Tonic

I subscribe to Dead at your age, and have an RSS which congratulates me when I’ve outlived someone. I never know any of the people I outlive, but by getting through today I’ve outlived Heath Ledger.

I got a small cod a chips today and found the biggest chip EVER! It was a five and a half incher! Amazing! (and tasty).

Tonic go to Glastonbury 2009 as heads, courtest of Tal Woolf, Junior Developer.

Thanks Tal-we had a blast!

Musicians use lots of digital effects in creating music nowadays, including autotuning and autoharmonizing. In moderation, these things can be good. Microsoft Songsmith, however, doesn’t seem to understand the concept of moderation. Witness Songsmith’s accompinament for the Survivor classic ‘Eye of the Tiger’:

Mark Hurst of Good Experience describes it as ‘it’s like Clippy … appeared and said, “It looks like you’re trying to sing a song. Would you like a bass line?”‘

Humans aren’t the only ones doing filming at the moment.  Wildlife photographer Enrique Aguirre caught this pic of an otter with a camcorder in Monterey Bey. From the Santa Cruz Sentinel via Gizmodo.

How great would it be to have your own Island.

A piece of tranquil heaven to truly call your own.

Here’s a selection of some of little Islands that have home’s on.

Enjoy

Watching anything in slow motion is cool, thats why lots of adverts, websites and films have use this effect.

Imagine you’ve hired a slow motion camera for work, then imagine that you’ve shot all the footage you need and there is still time before you have to return the camera.

Well this is what Action Figure did - Slow motion

A blog entirely devoted to the Ampersand!!  

Dangerous Mike and I have spent the weekend at a tinker.it workshop, learning about Arduino. It’s a simple yet powerful board with a microprocessor that can be programmed using a language similar to processing.

Pretty soon after you’ve created your first working circuit, you start to realise that the possibilities are limitless. It can accept a variety of digital and analogue inputs, and can feed back to a computer, or be used to control any number of devices.

Already it has been linked up to numerous Flash applications, used to create a glockenspiel that plays a tune based on the magnetic strip on the back of your favourite credit card… Or you could use it to control a espresso machine, using a Wii remote. If you really wanted to.

And to think, some people waste a beautiful sunny weekend by going outside and sitting in parks or pubs.

User Friendly has brought together leading interaction and usability experts from around the globe. Senior designers and managers from Microsoft, HSBC and the Chinese government were all present. What is surprising is the level of investment China is placing in it’s creative industries - aiming to be a leading global economy in design by 2020. My perception of China has changed from an economy that is ripe for production outsourcing partnerships, to a potential market that could mature quite quickly. Should this happen it will be interesting to see how this affects western digital agencies. How long will it be before clients are brave enough to test Chinese creative agencies on briefs that can be delivered at a fraction of the price. In reality this may be a few years off - but certainly an economy to watch.