IDAT 101: Blog review day

Today, in IDAT, we look into each others blogs. So far, a particular blog (which of course I won't name as he'll probably start putting something on soonish, in fact he is now doing it as we speak!) hasn't got anything on, not even a single thing (despite that he put a disclaimer as a build up to his blog, then it disappointingly resulted in an empty space)! Oh well, c'est la vie!

IDAT 101: Looking into technology for our strategy

In addition to our chosen space (in a club environment), I've looked into more technologies for our strategy, which will boost the scenario a bit more. These technologies include:


The Tenori-on: http://tenori-on.yamaha-europe.com/uk
Korg KAOSS PAD: http://www.korg.co.uk/products/dance_dj/kp3/dj_kp3.asp
DMX512 (the industry standard for lighting in stages and discotheques): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMX512
And ambient lighting, in which we are still exploring.


There's more to come, so stay tuned!

IDAT 106: The weird and wonderful world of RSS

Today, we have found many interesting, weird and unusual RSS feeds. I have found one about beer and fail images (you know, those ones that illustrate failure in unusual circumstances and funny stuff), which I didn't know they actually existed!

Back to the Mac: Apple's big day

Today, Apple will be announcing something big in the Mac world. Are we going to see iOS integration in the Mac OS X? Are we going to see a smaller MacBook Air? Or are we also going to be seeing a new iLife and iWork? Who knows, it's going to half an hour until Steve Jobs reveals something big, but more positive than the cutbacks our Prime Minister announced, and even bigger than that. Let's wait and see...

IDAT 101, IDAT 108 & SOFT 131: Interesting stuff and a snake

Yesterday's and todays lectures brought many interesting things to my mind; more stuff about spaces and a cube that recognises your voice and adjusts accordingly (imagine saying 'antidisestablishmentarianism' into the cube?). Then there was more about the history of photo and video (even in history, someone can prove that high-quality images equivalent to what we can get now was actually possible back in the day) and then more about JavaScript and guess what? A snake came along to the lecture, and at first I didn't see the link about what we were learning until it was explored: literature about keeping snakes is in Fahrenheit because it came from our friends the other side of the pond, so therefore, a converter must be created in order to then change the units to Celsius, which we, like the most of the world, use.

Return of the Mac (no, not that Mark Morrison song, I meant the Apple Macintosh!): A Lion's share of good news?

Wednesday the 20th (at 18:00 BST, just after IDAT 106) will see Apple focusing more on the Mac than most of the iOS stuff they've been churning out recently. The event will most likely reveal the next step of Mac OS X, which most sources have it that this upcoming version will probably have another big cat name: Lion. Other rumours say that Apple is preparing the first major revision of the MacBook Air, which is likely to have a smaller version that can take on existing Linux/Windows netbooks, so does it look like time that Apple could finally enter the netbook arena with Mac OS X (instead of third party hacked OSX86 offerings)? Probably, considering the most convincing of pictures of a MacBook Air chassis with the batteries exposed (and oh no, what happened to the big SSD? Looks like they've replaced it with something smaller, but nonetheless probably still has a reasonably-high capacity flash memory storage).

EDIT: Since the Apple event yesterday (on Wednesday the 20th) the majority of the rumours are true, there is an 11.6" MacBook Air and flash memory and also there's now Lion, with iOS-style features and now an App Store for that!

IDAT 101, IDAT 102, IDAT 107, IDAT 108, SOFT 131, IDAT 106 and sailing

Last week, we was busy at work on many things ready for more stuff to come: IDAT 102 saw us looking more into CSS, IDAT 101 saw us starting to think about public spaces (our group's example was again the nightclub scenario), IDAT 108's lecture turned into a quiz about computer history and the seminar saw another debate; this time it was about our favourite social network, Facebook (all of us, like myself, were pretty much pro, so an anti-argument was very difficult), whilst IDAT 106 was different in the other weeks that the Y2s weren't there, so instead we looked more into the use of Processing and a prosumer HDV camera until the fire alarm saw us evacuating the Babbage building (our domain for most of the time) and disrupting the session for more than 20 minutes, until we finally returned. IDAT 107 was cancelled last week, but we will be doing more with Adobe Illustrator in the coming weeks until we move onto the next bit. SOFT 131's tutorial started last week to a hot room in the Smeaton Building when we then started to explore the world of NetBeans and PHP on Windows Server 2003 workstations, courtesy of Lord Sugar's Viglen (like most of the Windows PCs in the University are). This weekend, I went sailing in Roadford Lake with the Sailing and Powerboat Club (Sailpower) and it was such a good experience, until the tent got damp! That's all folks, more will be coming soon!

IDAT 108: Most interesting debate ever? You be the judge

Today's seminar was interesting; we were debating about the morality of guns and whether or not it's either the person or the gun that does the killing. Despite today straying a bit off topic (given that it was supposed to be DAT and not a pro/anti-weapons forum), I came up with interesting points during the debate. Next week will see us starting to get ready for the big type (in other words, the essay!) which will bring back the golden days of writing excellent essays that managed to get me such a high grade in English back in secondary school. There's no doubt that later in the day in IDAT 107 we will get busy with my favourite part of Adobe's wonderful Creative Suite series, Illustrator! That's all for now folks!

IDAT 101, IDAT 108, SOFT 131 and IDAT 106: the 411 on everything!

As the week progresses on, I have some more news for you:

IDAT 101 saw us learn more about the industry and about the usage of spaces for projects (in our case, interactive disco in the form of a sequencer pad in a club environment), whilst IDAT 108 saw us learn more about what a computer was before the ones we know today existed (it was in fact a person, believe it or not!). SOFT 131 featured more about HTML, holidays in Kenya and India and more to come in this module.

Finally, in IDAT 106, we got to play on the Wiimotes, in which thanks in part to Nintendo's uncanny (considering that they like proprietary stuff very much) decision to use Bluetooth for connectivity, we can do anything with them, even control digital art projects!

That's all folks!

IDAT 102: By no surprise, Apple is my favourite website

After a quiet weekend relaxing, I have thought of a favourite website, and by no surprise, it is Apple.com.