As an update to my visit to the Olympic Stadium opening, I was excited at the prospect at being given ‘priority’ booking for the next load of tickets coming on sale throughout the week.

However, I guess the screen above is what most people will be seeing at the moment. “No tickets found” was at the end of EVERY search I have made so far. I was there the minute the site opened, I’ve searched every category, in multiple ticket bands and amounts. But same result. I’ve also been in each round so far, still nothing. I can’t think of what I could have done differently, or what algorithm they are using to allocate the tickets that were (I assume) available. My ideal was to see the track cycling at some point, even a qualifying round would have done. Sigh.

At least I’ve been inside the stadium I guess so I can watch the Olympics on TV with a small sense of the atmosphere. Good luck to all those who did get tickets!

And if you do find yourself with a spare track cycling ticket, hi, I’m Dino, your new bestest friend in the world ever… I’ll get the beers… :)

I’m one of those people that didn’t get any Olympic tickets at each round but was determined to allow my kids the ‘memory’ of actually being there at some point. So I managed to bag 4 tickets to the official opening of the stadium last Saturday. It’s not the swanky opening ceremony of the actual Olympic games obviously, just the first ‘test event’ for the stadium to make sure it works with 2012 hours to go.

So with my Creative Director, UX and member of the public hats on and family in tow, what did I found.

1: London transport

On the bus replacement service. Ignore the vacant / grumpy face.

I live in North London so it was just a blast down the Northern Line, then Central Line to to Stratford Station. 45 mins? Only the Northern Line was closed for engineering. So our journey was a bus to Camden, then to two tube journeys as planned. 1 hour and 45 minutes. Luckily, we left 2 hours for the journey. On the way back we had to get the late bus replacement from Camden with all the flotsam and jetsam trying to get home from the pubs. Cool experience for the kids. They certainly heard some new words…

Not the fault of the Olympic organisers but this could be a feature if Bob Crow gets his usual disruptive union way.

As far as transport links go, I worry. Stratford station seems pretty rammed and although we dived into a restaurant at the end to let the crowds die down, I can imagine how busy it was with 40,000 people all trying to get into tube trains on a two platforms. I guess I was hoping for slightly more development to Stratford station itself.

I did notice the car park at Westfield had a few spaces left in it… may be worth a punt if you decide to drive in, but I didn’t tell you that.

Score: 4/10

2: Initial impression… Westfield Shopping Centre

To the left, security. To the right, shopping centre.

I hadn’t realised that the entrance to the Olympic Park was right next to Westfield shopping centre. Initially it felt a little cheesy but when we came out, it was good to have a few restaurants on hand.

Score: 7/10

3: Security checks

* No pictures of the security checks… as they had my camera.

Wow, didn’t quite expect that. Just like the airport. Coats off, no water, belts and coins in the box etc. Walked through the metal detector and was subjected to a pat down and a further challenge over my wallet. Not a fantastic experience but I guess it’s necessary. Could have been done with a little more sensitivity or humour though. First impressions and all that.

Score: 7/10

4: Queueing… and queueing

Our view moments before being told to go queue somewhere else.

Once through security you walk through the various buildings towards the main stadium. The queues where maybe 150m long and 4 people wide… and there were maybe 8 of them. Hopefully everyone won’t descend on the stadium at the same time like this during the actual Olympics (except for the opening ceremony), so this is a pretty good ‘load test’ I guess.

We joined a queue and waited patiently. Others joined behind. After 25 minutes, two officials stood between us and the people in front and said “You can’t queue here, go to the other queues around the corner at “Bridge A” and join those.”. I offered “We’ve been here for 25 minutes, you’ve been stood there directing people, why didn’t you say 25 minutes ago?”. He replied, “We did tell you”. Pause. I replied “That’s a lie! Why would we stand here for 25 minutes and people also join the queue if you had told us all?”. His reply “We did tell you all, now move away!” I took real offense at being called a liar and being talked down to. I didn’t buy tickets for that. I gave him a piece of my mind, as did others. But realistically, one rude official isn’t what the night was about so we agreed to disagree. So not a fantastic start to the Olympic PR machine.

Thanks to our grumpy official friend, we now joined the very back of another 150m, 32 people wide queue at the mysterious “Bridge A”. This split and rejoined in weird, self regulating waves. Then we got sight of the front and realised that you just squeezed through a few tents at the front so the queues just disbanded into a mass of people filing through. Got to love how us Brits will make a queue happen even if it’s not needed.

Score: 3/10

5: Food

I didn’t take a picture but there was a ‘food village’ as you neared the stadium. Well, more of a set of food huts really. You queue then eat your food on some pretty standard wooden picnic benches. Not exactly in keeping with the architecture, aspirations or style of the park though. I was maybe expecting funky looking tents that resembled mini Sydney Opera Houses with crazy-coloured, canvas covered seating areas and funky chairs… or something. Not wooden huts and picnic benches. Still, the food range seemed ok… Eastern, curry, fish and chips… beer and sweets… you know, the basic food groups. The fish and chips did look great though, proper big fish and chunky chips so the ‘food’ itself looked spot on.

Score: 7/10

6: Signage

The image above was all you can see on the ground floor, obviously 207 was upstairs.

When we met the grumpy official, he gestured sideways and said “Queue at Bridge A”. The sign for Bridge A was at the far end and only the size of an A4 page, so the signage already had my radar on alert. At this point I have to declare an interest, my Information Design degree thesis was a comparison of the signage used in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. So I have a thing about Olympic signage (cue stifled yawn). I assume that there weren’t any event signs up yet as there are still 80 or so days to go, but the stadium seating signage was really, really confusing.

You are allocated blocks, then rows, then seats. Pretty simple. However, there is no indication which way to start exploring to find your block. We were block 207 but were initially dumped opposite block 220. Did we go left or right? We eventually started to see the right kind of numbers and got to 209 but then the next number was 108, then 107, then 106. No block 207. We asked some official looking types but they didn’t know. Most officials were guarding places you shouldn’t go in to so didn’t really know much about seating. It turns out you have to look behind you to a sign on the far side of a staircase that indicated 207 is upstairs. It seems they only label the blocks on the level they they are actually on. Sure enough, up a flight of stairs it said 207. Very tedious. How were we supposed to know that.

Score: 4/10

7: Toilets

Highlight of the toilets were the blue lights. Simple things...

Interestingly, the girls went to the toilet and us boys assumed we’d wait then nip to the one next door when we’d hooked up again. Turns out all the toilets on the ground floor were women’s. And came in blocks of 3 at a time. That’s 3 separate toilet blocks together. Nice to see the age old queues outside women’s toilets have been addressed. Mens toilets seemed to be upstairs in the stadium with more women’s toilets. They were clean. There wasn’t any hand paper though but the air dryer had a cool blue light in it. This was a highlight of the evening fro my 8 year old son. Men’s toilets were pretty good. The report from the women’s wasn’t so positive though. Toilets themselves were fine but other people’s hygiene seemed to be a factor. Wee on the seat and paper everywhere apparently. Could also be a maintenance / cleaning issue that wasn’t addressed?

Score: 7/10

8: Mind your head

Seriously? £486million to build and it needs MORE red tape?

You know when they put scaffolding up and have to put red tape around overhanging bits to try and avoid you hitting you head on it? Well you may have noticed that the Olympic stadium leans out like a big bowl and has lots of angled beams for you to hit your head on. You guessed it, just wrap them in red stripy tape. Job done. Interested to see what the solution is there.

Score 2/10

9: Seating

Covered, padded seating and a great view. Top marks.

Actually, the seats were comfortable. They did however cause my daughter an injury. Sounds silly but we saw a Mexican wave coming our way, we all jumped up and waved. I looked down to see my daughter on the floor in tears. The seats flip up like cinema seats and caught her out. She hit the floor after scraping her back on the underside of the plastic seat. Drew blood and left a nasty scratch. Just one of those things but at least she has the honour of being the first person to be injured in the London Olympic stadium as a result of a Mexican wave. With the world descending on London, I can only think of the dodgy injury claims that will emerge…

But ignoring that, the seats were padded and after 2 hours seated, no numb bums to report.

Score: 9/10

10: Audio and visual

The lighting was amazing. Almost like daylight.

The seats gave a really great view. We were quite high up but having seen a few photo posted by others, every image looks spectacular.

The public address sound was clean and crisp so you could hear the commentary well and the big screens either side were massive so you could focus on close shots from the TV cameras instead of squinting at the teeny weeny athletes.

The two screens were fantastic. Really clear and bright.

One thing I was a little dubious about were the ‘clacky fan things’. These were given out on the door and were just zig-zag card when make a loud slap noise when you flapped them. They sort of sounded like clapping but not. Now give two of them two a kid and the noise is bloody endless. It was a fun night and everyone was doing it, so everyone got into the spirit but they are up there with vuvuzelas. I’m hoping they were a one off, not a sign of things to come. Check out my video of the first full mexican wave in the London 2012 Olympic stadium… you can hear the ‘clacky fans’.

Score: 9/10

Bonus point… Cameras

Zoomed in shot of the far side of the stadium using a 300mm lens.

For those with cameras, our Nikon D50 digital SLR with a 70-300mm zoom lens was just about up to the job. You could just about take a pic at the other side of the stadium, just. I’d recommend something over 300mm though.
Have a look at the full stadium image for point 10 above. Look carefully in the top-left of the image. See that blue and red pole vault mat? The zoomed-in image above was at full zoom with the 300mm lens.

Conclusion:

So there’s my top 10. I’ll not mention the national anthem as it wasn’t ideal. Hopefully the opening ceremony will kick ass and we’ll all be proud.

In summary, loved the stadium, signage was poor and a few of the officials let the side down somewhat, but the others were polite and helpful.

Total score: 59/100 or B- in old money. Good start and we do still have a few months to go, so hopefully all the above points will get sorted.

To some, this weekend was 24 hours of constant rain and storm force winds. To about 400 dedicated game hackers and makers it was 24 hours of constant RedBull and code. Yep, the inaugural UK GameHack event kicked off in style at the world famous Pinewood studios just outside London.

If you’re new to the concept, these events challenge teams or individuals to come up with something in 24hours (or sometimes 48 hours) from scratch. You can bring a ideas, frameworks and code snippets but the bulk of the work is to be done when the whistle first blows.

So I wasn’t quite sure whether I should be a game creator of go as a general creative helper for anyone who needs me. As it turns out, a fair few others took this initiative, which was great. After the initial presentations and sponsor intros, we all managed to hook up with some needy teams. As luck would have it, I met a bunch of really great, dedicated and most importantly, funny guys to help out on the ‘MiniChe’ game concept.

MiniChe was a 3D mobile game where you follow the exploits of a mini Che Guevara as he tries to take over the world, one city at a time. My role was to create a bunch the UI graphics so the game could be played from end to end. Check out the video below of a ‘work in progress’ video the guys made, you get the idea. Can’t wait to see what the final thing looked like.

I had other commitments on Sunday morning so had to bail at about 1am. The stormy ride back on the motorbike was something I’ll remember for a while too!

Looking forward to seeing more videos from the other amazing projects as they emerge and I’ll definitely be back next year!

Quick update on my Processing and Kinect journey. This time it’s mapping the colour information from the on-board RGB camera to the infrared depth data.

The OpenKinect libraries come with a few demo files that pretty much have the nuts and bolts of it already, kind of. Here’s how it works:

1. OpenKinect returns the depth data as a complete array
2. It also returns the video data which is accessed as an image each frame
3. The depth data is then adjusted a little to make it map to the screen and allow for perspective distortion
4. Each depth point is then mapped to a static X and Y point, which matches the same X and Y in the video feed (*sort of, see below.)
5. It’s then simply a case of reading the colour data from a point in the video feed and colouring the corresponding depth point.

However, it did require a little fiddling with the video scale to get it to match the infrared data scaling. The raw video was slightly bigger and offset, so that your ‘texture’ didn’t sit correctly on the model.

Here’s the initial feed without correction. Note how the image feed is too small and to the bottom/left.

And below is the corrected image. It wasn’t particularly scientific however, I just tried a few values until it looked about right.

Here’s the code I used:

int pixel = kinect.getVideoImage().get(int (x*0.91) + 9,int (y*0.94) + 25);

I.e. the video is scaled by 91% and shifted +9 pixels on the x axis and scaled by 94% and shifted +25 pixels on the y. Not quite sure why this is needed but if you’re having the same issue, maybe it’ll help. Likewise, if I’m missing something, please let me know. As much as I like a good hack, I also like to know why it’s needed!

Incidentally, the video above was ‘recorded’ from Processing using individual bitmap frames. All the screen capture software I have causes the Kinect video to either freeze or not work. Strange. So handily, Processing can save out screenshots each frame. I then used  Time Lapse Assembler to stitch them back together.

To save the first 300 frames to the same folder as your code, it’s as simple as…

frameCount ++;
if (frameCount <= 300) {
   saveFrame(“kinect-####.jpg”);
}

So next step is to record the incoming data and store it so that I can do interesting effects on preset data sets.

Earlier today I saw “Unnamed Soundsculpture” by Daniel Franke, a really evocative and quite strange video that combined Kinect data, live dance and Processing.

So that got me thinking I should have a go, albeit on a much more basic level. It’s early doors but if you want to get started with Kinect and Processing, there’s a great starter guide here.

So just to prove it really does work, here’s me made out of nothing but depth data.

And this is an example of what the IR camera sees.

The exciting thing is that the depth data is available as a single array of depth points in 3D space, so it’s ripe for fiddling with to create all sorts of effects. Clearly this needs fiddling with, so I’ll post a few creations when I’ve dug a little deeper.

So, what to do with a few hours spare? Learn Processing of course!

Processing is an open source programming language that makes it relatively easy to make pretty things. The language itself is almost identical to something like JavaScript or Flash ActionScript but the number of commands and functions are vastly reduced. They only really keep the ones that have something directly connected with visual prototyping. Some syntax is a bit strange, like defining object arrays but the rest of it it pretty familiar.

One thing that surprised me was the default Processing editor. If you’ve played around with an Arduino board, you’ve used the editor already! Yep, you save ‘sketches’ and press the ‘play’ button to see your code instantly come to life.

There’s is also a Javascript flavoured version Processing.js. I haven’t looked too much into it yet but it’s obviously the smart move for web based creative coding. You just download the processing javascript library and add your experiment as a html5 canvas element. Ran relatively slow compared to the java applet, but was still pretty impressive.

So my first experiment is a little basic, but you get the idea. It generates up to 10,000 particles and just bounces them about. Took maybe 2 hours to get this far. Next stop is to pop downstairs and grab the Xbox Kinect and try and do something funky with the point data in 3D (Processing has a bunch of native 3D commands too).

So click the image above, or here to launch my demo as a Java applet in a new window. ** Don’t forget to allow Java in your browser if it asks you. You can also see the code in the popup if you’re interested.

Then check out Processing yourself at Processing.org and download it for FREE here.

And pop over to OpenProcessing.org to see what everyone else is up to.

A few friends have asked me for an explanation of what’s going on in the video above as it seems pretty weird. It’s actually pretty simple…

The camera records at 24 frames every second. The speaker is at 24hz (cycles per second) and ‘knocks out’ the drops of water in a constant 24 times per second. Think whacking a ketchup bottle once and then taking a picture just after the sauce flies out, you catch the ketchup blob in mid air. Now whack it 24 times a second and take a snap each time… you kinda take the same pic each time but clearly the blobs of ketchup will be a slightly different shape each time… but in pretty much the same position. That’s all that’s going on here.

But what about it going backwards? Well, at 23hz (not 24hz as before), the camera is relatively faster by 1 frame so the water *seems* to go slower. Seeing as it was stationary before, *slower* than stationary is backwards. In this case, the same water drops are snapped slightly earlier each time giving the effect of going backwards.

And, you guessed it, the opposite happens at 25hz. Water goes ‘faster’, relatively speaking. It’s a completely linear thing so you can change the frequency slightly and see the result instantly.

Main thing is to generate the drops at a nice constant rate, which in this case is what the speaker vibration is doing. Other methods involve precise pumps or special ‘gates’ that snip the water stream into droplets very accurately.

Here’s a quick flash example I made to show the ‘shutter’ effect on regular falling drops. Just move your mouse left and right then see if you can get the shutter and blob frequency to match. Note how there two streams of drops are created at slightly different speeds so that one can be made to look like it’s going up while the other is going down.

So the anecdote goes, if you drop a frog into a pan of hot water, it will jump out. Sit a frog in a pan of cold water and slowly increase the heat, it will be unaware of the subtle temperature rise and eventually meet a hot and somewhat sticky end. You may not have realised it, we are now that frog sitting in very hot water. Thankfully, the anecdote is only metaphorical but it serves my point well.

My slightly creepy intro is a relatively accurate description of the subtle but important changes in the way we share social information. Whereas a mere six months ago (that’s three years in social-media years), we used to actively press buttons to ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ the things we felt represented us, the movement is now towards ‘frictionless sharing’, where no buttons need be clicked at all. The most obvious example is Spotify and Facebook. Six months ago, you clicked a button and clumsily shared your Spotify playlists with friends. Now you just have to listen to a track and it automatically appears on Facebook’s ticker. This new sharing philosophy works on the principle that you authorise it once and it does the rest for you, forever.

What’s not to like?

Well, quite a lot actually.

As ever, for every benefit there seems to be a bitter aftertaste. Take Foursquare for example. You go somewhere, you check in, it let’s people know. Simple. Now add a new service like Walkbase that automatically checks you in. You’d have some explaining to do if you pulled a sicky at work but seemed to have checked into every shop on Oxford Street on the same day. But on the other hand, by manually checking, you’re probably missing all sorts of deals in places you wouldn’t have normally checked-in at.

Your ill-advised wander around the shops also reveals more of the real you. With manual sharing, YOU can control how you are perceived. With frictionless sharing, reality enters the fray, exposing your habits or the smaller things you do that you would never usually share. If your guilty pleasure was a quick blast of Lionel Ritchie before you go out on a Friday, would you want your friends to know? In a slightly awkward update, Spotify acknowledged this quite early and implemented a ‘private listening’ mode to save your blushes. But this is the manual exception to the frictionless norm. Next time you log in to Spotify, frictionless sharing is switched back on again.

The need to think before sharing is becoming less important, or at least you are not in control as much as you once were. Both the need to think and the extent to which we feel we need to be in control may simply be a passing fad though. Like our poor frog, we may get used to it and just adapt. New technology has the potential to allow us to relax the rules around basic human traits. If everyone knows everything about you already, basics such as privacy, embarrassment or dishonesty suddenly seem less of an issue. We have the option to share so much that privacy may become a quaint, old-fashioned notion.

Inevitably, more sharing just generates more noise. Even Facebook itself has a good example of this. All this sharing appears on the fast moving ‘ticker’. It’s now like a banner ad to me, almost invisible. Mostly too dull and too quick to engage with.

But the big question is where is all this data going? Sure, some of it is ending up with your friends but a bunch of it isn’t. It’s a goldmine for marketeers or behavioural analysts. Where once they needed to coax information out of you with competitions or dull questionnaires, now they have to become experts in collating and analysing of all the data you are throwing at them. Companies like PeerIndex or Klout specialise in matching up a company’s promotion with the most influential members of the public, all by analysing their castoff social data. One of the main arguments against frictionless sharing is that you lack control of what happens to your data. But being targeted and rewarded with two Adele tickets just for being social may smooth over a few cracks.

Intriguingly, in a bit of a tech gaff, Facebook accidentally revealed a secret ‘add to interests’ option on the new brand timeline pages, suggesting Facebook is planning to use your interests to suggest new brands to you. So complete is their vision, Facebook assumes users want to be profiled. And do you know what, they’re probably right.

Whatever your views, frictionless sharing is here to stay. Understanding it, and more importantly, embracing it is probably the smartest thing anyone in marketing can do right now. The water is boiling. It’s time to jump.

You can also find this article on iMedia Connection.

I vividly remember a Wired Magazine article in 2002. It sparked a million thoughts in my mind and still does to this day. It was about a guy called Jens who suffered two freak accidents and lost the sight in both eyes. In steps medical pioneer William Dobelle with a crazy idea; to drill a hole into Jen’s skull, plug some wires directly into his optical cortex, hook it up to a camera and give him back his sight. Simple. The process itself involved stimulating the visual cortex with electricity so Jens would perceive small points of light in various locations around his ‘vision’. With enough prodding, Dobelle mapped enough points to reliably recreate a crude dot matrix display… directly in Jen’s brain. He added a funky pair of glasses with a video camera in the lens and Jens was set. Ok, so the results were crude, but Jens recognised objects, navigated rooms by himself, drove a car and generally blew my mind.

Roll forward 10 years to today. Visual implants are still experimental but much more refined. In the not too distant future, I can see teenagers begging for the latest iEye. A 50x zoom, Facebook compliant, night vision, colour-changing, augmented data eyes to replace their useless, old, 1x zoom, organic ones. A right of passage like getting your ears pieced maybe.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many a glazed-eyed dinner party guest has had to endure my vision of the future manifesto about the body being the true battle ground for the media revolution. “YOU are the 6th screen!” would be my final battle cry before my wife pats me on the shoulder and whispers “clear the plates dear…”

The ‘screens’ concept has been around for a while. First came the cinema screen. Then the TV. Then the PC. The 4th official screen is the mobile or PDA. Some stretch it a little to include advertising displays as the 5th screen. So let’s be a little bold and officially add ‘you’ as the 6th screen.

There is amazing research out there to make it all happen today. When you think of what media consumption is… you see, you hear, you think, you have emotions, you may even smell. Here’s the news, scientists have already replicated, synthesised or implanted all of them. We know about sight implants already. There are smell implants in trials this year. Hearing implants have been around a while. Look up “Reconstruction from brain activity” on YouTube and you’ll see that your thoughts, even your dreams, can now be recorded like a home movie. Reading words from your mind is positively old skool now. And finally, what about emotions? Yep, we can make those too. Using electrodes implanted under the scalp, scientists can regulate depression and by extension, create happiness.

This clearly had profound implications for society in general but let’s be practical for a moment. I work in the entertainment industry. The future ‘me’ probably does too. So what will the future hold? Here are some starters for ten…

Firstly, forget devices and screens. No need for them. Want to watch a movie? It will be recreated directly onto your visual cortex, with perfect ‘in-head’ sound of course. Depending on which ‘experience’ you bought, it may even come with an emotion track too, giving you goose bumps and making you cry at will.

Can’t afford the latest eye and hearing implants? No worries. The Spotify ad-funded model comes to the rescue. Simply sign up to get the Spotify branded implants for free. In return, you agree to give up your vision for 20 seconds every 5 minutes for the sponsor’s messages.

Walk into a room and your augmented vision would identify friends, LinkedIn connections or groups of like-minded people. In fact, you can decide what they look like as your eyes will real-time substitute everyone’s faces if you want to. Look up “Arturo Castro” on Vimeo if you want to see this in action.

YouTube will have its sister site, DreamTube (don’t even bother, the URL has gone already) where the weird stuff of dreams and nightmares is posted for everyone to see. Just imagine if you had a way of searching other people’s dreams for reference of you. I’d pay for that. There’s your financial model right there.

Those ‘anti-mind-reading’ foil caps that alien abduction types insist on wearing may well be the only way to stop that bloke behind you in the ATM line from stealing your PIN number as you ‘say it aloud’ in your head. Of course, we won’t have PIN numbers, but you get the point.

Alas, like our dinner parties, I sense a gentle tap on the shoulder and my wife whispering, “clear the plates dear…” My final words of wisdom? Buy foil.

You can also find this article on iMedia Connection.