I’ve always liked the simplicity of opening up a sketchbook and drawing ideas out. I’ve tried many “digital” idea capturing applications, but I’ve always returned to the good old paper and pencil (or in my case my trusty Space Pen). So I wanted to create an interface based on the idea of simply scribbling […]

This site has always had a very selfish aim in that it’s focused on being a place where I can publish my latest experiments, code and projects. It’s never been a place where I post links that often to other stuff or even thoughts about things I’ve seen or bumped into.
So, I’ve been looking […]

I was looking through some old files the other day (like you do at the end of a year) and came across this old typography experiment done in Processing.
If you have a copy of my book, Analog In, Digital Out, you would have seen some of the stills from this sequence. It uses the […]

My publishers, New Riders, are putting on a great little web design conference called “Voices That Matter” happening in San Francisco from October 22nd till October 25th 2007.
Along side the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman, Andy Clarke, Jeremy Keith and Steve Krug, to name just a few, I’ll be doing a little session about […]

I’m really excited to be attending and speaking at this year’s South By Southwest Interactive in Austin, where myself and Jim Coudal will be doing a session on Sunday morning called “How to make your short attention span pay dividends”. Don’t expect any kind of fancy slick slides - we’re going back to the […]

Yesterday at 18:17 I answered my mobile phone to hear the sound of a gong being banged. This wasn’t some bizarre new telesales technique, but the ritual that takes place at the Peachpit office over in California every time a new book gets sent to the printers.
Analog In, Digital Out is now officially done […]

Yet another experiment with the fabulous Flickr and the Flickr API. This time it displays my latest pictures in a kind of spiral vortex pattern, but more importantly uses a blur effect to create a sense of depth of field that relates to time. The most recent pictures being more in focus than the […]

More experimentation with the Flickr API. This plays around with the idea of using small bars made of the average colour from a photo instead of the traditional thumbnails that you normally see.
100 photographs are loaded in from the current Flickr public photo pool and a vertical bar is then made for each photo. […]

Just thought I’d bang up some Flash 8 stuff I’ve been playing around with that messes about with the BitmapData object. Some of my experiments with Processing have helped out now that you can get pixel level information in Flash 8. There’s a lot of scope with this stuff, and starts to get really cool […]

Following on from my session at the HOW Design Conference, and my talk of experiments with Play-Doh, I’ve posted up one of the Play-Doh examples I showed in my session. Special thanks to everyone who came to my session and for all the kind comments I’ve received since getting back from Chicago.

Analog control of digital devices and media has always appealed to me. Like the controllers for a PS2, they allow degrees of fuzziness in a world made of very strict ones and zeroes. Life is not black and white, so for deeper interactive experiences we need to look at control devices that allow our […]

Most of my time at the moment is taken up with the brilliant Making Things Teleo system - getting to grips with controlling Flash with switches and knobs and the like as well as output like having Flash control motors and such like. Along the way I’ve blown a few bulbs up and nearly blew […]

I’ll be speaking in New York at Flashforward about “Twisting Data” and how Jazz, and particularly people like Thelonious Monk are a constant source of inspiration for a lot of my work. What I love about Monk is how he experimented with the composition of a song, putting notes in places that shouldn’t be […]

This is just really a dumping ground for some old stuff that you may find interesting, useful, annoying or maybe even useless. You’ll find a whole load of stuff, from interface experiments and trig based graphic generators to weird sound toys and digital zoetropes.

Lissajous Explorer
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Create circular Lissjous waves by moving your mouse […]

One of the big things everyone was talking about while I was at Flashforward last week was Making Things. Based in San Francisco, they make devices that interface with the outside world. You can add all sorts of sensors and then use that input to interface with the computer, both input and output. The cool […]

Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is the process of digital creativity be that it’s constantly refinable. You have the ability with the ubiquitous Command-Z to “undo” mistakes - wiping things entirely from the creative playground. But what if we didn’t have that facility? What if our digital creations somehow bore all the […]

It meant staying up till 3am but it was a blast! BD4D.2 NYC took place at the Remote Lounge last night and via the modern wonders of technology (well , iChat AV), I presented 2 pieces of work at the gig while I sat in my office at home. Not that I’m advocating this is […]

Got back from Toronto (as far as I know SARS free) after a great time at Flash In The Can. Thanks to everybody who came for my session about designing for the audience rather than other Flash designers. I whacked up some pictures while I was there, including some that my wife Lisa took during […]