ROGERS » technology.

And now you can post from an iPhone

Mr Rogers — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:41:41 +0000

I wonder how long it will take for me to tire of typing on the tiny iPhone keyboard. Not long, I think. In fact it took as long as the previous two sentences to make me go and find a computer, and type with a real keyboard (with modicum of speed). Well, that's not the point I guess. But it is interesting how the iPhone has evolved, suddenly. From third party applications which were only able to be installed by hackers and the technically savvy; to real, sanctioned, and official apps from Apple. It's hard to think of an (Apple) product that has been so rapidly influenced by outside forces... or been so popular. And now it can run apps which are actually useful and cheap (and a good portion of "cheap" is free). Now I have a dedicated Wordpress app for my iPhone. I'm not sure if I'll ever use it.

Cameron on dimension…

Mr Rogers — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:41:53 +0000

There is a great interview in Variety with James Cameron and his perspective on 3D films (pun intended). Of course, what he says is quite convincing, and salient. I met him once. He made some convincingly salient points then too. Via Daring Fireball, via John August.

Lovely

Mr Rogers — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:04:51 +0000

It is always interesting when you take a diversion from concentrating on "visual effects" and go see what other people are doing with graphics technology. In many ways, the SIGGRAPH conference is a yearly fix of all things interesting, but you have to stop working to get there, and residing outside of the US doesn't make it any easier. The alternative time-sucking solution, is web surfing. Sometimes you come across something which really gives you a jolt. The work Robert Hodgin does is clever and beautiful:

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

He uses Processing, an open-source programming environment for graphics and audio. See their exhibition space for more examples of what can be done. Robert Hodgin has a bit of his stuff on that page too, and great explanations of how the software was used (Birds/Flocking). I've become quite interested in procedural animation of late, and have been wondering what we can do with Massive (and a bit of time) to create some visualisations. We've done a bit of stuff on films using Massive to create things other than crowds (like traffic, pedestrians, etc); so another logical step would be to use it with some input data to drive different aspects of it... hmmm... music clip anyone? With the right input data, I am sure you could make something quite special.