Ok, here’s the deal. The SXSW (South by South West) converence in Austin Texas rocks. It’s a mish-mash of interactive, music, film and entertainment. All the thinks that I’m passionate about. Now that I’m putting my heart and soul into Noise Inc, Kim and I have the opportunity to appear on a panel at next year’s SXSW.

Now, here’s the rub. There are over 3000 proposals to be on a panel and they narrow them down using audience votes (among other ways). So it’s simple, I need you to…

It’s a bit of an arse as you have to click the thumbs up button and log in, but just think, if everyone else is put off and you muscle through and vote, that’s a win-win! Love you long time if you vote for me!

A few years back, I posted a video onto YouTube showing the difference between the various exhausts I owned for my Ducati. Fairly basic stuff and only of interest to a few. Surprisingly, it has just passed 211k views and doesn’t really show too many signs of stopping any time soon. It attracted enough interest for Google to start running ads on the YouTube page. I didn’t get much, a few pence a day maybe, but it all ads up.

And now I’m the proud owner of a genuine Google Adsense cheque for £60.62. Well, I was. It’s been paid into the bank and I’ve made a donation of £60.62 to Riders for Health. I figured I didn’t actually earn the money and Riders for Health do such a good job providing motorcycle transport to Africa, they deserve it more than I do.

On a biking note, the SEO is pretty good. Just Googling “Ducati 748″ shows my video as the top result for videos. On YouTube, just typing “Ducati” puts me in the top 6 results, just below Valentino Rossi! And if that wasn’t funky enough, I was sat having a cup of tea and a pie at the Ace Cafe, the famous biker cafe in north London, when a guy recognised me from the video. Not exactly Justin Beiber level fame but it’s nice to be noticed once in a while.

And finally, here’s the video one more time…

My brain hurts after watching this. Not so much from figuring out how they did it, that’s fairly straight forward, more from the possibilities it opens up. Really want to use this in a project really soon.

I’m making this up as I type but here’s a few for starters…

• Imagine this built into a digital camera so your holiday snaps can be viewed from any angle.
• Live kids TV will never be the same. No need for real goo any more when you have particle goo on tap.
• Estate agents will have a great way to let you view properties without actually having to deal with them in person.
• Student? Scan your food shelf before summer holiday. Scan it when you get back. Compare the two to see if anyone ate you stuff.
• Get scanned. Keep the data on your credit card and try on all the clothes without going to the store. And the size will be right.
• Scan your room. The move the objects around in virtual space to see if the TV is better by the radiator after all.

I was going to say crash-scene investigation or high-definition 3D streetview, but that’s been done already by 3D laser Mapping

Been playing with Eberhard Gräther‘s WebGL / Javascript Soft Body Painter on-and-off all evening. Essentially, you just draw blocks in the air a la Minecraft and let them drop onto a surface. Sounds dull but with the added jelly effect, it’s great fun. Try it for yourself:

http://egraether.com/soft.html

You’ll need a WebGL capable browser and video card though.

While you’re there, check out his other projects. Love this virtual reality tin can alley

Oh, and Eberhard is still a student. Yes, a student. Damn fine work fella’!

I find logos fascinating. There, said it.

My dissertation for my degree was the grand sounding “The Science of Semiotics” and examined what made a symbol have meaning, or more importantly, what made some symbols better than others.

I used the Olympic event symbols (or pictograms as they should be called) as a basis. In a nutshell, the 1972 event pictograms were revolutionary. You’ve all seen them, even if you didn’t realise where they came from. They were uniform in style and line weight, they created a sense of ‘collection’ that unified the Olympics. Any extraneous detail was removed in the pursuit of pictographic Zen. Otl Aicher, their designer won awards and fame.

Counter this against the previous Olympic pictograms in Mexico City, 1968. The arms had fingers, horses had reins, footballs had patches and nets had, well, netting. They were retrospectively regarded as inferior to the Munich pictograms. But I argued that their meaning was more intact. It was easy to test by simply showing people the icons and asking them what they thought they meant. Sure enough, the Mexico symbols had a more accurate recall.

I felt sorry for the Mexico pictograms. They got a bum wrap. However, the purity and the detail one could infuse into these tiny squares has been a passion ever since. Luckily, now I have iPhone app icons to keep me entertained. Your app icon design could make or break your app.

Logo design is no different. It has a lot of weight on its shoulders. A logo has to work it’s little ass off to ‘represent’ the company or concept it is attached to. I’ve designed countless logos over the years and I’m constantly amazed how many brilliant, innovative and fresh logos are created each year. Luckily, like most things, there are trends and the standard 4-year logo refresh cycle is driven by, and helps drive them. So what is ‘trendy’ in logo design these days? Well, I’m glad you asked… I’ll let the good people over at Logo Lounge show you their 2011 Logo Lounge Trends Report. Definitely worth a read, even if only to see if you can spot any of the trends in the real world.

The bunfight seems to have calmed down from the dizzy heights of the iPhone OS vs Flash storm earlier this year. Adobe or at least Flash was on the ropes and taking a battering.

Adobe had a few interesting innovations that were almost ignored in the melee. Their response to the Flash v’s HTML5 tirade seemed to be that Flash is a great platform to develop on, then you can spit out Flash, iPhone Apps, HTML5 etc. The HTML5 exporter seemed to get lost in translation.

Nice to see Adobe putting it back onto the agenda with their new inspiration site The Expressive Web. It was put together with US uber agency Big Spaceship and is a great inspiration and learning resource for the latest HTML and CSS techniques like transition, audio and the like. Sure, the zealots will get all sniffy, like the Adobe moniker has tainted the purity of the code, but we’re more grown up than that, aren’t we?

It seemed innocuous. My father-in-law bought an iPad 2. Now he’s not the most technical of people but loves his gadgets. He bought an iMac when they first came out, has the iPhone 4 blah, blah, blah. So the iPad 2 wasn’t a surprise.

So he gets it home, plugs it into his iMac (the white one, before they became aluminium). iMac says he needs to update his version of iTunes as it was the original version that came with his machine 3 years ago! Fair point. he downloads iTunes and fires up the installer. iMac says he needs to update his OS (he’s still on 10.4) for this version of iTunes to work. So how do you get the latest OS 10.7 Lion? That’s right, only via the App Store… which he can’t get until he updates his OS. Sensing an infinite loop yet?

So seems he has to buy a physical copy of OS 10.6, install that, to be able to download the 10.7 installer. This may not seem that important but it has quite interesting implications. Apple now requires you to go through every OS in a linear fashion. Up until now, you could pootle about with your current OS until you bit the bullet and upgraded to the latest version. It’s how it’s worked until now and is how Windows works. Apple have now guaranteed that any OS version they release is guaranteed to be bought somewhere along your upgrade timeline. And as delivery is digital, it’s money for old rope as far as Apple are concerned.

So then the phone rings. Said father-in-law has solved the problem. he’s just bought a brand new iMac to save the bother of upgrading. That’s certainly one way of doing it. So no need to buy that OS 10.6 update then! Luckily, he buys a firewire cable to connect the two macs together and we fire up the Migration Assistant on both macs. It’s a special app that will seamlessly transfer data from your old mac and put it in the right location on the new one. Brilliant. Only new mac says no. You guessed it, the version of Migration Assistant on the old mac needs updating for it to work. How does this happen? You guessed it, you need to buy the OS 10.6 update.

In a last attempt at circumnavigating the inevitable, I remember that macs can be started in Firewire Mode, turning the mac into nothing more than an expensive external hard drive. I can then just connect the firewire cable, mount the old mac as a drive on the new mac’s desktop and do the migration from there. You guessed it, the firewire drivers in the old mac don’t recognise the new mac as the new mac doesn’t actually run firewire, it has a brand new, Apple only ‘iWires’ connector. And, you guessed it, I need to update the OS to 10.6 to get the new drivers.

And don’t even think of suggesting that I put that new OS 10.7 disc that came with the new mac into the old mac and just install it from there. The installer discs that come with new macs are locked to that model. Devious stuff, or smart, depending on your angle.

So let’s assume you now have 10.6 installed. How do you get that all-important OS 10.7 Lion update? You have to download all 3.74Gb of it via your poor old home internet connection as Apple has decided not to offer any DVD version. Clearly a nod towards removing all DVD drives from Macs in the near future, like they did with the MacBook Air. It is due to be released on a USB stick later this month (hopefully) though. You’ll note the downloaded version is the same cost as the physical DVD version though. I believe the phrase is ‘go figure’.

As with so many Apple advances, the true implications are felt slightly further dow line. I’m watching this one with interest.

This is just a quick post but it only scratches the surface of my interest in this subject. In a nutshell, I was never very good at maths at school. I liked what it did, just couldn’t really get my head around some of the deeper concepts. I got a C at O-level and then dropped out of A-Level maths in the first 2 weeks.

Then I became a proper multimedia developer back in 1994, making games, websites and the like. Maths was my friend but I did it in a very organic way. I worked out how to write my own physics engine for a pinball game by drawing lots of angles in countless sketch pads… and chatting through the problems with my friend Jop. I got there in the end. Have a go at the game here. Most ‘hardcore’ developers wouldn’t even attempt it. I’m still not sure if that makes me smart or stupid. It did make me proud though. I showed the ‘clever types’ what someone who barely passed their maths exam could do.

My mission is to inspire kids to see the beauty, the fun and more importantly, the simplicity of maths. Nobody took the time when I was at school. We all have an inspirational teacher from our past that got us to invest that little bit extra by injecting their own passion into their lessons. If they don’t exist, I’ll have to do it for them!

Earlier in the year I started a series of simple modules to show how cool maths can be by showing how games use snippets of maths. And something games developers do very well is cheat with maths. Sure there are complicated equations for gravity, but Mario doesn’t use any of them. He just uses simple addition to do all that jumping around. It’s surprisingly easy when you know how… and shows how, with a bit of confidence, you can bend the rules a bit and ‘do maths’ in a very creative way. It’s problem solving at it’s best and when you use something like Flash, you SEE the results.

I’ll post more when I actually get my arse into gear and present to a local school (I have one lined up). My recent job change has deflected my focus of late. But now I’m back on my mission.

In the meantime, just noticed Quest to Learn, a fantastic initiative in New York. An entire school based around gaming. There’s a great article about them here to give you a quick overview.

Watch this space…

How cool is this… my pet project Zoikz has made it onto the football pitch on the shirts of the London team, the Greenford Gaints. Yes that red splodge on their shirts is the Zoikz Logo. Interestingly, they were supposed to be called the Greenford Giants but there was a typo on the entry form and it was too late to change it. That’s also how Google got its name… it was supposed to be Googol, but I digress.

The Zoikz are an idea I had a few years back and developed in conjunction with RDF Rights and Digital Outlook Studios. It was then made in to a game on Miniclip called Zoikz Defender, had a 6 episode, double-page spread in Toxic Magazine and then a follow-up game on Miniclip called Zoik and Destroy.

Now I’ve left Digital Outlook, Zoikz is out of my hands so not quite sure where we’ll see them next. Lets hope the Greenford Gaints make it to the Premiership and put the Zoikz on TV. If not, I’m more then happy they’re helping a local team with the cost of their kit. What a great thing to be involved in. If you’re near Greenford, you know what to do…

Seems all my bikes are being blighted by brake issues. While the Ducati has reassuringly unpredictable electrical problems, the BMW has reassuringly German, old-fashioned mechanical problems.

So the symptoms were pretty simple. The rear brake jams on after a few miles of riding. Just happened out of the blue while commuting to work one day. Being a bit of a MacGyver type, I got my house key out and wiggled the brake pads back a bit. Wasn’t easy, especially as the brake was red hot from the friction. Took 10 minutes but it seemed to work eventually.

The rod that the pads slide along looked rusty so I assumed the winter road salt had done its worst. Same happened on the way home. So back at home, I stripped the brake caliper, regreased with copper grease and reassembled. Same happened the next day so that didn’t work! BTW. The rear caliper isn’t actually bolted to the swingarm. It sits on a free-floating ‘peg’ on the swingarm and is simply held in place by the brake disc running between the pads. So if you’re looking for the bolts to remove the rear caliper, you won’t find any. Just remove the rear wheel and the caliper falls off by itself.

I also adjusted the push-rod that connects to the Brembo master cylinder from the rear brake pedal. Same issue happened. I even took it off, bled all the brake fluid. Disassembled the Brembo cylinder, greased the internals checked the spring blah, blah… no joy. TIP. If you need to bleed the brake fluid and you have the ABS model, you need to rotate the rear wheel to push the fluid through. Took me ages before I realised.

As usual, online forums were full of confusing advice, as they were solving someone else’s problem, not mine. I have the ABS version, so lots of chat about the ABS sensor having issues.

Cutting to the chase, it WAS the Brembo master cylinder, but it needed a new one to solve the problem (or a rebuild kit I guess). It was as simple as the piston not quite returning to the resting position. The image above shows the ‘sticking’ one on the right and you can see the black piston is 5mm or so lower than the new one on the left. Therefore the brake fluid was being ‘pushed’ by the lever, but then being held there. The pads then stuck on, causing friction against the disc, causing heat, making the fluid expand, binding the pads even tighter. Explains why it took me 10 minutes of ‘fiddling’ that first morning before the brake worked again. It was the fluid cooling down and releasing the pads all by itself.

So I ordered a new master cylinder (they’re fitted to loads of bike models). Making sure I had the ‘in-line exit’ version (as the fluid came in from the side and out from the top… in-line with the body) and the slightly bigger piston version (13mm rather than 11mm) for more oomph. It’s part number 10.4776.60 so google “Brembo 10.4776.60″ and you should find one. I got one from this page on IntoBikes.co.uk for £43. Putting the old and new one side-by-side, it was immediately obvious the piston (the white ceramic looking thing) wasn’t returning to the starting position against the circlip/washer like the new one did.

Bolted it on, new fluid (making sure to pump it through by rotating the rear wheel). Problem solved! Been riding it for 2 months, no sign of any problem.

There was some chat online about needing a special tool to bleed the ABS internals as air bubbles would cause it to malfunction, but I didn’t have any problems. Tried it out a few times and works fine.

So, as usual, bodged my way to another fix. Hope that helps if you were having similar problems!