News
Stickaid 2011
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Stickaid2011
This weekend has been a very long yet fun weekend working on Stickaid 2011 with SilverLine Media, at Ravensbourne University, North Greenwich. Stickaid is a 24 hour broadcast streamed live onto Stickam.com and Youtube.com and this year it came from Ravensbourne, with the help of SilverLine providing the stream and many Ravensbourne students filling rolls from Camera Operators to Sound Supervisors to Editing and many more. The students that helped out over the weekend came from all year groups with some only 3 day’s into there courses.
Scott and Russell from Fluxity were originally brought in on Thursday and Friday to rig the events lighting and power. This job turned out to be over complicated due to some poor planning and communication from all parties involved. The rig should have taken only 8-10hours to complete but had to be completely re-worked to overcome the lack of correct power and distribution.
At 5pm on Friday afternoon Tom also joined the frustrated rigging team to assist in finalising some decisions and to get the rig moving again. The rig was finally completed at approximately 11.45pm on the Friday, with only a quick focus and program to be completed in the two hours before the 12Midday Broadcast start. Programming was completed during the first couple of hours of broadcast by Charlie Fox and Scott.
Fluxity Lighting was kept on call during the event for power and other related problems, and we are very pleased to report that we didn’t receive a single call, and the system was stable and survived the full 24hours.
Scott, Tom and Russell turned up at about 11am on Sunday for the De-rig that was due to begin at about 12.15pm. Between the three of us we had all of the lighting power and staging out of the rig and Ravensbourne back to how it was, in just under 6 hours, in a very relaxed yet steady de-rig.
All in all a long weekend in which we helped raise over £17000 for Unicef. It’s not too late to Donate still, just click on the logo above.
Here’s what Elliot from SilverLine Media had to say about working with Fluxity, over this last weekend:
Scott, Russell and in the end Tom, helped us Thursday, Friday and when I honestly thought that we weren’t going to have the lights going or anything, 2 hrs before TX they made it all happen. Thank you so much guys, especially for dealing so well with my screw ups and then the de-rig on Sunday!
SCREENSAVER: 3D Cube Webcam
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Over the past couple of day’s I have been playing around with Xcode and Quartz Composer, both of which are very powerful developer tools for the Mac and iOS platforms. This very simple ScreenSaver is the product of about 20mins work playing with Quartz Composer.
The scene shown by my webcam wasn’t very interesting but it gives you the idea of its capability, when loaded as a full screensaver, it also shows the time in various locations. Any feedback is welcome, I’m still just playing with the software, and any thing you would like to see improved or changed, drop me a comment and I’ll see what I can do.
Installation and System Requirements
Installation is very simple process, consisting of copying the 3D Webcam.qtz file from the zip to “MAC-HARD-DRIVE/System/Library/Screen Savers”. Once the file has copied, go to the ScreenSavers menu in System Preferences, and choose “3D Webcam” and Enjoy.
This ScreenSaver has only been tested on a MacBook Pro running 10.6.6, however it should run on any Mac running 10.5.1+. Please note, running this ScreenSaver on battery power, will drain the batteries quite fast (approx. 1hour continuos)
Download
3D Webcam ScreenSaver 1.0.0 Mac
UPDATE:
Version 2 is up – This version is only a minor update with a couple of improvements:
- The cube is now slightly smaller
- The cube now rotates slightly slower
- The cube now also moves around the screen, preventing black screen burn.
SNOW: Still No Uni
0Still lots of snow here, its really getting annoying now, this week I should have 4 lectures, but due to the snow and the lack of public transport I doubt I will be going.
SNOW: Lectures Abandoned
0This week has been a a complete whiteout, since tuesday when it took me 4 hours to get home I haven’t even tried to get up to Ravensbourne. Since Wednesday morning we have had over a foot of snow fall, causing absolute travel chaos, with no trains running from Petts Wood to London.
Just take a look at my Facebook gallery, if you don’t believe how much snow we have had.
Due to the snow in the South East of London, and the lack of transport available, Rave decided to cancel the Industry day, that was scheduled for today. This was a good thing for me as if it had gone ahead I wouldn’t have been able to make it, due to the lack of trains and the fact that the car is also snowed in!
LECTURE: TV Systems & Signals
0Today, has been an eventful day mainly due to the snow that has been falling constantly for the last 24 hours. This morning there was only a light dusting of snow on the ground, so I risked it and went to uni as usual, no problems getting in. It was whilst I was at uni, things started to go bad. The snow just kept falling and falling, which i knew was bad right from the start, even though it wasn’t settling at North Greenwich.
This morning we had a practical tv systems and signals lecture with John Palmer. We looked into termination of video signals, and why it was important. which was an interesting lecture. and it surprised alot of us, how much the signal changed based on if it was terminate or unterminated.
At the end of this lecture, the snow was still falling and I was now dreading trying to get home.
Another Electronics Practical in the afternoon, and the snow was still falling, by this time, my dad had phoned me to say we now had nearly a foot at Petts Wood, and that it will be hard trying to get home.
I finally left uni at 5pm, and got to Lewisham via the Jubilee Line and DLR with no Problems. Lewisham had still only 2-3 inches of snow and trains were running ok, into London. MY train arrived about 10-minuets late and was said to be fast to Orpington, which was fine for me, just meant a slightly longer walk back.
We Pulled out of Lewisham and moved slowly down to Hither Green, where we stopped and the opened the doors. This wouldn’t have happened if we had been the true fast service that they had said in Lewisham. We had stopped because there were 5 other trains in front of us trying to reach the South East, all being blocked by one train that had broken down at Petts Wood.
After 3 hours of very slow moving and long waits at stations we finally made it to Petts Wood, the snow is in deed over a foot deep, and there are only two lines out of the usual 4 the could just about be used. Walking back from Petts wood station was just as dangerous, with next to no grip on the compacted snow.
I don’t think, I’ll be going to uni anytime soon.