David Chatting's Blog

Openfire: Plugin Developer Guide

Wed, 27 May 2009 15:46:52 BST

XEP-0166: Jingle

Wed, 27 May 2009 13:22:46 BST

Lux Delux - The best Risk game there is

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:46:39 BST

ConveyorGallery

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:17:37 BST

Welcome | Curiosity Collective

Mon, 25 May 2009 13:55:23 BST

Visual Arts Ipswich | Visual Arts Listings in and around Ipswich

Mon, 25 May 2009 13:52:42 BST

todbot blog » Blog Archive » Arduino-serial: C code to talk to Arduino

Mon, 25 May 2009 11:29:11 BST

DC Controlled Dimmer Kit Kit (K8064)

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:28:29 BST

Big Spaceship | Hope vs. Despair

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:55:35 BST

Welcome to Foulab! - foulab.org

Sun, 24 May 2009 17:29:12 BST

Xtify, Free Location Based Services for Mobile Telephones and Web Applications

Fri, 22 May 2009 11:00:40 BST

Video: Space Invaders, the carnival game - Offworld

Thu, 21 May 2009 23:37:26 BST

O2 Family Joggler

Thu, 21 May 2009 17:33:25 BST

100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter | GeekDad | Wired.com

Wed, 20 May 2009 08:54:26 BST

Make Your own Chiptunes with Free Software | GeekDad | Wired.com

Wed, 20 May 2009 08:51:46 BST

Personal Fabrication

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:58:58 BST

A model available for 'personal fabrication' via Shapeways' website

While teleportation remains firmly in the domain of science fiction, I think we are seeing the start of a significant growth in transporting three dimensional objects across our data networks. In today’s blog I’d like to think about developments in personal fabrication.

In the past few years we have seen the steady fall in the cost of 3D printers; machines able to print three dimensional objects by bonding particles of material (typically resin) together layer-by-layer until a full object is formed. For small objects the printers can be desktop devices. Last year it was pointed out that 3D Printers were as cheap as laser printers had been in 1985. In recent years these have been a useful rapid prototyping technology, but we can now envisage much wider use of people designing and making their own things.

While we await the 3D printer cheaper enough for the home consumer, a number of online services such as Shapeways and Ponoko allow people to submit designs online, to have their physical object them mailed back to them and to others sold online. Another, Thingiverse, allows designs to be shared with an open-source community.

The Reprap project is an interesting open-source project, allowing the enthusiast to created a 3D printer from cheap readily available components, that is in turn able to self-replicate 60% of its own parts.

Novices can now translate their ideas quickly into the required digital formats using applications such as Google’s SketchUp. An alternative approach is to scan an existing object. The combination of these technologies allows us to begin to think about copying physical objects across the Internet.

What does a Google for objects look like? What role is there for haptic technology and Virtual Reality to grasp and see the virtual objects, before we make them reality?

Initially these objects are somewhat superficial, rather than having functional and structural properties. However, the 3D printing techniques continue to advance allowing composites of materials, working mechanical and electronic parts. The garage is now able to fabricate the replacement engine part themselves and the consumer able to create individual market-of-one solutions to their needs.

This is the world that Neil Gershenfeld describes in his book Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop - from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. With the Fab Lab initiative Gershenfeld shows how fabrication technologies can empower communities in deprived or rural communities, to solve their own local problems.

If the personal fabricator becomes as ubiquitous as the desktop printer, the traditional models of mass production, physical distribution and storage are challenged, with one would hope positive environmental results.

Displays without Screens

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:30:44 GMT

I have previously talked about how the economics of display technologies will soon put Displays Everywhere. There I highlighted some methods for avoiding a visual hubbub by understanding the viewer’s attention. Today I would like to think about devices where screens are undesirable or impossible and alternative ways of displaying information.

Some examples of protoype ambient devices developed by BT

In recent years we have seen the emergence of ambient or glancable displays. These are typically screenless devices that change their appearance, perhaps by changing colour, to reflect a change in some interesting property; for instance the weather, stock prices or a friend’s online status. Like a wall clock, the information is available at a glance and importantly can easily be ignored when busy. Examples of these include: the Nabaztag rabbit, Ambient Devices’ Orb and our own Nurture prototype. Here information is represented using colour changing LEDs and physical actuators such as gauges and motors.

In my previous blog, Grasping a Tangible Future, I talk about further ways to present digital information physically.

In addition to visual and physical properties, sound, texture and even smell can be used to represent information. Each have different characteristics that make them more or less desirable for a specific application. Our senses can each distinguish over different ranges and degrees; drawing our attention in different ways. As Marshall McLuhan reminds us, “The Medium is the Message”. An ambient fire alarm is clearly inappropriate.

Sound, be it speech, music or environmental, is very rich way of conveying information and can be used very effectively in interface design. The swinxs console is an outdoor games system for children, using only a voice and sound effects. Apple’s new iPod shuffle announced this week, uses a voice to read back the track names and artists, without any visual displays.

Surround sound and binaural techniques allow the placement of sound in the space surrounding the user. This allows us to consider displaying information that can be moved and manipulated by a user, without a display.

I believe sound interfaces are an interesting direction, especially for mobile devices where the user’s attention is split between operating the device and their changing environment.

The use of audio and tactile interfaces, as alternatives to visual displays, is well established in access technologies for the blind and partially sighted. These include Screen Reading software and Braille displays. Recent research, such as the European Union’s ENABLED project, use a combination of haptic interfaces and audio, in this case to present a haptic city map.

While there have been advances in the synthesis of scent, it is yet to be widely adopted.

Configuration is a challenge for many screenless devices and many co-opt other local displays, for instance via a webpage interface.

As the shape of computing devices changes as they become increasingly ubiquitous and embedded into our environments, we will need to rethink the ways in which information is presented to us, if we are to avoid an overwhelming hubbub.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:15:23 GMT

By Cefn Hoile

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/curiosity-kill...

Clara 2.0 (the polite robot thereminist)

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:12:29 GMT

By Sarah Angliss

Run Rabbit Run...

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:10:45 GMT

By Sarah Angliss

A Watched Pot Never Boils

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:07:52 GMT

By David Chatting, Tom Juby, John Bowers and Chris Reason

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/watched-pot-ne...

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:04:53 GMT

By Cefn Hoile

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/curiosity-kill...

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:03:20 GMT

By Cefn Hoile

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/curiosity-kill...

A Watched Pot Never Boils

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:01:11 GMT

By David Chatting, Tom Juby, John Bowers and Chris Reason

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/watched-pot-ne...

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:52:06 GMT

By Cefn Hoile

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/curiosity-kill...

iPhore - a third way to SMS

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:49:34 GMT

By Cefn Hoile

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/iphore/

Medicine Man

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:47:22 GMT

By Alex Healing, Tom Juby and Matt Jackson

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/medicine-man/

You Cannot Have Your Cake and Eat it

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:45:31 GMT

by Angela McLellan

Owl Project

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:43:44 GMT

www.owlproject.com/

Medicine Man

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:41:48 GMT

By Alex Healing, Tom Juby and Matt Jackson

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/medicine-man/

Curiosity Collective 08 03 09

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:34:11 GMT

	Curiosity Collective 08 03 09	From: davechatting Views: 5 0 ratings
	Time: 01:07	More in Film & Animation

A Positive Pessimist Killed the Cat

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:12:52 GMT

by John Bowers

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/perverberator/

God Enjoys a Leisurely Breakfast

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:12:41 GMT

by John Bowers

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/perverberator/

Fate is Like Mustard Without Beef

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:12:32 GMT

by John Bowers

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/perverberator/

Curiosity Lasts But Nine Days

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:12:24 GMT

by John Bowers

curiositycollective.org/v2/projects/detail/perverberator/

Location, Location, Innovation!

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:37:29 GMT

Close friends: Google's Latitude service allows friends to share their location and status

In recent years GPS has been widely adopted in car navigation systems, guiding drivers to their destinations. With mobile devices using GPS, cell tower and WiFi location, a range of interesting new social applications have recently been announced beyond the navigational. In the past week Google has introduced the Latitude service, allowing friends to share their location and status. Others include Loopt and Brightkite. In today’s blog I’d like to think about services like these and social applications of location technologies.

As these new services emerge we can look back at the experiences of earlier work in this space. One playful example is that of Geocaching; a kind of treasure-hunt where people seek hidden containers or caches, at published locations, which has developed a large on-line community. Another is Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke, which allowed people to hide secrets around a city, that others may stumble upon. BT’s research project Elevate, also allows users to contribute located user-generated content for public consultation, on an urban renewal plan.

As we have seen these social applications become ever more useful as a crowd gathers around it. As it will be here, where friends introduce each other to a service. ZoneTag from Yahoo Research demonstrates the power of a network of users, to suggest descriptive tags for geotagged photographs. As there is a good deal of agreement on points for photographs, particularly around tourist spots, the chances are that someone will have taken a shot from a similar position before and the words they used to describe it will be good suggestions to tag your photo. The question is of course how a new service grows in popularity to this point.

This same technology can not only tell us about the local environment, but also allow our devices to adapt to the context in which they operate. For Nathan Eagle’s PhD thesis on Reality Mining, he equipped one hundred MIT students with mobile telephones that were aware of their location, the identity of devices around them, as well as the calls and messages made; for a period of eight months. From this Nathan could predict where a user was likely to be next and with whom, given their current location and those of their friends.

It is clear that will have to wait to see how these technologies are adopted and made sense of; addressing the evitable privacy and social issues that arise. As the mobile telephone already allows us to make far more ad hoc arrangements, “give me a call when you’re near”, I think these location services continue that trend. Arriving unprepared in a strange town becomes far less daunting, when your mobile device provides access to local hotels and restaurants, with user-contributed reviews. Will these technologies make us all more spontaneous and unplanned? Is this a good thing?

Bryce Canyon

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:14:44 GMT

From Sunset Point

Bryce Canyon

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:12:32 GMT

From Sunset Point

Bryce Canyon

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:11:28 GMT

From Sunset Point

Processing Code for MoteDaemon

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:58:11 GMT

MoteDaemon is a neat Mac OS X app that gets a Wiimote talking to Flash via a socket server, with which these guys have written Wiinstrument.

I have written some Processing (0135 beta) code to work with MoteDaemon v0.5 to get it to talk to Processing too. Download my code here. It works pretty well, but isn’t happy when the nunchuk (and I assume the joypad) are attached – think the xml gets too big to parse at once. That can be fixed.

There are several other solutions to getting a wii to talk to Processing.

Cheers,
Dave

train_clock

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 02:14:31 GMT

	train_clock train_clock shows how the "shape" of the UK changes over the day with the coming and going of trains from Ipswich. Each of the "stars" is a different town, where its size reflects the population. As time passes towns move closer as a train is about to arrive and spring back when it leaves. The hands on the outer ring display the time. When shown the rings indicate distance in time, one ring per hour from Ipswich. This sequence shows 24 hours starting and stopping at midnight, using real ...	From: davechatting Views: 710 2 ratings
	Time: 04:59	More in Film & Animation

Further Experiments with Musical Beer Bottles

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 17:22:10 GMT

	Further Experiments with Musical Beer Bottles Experiments from the Curiosity Collective in unusual ways of making sound. - read more about it at: curiositycollective.org	From: davechatting Views: 963 1 ratings
	Time: 00:35	More in Howto & Style

Somewhere between Vancouver and Toronto

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 05:22:48 BST

	Somewhere between Vancouver and Toronto Somewhere between Vancouver and Toronto	From: davechatting Views: 385 1 ratings
	Time: 00:40	More in Travel & Events

Musical Beer Bottle Experiment

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 13:52:46 BST

	Musical Beer Bottle Experiment At the Curiosity Collective (www.curiositycollective.org) we are building robot instruments - this is an experiment with a beer bottle and a fan	From: davechatting Views: 991 3 ratings
	Time: 01:24	More in Howto & Style

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams…

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:37:21 GMT

Adam Curtis’ second film in the “The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams…” was shown on BBC 2 tonight. Television at it’s best.

There’s lots I need to think about – to what extent has democracy been replaced by the free-market? How do the metrics we use to “measure” behaviour determine behaviour?

I’ve heard it said that you can see the evolution of the microprocessor through the increasing complexity of architecture it allows, for instance the work of Frank Gehry. Similarly, have our models of human behaviour been necessarily simplistic and can we expect them to improve with increasing computing power? Or is this a flawed and dangerous endeavour?

I’ll give it all some more thought…

My Blog

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 18:09:44 GMT

OK, so this looks like everything is working now. I realised that although I hadn’t got a proper blog of my own, I had been contributing to quite a few different places, including: curiosity collective, wordpress, del.icio.us, flickr and youtube. So I thought I’d build something to bring them all together and create a blog from them all.

So I’ve built an application in Java to take all these different sources (from RSS) and create a feed with all my contributions together, while tidying it all up and adding extra tags. Using XSL and JavaScript I’ve then taken the combined RSS feed and rendered it as my blog. I’ll make all the code available shortly.

Cheers,
Dave

An Evening of Curiosity

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:51:20 BST

	An Evening of Curiosity The Curiosity Collective Show, Ipswich, Sunday 6th August 2006	From: davechatting Views: 192 0 ratings
	Time: 00:52	More in Film & Animation

Mouse in a Box

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:52:01 BST

	Mouse in a Box Martin Russ' "Mouse in a Box" Martin says, "Computer mice are normally used for boring things like pointing. But this box turns a mouse into a musical instrument. It also shows you how the mouse turns movement into computer-speak - watch those two green lights as you move the mouse around." Exhibited at the Curiosity Collective Show, Ipswich, 2nd-6th August 2006	From: davechatting Views: 1607 3 ratings
	Time: 00:25	More in Film & Animation

Powerbook Puppet

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:06:39 BST

	Powerbook Puppet The Curiosity Collective's Powerbook Puppet - using Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) as a marionette controller.	From: davechatting Views: 28334 33 ratings
	Time: 00:39	More in Film & Animation

Making Recognisable Faces

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 12:00:00 BST

Chatting D J, Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition 2006 (April 2006)

The Uncanny Valley: does it exist?

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 12:00:00 BST

Brenton H, Gillies M, Ballin D and Chatting D J, HCI 2005 (September 2005)

The Uncanny Valley: does it exist and is it related to presence?

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:00:00 BST

Brenton H, Gillies M, Ballin D and Chatting D J, Presence-Connect (April 2005)

Prometheus: Facial Modelling, Tracking and Puppetry

Tue, 01 Jul 2003 12:00:00 BST

Thorne J M and Chatting D J, Vision, Video and Graphics, University of Bath, UK (July 2003)

Real-time production and delivery of 3D media

Sun, 01 Sep 2002 12:00:00 BST

Price M et al, Proc. International Broadcasting Convention, Amsterdam, Netherlands (September 2002)

Designing User Interaction for Face Tracking Applications

Sat, 01 Jun 2002 12:00:00 BST

Chatting D J and Thorne J M, DSV-IS 2002 (June 2002) Republished in, "Lecture Notes in Computer Science - Interactive Systems" - ISBN: 3540002669

The Prometheus Project - the challenge of disembodied and dislocated performances

Tue, 01 Jan 2002 11:00:00 GMT

Thorne J M and Chatting D J, BT Technology Journal, 20, No 1, pp 85-90 (January 2002) Republished in, "Broadband Applications and the Digital Home" - ISBN: 0852964285.