shinypixel.co.uk » News

A New Lick of Paint

Rik — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 16:56:06 +0000

I’ve spent a little time sprucing up Shinypixel today for 2010, as part of a new programme of rolling improvements for the coming months.

After an odd assortment of random holding pages, it’s back up, but I’ll still be ironing out the odd problem for a little while yet.

(And yes – of course – it works in IE6.)

The Student Radio Awards 2010

Rik — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:38:31 +0000

It’s that time of the year again, and tickets have gone on sale so the countdown has begun. The Student Radio Awards 2010 are on the 11th November, and they will be as usual celebrating the best that UK student radio in the has to offer. I’ve been going to the awards since around 2003, when I was a member of the Radio Warwick crew that won Best Station, and since 2004 I’ve been involved in some capacity with the visual design of the event itself.

Once again I’ll be producing the awards magazine/brochure (I’ve been doing it for years, and still I’ve never decided what to call it) that you’ll find on the tables to flick through, spill alcohol on, and hopefully take home on the night. We’re pulling out lots of stops this year to make it an extra exciting souvenir, so please do spend some time having a good nose through – I guarantee it’ll be worth it. I’m hoping that time and other factors to detail a bit of the production here on Shinypixel, so stay tuned for what promises to be an interesting annual excursion into the world of print design…

HCLD016 now released

Rik — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:40:07 +0000

Long time no see, eh? Still, here’s a free gift to make up for it. In between trying to find time to sleep, I’ve been helping the ever-hardworking DJ Pete to get a new version of Hardcore Lives! up and running. There’ll be more news on some planned music releases soon, but in the meantime to celebrate the relaunch there’s a free 4-track E.P. available from my Russian favourite, T92:

Suffler is my tip – a long, wandering journey through the early 90s in the same style as his previous Sensation. Flute Jhob builds chunkily around a delicate flute sample to unexpectedly good effect. It costs nothing, and you can find it on the release thread, so what are you still doing here?

Autowhack 0.4 available

Rik — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:26:03 +0000

A quick note to announce the availability of Version 0.4 of Autowhack, the handy GUI for automatically compressing Javascript and CSS. This version adds support for compressing CSS as well as Javascript (a godsend for the project I’m working on, at least) and also remembers your settings between runs of the application.

This version’s a beta which I whipped together last night, so there are a couple of known issues to be aware of which are detailed on Autowhack’s Shinypixel Labs page.

The Second Coming

Rik — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:30:48 +0000

Christ, what an interesting few months that was. Anyway, back once again as normal(ish) service is resumed with another Hardcore Lives! Records submission. This has been out for a while now, but being trapped in a cage has prevented its emergence here.

So here you have it: 26 MP3 files spanning a pick of the last few Hardcore Energy compilations (we’re up to 7 now – blimey), with their own special cover and a ringing endorsement from a man who just can’t let go of those mid-90s memories – me.

Hardcore Energy 2 – The Second Coming

Discogs Entry | Buy it at DJ Download

Alternative technologies on the Nokia N900

Rik — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:02:12 +0000

Hello, all. I’ve been on holiday in darkest Cornwall this week, but nevertheless there has been a soupcon of time for adventures in the world of the mobile technology. Just wanted to quickly share the results here, partly to show what a flexible beast the N900 really is.

First up – with the help of another enthusiatic coder – here’s a couple of (admittedly as yet unexciting) proof-of-concept applications running under the OpenLazarus (that’s Pascal/Delphi for people old/mad enough to remember) framework for Maemo 5. I didn’t do much but test and run these, so here’s the results:

OpenLazarus app running on Maemo 5 using standard widgets

OpenLazarus app running under Maemo 5 using Custom Widgets

…and then there’s what I’ve been fiddling with. Thanks to the frankly magnificent Wonko from the talk.maemo.org forums, we have a working Java/SWT stack for the phone. That means that my ShinySlots project can run out of the box and look like this:

You can see that the forced window-size has exposed my slightly-cheating repeating background, and sadly it’s not that performant at the moment, but it works as advertised, and improvements are in hand…

DownTheTubes is alive!

Rik — Sun, 02 May 2010 18:34:43 +0000

DownTheTubes has been sitting on the backburner for a while, until out of the blue Nokia released the Qt SDK Beta. This replaces the pile of libraries, development environments and MADDE (on various levels, but in a good way) virtual machines lying around my hard-drive, squishing them all together into an environment for writing things for that sparkly Nokia N900 that I’m still not at all bored of. The prospect of being able do so sensibly under Windows without having to use Python or GTK is nice, though my current blood pressure belies how my C++ skills have waned a bit over the years. (Can I have my managed languages back? Pretty please?)

Still: dogged persistence, luck and some mild swearing cobbled together the following:

So, this is DownTheTubes rejigged to work in the new SDK, and running in the “Device Simulator”. The simulator doesn’t simulate the actual OS, hence the incorrect title and the scrollbars which won’t be there in the actual N900 version (that map is finger-scrollable, y’see.) Still, work can begin again, although I can’t do any performance testing until PR1.2 is released. The main thing at the moment is that hoofing a massive bitmap around the screen is rather hard on the processor, though I think I’ve worked around that now.

DownTheTubes can be found on Shinypixel Labs too.

I’m on Twitter!

Rik — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:36:42 +0000

www.twitter.com/rikward

Simple as that, really. Thought I’d give it a go – come follow me and see what I’ve found. One wry smile per day almost guaranteed.

Love Maggie’s Day 2010

Rik — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:37:58 +0000

It’s Love Maggie’s Day today, raising awareness of and money for the Maggie’s cancer charity. At work we’re having a little bit of a competition for the best photo of “London from up high.” It’s open to everyone, the best photos wins a prize, and best of all Vexed donate £5 to charity for every picture uploaded.

The competition’s on our Facebook page, so rifle through your camera, become a fan and upload a pic to donate £5 to charity with no extra effort required.

Applying a bit of creative licence (and whatever I had to hand), here’s a couple of my entries. I might see if I can climb some trees* during lunchtime.

Santa’s Wish Kingdom @ Westfield Shopping Centre, Xmas

Disney Store, Oxford Street, a busy Saturday

* Unlikely, of course.

Good News Week

Rik — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:24:44 +0000

I went to see the excellent Russell Howard last night trying out some new material at the Tabard Theatre. Interesting, tiny little venue with steep seating and an intimate atmosphere. No loos – use the pub downstairs – and some bizarre, ornate wallpaper.

The material was for his Russell Howard’s Good News show which’ll go out in a couple of weeks. From what I heard (and the amount of laughing I and everyone else was doing) it’ll be well worth vegging in front of it when it airs, even if it is hiding on the digital-only BBC3. Your mother wouldn’t like it.

Labs News : Autowhack 0.3, DownTheTubes

Rik — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:31:39 +0000

Some quick news from the Shinypixel Labs – AutoWhack 0.3 is officially stable and available to download. AutoWhack is a small GUI application to assist with compressing and obfuscating Javascript for production websites. It uses the YUI Compressor under the hood, and allows you to conveniently concatenate and compress whole folder trees of Javascript automatically or as a one-shot process.

Autowhack 0.3 is now available.

(Usual disclaimer applies. May turn your cat green, but it’s pretty unlikely.)

There’s also DownTheTubes, which is a little experiment of mine in the world of Maemo 5 development for my Nokia N900. It’s a map for giving you a tube map and status in a convenient little package; it’s kinda working but nowhere near being finished, but it ‘s got its own page now.

An Englishman’s Home

Rik — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:23:49 +0000

…is his castle, as they say. I’ve finally finished digging the moat and pointing up the ramparts around my new place and so without further ado, some pics of my new abode in W6:

Happy New Decade!

Rik — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:59:17 +0000

To everyone in real life, on the interwang, and those reading via the magic of that Bookface thing somewhere in between: A very Happy New Year, and all the best for the next 10 coming years…

Who would have thought we’d all come such a long way in 10 years, eh?

New AutoWhack UI

Rik — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:39:29 +0000

Finished tidying up the UI on AutoWhack, my GUI application around the YUI Compressor, over the weekend, so thought I’d quickly throw up a shot:

AnyFont 0.7 Released!

Rik — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:19:51 +0000

One of the things that impressed me about WordPress was the out-of-the-box experience and the plugin ecosystem – you can do just about anything with the minimum of fuss possible, including upgrading and installing things. It’s A Good Thing, and something that a lot of Content Management Systems could learn from.

A particular part of said ecosystem is AnyFont, which does for WordPress excellently something that I’ve found myself hacking into various blog systems over the years – replacing headings with nice textual images. When I installed it I found that it didn’t do multi-line titles – which is why the first few blog entries on Shinypixel have short titles – so I got my hands dirty, coded it in and sent the changes off to the author.

My code has now made it into the 0.7 release, which as well as supporting multiline images now also supports OpenType fonts for your images. Many thanks to Ryan for being friendly and accepting my patches. Now you too can have multiline titles as premiered on shinypixel.co.uk!

Questions? Suggestions? Just drop me a comment.

Shinypixel is back!

Rik — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:05:33 +0000

Yep, that’s right. After a year or so lying dormant (or sleeping, as I like to kid myself), Shinypixel rouses from slumber to resume its rightful place as an important outlet for nothing in particular.

Why? I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, but a recent surge in personal motivation and productivity has led me to get back behind the reins. So, I’ve kicked the old site into a cocked hat and here we are. Well, obviously it’s not finished, but it ain’t a bad go for a couple of hours and a cup and a half of tea.

All of the old posts and content (since 2003 or so) aren’t around at the moment, but hopefully they’ll come back someday. I’m not sure if anyone will miss it, but for me there’s a certain nostalgia value so I’ll be getting around it it eventually.

So, erm, hello again. Do you remember who I am?