 15th June ‘08. I wonder what they will do with the hole…or the tunnel in fact…

I’ve just got back from an evening in London, where I attended the Japanese event extravaganza that is the Pecha Kucha Night. Supported by D&AD, the evening provided each speaker with a 6 minute, 40 second time frame in which to showcase 20 slides and each shown for only 20 seconds at a time! - a great idea which proved to keep tempo up and interest levels engaged. These slides could be anything; the stage was open, and as intended some inspired, amused and even shocked too.

Speakers included professional, digital creative’s from the likes of Poke, Digit, AllOfUs, Mook, Glue and AKQA to name a few.

Part of me expected the night to be occupied by a lot of work from the companies themselves, however this was opposed with talks about personal works and personal interests, which proved interesting to witness the thoughts, finds and inspiration of the people behind the company names. - Culture and the history of gaming were also a few other topics of interest.

On a separate side note, personally it was real beneficial to experience first hand a few ‘different’ presentation styles for a change, which I’m glad to say opened my mind a little too.

A great evening and well worth the trip. I can’t wait until I’m living down in London where events like this are more accessible

What better way for a company to generate hype, spark mass discussion and market themselves virally than on April fools?

High five to Google.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index.html

uk.youtube.com - click on any featured video

….ok so I mega underestimated the amount of stuff out there today
http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/2008.html

So I’m on about pushing these skills and broadening myself in new ways…and I’ve come across a thought. Actually this has spawned from a comment just made about my new as3 interactive piece; highlighting that it “needs colour!”.

You know what, I absolutely agree, and this is the thing. Ever since I can remember; A-Level, GCSE, Year 2, before that even, I’ve always worked with pencils and charcoal as mediums of choice in my art. Everything was very dark, subtle, discreet and overall pretty darn grayscale :-S.

It seems like this influence is still taking an affect on my work and I think its about time I experimented with different visual mediums/theory/techniques, whatever you want to call it - and added some colour!!!!

Recently I’ve been quite heavily engaged with the things I’d like to be doing. The things I’d like to get my teeth into, explore and all out consume! To list a few :-S

• The words ‘Ruby’ and  ‘Rails’ have been idling on my dashboard stickies for some months with the intention of exploring what everyone seems to swear by and recommend. Well, I got around to doing a bit of research last night and came acorss this: http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov. I’ll just say that this mov did it all! - The title of this post echoed nicely in conjunction with my intended point! - Well, well! worth a look for anyone interested as a very quick-fire, almost comical route to web development.
• As mentioned before I’m really getting into the AS3 side of creative development, and have felt myself being drawn to API’s such as flickr, youtube, facebook, and even google. - Luckily these are things I hope to incorporate into my final projects this term so I’ll get around to these in the near future.
• I’m a grand fan of php myself as my lang/tool of choice, however I must get to grips with the OO side of this alongside Smarty as a way of pushing this skill and developing my own library/system…..that would be swell.
• Second to last is the exploration of AJAX, which will hopefully come hand-in-hand with either the push of OOP PHP / Ruby on Rails.
• I was going to mention Flex and AIR, but yea….I’ll keep them on the burner for now
• Of course, the list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the iphone’s SDK! and so once I get my hands on an iphone I’m all over this. I guess this spawns learning Cocoa and everything attached to it too so this is one I’m really looking forward to.

I’ve recently just got back from NYC, and my first visit to the states. So I just thought I’d post up one of my flicks from the towering peak that is the Rockerfeller building. Such awe.

Of course, I couldn’t be tempted away from the 5th Ave Apple store either.

I look forward to returning in the near future, perhaps for an end of degree trip away to soak up the more cultural vibrancy of the city, but we’ll see.

I have now re-implemented my new Flash app (see previous post) in AS3! which has been a great learning curve I must say and I’m actualy very fond of the new way of working, everything is so much faster! tweens are now so sleek and efficient.

This app is still in development and will soon contain another piece of uni work, along with a few freelance portfolio elements in the future too. Roll on AS3.

Check the new version out at the same location:

http://portfolio.chris-boardman.com

As part of our new studio project this term entitled ‘Utopia/Dystopia’ I was tasked to illustrate a series of designs which conveyed either or both of these themes in the form of a book. - Taking ‘Dystopia’ as my topic of choice I drew inspiration from a few personal photos and started experimenting.

I actually really enjoyed this mini task and thought I’d expand on it by publishing a digital version of this book and wrapping some kind of package around the content. I am always looking for a little sideline project that will help push my skill set so I thought I’d develop a dynamic Flash app to allow interaction with these images. Feel free to have a gander at my initial development:

This is still developed using AS2, and the images are sourced using xml all well and good, but there is something niggling at me, something telling me to bite the bullet and start getting to grips with AS3!…….So I’ve decided I am going to use this application as a foundation to develop these skills and implement a larger scale interactive ’surface portfolio’. My intention is for this subdomain to eventually house an interactive version of my work, represented in a much more visual way. - Imagine a surface with different pockets of work, they can be chucked around, transformed and viewed. Right, kool, go.