Back in the day, I used to make a living as a director developer. I did lots of lingo programming and built loads of cd-roms. My focus began to shift away to primarily web development around the time when Macromedia introduced the 3D stuff into Director; consequently I never really spent much time getting my head around it.

I've been engrossed in the web development world for quite a long time now, but when I started getting into Quartz Composer, I felt somewhat restricted by not really having a timeline or a scripting language to work with. Which got me to thinking….

Director is a very powerful development environment. I did a little test incorporating a quartz composer file (exported as a quicktime movie) into Director - just dropping it on the stage, and it works. Not a great surprise, but does at least prove it works.

With the way I am building my setup, the fact that you can get midi support into Director pretty easily, could be very helpful.

So I can play quartz composer files inside Director, and I should be able take the S-Video output of my old powerbook, running Director, through my AV-DV converter, into my newer powerbook into Quartz Composer. If I can connect them both up to MIDI, then I should be able to have them both respond to the same MIDI signals.

I'm guessing that running quartz composer files inside a quicktime wrapper is fairly limited - no interaction? Also runs slow inside Director?

Still, maybe all those years of working with Director might pay off now!

SteamSHIFT out.

Click the image to download the full size poster archived in zip format (warning : big 5.5Mb).

Last June, I bought myself a digital camera. I spent quite a lot of time deciding which camera to go for, and in the end plumped for the Canon Ixus 50.

My Primary Reasons:

1. Size - it really is tiny

1. Quality - 5mp, 3x Optical Zoom, good lens

1. Canon - have been making cameras for ages

And for the most part I have been really happy with it … until on my to Japan, I realised that there was a problem with the pictures I was taking - at full wide angle you wouldn't notice it, but as you zoomed in, a number of blobs would come into focus. Basically it turned out to be dust inside the lens mechanism. Cost to repair - £85 - not covered under warranty.

The moral of the story - if you have a digital camera - keep it in a case, even if that means it is now too bulky to carry in your jeans pocket (the reason I chose such a small camera!).

SteamSHIFT out.

Click the image to download the flyers (zip file, 2 page pdf : big 9.4Mb).


Well, first off, I know that it‘s not secure and all that jazz. On the other hand, SFTP on OS X Server has no chroot abilities. So, in order that the few people on my server that need ftp access can have it, I’ve delved into getting it set up and here is my short intro tutorial.

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tutorial, mac, osx, server

1. You need to start off in Workgroup Manager. I have set up new users for ftp, so create a user.

2. Under the Advanced tab for the user, set Login Shell to ‘custom…’ and enter ‘/usr/libexec/ftpd’ ; this ensures the user does not have shell access, only ftp access.

1. Under the ‘Home’ tab, click the plus icon and in the ‘Home’ box add the full path to the directory you want the user to have access to, then click OK.

1. Enter a number to limit the Disk Quota, then hit save.

1. Now in a shell, sudo edit the ‘/etc/shells’ file and ensure ‘/usr/libexec/ftpd’ is in the list - you'll only need to do this once.

1. In Server Admin, click on the FTP service and go into Settings tab. Under General, I would disable anonymous access. Under Advanced, set ‘Authenticated users see:’ to ‘Home Directory Only’. Click save and start the service

1. Finally in a shell, ensure that the files contained in the users home directory belong to the user! It‘s also worth noting that if you specify a home directory that doesn’t exist, Server Admin will attempt to create it, and put in the default OS X folders - Desktop, Documents, Movies, Pictures etc. You may want to delete these.

That's it - pretty easy but I found a few gotchas along the way ; hence this tutorial!

SteamSHIFT out.

fragments

I shall probably suggest this to Apple, but I thought I'd try and get some opinion on this as a possible feature request for quartz composer.

How about built in support for DV output?

I know it is supposed to be possible using a wrapper application, and there are example apps out there (eg), but it would be so much easier if it were built in - I guess it would be optionally enabled (probably instead of output to screen).

The obvious application would be that you could use firewire to connect 2 machines running quartz composer to another that did video mixing (all in DV without having to do any AV-DV conversion), or even just to share the CPU/GPU load.

The application linked above disables DV in if you are using output to DV. Is this a OS level limitation or hardware or what? I‘m guessing you’d need pretty powerful machine to do it. It could be really interesting if you could do it though.

Any thoughts anyone?

SteamSHIFT out.

Artkrush: “Formerly a web-based art magazine and virtual gallery, Artkrush has relaunched as a twice monthly email magazine, featuring current news, links, people, and events in the international art community. ”

gallery news :: about us :: John Hansard Gallery: "Due to open in 2008, Southampton's New Arts Complex (SNAC, a working title - a permanent name will be chosen in the next few months) will bring together a diverse mix of art forms, including visual, performing, film and video and Asian arts in a dynamic new building, overlooking the City's East Park and Guildhall Square. Featuring two landmark towers, the building will bring alive a cultural quarter in the city centre, providing a breathtaking new visitor attraction.

The John Hansard Gallery, part of the University of Southampton, has been influential in the artworld, both nationally and internationally, for 25 years, and is one of the leading partners of SNAC. The gallery space will cover a significant proportion of the three lower floors of the building, with the remaining space occupied by the other arts organisations (Art Asia, City Eye and The Performing Arts Organisation), restaurants, bars and cafes. A further eleven floors above will house luxury apartments."

I realise I am prone to being pretty negative about government initiatives in the arts, and I‘m certainly sceptical about whether this will actually achieve the the council’s stated aims of revitalising the arts in Southampton. However, I‘m certainly glad to to see some major architecture happening - it can’t help but to have a knock on effect. I‘m concerned that the project has so little information out there; building work is supposed to be starting ’early 2006' - hmmm.

For a art focussed revitalisation Southampton City Council could do much worse than to have a look at the example of Folkestone, which with the combination of private investment, exciting architecture, grants and a sympathetic council has the potential to see really exciting regeneration. Also see here.

We'll see. SteamSHIFT out.

VJamm Allstars

VJamm Allstars is an audio-visual performance collective formed out of a common artistic vision of intimately linked music and moving images aimed squarely at rocking the dance floor and feeding the head. Applying video to music is nothing new these days, but our range of material and techniques allows improvisation and communication between the artists and the audience.