Every year at the Engine Group, we down tools for a day and visit each of the companies on the various floors to reacquaint ourselves with what they’ve been up to (and or ned starters, what they do). Each year is...
Latest Work
Dino
Cheating mobile step counters
Got involved in an inter-agency stepping competition using an app-based pedometer. It seemed kinda accurate but inevitably, my curiosity drifted towards trying to figure out how to automatically gain steps while...
Persistence of vision test with LEDs
Back in the 1980’s, there was a catalogue called “Innovations“. It was full of all sorts of gif gadgets and nic-nacs. I was always fascinated by a clock that looked like a metronome. As the arm moved...
The making of The Jenson Button ATM
ExperientialSantander is one of our biggest clients at WCRS and they call on us for everything from TV ads to posters… and at Christmas time, their Secret Santa(nder) event. Here’s how it works, each year...
Engine light on? Try better fuel…
The ‘engine light’ comes on on occasionally on our car (a 2001 BMW 318SE). Sometimes I fix something but curiously, sometimes it goes out on its own. Looking at the manual, you soon realise the light is a...
Box2D Javascript test
I’ve just indulged myself in some physics therapy. I *FINALLY* managed to get a few hours to play with the JavaScript port of the infamous Box2D.js physics library. Not fantastically exciting, but at least...
HTML5 Canvas maze maker
I recently created a kids activity pack that required a massive maze. I’ve had some maze creating code rattling around my from the Flash days so decided to throw it down in JS and HTML5 Canvas. I used this code to...
GoPro commute Feb 2014
Feb has been a relatively uneventful month of commuting on the wet and windy streets of London but still managed to catch a few random things along the way. Hope the 2 people on the floor being attended to by ambulances...
Go go GoPro! Jan 2014
Few random moments captured on camera commuting from East Finchley to Old Street. All taken during 3 weeks in Jan 2014. For the record… Yes, I stop at ALL red lights… wear a helmet… also ride 2...
Guide to replacing a BMW E46 4 cylinder pre-cat sensor
Did a bunch of searching online for this when mine broke and couldn’t really find anything that related to the 4 cylinder E46 BMWs. Got a good steer from the good folk over at Bimmerforums so thought I’d...
Xbox 360 RROD reflowing – doesn’t always work
I love broken stuff. It gives you an excuse to try and fix something. If you succeed, you’re awesome. If you fail, it was broken anyway, right? Base in point… my Xbox 360 has been having the infamous Red...
Kitchen Science – cabbage pH indicator
This one’s a favourite in our house. Any time we have red cabbage, we keep the ‘juice’ and use it to test wether things are acid or alkaline, often with some surprises. Certainly makes for a good...
HTML5 tree generator
Always wanted to write a tree generator and decided to have a go with HTML5 and canvas. Have a look here. Should work on mobile and desktop. Took about 2 hours from start to finish, and as I’ve realised...
Cookie Clicker – iPhone ‘cheat’
[youtuber youtube=’;] I like my cheats a bit old-skool so came up with this way of getting up to 50 clicks per second using a small solenoid to move your finger for you! Lazy? Yes. Cunning? Yes. Practical? No, not...
LifeHack: How to fix your TV remote buttons…
We bought a Sony LCD tv a while back and over the years, some of the buttons on the remote started to become unresponsive and vague. Mainly the volume buttons. You had to press them harder and longer to get any response...
Olympic Stadium seat/row guide, sort of…
I posted an article about visiting the 2012 Olympic Stadium and detailed the top 10 ‘things’ I found during my visit. Some good, some not so good. One comment asked about seat allocation and after a few...
FatFonts – Fonts just got geeky
It’s not that often I get really excited about a font. I get excited, just not really excited. But FatFonts is really quite exciting. FatFonts is a graphical technique conceived and developed by Miguel...
London Olympic Stadium opening – my first impressions
I’m one of those people that didn’t get any Olympic tickets at each round but was determined to allow my kids the ‘memory’ of actually being there at some point. So I managed to bag 4 tickets to...
Colour mapping Kinect data in 3D
[youtube][/youtube] Quick update on my Processing and Kinect journey. This time it’s mapping the colour information from the on-board RGB camera to the infrared depth data. The OpenKinect libraries come with a few...
Huston, we have Kinect data…
Earlier today I saw “Unnamed Soundsculpture” by Daniel Franke, a really evocative and quite strange video that combined Kinect data, live dance and Processing. So that got me thinking I should have a go...
Experimenting with Processing
So, what to do with a few hours spare? Learn Processing of course! Processing is an open source programming language that makes it relatively easy to make pretty things. The language itself is almost identical to...
Static flow of water – explained
[youtube][/youtube] A few friends have asked me for an explanation of what’s going on in the video above as it seems pretty weird. It’s actually pretty simple… The camera records at 24 frames every...
A brief guide to frictionless sharing
So the anecdote goes, if you drop a frog into a pan of hot water, it will jump out. Sit a frog in a pan of cold water and slowly increase the heat, it will be unaware of the subtle temperature rise and eventually meet a...
The 6th Screen – the future of advertising IS your head
I vividly remember a Wired Magazine article in 2002. It sparked a million thoughts in my mind and still does to this day. It was about a guy called Jens who suffered two freak accidents and lost the sight in both eyes...
The 12 fun facts of Christmas – Noise Inc style
Before I forget, thought I’d share the Xmas Infographic I put together for Noise Inc. Informative AND festive, you can’t go wrong there!
12 tips on how to manage a creative
A good friend of mine has joined a small but exciting business and has found himself in the position of managing a new, fresh-faced and enthusiastic designer. He wanted a few pointers to be a good mentor and keep them...
Just found my first 3D engine…
My last post reminded me of the dark days of Macromedia Director. In 1999 (yes, they had the internet then), a new version of Director introduced ‘quads’, which were like deformed squares. I figured I could...
My first Google Adsense cheque… to a good cause.
A few years back, I posted a video onto YouTube showing the difference between the various exhausts I owned for my Ducati. Fairly basic stuff and only of interest to a few. Surprisingly, it has just passed 211k views...
Logo trends 2011 report
I find logos fascinating. There, said it. My dissertation for my degree was the grand sounding “The Science of Semiotics” and examined what made a symbol have meaning, or more importantly, what made some...
The school of gaming for kids. The start…
This is just a quick post but it only scratches the surface of my interest in this subject. In a nutshell, I was never very good at maths at school. I liked what it did, just couldn’t really get my head around...