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Pixelh8 @ Creative Computing Club

Pixelh8 — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:34:10 +0000

So today was the start of Creative Computing Club, it was a relief to finally get started. Today was just the introduction to the sessions and already there was a good feeling. The blog here will go live in eight weeks time to the public , until then it is invite only to those who sponsored or supported the event in some way. Next week we will start looking at Game Maker, then Processing, then Arduino, LEGO Mindstorms, sound, animation and finally the exhibition.

We now have all the things we need for the sessions and that is all thanks to those who supported the project. You can follow Creative Computing Club on twitter @CCCSuffolk.

Pixelh8 @ IPRUG

Pixelh8 — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:49:47 +0000

Yesterday I got to give a talk about my wide and varied career as a musician / coder at the Ipswich Ruby User Group (IPRUG). It is a great group who meet monthly and talk about all manner of computer related subjects not just the Ruby programming language. The talk before mine was given by Kerry Buckley about the Seven Programming Languages in Seven Weeks which looks like a fantastic book and was nice to see people trying different languages and to hear him discuss what the pros and cons were with each of the seven languages. Although I must admit I wasn’t able to follow everything there were certainly somethings I really liked the look of like “lazy evaluation”, I also quite liked the look of Io programming language. I had a great time and I was genuinely made to feel welcome (even though I had openly admitted never programming in Ruby), the group meet at the Brewery Tap Pub in Ipswich, which has really amazing food (I will be returning with my kids to eat there) , so what are you waiting for? You can get more info on the group here from their website.

Pixelh8 @ Leeds International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition

Pixelh8 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:19:30 +0000

I was very fortunate to deliver a paper at the Leeds International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition today. The paper “Handheld Orchestra” details a system which allows novice musicians to interact with a professional orchestra without learning traditional notation or music theory. Additionally the system uses a device familiar to them, their internet enabled mobile phone. I would like to thank Room 1 Studios for funding the project and for allowing me to disclose the nature of the work I have been doing for them. Additionally I would like to thank Chris Wheeler and the Heritage Orchestra for their moral support of the project. The system in “mock-up” form is available to interact with here and the paper is also available to read in draft form here. My aim was to allow a greater access to a world of music for the novice musician, when the software is stable I hope to release it. It was a short but sweet visit to Leeds, but I got to bump into one of my former music students enjoying his time as a student there. Any comments tweet me @pixelh8 on Twitter.

Pixelh8 @ Levington Village Hall, Light & Colour Workshop

Pixelh8 — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:32:43 +0000

Last night at around 10:30pm I was asked if I could help out with a group of Home Educators to run a workshop based around Light & Colour today. I wasn’t leading the workshop as all the parents of the children had different activities to do, I was just running one of several cool things to do. Quickly I set about coding / re-coding / tweaking some Processing code and adding some different options to allow the children to paint via light, colour and a webcam. We beamed it on to a projection screen so they could see themselves life size. It was really good fun and the children had loads of cool things to get on with like mixing coloured glow sticks to make white light, some chromatography as well as making a silhouette puppet stage. It was the first outing for my new computer, amusingly this project couldn’t have even been done by my old one (more on that here). The code was based on James Allibans excellent work (check it out, amazing stuff) which in turn was based on Golan Levins excellent work (which got me into academic research) with a few extra options to paint with different shapes and colours fading over time. It was nice to help out the local community with technology and they gave me a nice lunch.

Bike Alert wins Guardian reader award

Pixelh8 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:04:58 +0000

Back in November I was asked to be one of the “cutting edge” developers at the Power of Minds Hack with Honda, organised by Rewired State, in one word it was” excellent”.

I was fortunate to team up with Emily Christy, Sym Roe and Kevin Fong for a project called Bike Alert, on the day it was voted best in design and now thanks to the readers vote it has received an additional £2000 to be developed further.

You can see the full article on the Guardian website which explain the the whole project here.

I am very excited about the win, I however am having to bow out of the project due to teaching and studying committments, I wish them well and I hope you will check out their work and progress. It is a great project and I hope it will save lives.

(Picture courtesy of Rain Rabbit on Flickr @rainycat on Twitter)

Pixelh8 and the plan for 2012

Pixelh8 — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:00:08 +0000

I always like to have a plan, in fact most of my 2012 is already planned out and I have some cool things coming up.

A lot of you may have noticed I have moved away from being “Pixelh8″, I still am “Pixelh8″ I am just more interested in promoting, facilitating and helping others be creative, I have always done this, it is just my main focus now. Whether it be making or performing music, designing or programming games or creating stop frame animation. 2012 is going to be about helping others create. There are two reasons for this;

1) I have had five years of fun, making and promoting myself as Pixelh8 it would be nice to now help others.

2) I am starting my PhD in “Educational Music Technology” all my research will be focused on helping to get others involved in music performance and creation.

There are already some great events I am booked for in 2012, Games Britania a game making festival in Rotherham which is building year on year, HESFES home educating festival where i’ll be designing games in a field, BACON a two day technology conference, British Museum workshops, St. Albans game design week, Young Rewired State 2012 and working with IP1 and The Mix to deliver so unique music making workshops. Don’t panic if I have missed anything. The full list albeit amazing is quite long indeed.

This doesn’t include the two patents, several conferences, maybe another published paper, being in a book about music, making all of my existing iPhone Apps HD for the iPad, “OCARBOT 2″ and “Cross-side” for iPhone, helping my ex-degree students publish some XBOX 360 games, jumping out an airplane and sending something else into space. 2012 will be busy.

Of course this is just the “plan” things will change. “OCARBOT EDU” has been slightly delayed to fix a few things here and there; try and trim the 134MB distribution size, allow myself a chance to recharge my batteries and to play on some new games and software over christmas.

Hopefully I’ll bump in to you in 2012 either in real life or on twitter, @pixelh8. Either way I hope 2011 was good for you and that 2012 will be even better. If you need me for anything just drop me a line.

Pixelh8 @ BT, Adastral Park

Pixelh8 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:54:15 +0000

I was fortunate to be asked to give two talks to at BT, Adastral Park to ICT teachers and technicians, the talk mainly focussed on my previous work and looked at how “OCARBOT” was developped for education.

They were both great groups, both passionate about using tech in exciting ways and I look forward to working closely with some of them in their schools on new projects.

“OCARBOT” on the Apple iPhone

Pixelh8 — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:25:17 +0000

Here it is, my second game on the Apple iPhone®.

“OCARBOT” is a puzzle platformer with over five gameplay zones spread over fifty levels and features an original chip tune soundtrack. The app is available at the Apple App store here. It’s not free as the funds from the sale of the game will help pay my student fees for my PhD into researching music and technology for teaching children music.

The game itself took three months from beginning to end and will actually be used as a teaching tool to teach children about videogames. I have documented the entire process from beginning to end for a series of lectures and you can you can read more about the development of the game here.

Pixelh8 MicroSynth for iPhone and Android

Pixelh8 — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:17:55 +0000

MicroSynth for the Apple iPhone® and Android is exactly that, a tiny synth based on a wonderful the BBC Micro Computer which is now on the verge of being 30 years old! All of the sounds you hear are actual samples taken from one of my real Micros and all of the sounds were also programmed by me. I hope you you enjoy making music with this MicroSynth.

The App is avaiolable now from the Apple app store here, and from Android Market here you can also download all of the sounds that are included in the App for use in your own music or whatever here. BBCMICROSOUNDS ZIP FILE (6.13 MB) release under Creative Commons License

Pixelh8 BBC Micro Sounds by Pixelh8 / Matthew C. Applegate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Closer to September 30th, 2011 the BBC Micros 30th Birthday I will be releasing my archive of several hundred almost a thousand retro sounds made with my BBC Micro free for you to use.

Make Music, make friends, have fun.

Pixelh8

Pixelh8 “6X9″

Pixelh8 — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:00:27 +0000

“6X9″ or “6 by 9″ for the Apple iPhone® is a simple logic based puzzle game. You simply use the “Directional Blocks” to move “You” to the “Exit”, it’s that simple, right? The Free “Lite” version features 20 of the 100+ levels available in the “Full” version and is available here. The “Full” version also includes “Progress Save”, loads more music and some surprises. The “Full” version will obviously follow the release of the Lite version in about two weeks.

The whole game came about by simply reusing graphics from a piece of educational software that I had made to teach kids music. I simply thought “what if I did this, and this” and shazamm we have an entirely new puzzle game to infuriate players featuring a chip tune soundtrack by yours truly. I am very excited by this, the first game release from Room 1 Studios.

I hope you enjoy playing.

Make things, make friends, have fun.

Pixelh8