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ARRR! Augmented Reality Pirates!

by Tom Saunter on 14. Jul, 2010 in gaming, mobile

Cambridge-based Augmented Reality specialists Optricks Media have just released their newest creation: AR! Pirates.

It’s a swashbuckling shoot-em-up game for Symbian devices (Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson) that uses a really unique marker-based mechanic: the coins in your pocket!

In AR mode, three coins laid out in a triangle become a desert island, and the surface they are on become the ocean. The idea is to stop waves of marauding pirates from stealing your buried treasure, so you must aim your device to blast the approaching galleons with your cannon, whilst avoiding their fire by moving (yes, moving!) out of harm’s way.

The more ships you sink, the more treasure you earn and the more power-ups you unlock. There are 30 levels in all, including battles with the Spanish Armada, drunken pirates and ghost ships. It costs 99p to download the full version, chargeable to your phone bill.

Here’s a video of the game in action!

As you’ve seen, the innovative approach that Optricks have taken with their markers mean it’s possible to play at any scale. You could use coins to keep the game small enough to play in the pub, or you could ‘upscale’ and use larger discs (like frisbees) to play with massive pirate ships. The best bit: the larger the markers, the larger the field of play, and the more immersive the player experience!

This is one of the best, most purposeful uses of AR that I’ve seen. There are too many use-cases where ‘the medium is the message’ – but in this instance the medium is what connects you to the content, rather than defines your experience of it. Great work Ian, Gavin, Marcus and Dylan.

Here’s the link again: AR! Pirates.

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digitalcortexecosystem

My Personal Blogging Ecosystem

by Tom Saunter on 12. Jul, 2010 in Productivity, blogging

Hello! Before we get down to business, here’s just a quick announcement: This weekend I launched a new WordPress plugin called Foursquare Map – any readers with your own blogs, please check it out and let me know how it goes!

Another thing I did this week was to set up my own GTD system with a fresh Moleskine book. I’ll be using this set of icons to help me manage my growing to-do list. First on that list was to follow up on a note to “Map the Digital Cortex Ecosystem“, so *tick!*

What does that entail? Over the two years the site has been running, I’ve tried and tested loads of ways to syndicate content, drive traffic and grow my following. I think I’ve just about maxed-out on the optimisations I can make, and expect further growth to come solely from publishing interesting content. So what does my so-called ‘optimal’ set-up look like? Thanks to Paint.NET you can see for yourself (click for full-screen):

Some tips for building your own blogging ecosystem:

  • Try StumbleUpon – it shows me the coolest stuff every day because I’ve spent time telling it my interests, and then fine-tuning the system with thumbs up / down. I use it about 50 times a day.
  • Get Read It Later – when you don’t have time to give a site the attention it deserves, click the ‘RIL’ button and it’ll sync to the cloud, for reading at a later date. I’ve racked up so much cool stuff this way.
  • Use Delicious Effectively – it’s immensely powerful when used in the right way, and I use it to write one sentence descriptions, along with loads of tags, that publish to my Tumblr each day.
  • Start a Side Blog – some stuff is too cool not to blog about, but sometimes that stuff doesn’t warrant a full blog post (esp. when you’re busy). That’s where Tumblr comes in, and mine is now the fifth largest referrer here, after just two months!
  • Don’t Cross the Streams - sure it’s fun to publish everything everywhere, but it’s sensible to apply a bit of intelligence: what’s really the most appropriate content for that channel? That’s why only blog content goes to my Facebook fan page.
  • Twitter is WIN! – It’s an amazing tool for bloggers, both for content discovery and for content syndication. It’s especially powerful when paired with Tweetmeme buttons on your site (like below). The same is true of the Facebook ‘Like’ button.

There’s probably more to structuring a blogging ecosystem than this, like the ‘star system’ with Twitter/Spotify/Google or the X-Marks approach. There’s also the big question of how you go about measuring any of this stuff, and no word has been made of an actual content strategy but hey, that’s the eternal battle, eh bloggers?!

That’s it from me, hope you enjoyed this post. Let’s discuss tactics… Go!

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alcoholic-art-tequila-microscopic-image

Are You Ready For Your Close Up, Miss Colada?

by Tom Saunter on 06. Jul, 2010 in design

BevShots have discovered what you’d call a niche: they take your favourite alcoholic drink, crystallise a single droplet of it in an airtight container, photograph it at 1000x under a microscope, and then sell the resulting image on a printed canvas.

And man, are these things selling! Since August last year BevShots estimate sales of over 20,000 prints ($24.99-$549). The product is aimed at the ‘hedonist with a mind for science’ segment: those who appreciate good photography, laboratory conditions and a damn-tasty cocktail now and then.

Here’s my favourite image, the classic Vodka and Tonic:

The shots are taken in Florida State University’s chemistry department, where founder Lester Hutt developed the approach, which can take up to three months to produce an image.

Lester says:

“What you can see in the magnified pictures are the crystalised carbohydrates that have become sugars and glucose. With my background in chemistry, I saw the potential in these kind of pictures and am so glad to be able to offer them up as art works. It is a pleasure to show people what makes up their favourite drinks and how beautiful it can look.”

Most alcohols are blends, with varying levels of carbohydrates, sugars, acids and glucose, so each shot taken is entirely different from the last. Some favourite drinks are so pure that when they crystallise  into their component parts, they fall apart or don’t dry out properly. So, not unlike the perfect Margarita, they’re pretty hard to get ‘just right’, sometimes taking up to 200 attempts.

Here’s some more of their work – click through for the full images or visit BevShots.

I’m thirsty! Who’s for a drink?

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Holy Hole in a Doughnut!

Holy Hole in a Doughnut!

by Tom Saunter on 02. Jul, 2010 in Culture

TV ain’t what it used to be, and I’ve found the evidence. It’s a video of the 109 utterances of Robin’s famous catchphrase, mashed-up and in sequence, as spoken by Burt Ward in the first series of television’s Batman in 1966.

It’s the sort of thing I’d usually post on my Tumblr, but now we’re back in action over here, what’s the harm in publishing less ‘thoughtful’ content here on the main blog too?
Plus, this is pretty funny:

So Robin said the following weird shit:

1. Holy barracuda.
2. Holy ashtray.
3. Holy smoke.
4. Holy showcase.
5. Holy haberdashery.
6. Holy popcorn.
7. Holy lodestone.
8. Holy flypaper.
9. Holy cofax, I think.
10. Holy jack in the box.
11. Holy red herring.
12. Holy stuffy. WTF?
13. Holy ravioli.
14. Holy serpentine.
15. Holy grammars?
16. Holy safari.
17. Holy headlines.
18. Holy iceberg.
19. Holy blizzard.
20. Holy schizophrenia.
21. Holy snowball.
22. Holy Venezuela.
23. Holy rainbow.
24. Holy hole in a doughnut. LOLZ!!
25. Holy backfire.
26. Holy birthday cake.
27. Holy baseball.
28. Holy graveyard.
29. Holy crossfire.
30. Holy sawpipe, or something.
31. Holy conflagration.
32. Holy happenstance.
33. Holy switcheroo.
34. Holy ricochet.
35. Holy bowler.
36. Holy magician.
37. Holy ball and chain.
38. Holy Las Vegas.
39. Holy fruit salad.
40. Holy Benedict Arnold.
41. Holy hail storm.
42. Holy murder.
43. Holy New Years Eve.
44. Holy bouncing boiler plate.
45. Holy Houdini.
46. Holy armour plate.
47. Holy transistors.
48. Holy wigs.
49. Holy rats in traps.
50. Holy Reshevsky (a famous chess player).
51. Holy trickery.
52. Holy icepicks.
53. Holy felony.
54. Holy geography.
55. Holy nick of time.
56. Holy knock out drops.
57. Holy jackpot.
58. Holy leprechaun.
59. Holy bat trap.
60. Holy hotfoot.
61. Holy nightmare.
62. Holy Romeo and Juliet.
63. Holy noose.
64. Holy iodine.
65. Holy parrafin.
66. Holy jack in the box.
67. Holy Taj Mahal.
68. Holy t-shirt or whatever.
69. Holy shrinkage.
70. Holy looking glass.
71. Holy smoke stack.
72. Holy impregnability.
73. Holy camouflage.
74. Holy motel.
75. Holy encore.
76. Holy Golden Gate.
77. Holy heiroglyphics.
78. Holy hurricane.
79. Holy whiskers.
80. Holy masquerade.
81. Holy asp (I think this is a type of snake).
82. Holy travel agent.
83. Holy taxidermy.
84. Holy hi fi.
85. Holy flowerpot?
86. Holy smoke.
87. Holy skyrocket.
88. Holy homicide.
89. Holy reincarnation.
90. Holy explosion.
91. Holy detonator.
92. Holy magic lantern.
93. Holy bullseye.
94. Holy cinderella.
95. Holy headache.
96. Holy towel?
97. Holy stewpot.
98. Holy pressure cooker.
99. Holy triple feature.
100. Holy kindergarten.
101. Holy molars.
102. Holy Wayne Manor.
103. Holy subliminal.
104. Holy puzzlers.
105. Holy fuck! I hope that’s what he said anyway.
106. Holy clockwork.
107. Holy oxygen.
108. Holy runner.
109. Holy jitterbugs.

Any I’ve missed? Did I get any wrong? Would you rather this sort of thing stays over on my side blog? C’mon, let’s talk it out in the comments.

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christmas-coral-bed

The Weird Inner World of the 3D Fractal

by Tom Saunter on 01. Jul, 2010 in Technology, design

This post is about one of the really cool things that happens when maths I don’t understand and technologies I don’t understand get together to make something awesome. Let us begin:

A typical fractal, made using the Mandelbrot set.


A fractal is a conceptual object that reveals further details about its shape ad infinitum, upon ever-closer inspection of it’s fabric. Think of the trunk of a tree sprouting branches, which in turn split off into smaller branches, which themselves yield twigs etc and you won’t go far wrong. In fact, fractals typically look like this thing to the right.

These infinitely complex shapes are ‘created’ by instructing graphics software to render the result of a simple mathematics formula. Until now, the result has been a 2D image – there’s no depth, shadow, perspective, or light sourcing. It is a truly abstract mathematical shape.

But since your home computer became powerful enough to do proper image rendering stuff, home hobbyists have begun to innovate on these formulae. For the first time, three dimensional fractals are able to be created with relative ease.

I can’t go into the maths, because you know, I’m not a total geek, but I do want to show you how beautiful some of these shapes are. Let’s run through some examples:


This is what you get by multiplying phi and theta by two.


More like a classic fractal with 0.5*pi to theta and 1*pi to phi.


This time multiplying angle phi by two, but not theta.




But we’re still looking at these things from outside. The really cool bit is when you start to zoom in. So let’s look at some of the high quality renders from the archives of Daniel White at his highly eclectic Skytopia, where I first learned of this phenomenon.

Make sure you click around on some of these thumbnails, yeah?!

If you’re anything like me, you’d be pretty excited at the idea of being able to create both beauty and complexity from something as simple as a few lines of code, and to then be able to explore your creation from every angle.

Then again, if you’re anything like me, you’d feel a bit frustrated that you’ll probably never be able to make something that awesome yourself. So let’s marvel at the wonder of Daniel’s creation as he takes us deep ‘Into the Heart of the Mandelbulb’.

Your comments, please!

Into the Heart of the Mandelbulb

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