Alias

So if you’re reading this, you may be aware that I’ve been having various ongoing problems with this site being habitually hacked by dickheads. Having shouted at my ISP very very loudly, and finally saying “JUST FIX IT! I DON’T CARE HOW MUCH IT COSTS!” I am reasonably sure the site is now malware free.

However, if you know otherwise, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know!

Stopbadware.org are a bit difficult to get answers out of, and although I approve of their basic mission, the way they treat site owners leaves a lot to be desired. You don’t get any warning that your site’s been hacked, they just add you to The List Of Evil and that’s the end of it. You are then reliant on well wishers pointing out to you that your site is suddenly coming up with a BIG MASSIVE RED WARNING saying that you are EVIL. You then have to go through a very complex and convoluted process of proving you are In Fact Not Evil with Google webmaster tools, and yadda yadda yadda it’s basically a total pain in the arse.

All to sell penis enlargement pills. The dirty feckers.

Anyway, if you have any bright ideas as to how I can best prevent this happening again, (my suspicion is that it was a wordpress vulnerability that was originally exploited so I’ve been keeping an eye on that side of things) – I’m all ears.

I’ve been training for the past nine months with the intention of entering the Rooney’s Judgement Day white collar boxing tournament, after my friend and former colleague Ben Hammersley entered last year. It’s gonna be pretty awesome, I think!

I’m making training videos on a bi-weekly basis, here’s the latest one…

So I was in the general area of the Apple Store today and thought I’d go down and check out this new iPad contraption that everyone’s been raving about.

It was a kind of interesting event, there was a big queue outside for people who’d made iPad preorders, and there was a slightly wierd setup where they had all the iPad customers queue up outside and as each one came in, they were applauded by a group of apple staff. I asked what they were cheering for and I was told they were giving everybody a warm welcome. Fair enough, I thought. Then I had an idea – why not get a video of one of the apple store guys demoing the iPad? That would definitely get me some youtube views, right?

So I asked one of the guys in blue shirts if it was OK to film, and he said sure, go ahead. Five minutes later another one came up and said it wasn’t OK to film, but I said I’d been given permission so he said I could film, but not film any employees. I asked if I could get a few shots of someone demoing the iPad and he said to speak to marketing, which I did, and as I was waiting I figured it would be OK to shoot some general wide shots of the store.

Apparently not.

After about a minute, I was physically grabbed by two (very large) apple security guards and unceremoniously thrown out into the street, much to the surprise and confusion of the excited crowd on the outside. As I was dragged out I shouted “All I did was ask a few questions and take some pictures! Is this what Steve wants?”

So anyway, the iPad:

• Doesn’t run Photoshop (or Flash, obviously because it’s the WORST THING IN THE WORLD, apparently)
• Doesn’t run Excel or Powerpoint
• The keyboard is a bit crap compared to a proper physical one: it doesn’t really make proper use of the screen real estate that it’s got, but seems like just an enlarged iPhone keyboard. You have to toggle between a number of different keyboards, for, say, punctuation or numbers, even though there’s easily enough space for another row of keys.
• The 3G one which takes a SIM is only for data, so you can’t actually use it as a phone, which surprised me.
• Vimeo seems to work ok, which is good.
• The page flip effect only works in landscape mode. Not sure if you can turn it off.

All in all, it’s a decent little novelty device, and I’d be considering getting one to use as a digital photo frame or something if

and

Oh well. I’m sure Steve will find it in his heart to forgive me.

Eventually.

Ric Carvalho and I made this for Kinetica Art Fair 2010.

It’s an interactive urinal.

To my knowledge, it’s the first working urine-drive user interface to date. Thanks to Chris O’Shea for discovering prior art.

Check it out.

In November 2008, I worked with Moving Brands to create an animated brand mark for global media and marketing services company MindShare Worldwide.

The work involved creating various different animated versions of the brand mark created by Moving Brands, for deployment across various media. I also produced a screensaver which showcases the new branding.

In september 2009, Albion London approached me to create a series of generative artworks for their client, Atomico Ventures.

The brief was to create a generative system which would take data from a client project (such as company share price, number subscribers, temperature in office – anything they could think to provide, really) and create an artwork which would contain a visual representation of that data.

Working with their design team, I created four different pieces, which take arbitrary feed data and incorporate it into a moving artwork. Additionally, each user can select which data/artwork combination they see by using the control panel on the top right.