I gave it very limited testing so sorry if it looks completely screwy for anyone (and sorry to my girlfriend who said that it nearly broke her pc…), maybe if you leave a comment here I’ll have a look, but it’s very basic, so I make no promises that I can fix it!

It’s actually quite a messy script compared to Seb’s who was showing off computer generated art with just one line of code in a Commodore 64 emulator! From the top of my head the code was something like this:

10 PRINT(205+RANDOM(1)); : GOTO 10

I guess if you know anything about programming for a Commodore 64 then you’ll know how to fix any mistakes I’ve made, but if you don’t then hopefully you get the idea of how it works. If I’m correct then the character code for \ is 205 and / is 206, so it’s just randomly choosing one of those to print and doing it forever.

My code is uglier and has another section just to style it properly. Here’s the javascript:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
(function printLoop() {
setTimeout(function() {
document.getElementById(“console”).innerHTML += String.fromCharCode(47 + (45*(Math.round(Math.random()))));
window.scrollTo(0,document.body.scrollHeight);
printLoop();
},5);
})();
</script>

Here I’ve got a function instead of a go to and the function simply registers another function to be called in 5ms which calls the parent function, causing the loop. The actual printing just appends a character either 47 or 92 for \ and / to a div with id “console” which is defined after the script block as:

<div id=”console” style=”white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;font-size: 40px; line-height: 29px;font-family:courier; letter-spacing: -10px; font-weight: bold;”></div>

The style seems to make it pretty similar to a console output for the few browsers I tried it on. The word wrapping isn’t great outside of Chrome, but I’m sure it’s possible to improve it with effort.

So yeah, that’s how to do slash art that’s one line on a Commodore 64 emulator in nearly a dozen html/javascript lines!

The title of this piece is from a talk given by a founder of professional social networking site Viadeo in which he mentioned that they were given a little boost against their major competitors LinkedIn because people with French as their mother-tongue find it hard to pronounce their name. Now I don’t know that many french people and the guy is from a competitor company so he could be embellishing this a bit, but I quite liked that subtle difference. Read on for more thoughts from Thinking Digital.

Networking

As I said, this was my first proper conference so I was also new to this Networking business. I had a little bit of a head-start knowing Tommy Jackson, the official photographer for the event, and Chris Stainthorpe who both introduced me to quite a few people. Hopefully I didn’t annoy too many of them by loitering around and asking stupid questions! I certainly enjoyed speaking to people doing the same sort of work as me now that I’m the only real programmer left at work.

Dancing Robots and Mind Control Headsets

There was some pretty amazing technology shown off at the conference. Heather Knight brought her dancing/comedian robot Data along to showcase her work in AI/Robotics along with some of the art related stuff she’s done (Including this Rube Goldberg machine for OK Go’s music video which can be seen here!). Tan Le brought along a headset from her company Emotiv which cheaply and easily tracks brain waves. They’ve got some really good uses for it already and we had a demo of how software can learn brain wave patterns for the different actions people take. They’ve also hooked it up to a real car that can be driven via the headset as well as a wheelchair.

So off to google and Stack Overflow I go, apparently this a very frequently brought up question and as such there’s a solution: flip the view. However, this has rather unfortunate consequences for the poor developer (me!) and an awful lot of the mailing lists and posts I’ve read on the subject seem to suggest that we have to man up and get on with it. I find this rather odd, because the solution I’ve come up with is stupidly simple and I cannot be the only one to figure it out. Read on for an example of the problem and my solution.

Disclaimer: I’m using Leopard on a mac mini, Xcode & Interface Builder versions 3.1.2. As these are the only versions I’ve used I cannot point out any differences you may encounter.

1) Let’s start off with the initial problem. Create a new Application Project in Xcode. Load up the MainMenu nib/xib in Interface Builder.

2) Double click the Window to open it up. Drag an NSScrollView onto it and stretch it to fit the window. Now select the NSView inside the NSScrollView. Change the width and height to be 100 pixels greater than the window’s values. Now place 4 labels in the NSView. Drag each label to a corner and name them “Top Left”, “Top Right”, “Bottom Left”, “Bottom Right” to match their location.

3) Run the Xcode project. The window will appear as below:

As you can see, it’s loaded the view pinned to the bottom-left corner.

4) Now for the solution to the first problem: Go into Xcode and create a new objective-c file, I’ve called mine FlippedView. Make it a subclass of NSView. Put this code into the .m file:

-(BOOL)isFlipped {

return YES;

}

5) Now in Interface Builder select the NSView inside the NSScrollView and go to the Identity Inspector. In the Class box select your new NSView subclass. Now run the Xcode Project. You’ll get this:

We’re at the top-left of the NSScrollView, but we’ve flipped everything inside it top-to-bottom. Not so good.

6) Now we have two choices. a) we move our labels around in Interface Builder so that it appears in the right place (and any images we use still get flipped). Or b) Fix it. I prefer the latter, so let’s do that.

7) Select all of your labels (in the window, not the component list) and go to Layout -> Embed Objects In ->Custom View. A new NSView should be inserted into your NSView subclass and all of the labels will be inside the new NSView. Resize the new NSView to fit the NSView subclass and voila:

And for good measure, here’s the final list of components for the nib/xib:

You can read the full article and see the posters on Joe’s website here: http://joealterio.com/2010/07/get-physical/

This is the Earth/Moon one. The top half is visible when the lights are on, the other half when they’re off.

Recently (Activision-)Blizzard has updated the Battle.net service. Part of this update is the RealId feature. RealId is supposed to be an all encompassing profile for all games linked with battle.net (Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo) allowing players to read and broadcast messages amongst their friends. Seems fairly innocent enough, need a 10th player for a WoW raid, grab someone from their Diablo III game, it’s basically Facebook for games (That’s pretty much what they’re aiming for). The implementation is contentious though, the amount of information shared about exactly what you’re doing and who you are friends with is rather over the top and there are no granular controls to change this. This really isn’t a huge problem though – for the most part, people will only become friends with people they trust, alternatively they don’t have to use it at all since it’s voluntary and there are simple alternatives – However, the latest advancement of the RealId programme is rather a step too far. Here’s a snippet from a press release yesterday:

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

A couple of quick things about the WoW forums: There’s nothing forcing you to post on there (there are thousands of other sites you can discuss the game on) but it’s widely read, contains very useful guides contributed by the community and allows communication with Blizzard themselves. From late July, every post anyone makes will be under the account holders name. This is Bad. Bad bad bad. Here’s why:

• Diminishment of the community – This is the overall consequence of the change. For the reasons below, many people will stop posting, be they trolls or people who genuinely contribute. Lower posts offer less opportunity to join in, lower amounts of content means less reason to go there in the first place. For all their faults, trolls make discussions. They may be ultimately pointless, but they can often be amusing.
• People won’t post because of the social stigma – If you work freelance, apply for a job, have curious/drunk friends you will at some point be googled for. You may have locked down your Facebook profile so that your mother cannot see those photos of you feigning indecent acts with a stuffed tiger but they can still see your responses to “If you could have one WoW ability in real life, what would it be?” and they will not be impressed by your answer of “Stealth, so I could rob banks and see in girls showers lol”.
• People won’t post because of fear of backlash – If you ask an innocent question on the forums you can still be lambasted by others who see your inexperience as stupidity. By revealing your real name you can open yourself up to a whole new level of abuse, spammed Facebook profiles, blogs. If you are female I am sure you’re probably aware of the horrors revealing your gender to a load of gamers can lead to. If you have an eastern European (Where are they all coming from…?) name you may be vilified on British servers. If you are famous you risk being hounded or your opinions of the usefulness of Glyph of Disease being discussed in the Daily Mail. If you have a unique name then you can start to be tracked down in real life. If you don’t have a unique name…
• Others can suffer for your retarded nature – You may be called Galileo Galilei, there may be only two people with that name on the planet, you and some science guy, but he’s just been placed under house arrest because you argued that the Earth isn’t the centre of the universe on the WoW forums. In slightly less veiled explanation, many people (read legal professionals) keep immaculate Internet profiles in order to be seen as reputable and professional, this can be undone by some 15 year old with the same name having a flame war with some 44 year old on the Tanking forum. The same thing applies if you’re a kid and using an account in your parents name.
• Legal issues – This one isn’t that important (unless you’re Blizzards legal team) but I’m pretty sure there are legal issues with children revealing their full name. I know a few european countries take the issue of privacy very seriously so Blizzard could be walking into a minefield here.
• What does it precede? – If they can get away with this, what comes next? The Armory displaying your full name, your character sheet in game? In the same way Facebook pushed more and more of it’s customers information into the public domain there has to be a stopping point. I say that it should be stopped before it gets this far.

A quick mention of the main reason Blizzard is doing this, with the aid of Penny Arcade:

So the idea is that by revealing full names, people are less likely to make an idiot of themselves. While this is true, there are alternatives to making us all suffer in order to cut down on the idiots. Agressive moderation of the forums (See Elitist Jerks, but not Elitist Jerks, cos that just makes people too scared to post) combined with tougher punishments (ban them from the game for a week, not just the forums) sets a tone that the forums are not a place to be an idiot. The higher the consequences, the lower the number that will try to push the rules.

I don’t agree with “Just don’t post”. I think that we should be encouraged to contribute and become part of the community and the same is true for any community. I laugh at John Gabriel’s comic theory the same as most people, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. A normal person plus anonymity and an audience of like-minded people can lead to an amazing transformation for the better, free of backlash because of their name or origin and a few mouse clicks away from disconnection should they feel uncomfortable. Some may choose to reveal their identities and take the plaudits in the limelight, for others, anonymity lets them continue their work carefree and the world is a better place for it.

Final Note – I’m aware of the irony of complaining about the social stigma of playing WoW on a public blog under my real name. I also very rarely post on the official forums anyway, I just think this is a very, very bad move.

As for the music, I’ve compiled a little spotify playlist from the bands I managed to see albeit short and uncomprehensive. It can be viewed/listened to here: Glasto

A few highlights:

• Thom Yorke & Johnny Greenwood’s special guests slot on the Park stage, Friday – I think the initial rumours for this slot were The Strokes although I heard one whisper earlier in the morning of Thom Yorke. We decided we weren’t missing anyone important regardless of who it turned out to be so wandered up to the Park after food (and a French covers band). A stop halfway to visit the little boys hole over a cesspit was rudely interupted by Tommy upon finding out from a friend (my former student union president and recent tory party candidate) that it was in fact Thom and Johnny. The rumour had certainly spread enough to have a sizeable crowd already at the Park by the time we’d arrived and we managed to go around the outside to the south side of the stage which was slightly less packed (A trick to be repeated the following evening for Biffy Clyro). I’ll admit I’m not terribly familiar with Thom’s solo stuff but recognised a couple of the songs, the atmosphere itselfs pretty entertaining. The Radiohead stuff was great though and whilst everyone else wanted a repeat of Karma Police’s epic ending from 2003 I was ecstatic to hear Street Spirit, my favourite song for quite some time now.
• Frank Turner at Strummerville, Friday – I managed to see Frank three times over the weekend. The first was a rather packed showing at The Queen’s Head which in true indie form was made better by being in the minority of people in the crowd who knew ‘The Ballad Of Me And My Friends’. The second gig, at Strummerville, was in the early hours of Saturday morning, tucked away in the middle of Shangri-La and the Unfair Ground. It was strangely heartening to sit next to a huge campfire and listen to him very drunkenly belt out his earlier songs, although he didn’t give in to my request for Million Dead acoustics
• The Flaming Lips headling The Other Stage, Friday – I don’t know an awful lot of Flaming Lips songs (despite my housemates obsession) and indeed this highlight was more about the spectacle of the show rather than the songs themselves. Having chosen to stick with Broken Bells for a little while before heading down, this was viewed from a bit further back than the sound stage. I imagine the crowd would have been amazing. The sound really was amazing, as was Wayne Coynes on-stage banter.

One last thing

Whilst I saw dozens of opinions afterwards praising The National’s set on Saturday, it kind of passed over me. Partly because I’ve only recently gotten into them and partly because I was already struggling with back pain. They are a good consequence of Glastonbury though in that it made me listen to them a lot more and I do appreciate them moreso now. Similar can be said for Frightened Rabbit who I watched on the Sunday.

“Ada don’t talk about reasons why you don’t want to talk about reasons why you don’t wanna talk.”