Wonders of 'Wonders of the universe'

I watched 'Wonders of the universe' on BBC2 yesterday, presented by professor Brian Cox, and enjoyed it immensely. Not only was it a joy to view, with some outstandingly beautiful landscapes, especially of glaciers and breathtaking skies, but it was so thought-provoking, covering as it did so many deep and meaningful questions about the progress of time. We seem to be enjoying almost a renaissance of science programmes lately (long may it continue!), and this one especially covered many rarely discussed questions about the 'arrow of time', entropy (explained so well), and the future not just of our planet but of the whole universe. The scope of the whole episode was so huge, and when it began I wondered whether it was too big and might become unmanageable and unfocused, but the more the episode progressed the more ideas were clearly explained, and at the end I was left with a feeling of awe, my brain buzzing with questions (how does the rather bleak far future of our universe relate to ideas such as multiple universes?, etc.)

Anyway, if you haven't seen it and are interested in 'big' questions, I would really recommend it - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zdhtg for more information, and the programme is available on the BBC iPlayer.

GroBoto - a unique 3D modelling tool

I've been playing with the demo version of GroBoto, a unique and fun 3D modelling tool which also allows you to create animations. It's a bit strange at first, and is quite different to other modelling tools, but it's fun to use and the animations feature, where you can create an animation that morphs between two or more 'bots', is very easy to use and great fun. Here are two videos I created with the demo software:

Groboto demo animation from Lib4tech on Vimeo.

GroBoto Dance from Lib4tech on Vimeo.

Learning Blender with Dr. Grordbort's raygun shootout competition

I've been meaning to re-learn Blender, the free open source 3D content creation software, for a while, especially since a new version is on its way (2.5). However, I've since got sidetracked with ZBrush, but last week I heard about Weta's 'Dr. Grordbort's raygun shootout' competition, and was really interested, since I thought this would be the perfect motivation for me to learn Blender. I followed the download instructions on the website, and after a little problem with Blender not recognising where my scripts folder was (I reinstalled Blender to the same folder rather than the AppData folder where it originally put my scripts - Vista problem?), everything worked fine and I was ready to create.

I used the empty scene option and then had a slight panic as I stared at Blender's interface - I had tried Blender ages ago, but couldn't remember much at all, apart from the strange interface. Time to get back to basics - I needed some video tutorials on using the interface, so I tried some of the tutorials on the Blender site first - the 'Education & Help' tab has a 'Getting Started' section which I found very useful. Vimeo also has some great video tutorials - try searching Groups for 'blender tutorials', and there are loads of other tutorials out there.

The more I've been practising, watching and reading tutorials, the more excited I'm becoming about this fantastic software. I think I always knew that Blender was amazing but that it also had quite a steep learning curve, but I guess anything that has so much functionality has to be quite complex. Anyway, I've started now and I'm really enjoying it.

The main thing to remember when using Blender seems to me to be to use the hot keys and, as most tutorials suggest, have one hand on your mouse and the other on the keyboard. You soon remember which keys do what and the interface starts to make more sense. The other thing that has really helped, as with learning most things, is actually having a project to work and practise your new skills on. The raygun competition has really helped me start my journey with Blender, and I've submitted my first entry to the competition, as below:



I'm doing very badly in the rankings at the moment (a flower theme for a raygun probably is not one of my best ideas!), but I'm really enjoying the competition - most of the entries are amazing and really motivate me to carry on learning Blender. I'm already working on my next submission, and no, it's not another flower..!

Happy Easter - with a ZBrush egg

I created the above image using ZBrush software from Pixologic to create the Easter egg with writing, and the petals of the 'crocus'. This is one of my first models created with ZBrush and there's lots to learn, but it really is the most amazing software, which really lives up to its description of being software for 'digital sculpting'. This is exactly what it feels like when you start using the many brushes to sculpt, move and texture what seems like clay on your screen.

As with lots of modelling software, the learning curve can be quite steep, but it doesn't seem so with ZBrush due to the interface and the fantastic free video tutorials on the 'Education' tab of the Pixologic website, which take you through the basics and more advanced topics in very clearly explained short tutorials. These tutorials are so impressive that it really made me think that we in the library world could really learn from them on how to present and structure tutorials - nice clear screencasts explaining and demonstrating a particular topic and done in short discrete episodes, so the user can learn at their own pace, try out the examples and return to them as required or continue on to the next topic.

I can't wait to continue my ZBrush journey, but in the meantime I created the above image to test it. Since it was Easter, I decided to create an Easter egg (original, I know!) and did this by using the move brush on a 3D sphere and sort of dragging the clay up and making the shape smaller towards the top. I then used the smooth brush on the shape and the standard brush to write 'Happy Easter', and then exported the resulting shape as a .obj and imported it into Daz 3D's Bryce software, which I've always really liked.

I also created part of the egg using the masking properties on my original model and when importing this into Bryce, thought how it looked a bit like a petal, and since my crocuses have just finished flowering (and I'm not quite ready to model a daffodil in ZBrush just yet), the idea for the image began to form. I did have a bit of trouble in ZBrush trying to model the whole crocus using subtools: I tried to append two more petals to an original petal, but they seemed to 'stick' to each other when I tried to move them into place (I must be doing something wrong but haven't figured it out yet!), so I arranged it in Bryce and started playing with the materials.

By the way, this is my first post for absolutely ages, for which I feel bad, but I've been so busy lately learning CSS and jQuery so I could create the design for our new library catalogue, and then I got sidetracked by ZBrush... and now the garden is starting to beckon as well...!

Happy Easter to you all!

Happy Holidays!

I've been playing with the graphical user interface to Karsten Schmidt's amazing digital identity code, created for the Victoria and Albert Museum's Decode exhibition - see http://www.vam.ac.uk/decode . Visit the Decode Google code page from the 'Recode' tab on this page for details of how to download the application.

The Decode application was developed with Processing, which of course I love using, as you can see from the other posts on this blog, but I haven't had time to explore the actual code yet (it looks very complicated) so I've just been playing with the graphical user interface to the code. This allows you to very easily create new visualizations by modifying the various parameters using sliders and option boxes, and you can also choose your own short word. I've already created two videos (at http://www.vimeo.com/8181418 and http://www.vimeo.com/8182063 ). In the spirit of this festive season, I also created the video below, using the word 'xmas'. Happy holidays to you all!

Decode recode video for Xmas from Lib4tech on Vimeo.

Tiny sketch competition on OpenProcessing

I've been busy recently creating Processing sketches under 200 characters in length to enter into the 'Tiny sketch' competition at OpenProcessing . Well, I didn't win but it was a great fun challenge creating these sketches and trying to cope with the limitations of keeping the sketch under 200 characters. I also now have a number of sketches which I can modify and perhaps expand for future sketches, and the competition even helped me try using 'P3D' for three dimensional effects for the first time.

The winner was dotlassie with 'Driving through Iceland' , an amazing sketch, and there were many other sketches which also were unbelievably great, especially considering the under 200 characters rule. I liked many of the entries by Martin Schneider , Jim Bumgardner, and dotlassie , as well as many others.

Fun with video - Picasa, YouTube, Windows Movie Maker, CamStudio, and Vimeo

I've been having some fun with video lately, and thought I'd write about my adventures. It's funny how one thing leads to another, and this particular journey began with Picasa 3 (download it for free at http://picasa.google.co.uk/), software from Google that allows you to organise, edit and share your photos/images. Picasa was on my list of things to try and I must say I was very impressed with all aspects of it, from the ease of use and great display properties to the extra features such as creating collages, slideshows, and movies, and thus we come to videos. I thought it would be fun to create a slideshow/movie of my fractal images, and, another thing on my list to try, upload it to YouTube.

After creating my YouTube account, I started exploring all the other features of YouTube like Channels, Playlists, Favourites, Subscriptions, etc. Wow, I'm ashamed to say I didn't really realise YouTube offered all this, I had registered vaguely the concept of Channels, but hadn't explored it until now! My use of YouTube has really grown lately, since it offers so many great tutorials, and in fact I do find myself searching on YouTube when trying out new software - usually someone has already made a tutorial about it. Yes, there are some not so great ones, but it doesn't take long to find lots of excellent videos on all kinds of subjects offering a great visual way of learning.

So my new YouTube Channel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/lib4tech , and I've uploaded 4 videos, 1 of the slideshow of some of my fractals, and 3 of my Processing sketches. Which brings me to CamStudio and Windows Movie Maker: I used Windows Movie Maker (you've probably already got it on your computer since it comes with Microsoft Windows, but I'm sure there are other video editing software packages available for other operating systems, probably better ones!) to add some titles and text to the Picasa-created video (I'm sure there are better video editing packages out there but hey, I'm new to all of this and haven't researched this yet, and Movie Maker did what I required), couldn't resist adding some transition effects and uploaded to YouTube.

Flush with the excitement of uploading my first video to YouTube, I wondered about what else I could usefully upload, and thought about my Processing sketches. I've embedded one of them on this blog, on the right, but the animation of most of the others just runs when you load the page - there's nothing to pause or stop it so it could get very annoying, unless it was in video format (of course, I should have programmed the animation to stop and restart by pressing a key!). But how to convert a Processing sketch easily into a video? I decided to use screen-capturing software, and decided on CamStudio (free to download at http://camstudio.org/). Again, this may not be the best solution, but it's free and does the job, and I have to say I really like CamStudio's ease of use.

So, 4 videos uploaded on YouTube, and then I thought I should also investigate Vimeo, at http://www.vimeo.com/, another video-sharing website. This site seems to have more of a community feel, with social networking-type features and again you can create channels, groups, likes, and upload videos of course. I uploaded the same Processing sketch videos on my profile page at http://www.vimeo.com/lib4tech , and they do seem slightly clearer on Vimeo, and Vimeo does seem to have less of the more, er, frivolous types of videos sometimes found on YouTube. Have a look at some of my likes, especially the absolutely amazing videos by flight404 (see Robert Hodgin's vimeo page at http://www.vimeo.com/flight404 ). These flight404 videos are just so amazing, I watched absolutely mesmerised by the screen, and the most amazing and exciting thing is that they've been made with Processing. I spent loads of time watching the videos, reading Robert's blog, and, after a bit of a break from learning Processing, I feel so much more motivated again to return and continue learning this amazing software.

Phew, bit of a long post, so here's one of my YouTube videos showing a sample of my Processing sketches:

JISC Libraries of the future video

I just watched this great 10 min. video from JISC (click below) about the 'Libraries of the future' from the great iLibrarian blog, via the Librarians Matter blog:




I couldn't agree more about the need to act now, the importance of the need to change how we do things, and especially like the positive comments about Google (we and our users all use it so why are some of us so negative about it?), and the general thread of how librarians themselves will have to change to embrace technology. I think the future of libraries could be very exciting, and if we can get excited about offering new services to our users and new ways of doing things, then our users may even follow us into the technological future...but we have to start changing now!

Microsoft Popfly will soon be no more

I was very disappointed to get an email recently informing me that the Microsoft Popfly service will soon be discontinued on August 24th 2009, and all the resources will be removed. I thought Popfly was a very interesting and easy to use tool, as I have blogged here, and I had created some very simple mashups, and even embedded one on this blog, which I've now removed.

I hadn't created anything using Popfly for a long time, but wanted to go back to it to try and create some games, a fairly new feature, and also some more mashups, especially since I had recently created a Windows Live Space and found I could embed Popfly gadgets on my Live Space page to make it more interesting.

Oh well, such is life, I guess I'll have to look again at Yahoo Pipes (at: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ ) for creating mashups, though it doesn't have any fancy display facilities like Popfly, and I did so love the revolving carousel, the page-turner display, the photosphere...sigh, thanks while it lasted anyway, Microsoft!

Windows Live Writer – post to any blog

I recently edited my Windows Live Spaces page (at: http://lib4tech.spaces.live.com/ ) to change the theme and started exploring some of the modules etc. available to add to your spaces web page, and while playing/experimenting I came across Windows Live Writer, software that allows you to post to any blog from this desktop application.  Why should you want this software?  Well, it’s free, and it allows you to more easily create blog posts with a very user-friendly interface.  I was especially impressed with the way you can very easily add images to your blog post and then add effects to those images such as tilting them, or (my favourite!) reflection effects, etc.  Adding effects and changing size etc. for images all takes place within the Windows Live Writer interface, so much easier than creating the image with an effect in image editing software before you import it into your blog, and you can see how the image looks next to the text and preview how it will look on your blog before publishing.

There are lots of plug-ins to load from the Windows Live Gallery (at: http://gallery.live.com/default.aspx?pl=8 ), and the software comes with plug-ins to insert hyperlinks, pictures, tables, maps, and videos into your blog post.  Unfortunately, you can’t seem to embed <iframe> tags into the blog post or into the HTML module on Windows Live Spaces – I tried to embed the code from one of my Processing sketches, the preview worked fine but when you save, it seems to strip the <iframe> stuff away.

Anyway, I’m impressed with Windows Live Writer – the interface contains all the usual layout features, saving drafts,  checking spelling, etc., and it even lets you post to more than one blog, so I wrote this post in it, and couldn’t resist adding an image of my spaces site, with reflection effect of course!