Blog

Stop Animation 2 / Time lapse

POSTED IN Blog, Everything Else November 17, 2011

So I also wanted to grab my piece of sunset. Natalie and I went up Signal Hill to have a picnic. While I spent most of the afternoon squinting through the viewfinder, Nat actually managed to enjoy a glass of wine. Manually shooting time lapses is a bit of a pain. You really do need all the gadgets if you want to have a long flowing shot without all the shake you see here. Still, some good love went into capturing this little moment.

Stop Animation 1

POSTED IN Blog, Everything Else November 17, 2011

A few months ago my friend Hernan came to visit from Spain. He’s a pro cameraman, and we spent an awesome afternoon on Kloof Nek shooting a time-lapse of one of the most amazing sunsets I have ever witnessed in Cape Town. This created a little itch, and I set about testing a few of my own little stop animation experiments. This is the first result – a version of which is currently viewable on the background of this site’s home page.

Experiencing WP3.2.1′s Full screen mode

POSTED IN Blog, IA and UX September 29, 2011

Today I am trying out WordPress’ new fullscreen mode. As a UX designer, I am always on the lookout for what the smoothest, and simplest experiences are available in today’s online applications.

There have been a few delays in me upgrading to the latest version of WP – mainly because of my hosting provider’s legacy version of MySQL. WP3.2.1 requires MySQL 5 or higher, and until recently I was running on v.4. There were instructions in the knowledge base on how to upgrade manually, but it seemed like a lot of work for something that I was sure they would need to tackle eventually. I was right.

At first galnce, it is really cool. Kinda like Ai’s writer all wrapped up in the browser. I never really thought about how much the extra buttons around you actually serve to distract you from really getting down to writing. Recently I have been feeling rather ADD when tackling many tasks, especially getting down to writing, but this clean environment really does focus your attention purely on getting your thoughts down.

I also recently upgraded to OSX Lion, and it seems to be a pervasive feature amongst todays leading software manufacturers (I’m very broadly sweeping Apple and WP under the same brush here – I’m sure there are others too) to cut back heavily on unused functionality, whilst focussing on the core user tasks. This is a good thing, and has been trumpeted over and over by UX evangelists for years now.

There are a whole slue of new and fascinating devices and interfaces entering the market at a rapid rate. Just yesterday Amazon announced their Fire tablet, with it’s own browser built on the back of Google’s Android OS. Facebook also recently announced that they will be rolling out a few major changes to their service – the biggest of these being the replacement of current profile pages to the new Timeline interface – which is going live tomorrow. Finally there is also the highly anticipated announcement of the new Apple iPhone expected next week – 3 October. It’s a crazy few weeks in Internet Land.

As we enter a space where the major internet players are increasingly competing for users’ attention (admittedly they’ve been at this for quite some time – but we’re feeling it now more than ever) the way in which we experience these products – be it a hardware device or application interface – is increasingly going to effect our immediate impressions towards that product. Being able to strip away the bloated “additional” features, and get straight to the core of what makes an application useful to the user, is what will keep us coming back for more.

I enjoyed writing this post, because nothing distracted me (except my wife arriving home halfway through writing it).

Square Pictures

POSTED IN Blog, Everything Else September 25, 2011

I felt like making something in photoshop, so I did this.

September Remember

POSTED IN Blog, Everything Else August 11, 2011

So two things are happening:
1. I’m rooting through all my old mixes and getting them up online.
2. I’m kinda dumping soundcloud for mixcloud, mainly because it lets you upload unlimited “minutes” of music for free, which is nice.

You Name It

POSTED IN Blog, Everything Else August 11, 2011

Here’s an old mix I pulled out of the archives. Groovy summer vibes!

Barely Legal in the Ukraine

POSTED IN Blog, Everything Else August 10, 2011

Here’s a mix I put together recently. It’s a little slower than usual, but groovy as hell!

Barely Legal in the Ukraine by emilbergh

A few random doodles done in Processing

POSTED IN Lab August 5, 2011

These are a few screen grabs of the first few sketches I did in Processing a while back.

Random Bubbles of Love

POSTED IN Blog, Lab April 10, 2011

This is one of my favourite sketches so far: Random bubbles popping up all over the screen. You don’t even need to do anything, you can just sit and stare. To me this is what makes Processing so appealing. Looking forward to creating more random beauty… but better!

Color changes and fades

POSTED IN Blog, Lab April 10, 2011

So two things – the WP plugin doesn’t play nicely if you try to place to sketches in one post. That means I’ll be making lots of little posts. Oh well.

And, this sketch shows some basic color fades depending on the position of the mouse, and whether the mouse is clicked. Try it. Its fun.

Processing.js installed! It’s inline bitches!

POSTED IN Blog, Lab April 10, 2011

EDIT: Although I can’t fault the processing.js WP Plugin from Keyvan, I recently changed my WP theme to one that is very JS intensive, and since then I have not been able to run pretty much any plug-ins on the site. It’s very sad, but a sacrifice I am willing to make at this stage in light of keeping things simple. So I am moving all my processing sketches over to the HTML version of processing.js. Same thing really, you’re just not viewing it inside my WP site.

I just installed this rad plugin from Keyvan Minoukadeh. It allows you to run Processing sketches rightin your WP posts. Which is super easy, and means you don’t have to deal with the lag caused by running your processing sketches through the Java engine.

Look at Limebot take off, lights flashing and all!

LIMEBOT can move!

POSTED IN Blog, Lab April 2, 2011

Fascinating isn’t it just! CHECK HIM

Limebot is live!

POSTED IN Blog, Lab March 31, 2011

Check him out here: LIMEBOT GO!

Yay! More processing adventures coming as we speak!

NYC Bike Ride

POSTED IN Everything Else February 3, 2011

(This post originally appeared on Fixed Gear Cape Town)

It’s taken me all of a month to finally get around to putting a few of my favourite pics together from the holidays, but here they are.

After some nightmare flight delays and lots and lots of snow, we finally made it to NYC in time for New years. Having seen Ian’s post go up a few days before about NYC Riders over the xmas period, I got the itch to have a ride around the city.

On 2 Jan, after having fully recovered from the NYE hangover, I ventured out in search of a bike to hire.

Staying with a friend in the Lower East Side, there were stacks of bike shops around. A friend recommended Chari & Co. on Stanton Street. Besides having loads of very desirable gear, the guys were friendly, and had me sorted in no time. I was kinda hoping to hire a fixie (which they do have), but the city streets were still a mess from the blizzards a few days before, and what with the yanks driving on the wrong side of the road, I figured it would be a bit more sensible taking a freewheel and brakes for my first ride around the island.

The snow had for the most part melted away, but a lot of streets were still quite iced up. Where there was no longer snow, there was a thick layer of caked up mud/sludge/glass/trash along the shoulder of the road (which inevitably led to me getting a puncture later in the day).

I did the round at all the big tourist sites, but highlights were most certainly the view from the Williamsburg Bridge, high-tailing it down 5th Avenue and the mirror view over the Jacky Kennedy Reservoir in Central Park. Lo-lights were the puncture and that I managed to stack it like a total fool right in front of the Flat Iron building. Staring at the building instead of the curb in front of me, I flipped over the bars. Fortunately at super slow speed, but still enough to leave me with a few good bruises. I call it NYC’s way of saying ‘hello’.

If you’re interested in seeing my whole route, you can check it out here, and use the absolutely frikkin cool 3D function to see a fly-over of the route, it’s RAD!

Enjoy the pics

Mobile test post

POSTED IN Lab November 29, 2010

I have just installed wp for iPhone. Thus will be my first test post from my phone.

Panoramas

POSTED IN Blog, Everything Else | TAGS : Pictures August 23, 2009

I’ve always enjoyed the nifty panorama setting on my camera, and these are some of my favourites.  Click on the thumbs below to see the BIG PICTURE Enjoy!

Web 3.What?

POSTED IN IA & UX, IA and UX, Web Trends July 11, 2009

What is Web3.0? It might be a little premature to start asking this question, but if we don’t start weighing up the possibilities, we’ll never know when it does actually hit us. Read More »

Repurposing Existing Technology

POSTED IN IA & UX, IA and UX, Interaction Design, User Experience, Web Trends August 6, 2008

I recently had the honour of giving a talk at the DegreeArts student graduation.  The night was a showcase of some of the most exciting young students graduating from leading design schools across London this year.

The speech was co written with our company director, Damian Kimmelman, and the main idea was to show that new ideas do not necessarily mean re-inventing the wheel: Read More »

Bridging the Digital Divide

POSTED IN Essays, IA & UX, IA and UX, User Experience, Web Trends May 5, 2008

It is estimated that in 2009, half the global population will have access to a mobile phone.  What effect will the proliferation of new technologies and access to information have on social and cultural norms in previously disadvantaged communities? Read More »

How reliant are you on a framework?

POSTED IN Essays, IA and UX, Interaction Design, User Experience, Web Trends March 21, 2008

As we move towards a world of “plug and play” devices, are the frameworks within which we are designing these devices flexible enough to allow for a radical shift in attitude, should such a shift be required in the future?  The danger of designing an entire world of self-maintained ubiquitous systems that in the end force us to accommodate their existence, as opposed to assisting our lifestyles, is a very real threat which needs to be addressed before we become caught up in such a scenario.
Read More »