JRC313.com

BlipLR 1.2 released

jrc313 — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:29:51 +0000

It looks like version 1.1 of my Lightroom plugin – BlipLR doesn’t work in the full version of the newly released Lightroom 3. A bit of tinkering this morning has seen the bugs bashed and a new version of BlipLR is now available to download.

BlipLR

jrc313 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:09:55 +0000

After what feels like an age, I’ve finally got round to getting my “export to Blipfoto” plugin to a state where it’s ready to be released for public consumption … check it out!

Upgraded!

jrc313 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:36:13 +0000

That should stop my host sending me constant reminders that my WP installation is out of date. Hopefully, it’ll keep me safe from the latest WP worm too.

Processing Game

jrc313 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0000

This thing is bloody ancient. It’s an sfcave clone I put together in Processing many moons ago.

Instructions

The premise is simple:
You must avoid the relentlessly marching bars and you must not touch the floor or the ceiling. The longer you stay alive, the higher your score. Of course, the longer you last, the faster the bars will move up and down … you didn’t expect it to be that easy did you?

You can also build points by trying for bonuses:

Go through a yellow bonus field for an extra 50 points.
Go through a red bonus field for an extra 500 points.
Fly close to the floor or ceiling for as long as you can to gain extra points. Now with sparks

Press the mouse button, space bar or up arrow to thrust. Release to let gravity drop you.

Pressing ‘P’ pauses the game – press it again or click the mouse to continue.

The source code is available to download, but it was written many moons ago against the alpha release of Processing so it’s unlikely that it’ll run without some serious refactoring.

Introducing Giant Bear

jrc313 — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:07:52 +0000

Something my Brother and I have been working on recently is a price comparison site for games. As a self confessed video game addict who spends an inordinate amount of money buying games – it’s a project that is of great benefit to me.

Hopefully others will also find it to be of some use.

http://www.giantbear.co.uk

Gutted!

jrc313 — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:59:09 +0000

I dismantled my multitouch table a few months back. Absolutely gutted to have to do it, but between work and other projects I simply haven’t the time to dedicate to it.

Oh well, it was good fun playing with it and I learned a lot. The only thing I’ve got to do now is figure out what I can do with a billion IR LEDs.

24 Hours and 3 Minutes!

jrc313 — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:00:13 +0000

After happening across the P5Sunflow library for Processing, I just had to put together a sketch that used it. Since I’ve been playing with the Phys2D library recently, I figured a nice little physics simulation would be the most appropriate direction for a test sketch.

A bad day at the box factory. from jrc313 on Vimeo

As the title suggests, this little 600 frame movie took rather a long time to render. I think I need to invest in a new machine before I make any more attempts to render pointless, but beautiful movies.

You can have a look at a realtime version of the sketch over here and the source for the P5Sunflow version can be downloaded here.

Compliant Surface – FAIL!

jrc313 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:39:17 +0000

I got all excited when I removed the acrylic from it’s temporary home while the compliant surface was curing. I was all prepared to see wonderfully bright blobs as a dragged my fingers across the acrylic. All prepared to start experimenting with this exciting new interface.

Sadly, my hopes were crushed.

While the silicone layer appears ultra smooth with no air bubbles and is pretty clear (I hesitate to call it crystal clear), it still requires a lot of force during movement to set off the FTIR. I’m not entirely sure what the issue is. It could be that my inaccurate measurement of the liquid silicone and catalyst have resulted in something that is too hard or that the optical properties of my chosen silicone rubber aren’t ideal. Either way, I’m going to need to apply a new layer before I can continue. Fortunately, I’ve found a couple of distributors of the more popular silicone – Sorta Clear. Most folks seem to have pretty good results with Sorta Clear, so I’ll try it out and see what happens.

Applying a compliant surface

jrc313 — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:17:07 +0000

Got some transparent liquid silicone rubber compound last week and poured it onto the acrylic to act as a compliant surface to help the blobs show up without requiring significant amounts of force. The silicone is supposed to be cured at 23°C for 7 days, so it’s been in a box in the spare bedroom since Sunday with the heating jacked up. Had a check tonight and it’s looking very promising. The silicone layer is as smooth as silk with no air bubbles or ripples (well, none that I’ve noticed yet).

Pouring the silicone was pretty nerve wracking. I knew that the compound had to be mixed very precisely (5:1 by weight in my case) and that others had had some issues with air bubbles or their layer remaining tacky after curing. Fortunately it seems to have worked out quite well, although I won’t know for sure until I try it out on the table again.

Anywho, on with the pics …

The two part compound. The big tub on the right is the silicone rubber itself, while the small bottle on the left is the catalyst.

Weighing out the components with the only scales I could lay my hands on.

20 minutes of stirring later. Getting slightly worried about the number of air bubbles.

The spreader. Made using some of the MDF off-cuts and a piece of pine dowel. The MDF is 9mm thick compared to the acrylic’s 8mm. So, I should end up with a nice 1mm silicone layer. Underneath the spreader is a big ass sheet of cellophane to protect the dining table.

Silicone applied and ready to stashed for curing. At this point I was already chuffed with how smooth it was looking. As you can tell from the large puddle of silicone, it was pretty difficult to judge how much to apply.

Should be testing the compliant layer early next week and I’ll post an update here shortly afterwards.

Let there be light!

jrc313 — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:13:45 +0000

The next job was to add the IR LEDs, acrylic and mount the IR camera underneath. I’d already soldered a series of LEDs to some breadboard, but was having difficulty mounting them into the holes in the U rail as they weren’t all perfectly straight. So, I ended up using connector blocks instead.

The U rail is fixed in place with No More Nails, which is frighteningly strong. One side is left open for the moment so that the acrylic can be removed for access to the monitor. Once everything is ready I’ll close the gap.

Another view of the underside. Things are looking a lot busier under there now. The LEDs are all wired into a molex connector which will plug into the PSU for the machine that will be powering the table.

Here’s the first test grab of interaction with the surface. This was before I had added a visible light filter to the camera, which is why there appears to be colour in the image.

Although the blobs show up really well here, they are much less visible while dragging. Going to have to add a compliant layer to the acrylic to resolve that.