ryuuzakimasato7:

COSPLAYERS, READ THIS POST, ALL OF IT.

nyaffna:

I don’t care how appealing it seems, please boycott this convention - D-con - next year.
Jamie Keddie abandoned the D-Con 2012 committee but when the convention was announced without him, he tried to sabotage it and turn people away from “his” convention.
The committee then ran under the name “Dee-Con” and ran a very successfull convention with 1500 attendees.
Keddies attempts to undermine another convention to promote his is petty, immature and shows he shouldn’t be trusted. He has ruined what little reputation “D-Con” had left

This, a thousand times this.

Jamie Keddie is incompetent and childish. The picture, which was his original post on the Auchinawa Facebook page to promote his “D-Con” event, is perfectly good proof of this.

There was a massive fuss when this years “Dee-Con” was announced - it was originally simply named “D-Con”, and Keddie was not involved as he did not have time to organise it. That’s fair enough, no-one’s going to bash him for that, we all have times where such things happen. What DOES bother me, and a lot of others, is his insistence (at first) that this ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT run without him - he cancelled the event as soon as he saw it and told everyone to ignore it.

Eventually after talking about it some more with the organisers of “Dee-Con” (Including the vice president of the previous years “D-Con” I might add), he relented, the name was changed to DEE instead of D, and Keddie was very open in giving his full support. 

In case anyone disputes that, have a screencap from the group for D-Con, showing a post by Keddie himself.

And that was the end of it. Or so we thought. Only yesterday as I type this, the photo at the very top of my post was taken as Keddie posted in the Auchinawa group. (Credit to nyaffna for screencapping it)

I personally called him out on his fuckery, as did several others. He then deleted the post, and made a new one, removing the fuckery. We of course weren’t happy with being ignored, and continued to call him on his fuckery. 

Shortly after I started posting, he messaged me directly, sounding quite apologetic - at first, anyway. Not sure why he chose me to message - maybe he thought I would spread his nonsense so my group, Cosplay Scotland, could see it. Below is my entire conversation with him.

There are three main points I’d like to point out here.

1: “Nothing to do with them … own event name no issue … damaged our name …”

This despite previously announcing, PUBLICLY mind you, that Dee-Con had his FULL SUPPORT. To this, I say that he’s an incredible hypocrite, and that he’s clearly feeling a little butthurt that Dee-con was so well received without him.

2: “Shit that went on… illegal…”

Again, I call hypocrite, since he PUBLICLY APPROVED Dee-Con. They simply filled the gap that he couldn’t fill, so the attendees still had an event to go to. By they, of course, I mean other committee members from D-Con that organised Dee-Con.

3: “Lies … Done nothing but make you guys have fun… “

Not lies mate. As my screenshots prove.

As for the last point - Keddie turned up to last years D-Con event, not only late, but drunk/hungover. He then proceeded to tell the rest of the staff to “handle it” and went for a sleep.

Yeah, great management pal.

——————————————————————————————————-

So there you have it. As was put in the tags of the original post, “a bigger douche than Mike Towers” - he’s certainly headed in the right direction. D-Con is after all, just about the only event in the UK Towers is welcome at. I scared him away from me last year with my hidden blades, that was fuuuun.

But, to reiterate the point of this whole thing and the point made by Nyaffna: Please, help us out in boycotting D-Con 2013. The organiser Jamie Keddie is, put simply, a childish, butthurt moron, who has nothing better to do than attack other, more successful events in a vain attempt to boost his own popularity; deny everything; and insult us to our faces. 

If you’re a cosplayer, please reblog this. It may be a Scottish event, but English cosplayers should know to avoid D-Con as well, and to spread the word.

In the event that DEE-CON runs in 2013, however - I insist everyone makes it to that event. It is, after all, Keddie-free. :D 

link-and-ash-shit:

why WHY

poke-problems:

artmansteve:

…And here’s a few more: http://artmansteve.tumblr.com/post/17575696971/the-b-side-ones-this-is-part

asdfghjk these are way too cute. why doesn’t this have more notes?

This week I decided to look at new possibilities that I would like to consider for my project.

The Motor:

With this equipment, I discovered just how complex the wiring could really be for arduino boards. For ages I could not get my motor running, it was nothing to do with the code I was using or the set up at first glance.

However, I eventually reversed the input of the motor wires and suddenly the project came to life:

http://youtu.be/QWQNgKAMH0k

TILT SWITCH:

With this new piece of equipment, I decided to first of all see what sort of interaction this would create. Using the basis of a light switch as my first project, this is the set up I have created:

As you can see, I have added a tilt switch to the bread board (that silver tube thing) and it is attached to the Arduino. Using the exact same coding for the LED switch from my second week, I have created a working switch using an interesting form of interaction:

http://youtu.be/ebnSV8J2IYo

WHAT I’VE LEARNED:

As you can see, I have looked at one form of interaction and one output that has already challenged my ideas from last week. There was such a nice bit of satisfaction when I waved around the tilt switch that opened my eyes to the possibilities of the Arduino and how we interact with technology.

The motor creates numerous possibilities since I would then be able to manipulate anything I could imagine, from a jack in the box to wheels in a remote control car! So, as I head into the next week, I will research just how others have

fat-birds:

waddlewaddlewaddle

wonderteken:

Guys, this is my boyfriend’s awesome Adventure Time original character, Earl of Limegrab! His character has a lime personality. His hobby is screaming and his favourite colour is purple!

I wish I was as imaginative. D:

In this day and age, it has become essential for companies to create Interactive Experiences in order to immerse users into the world of their product or service. Adobe, a company that creates a platform for this to be achieved believes that,

“Successful interactive experiences engage as many of our senses as possible.”

With this in mind, I intend to look at different types of websites to see just how they use different methods of interactivity to both their advantage and disadvantages. I have chosen two websites with different purposes and two very different target markets in mind.

P&M are a Computing Business located in New Jersey who specialise in providing a computing environment suitable for the needs of a variety of both large and small Companies. Ideally, such a business would therefore want their corporate website to look and feel professional while also being able to convey the information desired by the possible client browsing onto the website. However, this is not what I found when I first typed in the URL to enter their website.

Figure 1 shows the ‘splash’ introduction page that appeared when I had first visited the website. A splash page is meant to contain a short animation which generally plays when a website loads and can be skipped by the ‘engage site’ link at the bottom of the page. I firmly believe that splash pages are great for first time viewers of websites as the short animation can be a great way to show users in an interesting and quick way what the website is about. A company may even wish to play a short film advertising a specific product before the user clicks to view the website containing textual information about the product.

Unfortunately, this is where my problems with this website begin. The splash animation is very sluggish, with text appearing on screen letter by letter in what first appeared to be a clever way to display such information, yet quickly becomes tedious as I wait for the information to appear. Once the text has appeared on screen I found that it is a light grey colour. Light text does not appear particularly well on a white background. Not only that, but the text itself is relatively small to read. For many users, this is a large turn off as text should be clear and concise in order to be readable. The way the text appears and vanishes is also unfortunate as it makes already small text difficult to remained focussed on.

Once the text has been read, I discovered that the purpose was to display corporate beliefs that the company has. This is only the introduction and already I feel unsure if I want to browse the main site itself after such a boring use of animation on the splash page of the website. While the speed of the text vanishing once it has appeared is slow, allowing time for slow readers to understand the text, it is poor use of animation especially at a professional and corporate level. This splash page would be very difficult for those with poor eyesight to read and no audio is used to help tell those users the displayed information. I believe that companies would expect clients to be able to cater for those with different abilities and this animation simply does not deliver.

Sight is our primary sense as a species and this website very quickly wants to make me look away. The website consists of three basic areas, a header, a main content section along with a footer. This layout is something I actually find to be the website’s major strength, the user’s eyes are drawn immediately to the static text in the content section. Unlike the splash page, the text appears larger and is therefore is easier to read despite keeping the light grey text on white background. However, while main content should be where my eyes are drawn, I find that it is not the case.

The flash web page itself loads in a particularly messy fashion, I found myself to feel ill as I saw the web page load with orange bars and grey objects moving about the screen as everything loaded. It was an interesting way for the web page to load, however I feel that a simple percentage loading screen would have made it much better as the way the page loaded was really quite disorientating. This becomes problematic when the website loads every page in the exact same way, even if it was previously visited, meaning that it is an animation and not a loading screen. This abuse of animation continued as I tried to read the text written in the main content area as the header section continued to move about the place, throwing the company logo and text about the top of the screen until I realised I could no longer view the desired block of text due to disorientation.

With this in mind I believe that a flash website needs static web pages in order to still let users read the text on screen. While reading the web page, I did not expect to experience the sense of taste as I felt my stomach disagree with what my eyes were registering. Moving images would have been more effective on this website when self contained into specific boxes, instead of swamping the entire span of the header section.

White space is the theory that web pages need to contain a balance of both text, images and blank space in order for information to be presented in a clear manner. With this in mind, I have noticed flaws in a design I first thought to be the website’s major strength. The flash site itself is not centre aligned in the browser as Figure 2 shows. It does not even display at the true centre of the browser. Instead, the website hugs the top left corner of the browser, leaving large chunks of empty space below the footer and to the right hand side where the navigation bar ends. This only drives home how empty the website feels as a whole. This became obvious when I took a look at the Technology Partners link on the navigation bar.

The navigation bar itself is the only truly static part of the website, it is simple grey text on a white background with faint grey bars dividing each section. With the rest of the website containing some form of motion, it is strange for this one section to contain such a bland navigation bar. It does not even indicate with something visual that the cursor hovers over a link. However, I do like the three small images on the far right which depict a mobile phone, a letter and an odd dot. The former two images I believe are effective ways of saying the content they lead to without explicitly telling the user with text. Images are a powerful medium and at times the website really can show how good they can be. However, they still suffer for being too small for a user to really see.

The Technology Partners page itself is extremely cluttered compared to the two column layout found on the rest of the website. There are numerous logos forced into an incredibly small space, which shows that the website could have made better use of the empty space shown in Figure 2 and given the main content a much larger pixel height in order to better display and balance information without it appearing either too minimal or too cluttered.

Thankfully, the website itself has an excellent sense of Unity. P&M have created headings and links for each of their pages that give the user an expectation of what information they are about to view. Successfully, the links lead to information that matches the main content of the page with the heading at the top with no extra fluff. This allows users to never be lost or confused on the website. The constantly moving header, unfortunately, confuses the user enough as it is.

Moving away from P&M, I wanted to find a website that used flash in a far more immersive and effective way. This brings me to wechoosethemoon.org (henceforth referred to as WCTM). Unlike the previous website, this interactive experience struck an interesting chord with me from the first time it loaded in my browser.

Edutainment is a phrase which best describes WCTM. The purpose of this website is to immerse the user within a flash game like re-enactment of the Apollo 11 shuttle launch and cleverly, is also split into eleven interactive pages or ‘stages’ of the moon mission. The user’s goal is to follow the mission in a linear fashion as they travel through eleven stages of the mission. This is accomplished this through an exciting use of images, animation, sound and a minimalistic interface.

Figure 3 shows us a clever interface. The shuttle craft is at the centre of the screen and is a 3D image, serving as a focal point with various buttons and menus surrounding it. From this screen, you can change the view of the shuttle, which plays an animation of a camera panning around the shuttle craft. This is incredible as it really displays the size of the shuttle, giving the user a sense of wonder in this visual treat. Beside the shuttle are two menus.

The right hand one serves the purpose of giving you information about the launch event via a clever use of a twitter feed, while the left hand column displays how far you are into the flash website. In an educational twist, there is a timer which displays the mission time, or the amount of time it took the astronauts to reach the current stage in real time. I really enjoy how the website can display such information in a clean way that does not detract from the central image which takes up most of the screen. To advance through the website, the user clicks ‘launch’ before being treated to an animation of a shuttle launching into space. Immediately, I felt the wonder and vastness of space as I saw this launch.

The use of sound really made me feel like I was part of that mission. Hearing is a sense which this site takes full advantage of. An audio track plays in the background, these sounds are real recordings taken by NASA throughout the mission. They are spaced out so that the sound relates to what part of the website the user is on. For example, in Figure 3 NASA are discussing the shuttle’s status. However, what Figure 3 can not show is the sound itself, this is the biggest flaw of the website. While the sound is incredible and adds to the user experience, if a user does not have speakers or is hard of hearing, then the overall immersion is dampened. Though the website is still effective edutainment, it loses a lot of value without such a key element in place.

Upon reaching page three of the website, or the third stage of the moon mission, I realised a very clever constant kept appearing on each new page. The shuttle always contained circular buttons, which take a user to a large collection of images and video, depicting the various stages of the launch and the shuttle itself.

Figure 4 displays the image gallery which can be accessed on every page of the website. The interface is very clever in it’s simplistic design. A blue bar at the top displays the eleven different stages (or pages) of the moon mission depicted on the website. By clicking each number, you are taken to images related to that specific stage. This is really intuitive as it means that users may only view images that they have ‘unlocked’ by going through the different stages of the mission. This encourages a user to see more of the website and thus learn more in an edutainment environment. The gallery itself displays six thumbnails at a time, by clicking a thumbnail, the box on the left hand side displays a full size version of the selected image along with an educational description. A down arrow allows the user to access more images in the section of the gallery.

This allows the gallery to be accessible by people of all ages. This website was clearly designed to be used by children and teachers alike as their target audience, as it is simple enough for even the least experienced computer user to navigate through. I would even go as far to say that the design of the website is it’s greatest strength.

I believe that simplicity is the key when creating edutainment software. As Figure 3 showed us, you do not need to clutter up a page in order to display all the relevant information, the website uses a clever use of dark blue for all of it’s menu bars. Blue is a colour that promotes learning, however, I feel that it serves another purpose. Blue can also signify the Earth itself, the shade of Blue used I feel matches the hue of Earth seen throughout the experience. This creates an attractive flow for the website, but also keeps the user in tune with the idea that they are travelling through space, always aware of the wonder to which they are seeing.

The 3D image of the shuttle as it goes throughout the various stages is an amazing feat as it manages to look so real without forcing the user to wait a long time for different stages to load. The shuttle continuously changes as it goes about the website, shrinking in size as it jettisons more parts as it nears the moon. This could have easily lead to long loading times.

The cursor turns into a blue counter, which informs the user how fast the page is loading. This is a great way of displaying the information as the user can see the progress of the loading, thankfully, the user does not have to wait long, otherwise the website would become unusable and boring as the user has to wait for the edutainment to load. The website could have easily abused animations, but always kept the focal point on the shuttle and never overwhelmed the user with activity.

Overall, I believe that a modern website needs to be interactive and interesting while displaying information in any form, regardless of the intended target market. This should be done without sacrificing effective use of white space and ensure that animations crucial to the experience, without overwhelming the user with intrusive sounds or motion. Or indeed, alienating those with different abilities. Great thought needs to be considered with interactive experiences, to ensure that all elements are equally important to the whole, otherwise the result will be more like P&M rather than WCTM.

References:

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/#

http://www.pandminc.com/pmweb/approach.html

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/interactive.html