I spent a little of this morning watching the iLife ’08 guided tour video and when I noticed the new “skimming” feature of iPhoto and iMovie I couldn’t help but feel like I’d seen it somewhere before. Then I realised that I had seen the style sheet genius Stu Nicholls use exactly this effect for pure CSS flick-book style animations at least two years ago. I never really found an occasion to use the technique myself but it seems to work well in the iLife examples I’ve seen.
Monthly Archive for August, 2007
I set off on the train a little after 7am this morning from Edinburgh for the opening of the new Glasgow Apple store. The queue started at 10pm the night before and was a couple of switch-backs long when I arrived. The idea of queuing for this seemed to bemuse passers-by and denizens of the Starbucks opposite (which was doing a roaring trade).
Continue reading ‘Cult of Apple’
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
- Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of The Future
Computer graphics are intimately linked with mathematics. I studied a little graph theory and path analysis algorithms as a part of my university degree but never really implemented anything of note. Unlike the two links that caught my eye recently.
A couple of weeks ago the BBC ran a story on repairing images that may be damaged, incomplete or otherwise contain unwanted elements. I thought that was cool enough until I was shown a YouTube video demonstration of content-aware scaling and resizing.
I’m still waiting for the “pan, zoom, rotate” functionality from the movie Blade Runner. Actually, we might not be too far away. (There are some fairly weighty concepts involved in dual photography but make sure that you watch the video to the end for an example of what can be achieved.)
Take two of the biggest things around at the moment – at least in terms of column inches. Put them together and what do you get? The Facebook iPhone portal. Clean, uncluttered, funky transitions and as far as I can make out, advert free (although how long that stays remains to be seen).
Thanks to Mike Coulter’s status update, I know I’m not the only one to be playing around with it while I patiently wait for the UK/Europe launch of the Apple communication device.
As an aside, I was also interested to come across Cityware’s Bluetooth Facebook application that tries to tie-up your online and real-world networks. Something to maybe play around with and keep an eye on, if only to satisfy my curiosity as installation isn’t exactly what you’d call straightforward! Here’s another take on the experiment from the BBC.
One of my major pet peeves is the airport baggage reclaim scrum. For some reason the British seem to have a reputation for good queuing etiquette. You only have to observe a line standing perpendicular to the pavement at a cash machine or sandwich shop at lunchtime up-and-down the country to notice that the wisdom of crowds concept doesn’t always ring true.
People at airports who have been separated from their possessions for a couple of hours seem to behave like idiots. Maybe it’s the anxiety of leaving their property to the ineptitude of the airlines. Regardless, if everyone just took a few steps back and only approached the carousel when they have actually seen their bag, grab it and then move back everything would be far easier. To those people who were crowding around and were in my way at Edinburgh airport last night, I apologise for my little outburst.
Maybe some kind of yellow box junction painted three feet around the edges of the conveyer belt would do the trick.
After Apple announced the new iMacs and keyboards yesterday
we noticed something in the office. Doesn’t the Mighty Mouse look a little out of place with all of that aluminium everywhere else?
After a phone call to Apple to check on his order status, my colleague confirmed what we’d suspected. There are newly designed mouses on the way – expected in about a month from now. What is unclear is whether or not they will be the latest product to use the currently fashionable multi-touch technology.
The product designers at Cupertino have been busy. The nice illusion of a smaller “chin” on the iMac bears the hallmarks of Jonny Ive’s attention to detail. They’ve even made the super-slim keyboards visually stunning (despite messing around with the function and command keys).
Well, league wise, at least it is in Scotland. The Charity Shield (I still can’t get used to calling it the “Community Shield”) is over and we’re only a few days away from the kick-off in the English Premiership.
The Summer dearth of football hasn’t actually been all as bad as I had first feared it would be. This season I have more than Liverpool and a fantasy league team to consider – I’ve just bought a football team.
To be more accurate, I’ve actually only purchased a membership of the MyFootballClub Trust that is currently in talks with four clubs (one of which is rumoured to be the mighty Shaymen themselves – Halifax Town, my hometown team).
Now I have my proper footballers injury I can’t help but notice the difference in treatment received by Beckham and Rooney. I can go without the psychic attentions of Uri Geller and the tabloid-that-shall-not-be-named (suffice to say I’m a Liverpool fan) or an oxygen tent but at the very least I was expecting a cast (plaster or inflatable), crutches or some painkillers. What did I get? Tubigrip.
Also, the bus I was on was involved in a traffic accident on the way back from the fracture clinic. I anxiously await the third installment of misfortune.
