Author: Eggwhite (Page 6 of 9)

Eastercon Trepidation

March 26, 2012 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

Eastercon makes me nervous. I’ve been to a couple of them now, and I always enjoy my time encapsulated in the fannish bubble universe… but that doesn’t mean I’m not nervous about my time there. What I’d like to do here is to write a little about my trepidations, partly to just get them out there, and partly to seek advice and maybe gain some pre-con connections to follow up on whilst I’m there.

My fannish & congoing history

By many measures, I started going to Eastercons fairly late in life. There were no university societies on my campus when I was a student. They were all on the main campus, and were basically unreachable without a car as the public transport curfew for a return journey was at about 8.30pm. On top of that, from what I’ve heard, the SF society was of the “three people in a bedroom talking about Pterry” variety. I found a couple of fellow geeks on my own campus, and managed to get to know a few of them, but we were muddling through and knew nothing of cons.

But I wasn’t devoid of fandom. I got to know a lot of lovely people through being actively involved in the Tad Williams Mailing List (which existed before the Shadowmarch site came about) and went to (and hosted) a few TadMoots. But those were small and ad-hoc internet meetups. Cons were still strange and mysterious things to me.

A bit later still, after some encouragement from one of the tadlisters and with the accompaniment of my then-partner-now-friend Linette, I bit the bullet and invaded the university next door. They had an SF society. By this point I was a postgrad, and outside of the usual student social structures, so that was a very good thing. But it leads on to my current situation…

The problem?

The problem with meeting most of your fannish and geeky contacts through a student society is that they’re generally of a fixed age bracket… it’s always people of student age – predominantly 18 to 21, with a few postgrads. There comes a time where staying too involved with that group starts feeling a bit creepy. Similarly, most of the student crowd disappear every few years. The result is that my social circle is losing people to attrition as they move away, but not gaining as many through new folks arriving.

Part of why I like the idea of Cons is that I get to socialise with a whole new crowd and maybe meet some new folks. The problem is that in a loud, busy social environment, I suck at these things. Just walking up to a random person and starting to talk to them feels like an imposition, and when random people come up to me and start talking, I get that “rabbit in headlights” feeling and my brain starts reciting a mantra of “AAAAAAGH! New people! Don’t fuck up! Don’t fuck up! DON’T GET IT WRONG!” that’s so loud and recurring that it drowns out the actual conversation and I end up rambling or babbling somehow. I am my own worst enemy.

The other problem?

The other problem isn’t really a problem, but it makes me a bit nervous all the same… I’m attending (and sharing a twin room) with a friend of mine who used to be my ex. We’re still close friends, but I’m keen to not be seen as a gestalt entity with her. Whilst I’m not going to the con with the intention of pulling (that would be crass), I’m slightly wary of us falling into old routines and basically spending the con as a two-person unit. But it’s also only her second Eastercon (and her first as a full 4 day attendee) and I want her to enjoy it too.

I’m hoping that the more crafty / creative crowd will take her under their wing and that she’ll enjoy herself as an attendee in her own right. She’ll be dealing with a bit of similar weirdness on that front, I suspect.

Social Props

One of my common social props is my camera, so that if talking isn’t happening (such as if I bottle it in a busy room) I can put a camera in front of my face and hide myself. Or, what I usually prefer it to be is a reason to start talking to people. But even the question “do you mind if I take a photo with you in it?” requires social interaction. I love being able to take good photos of people, but cameras also make people nervous and scare them off.

So, for any Eastercon folks who read this… if you see me with a camera, and you’d prefer I didn’t point it at you, feel free to talk to me and tell me so! The camera will still have served its function as a social prop in that instance. I know there are labels that can be put on folks badges, but those aren’t always visible, so accidents will happen. I’m happy to delete stuff, and being asked nicely to do so isn’t a problem.

Volunteering

I have previously done a bit of tech volunteering at Eastercon, but I’ve decided I’m not going to do that this year. Tech is always stressful, and I’ve backed away from all of my other tech commitments except for the comedy nights for exactly that reason. I’m keeping my technical hand in, but not doing much that’s new. I’ve toyed with other volunteering, but don’t really know what’s what… and want to avoid too much stress, so I’m probably going to give it a miss this time.

Next time I might put myself down to help with green room, gophering or some of the at-con publicity (newsletters, etc…) but I don’t really know what I’m doing with that kind of thing. If there was an active social network back-channel, I might be tempted to volunteer in some capacity that relates to that kind of thing.

Path of Least Resistance

As mentioned earlier, I’m a bit rubbish at actually talking to new people. Once I get started, I’m usually okay… but it’s getting started that’s the problem. I’m an introvert and I’m frequently quite shy (which isn’t the same thing).

For me, the path of least resistance is usually to go to programme items and be a passive listener. This is still good and enjoyable, but I can’t help but feel that I’m missing out on the real con experience. I’d prefer to get to know people as I do that, and to get to know a few more people who go to these things.

The Negative Bit

I’ve generally found my con experience to be a little disappointing. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed them, though. It’s more that I’ve generally had the feeling that those who turn up in a group or already knowing a bunch of folks enjoy them more. Being at a con where you already know more of the other attendees just seems to be more fun. The conventional wisdom is that you meet people socially outside the program items, and that the con experience then starts to become more about the people you meet.

In my experience, the outside-the-programme atmosphere has generally been fairly cliquey. Which is fine – that’s what happens when folks use the con to catch up with old friends. But it’s hard to do the “catching up with old Eastercon buddies” thing if you never manage to make them in the first place.

I’m forever told that a large part of the Eastercon vibe is to be found in the bars. That’s nice, but a) I can’t physically fit in the bars as they’re full of long established eastercon attendees catching up with their mates. If you don’t know anybody else in there, it’s a socially hostile environment and b) I barely drink these days, and a human being can only contain so much lemonade or fruit juice without unfortunate digestive disturbances.

In short, to spend time in a bar at Eastercon you need backup. Preferably experienced and established backup. Whilst my elder sibling probably counts as experienced backup, he’s also got two kids to look after and his own Eastercon social circle to catch up with.

I’ve enticed several people into attending in the past through IFIS, but bringing along folks I already know doesn’t help a great deal with finding new folks. I’ve steadfastly failed to actually make new connections at the event.

Online backchannel?

One of the things that helps me with this
kind of thing at professional tech conferences and barcamps is the use of an online backchannel. An offical hashtag and a means to burble to strangers over the web from inside program items is a great help – it means you can start talking to people before the difficult face-to-face meetup. There seem to be some moves towards this kind of thing this time around, which is good.

The official hashtag seems to be #eastercon, by the way, and I’m on twitter as @the_eggwhite.

Hopefully I’ll get to chat to a few folks this time around and be a bit more sociable. If you’re in the same boat, feel free to ping me. Hopefully we’ll be able to fit in some kind of “tweetup” over the weekend, if there’s not one already scheduled. I’d suggest an impromptu one each day, rather than just one… then we can get the day visitors and folks who were busy as well.

A Film I Wanted to Love… and DID!

March 11, 2012 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

Today, I went to see a film. It’s a film that I really wanted to love, and which film critics really wanted me to hate. Sometimes I love it when things turn out my way and the critics turn out to have been watching a totally different film.

The film: John Carter.

It’s GREAT. Go see it.

If you’ve not heard of it it, it’s based on a series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs that fit into the genre known as “Planetary Romance”. People will often call it science fiction, but it predates the SF genre, having been written nearly a century ago (the first book was written in 1917).

It seems the critics have their knives out for this one, but largely speaking, it seems that they’re just not paying attention. Either that, or they’re panning it because they don’t like the genre. I’m not going to say it’s a masterpiece, but if you like the genre, you’ll *love* this film

It nails it. The cast are good. The effects are appropriate. The story is solid and doesn’t drag. The action is good, and unlike most modern action film fights, they told the story of the fight, rather than just showing a series of jump-cut set-pieces.

If you’re aware of the books, and are staying away because it’s just called “John Carter” instead of “John Carter of Mars” or “A Princess of Mars”, stop being an idiot and go see it. The title change, whilst a bit weird, actually makes a lot of sense in the way that the film pans out.

If you want a good, solid action / adventure film in a Planetary Romance genre? Go see this. Go see it now. Don’t just go and look at Rotten Tomatoes, as it’s clearly populated by folks who don’t get Planetary Romance. The kind of people who’d have panned Star Wars because it was “silly”.

The fact that everybody who’s voice I respect in the field of SF or Planetary Romance seems to have got on board with this and loves it should tell you something.

I gave it a shot, and loved it. I’d like to see more of this kind of thing, and I’d like to see it done as well as this has been, and as respectfully of the source material.

So there.

(I’m about to crosspost this to a couple of other places. If you see it multiple times… well, that’s how it goes!)

Community Content is POO

November 18, 2011 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

I beg your pardon?

In some circles, the title of this post alone would be enough to get me thrown under a bus… and not for the language. I’d be hauled over the coals for the very fact that I’ve dared to besmirch the great god “Content”. But if folks are preparing to throw me under a bus, then at least they’re paying attention… so hopefully I’ll be able to get them to read what I mean by that statement first. It may not save the world’s ears from the horrible crunching sound as the bus casually rolls over me, but at least I stand a chance of getting the message out. So what actually is the message?

Community Content is essentially “Community Poo”…

…But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Poo is a sign of life (It really is! it’s technically one of the seven or eight acknowledged indicators of life), and finding it somewhere is a sign that life has been happening at that location. If it’s fresh, it’s a sign that it’s happened recently. It’s also good fertilizer, so it creates places that life (and activity) can thrive… but if you were to start declaring “poo is life!” you’d probably get a few funny looks and maybe a special jacket that does up at the back and makes you hug yourself all day long.

The same is true of community content. It’s good stuff, and it’s great evidence that a community has been active, but it’s not the community itself. A set of diverse forum threads with loads of posts in are not a community, but they are evidence that a community has passed that way. “Community content” is the trail of droppings that gets left behind by the real community, which is happening up at the front where the interaction is happening.

If you want to help keep a community healthy, it’s probably a good idea to keep an eye on the community poo, but it’s not *all there is*. Not by a long shot. Despite what Gillian McKeith might tell you. You should look at the ebb and flow of the community and look at the people that come together to form it. You should listen to what they say and how they choose to behave, not just at what poo they leave behind.

So what should we be focussing on?

If you want to keep a community healthy, it’s probably a good idea to keep an eye on the stuff that produces the poo. That’ll generally be the users. You want them to keep pooing, becuase if they’re not, it’s a sign that they’ve either left or died… neither of which is exactly promising for the longevity of your community. But don’t get hung up on preserving every bit of poo for the rest of eternity. Particularly memorable community poo will preserve itself – it will live on in the memories of the *people* who make up the community.

What are you getting at? What’s the point of this post?

If I really have to spell it out for you, the point of this post is that businesses should stop fixating on the community content and instead focus on the engines that generate it. Keeping the community alive and healthy so it can produce more community poo is far more important than lovingly and painstakingly preserving all the community poo that was ever produced.

All you lovely readers out there? Wherever you lot converse and discuss things, you create community. The stuff you leave behind when you move on? The content – the forum posts, tweets, status updates, blog posts and comments and all that stuff? That’s community poo. It’s the leftover sign of community interaction having happened. It’s fertile and creating it is good and healthy, but if you’re fixating on it too much then you’re doing it wrong.

Don’t look a pile of poo and call it a nice meal. Don’t look at a heap of forum posts and call it a community. In either case, you’re looking at what’s left over after the best bit’s happened!

Geek Strolls – It needs to exist

October 17, 2011 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

The loneliness of the short-distance ambler

For various reasons, I try to get out and go for a reasonable number of walks around the place. I like going for strolls, and they’re good for me, but I find that after a while I can exhaust the local area’s supply of relatively interesting walks. I’ve found that two things help solve this problem – photography and company. But the number of people I know who are interested in going for a leisurely stroll is quite small. Similarly, my social circle has shrunk a bit in recent years for a variety of reasons. So whilst I was out walking in St. James’s Park over lunch, an idea occurred to me: A simple web / phone app to match up people, location and (potentially) interests for short strolls at lunchtime or early evening. With a focus on geeky interests there’s a chance of keeping the strolling pool to likeminded people who may have some conversation topics.

The idea would be to promote the idea of people meeting up with groups of other people in their area to go for strolls and share some good conversation. That’s all.

Ambulatory geek socials

Strolling groups could easily form around common interests, around planned discussion themes or purely based on location. This is online social discovery of offline social light exercise and company, with the idea that meeting in ad-hoc groups for some gentle outdoor exercise is a good way to explore your area a bit and get in touch with your surroundings as well as meeting new folks.

Rather than the traditional “all go to a pub and eat and drink your way through a chat”, the idea here is to meet at a park gate at lunchtime (or after work) and just walk, talk and maybe take a few photos and fire them at the net. It would encourage people to explore their local areas a bit more, and to meet up with people in an area that they might not otherwise meet who have a connection to the same places.

With integration with a whole bunch of other social tools, you could build up ad-hoc lunchtime walks that end up spawning new social ties between people who work or live in an area, and also help those people to explore their surroundings.

Meet the local community

You might not be around your usual stomping ground, and want some good conversational company for a walk. Sure, the people you meet via a webapp could limit your conversational options to geekier topics… hence the Geek Strolls name, but the geek church is pretty broad! You’ve got the developers and UX people. You’ve got the SF fans, the knitting junkies, the console gamers. You’ve got the roleplayers, the boardgamers and the electronic hackers. Throw in a few amateur theatre folks and a woodworker, then mix in somebody with local knowledge who’s found an interesting spot to walk through and you’re golden.

The problem

I’m a frontend and UX guy. I probably _could_ build something to make this happen, but it wouldn’t exactly be elegant and well written. I could probably make it pretty, and I could probably streamline the interactions and make it slick and usable to a good cross section of users, but somebody else would need to actually code the little bugger up and make it work.

How could you help?

Does the idea sound like a good one, and one that you’d be interested in using? Are you a developer who can knock together something like this? Grand! Go right ahead. I’ll certainly use the tool when it exists, and would be happy to be a test audience, testbed user and (time permitting) UX guy. Maybe even to do some UI work for it.

Basically, I want this app. I want it for a desktop PC (where I can manually specify my location) and for my android phone (where I’d like to be able to manually specify OR use GPS). So there.

The trouble with online identity

September 21, 2011 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

I think that most people who design and work with online communities have, by now, learned that identity is an important issue. I’ve certainly been harping on about it for years, and have repeatedly found that it’s a tough nut to crack. People say that they get it, and that they realise that it’s important, but then they’ve repeatedly shown that they didn’t get it.

Now, I don’t know if this is normal behaviour or not, but when people repeatedly don’t get what I’m saying, I find it frustrating. I’ll keep digging around until I find out why they don’t get it, and I’ll keep trying to improve my mental model of the problem until I can find new ways to express it. After all, a clear and understandable expression of the problem is vital if you want to get past the blocks that are in the way.

Every now and then, getting past the blocks makes me realise a gap in my own thinking, and a lot of the time it comes down to language. I don’t mean that I’m writing in english and you’re reading in french (although you might be – I wouldn’t know!), but that the word identity comes with too many meanings. Particularly when you’re a fuzzy, imprecise UX guy talking to rigid, precise developers. Thankfully, having a fair bit of fairly arcane coding in my background (fast fourier transform code and neural networks – particularly Kohonen SOMs) I am often able to speak enough developer to get by.

It was stepping back from working on online communities to work on our product that brought me to something of a realisation about how I’d been communicating something about communities. Or more accurately, how I hadn’t been communicating something.

I’d been banging on and on about how identity was important, meaning one thing. The folks I’d been working with had heard me banging on about identity being important, but hearing something entirely different. Identity meant different things to different people on the team, and that was muddying the waters – I was saying identity was important and that we needed to focus on it more, and they kept going off and focussing on the wrong thing. What they were focussing on was what I’m going to call the system identity, whereas I was talking about what I’m going to call the self identity.

But what’s the difference?

To the developers, the purpose of identity was separation and identification of individuals. It was a means to say “this person in this system is the same as this person in that system”. A way to reliably tell who a person is, and to match up that person in one systerm with themselves in another. It’s how the software tells one user from another and can tell who people are. I’ve taken to calling this one the system identity.

To the social and community folks and the front end users, that’s not what identity means. To those people, “identity” is how each user expresses themselves. It’s a means to say “this is who I am, this is what I do and this is what matters to me”. It’s a way to express what it means to be who you are. I’ve taken to calling this one self identity.

So, using this terminology, you can make it clear what kind of identity you’re referring to.

System Identity is knowing that the UserID 1138 is Jed (and only Jed) and user 1149 is Bob (and only Bob). It’s how the system differentiates you as an individual from other individuals. It’s used by the system itself to differentiate users and associate them with other things.

Self Identity is Bob’s profile letting people know that he can help them file their TPS reports on time and that he likes skiiing. It’s also Joe’s profile letting people know that he likes muffins, playing squash and going out for drinks on friday nights. It’s an expression of what being Jed or Bob actually means.

Both are valid uses of the word identity, and both are extremely relevant in social or community software. You need a strong model for both forms of identity if you want your online community to thrive and be successful. You need to be able to reliably tell users apart behind the scenes, but you also need to allow users to differentiate themselves and present themselves in a manner of their choosing at the frontend.

You must be able to clearly distinguish users at the backend through their system-identity, but you also need to let users distinguish themselves from each other in the frontend through the way they choose to express themselves and present themselves. This latter method of distinction relies on the self-identity. It might be through personalised avatars and signatures, or it might be through and expressive username.

In a real world analogy, the system ID would be the passport or ID card. It’s an official document that states who you are. It’s typically reliable and is useful for proving who you are, but generally says little about you as a person.

In the same real world analogy, the self ID would be your skills, your personality, your fashion sense, your taste, your interests & your hobbies. It says a lot about you as a person, but doesn’t necessarily serve as a unique identifier.

One says “I am unique individual 1138. Nobody else is unique individual 1138. I am only unique individual 1138.”

The other says “I am bob, I like beer and fishing. My tastes are these and you should read what I say because…”

For an online community (or social network) to work, you need to understand both of these and have an appropriate approach to dealing with them. You need to be able to reliably differentiate between individuals, and those individuals need to be able to reliably express why you should care what they say.

Speak Out With Your Geek Out – SF/F

September 14, 2011 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

Today’s “Speak Out With Your Geek Out” post covers the fairly broad topic of written Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Yes, I’m a fan of that kind of thing. I even go to conventions.

I can’t pinpoint when I first really got into SF. It’s kind of been there my whole life. I don’t have many memories of my really early years, but one that I do have is playing on a really cool slide for a long time. It was just me and my mum there, and my dad and my brother were elsewhere. It turned out that elsewhere was in a cinema watching Star Wars: A New Hope. I think we were on Jersey at the time, but I wouldn’t like to bank on it

Despite not having seen the film, I recall that moment quite well – as well as attempting to draw pictures from a film I’d never seen. I’m not sure when I actually got to see it, but it was probably quite a lot later. But I think from then on, if not from earlier still, I was hooked.

As a kid, if it was space related, I was probably interested. If it was science fiction or fantasy related and on TV, I’d want to watch it – cartoons, kids tv drama, films… you name it. I was the same with books, too. I gradually ploughed through my dad’s collection of classic SF (by which I mean things like Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Larry Niven – that kind of thing), and through some of my brothers. I also started gradually acquiring my own, aided greatly by semi-regular visits to Hay-on-wye to stock up on second hand books. Libraries helped too, as did the Invicta second-hand bookshop in Newbury. There was never a shortage of old SF in there.

Along the way I strayed over into Fantasy, too. I dabbled with Horror occasionally, but only found myself appreciating it when it was paired with science fiction or fantasy. My tastes in genre have stayed largely that way every since… although I’ve largely drifted away from Military SF and towards more big idea, tight story SF.

Similarly my tastes in Fantasy have changed over the years, too. I used to read the odd bit of it here and there, but it was David Gemmel that made me sit up and take note. It was the first fantasy that I read which was gritty without being bleak or dull, and which did a good job of keeping pace without getting to repetitive. I still read a lot of other fantasy, but it was the odd bit here or there – when there was anew David Gemmel or a new David Eddings.

So now I was reading mostly SF, with the odd bit of Fantasy… and I thought that was how stuff would stay. But one of the “odd bits of fantasy” that I read was a little book (hah!) called “The Dragonbone Chair”, by Tad Williams. That was a gamechanger for me. It’s still right up there in my “favourite books” list, although I’ve not read it for many years. Last time I tried it was still too familiar after too many reads. When I say “too many reads”, I mean that I’m on my third copy of the book after the first two fell apart through a combination of ill treatment (reading in the rain, anybody?) and just plain overuse!

For a while after that, epic fantasy started to come out of the woodwork. Robin Hobb appeared on the scene with the Farseer Trilogy and the Liveship Traders – which I also devoured with a passion. Authors like K J Parker soon joined the mix with “Colours in the Steel”, starting a steady stream of protagonists who turn out to have moments that could be seen as… less than heroic.

Then came George R R Martin. Of course, these days he’s big news because of the TV adaptation, but reading the first book of “A Song of Ice and Fire” was like a gale of fresh air… blowing the airborne corpse of a previous victim straight into your face. Suffice to say that certain developments at the end of “A Game of Thrones” were somewhat unexpected – as viewers of the TV adaptation discovered in Episode 9.

But I digress. I should actually be summing up by now. So, to conclude:

I like losing myself in a good book, and the really good ones will be shoved into the hands of all and sundry. When it comes to written SF, I seem to be quite effective as a memetic infection vector. If I like a book, I’ll identify others who I think will like it too, and won’t shut up until they’ve read it too.

In recent months, for various reasons, I lost the ability to read books for a while. I won’t go into the details, but reading is such a big part of my life that it was pretty horrific to lose the ability. I could read the words, but I couldn’t make them stick. I had many other symptoms, some of them quite unpleasant, but not being able to read and enjoy a book was the killer. I went about five months without reading a single book, and a couple of months before and after where I was scraping through maybe a small book a month.

I’m still a long way from being back to my old reading pace, but I’m getting there. It took me about four weeks to read George R R Martin’s “A Clash of Kings”. About a week later I’m about three quarters of the way through “A Storm of Swords”, and I’ve read a couple of graphic novels in between.

I reckon in a few weeks I’ll have caught up with A Song of Ice and Fire and will be back to my old reading pace. When I’ve managed that, I have a backlog of books to read, and an SF reading group to rejoin.

I’m rather looking forward to it.

Speak Out With Your Geek Out – LARP

September 13, 2011 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

In my previous post I got one of the more socially acceptable topics out of the way… so now it’s time for the full in the face, double barrel shotgun of geek:
Live Action Role-Playing, aka. Live Roleplaying, aka. LARP, aka. LRP, aka. Freeforming, aka. Freeform Interactive Theatre, aka. Cross Country Pantomime.

You might think I’m joking, but all of the above are names I’ve heard applied to the hobby.

Yes, on occasion I dress in silly costumes and run around being an idiot with weaponry. Yes, I am an adult. Yes, I have social skills. Yes, I can pass for a normal human being if I really chose to do so. I’d rather pass for somebody who’s prepared to do something a bit daft in the name of fun, though.

But it gets worse. I’m one of the secret elite – I don’t just play these strange costumed games, but I actually organise and run them too.
(note: not actually very secret, nor particularly elite)

I put time and effort into creating coherent settings and plots, then adjusting them to remain fun as the players go out of their way to do things I hadn’t expected or planned for. I have to think on my feet to react to their sudden and inexplicable plans. I have to try to keep pace and atmosphere whilst trying to work out what’s going to happen next after the players came up with a plan that’s so out of left field that it may well have started on another planet.

It’s a lot of work, coming up with a game that makes sense and where the players get to go through an emotional rollercoaster because of half imagined things that are going on around them. But it’s worth it. It’s a deep, engaging and frequently exhausting hobby – both physically and emotionally.

I get a kick out of it because, when I’m running games I have to stay one step ahead of the players to keep things entertaining and exciting… but it’s at it’s most rewarding when they get themselves one step ahead of me. It’s at those moments that I know the game has taken on a life of it’s own and the player are running with it. It’s then that I know they’re really into it, and I can feed off their enthusism… putting it back into the game to build in more barriers for them to break down before bringing the story to a fulfilling conclusion.

I get a kick out of seeing everyone involved get invested in the game. The way that people’s characters grow and gain stories that can be told again and again as the years go by. I like the way that even when a particular game was years ago, the stories can carry on and grow in the telling, becoming modern epics in the world of LARP. Those stories can be told by people who’ve never met the people involved, spread by word of mouth across campfires, whispered from vampire to vampire in a gothic mansion or spoken of in hushed tones in the foxholes of the forgotten battlefields of the 41st milennium.

It’s a hobby that makes people think on their feet, and it makes people look at things from different perspectives. You can throw people into experiences they’d never meet in real life and, between everyone involved, build a story around it that they’ll remember for years. It’s also a hobby that, no matter how into it you get, you can never entirely take it too seriously. When it boils down to it, it’s fun – and it doesn’t take much at all to remind you of that, even when you just saw two of your friends cut down by an orc with an outrageous accent and green “skin” that’ll refuse to fully wash out of their hairline for days to come.

If you think this kind of thing is something people should keep quiet about and hide away from their employers, then I’ve got a suggestion for you: Quit whining, paint yourself green, dress yourself lie a mad-max reject, pick up a foam axe, a NERF gun and an atrocious accent and stop taking everything so damned seriously. Enjoy yourself whilst running around like a loon in the company of others. If that’s not your bag, how about putting on a regency dress (or doublet and hose) and spending a weekend drinking tea and gin whilst the lower classes outside your pavillion beat the crap out of each other for your pleasure. Cheer on your favourite ne’er do well if such things appeal to you.

Either way, there’s several thousand people in the UK alone having a great laugh doing this kind of thing. Why not give it a shot?

This is the second of my “Speak Out With Your Geek Out” posts. There will be more to come over the next few days.

Speak Out With Your Geek Out – User Experience Design

September 13, 2011 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

Amongst several other things, I’m a user experience (or UX) designer. This can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but to most people in day to day life, it means something along the same lines as “…” or “wurbwurbwurbwurb”. It sounds like some kind of pretentious made up job about “living life to the full!” and “squeezing every drop of experience from every moment of life”, but it’s not. There’s a lot of nonsense out there about the field, particularly because it’s caught a bad case of the buzzwords in recent years, but the actual field itself? Good and solid.

At the lowest level, it’s a job that focusses on the the activity of doing things, and making it so that a user’s (or participant’s) experience of that activity is appropriate instead of shit. Simple as that. I’m not even going to say the job is even to make the experience good or fun, although it is what you’re going to strive for as much as possible. For some tasks, fun may be appropriate. For others (say, a self service online form for handling the mortal remains of your recently departed but beloved pet) is generally not going to be fun whatever you do with it.

Similarly, most of the time, using enterprise software on a day to day basis is not going to be fun because most of the time it’s work. It might have elements of entertainment in it, but it’s still going to be work. My job as a UX guy is to make it not suck, and to make it as easy as possible for you to deliver what you need to deliver inside the ridiculous deadlines that you’ve been set without feeling like you’re stuck in a “choose your own adventure” book and have just turned to “page 46: Your eyes are gouged out with a grapefruit spoon. You die in pain”. If I can slip a few “heh… that’s cool” moments in there as well then we’re golden.

Enterprise Software isn’t really something that many people will say is a passion or something to geek out over, and I’m right there with them. It’s functional, and as a general rule the definition of success is “we made money instead of losing it”. But inside that, you can still geek out. You can still get passionate and enthusiastic about making things smoother for the end users, more slick so that the people you’re selling to can see the appeal without having to get all the details. For people in my line of work, we look at the bottom line, and that’s not how much money one accountant gave to another… that’s the experience of the guy at the end of the chain who actually uses the software to perform a worthwhile task.

Now, I do this as a profession, but it’s actually a passion as well. It’s something I can geek out over. Give me a tough problem and people who know their specialities (and know when they’re lost, when they’re winning and who care about what they do) and I’ll be happier than a pig in a nice clean brick building with a warm straw floor and some apples and cabbage.

I may get stressed. I may get frustrated. I may even get angry. I might make us retread the same problems and conceptual disconnects seven or eight times before throwing my hands in the air and leaving the room before I explode… but when the problem clicks (and it will) then we’ll have really done something. The easy problems get boring pretty quickly. The meaty ones? Those are where the “hell yeah!” moments come from. You can’t geek out over solving an easy problem – it’s just empty.

I geek out over those “hell yeah!” moments. I geek out over user experience design in general, but mostly it’s because of that click when something goes from a muddled mess to the right thing to build next. The moment the lights go on and you can see the solution and the path to it. The best thing? You’re never finished. There’s always more of those moments just a little further along the way. Things can always be a bit better, and it’s geeking out over stuff and getting passionate about things that’ll get you there. Sometimes it’s even getting angry or despondent about them, because those things make you identify the problems and hit them with sticks until they damned well get out of the way.

I’m a UX Design geek. It’s about making hard things easier, complex things simpler, and helping the people who have to do them be the ones who get the job done and go home happy. That’s why I geek out over it.

This is the first of my “Speak Out With Your Geek Out” posts. There will be more.

My Life Has a Soundtrack

May 18, 2011 / Eggwhite / 1 Comment

A Quick Starting Note…

I plan to link to a whole bunch of music to go with this post. It’ll probably all go at the end as a massive lump until I rejig my content management system to let me conveniently link to music in a more sensible way… which may or may not ever happen. It’s not the focus of this blog, after all. If there’s not a small bunch of music links at the end, bear with me and they’ll be along eventually. There’ll probably be links in the body too…

In the meantime, here we go…

My Relationship With Musical Talent

Conspicuous by it’s absence

I’ve never had quite the relationship I’d like with music. I like to think of myself as a put-upon musician, in that I’ve never yet found a musical instrument that doesn’t hate me.

As it stands, I’ve attempted to get somewhere with a violin, a piano or keyboard, electric or accoustic guitars, bass guitar and drums. No luck. I seem to have the musical talent of a whelk. On top of that, please never,ever ask me to sing. The geneva convention probably prevents me from doing so, and if it didn’t, I’m sure they’d rectify the oversight shortly afterwards. Of course, I still attempt some form of music every once in a while.

I’ve come close to being able to make vaguely decent noises come out of guitar, bass and keyboard… but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to play them in any reasonable capacity. Guitarists are usually expected to be able to play more than the first few bars of the intro to “wish you were here”, or to be able to make the guitar do what they want without causing pain to all in the vicinity. I had a slightly better go with a keyboard, and actually managed to work out the start of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” by ear alone… which a) I’m unduly proud of, considering it’s not exactly complicated and b) absolutely certain that I’ve since forgotten.

I finally understood what the hell was going on with a guitar (and similar stringed instruments) after an awesome presentation on the physics and technology of the guitar at BarCampLondon a while back (which I mentioned in another blog post nearer the time – If I remember, I might come back and link to my writeup about it). I still can’t play a guitar, but I understand them a lot more about how they work than I did. With time and patience, I reckon I could probably play some form of stringed instrument for a particular style of music. Not a style I reckon many folks would listen to, admittedly, but I reckon I could.

Likewise, it was experimenting with a keyboard after knowing a bit of physics and maths that made me finally get how they behave. It was also messing about with chords on a keyboard that made chords on a guitar start making more sense to me. Not because of how you play them, but because it’s easier to pick up on the relationships between the strings and how the waveforms interact.

As for rhythym, it was messing about with a cheap electric drumkit that made me finally get how some of that stuff worked. I couldn’t quite make my limbs behave enough to give it a proper go, but I got a much better idea of how drums work and what’s involved in playing them. it’s something I may eventually go back to when I have more space and more free time. I could carry a very, very basic rhythym, but I couldn’t do anything more complex than that.

But, even with all of that, I don’t think I’ll ever be a musician.

Can’t create, but can appreciate

I may not be able to play music in any meaningful way, but I can sure as hell appreciate it. My continued attempts to learn to make instruments make noises other than “cat put through badly oiled shredder”, “drums dropped down liftshaft” or “monkey trapped beneath piano lid” also give me more and more respect for the talent I do hear.

When I find something I like, I want there to be more of it. Which means more people need to support those artists right now, before they go away. I’ve always tried to build enthusiasm around the music that I like and spread it around. It’s a way of ensuring that a band gets a bit of reputation and survives.

How things used to be…

Airplay

Very little music I like gets airplay. This has always been the case. In the past, there used to be a rock show every friday on the radio… which would play rock & metal for four hours, from eight until twelve. That was it. There were a couple of other shows, and a couple of other stations, but they mixed to good stuff in with so much utter arse that they weren’t worth bothering with. There were also a couple of TV Shows that did me some favours, for the brief time they were around, and when I got the chance to watch them… shows like snub-TV or, on certain weeks, when they had the indie or rock charts, The Chart Show.

The problem was that I didn’t have my own TV – just the one in the front room, so when I wanted to watch music shows, my folks were usually sat right there with me. I had a tape deck of my own, but that required me to have found and bought music. Which I couldn’t easily do if I couldn’t listen to it first to find it.

Discoverability

The problem I always used to have was that it was really difficult to discover bands, or to evangelise about a band or a song. You could hear it at random, and you could tell people about it, but you couldn’t just point at it and say “listen to this, right now!”. You had to wait for the radio to play it, usually with two fingers at the ready on the tape deck so you could record it, give the tape to your friends and tell thim “this is the one I meant” – because the chances were that the local record shop wouldn’t have it unless it was already popular. Considering a lot of the stuff I liked was never really going to get as far as popular (or had long since ceased to be so) I was unlikely to get very far. I knew there was an underground scene, but living away from cities made it largely inaccessible to me. You also couldn’t really try tapes before you bought them, and they weren’t cheap. If I saved for two or three weeks, I could afford a tape.

The problem comes a little from my rarified tastes. There’s not much “popular” music out there that I like very much. There never really has been. The closest I got was in the 80s with some of the hard-rock, metal and goth stuff, and the 90s with a bit of the shoegaze and indie stuff and, on a different tack, some of the ambient or celtic stuff.

Tastes & Clubs

I can appreciate a fair amount of music that does get airplay for what it is, but I don’t necessarily like it. I won’t say it’s bad… art is subjective, after all. I will, however, say very firmly that most of it’s just not to my taste. It’s not meant to be. Overweight ex-goth-metaller-indiekid-prog-rocker guys in their mid-thirties aren’t usually the target audience for pop music… especially if they’re ardent two-left-feet-that-don’t-even-work-right non-dancers like me, so aren’t interested in dancing to stuff at clubs. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate some club music in the right circumstances – which are generally when I’m rocking the lighting controls for the club and getting caught up in the vibe of the room. I did a fair bit of that to fund myself through university, and grew to appreciate a lot of different music for different reasons. I wouldn’t listen to all of it, but I can appreciate the atmosphere it can create in a club. Even as a non dancer, I can, in the right circumstances, get caught up in a good club night if the DJ is good at their job and I’m running the light show to follow the music. I can pick up on the vibe of the room and find myself getting lost in it. It doesn’t even have to be music I like – it just needs the right atmosphere in the room.

But my music – the music I li
ke – isn’t really club music. Not all of it anyway – some of it is, but usually for a different kind of club.

Music Archaeology

I’ve spent a long time finding my music via recommendations from friends, which have usually had around a one-in-three success rate if the friends know me and my tastes pretty well. Some friends have a better hit rate than others, of course, but that’s to be expected. I have tastes that have traditionally been a little outside the mainstream. On top of that, bands I like have a long habit of breaking up due to label shenanigans (or just plain falling out with each other) and scattering into a selection of new bands, with no breadcrumb trail to let you follow them. They also have a habit of doing it just after I’ve found them. I am become death, destroyer of bands!

The bands that don’t follow the “explode as soon as discovered by Eggwhite” pattern do tend to hang around, but don’t usually release music on a particularly punishing schedule. An album every few years, if I’m lucky.

This often left me starved of new music. This wasn’t too bad, as I often dug back into the past to find music that was new to me. Whilst finding this was great, and I still do dig into the past to find music on a fairly regular basis, it doesn’t help me find new, current music to share or introduce people to. It’s music archaeology, rather than music discovery.

Ticking along with the same few bands

This situation left me, for a great many years, with a small number of bands that I really liked, and who’s back catalogues I’d buy up fervently until I ran out. Then, because they were established bands, I’d get maybe a new album every year or two. Eight to Twelve new songs every year or two, from three or four different bands. Because I live in the UK, pandora wasn’t a viable option for me (it might be now, but I’m not that fussed) and because my tastes are a bit far from the beaten track, spotify just didn’t handle me very well. Last.fm? Love the site, but it just didn’t have content for my kind of music. I still use it, and try to make sure that all my music players scrobble to it. I found a couple of bands that way, but mostly it just liked recommending bands I already knew or that weren’t to my taste.

There just wasn’t much out there for finding me new music. There were a couple of podcasts that I listened to, such as a few from The Dividing Line Broadcast Network, but they were usually quite hit and miss for me. The better shows were pretty awesome, and probably still are, but there was so much in there that just didn’t quite grab me… and long podcasts where you don’t like 50% of the music, whilst they’re better than my luck with radio, are a lot of effort to go to for not much benefit. Too many shows themed around one band, and too much effort to work out what a song was whilst listening. Good for listening, but not so good for music discovery.

Then came Classic Rock Presents: Prog – a print magazine, with cover CDs. The magazines were good (probably still are – I think my subscription’s lapsed and I can’t remember my credentials to renew it) and I’ve picked word up a lot of good bands that way. One of which was a solo artist called Matt Stevens. More on him later. But, as had always been apparent, I’m not just a prog fan, and I don’t like all prog. That said, the cover CDs always had at least one track on them that I really liked – usually more. I’ve only had one cover cd from them that I thought was “a bit of a duffer”, and even that one still had some good stuff on it.

Then, Out of the Blue, Bandcamp!

How BandCamp got on my radar

It was actually one of the cover CDs that made me notice Bandcamp, via a guy called Matt Stevens. His song Lake Man had been on one of the cover CDs. I’d also heard his name a couple of times around the place, but hadn’t gone much further than that. But having heard a bit, I did a search, found a link, and there he was… on bandcamp. Where I could listen to a bunch of stuff for free… and where I could also buy stuff if I wanted to. I liked this model. I listened free for a while, and then decided that, at the prices he was asking, and with the amount I kept playing it over and over, he thoroughly deserved my money. So I bought both albums – physical CD and download.

Here’s another place where Bandcamp is a bit different. The amount I paid? I got to set it. There was a minimum, bit it was ludicrously low, but if I wanted to pay more, I could. I could also listen to the whole lot online before I did so – so I knew exactly what I was getting. I was impressed, so I paid over the minimum. They were easily worth twice what he was asking. So I paid twice what he was asking. I don’t regret it.

Now, I’ve not found Bandcamp to be a site that I ever intend to use, particularly. But it is one that I found myself ending up at again and again. I ended up there by following hints of interesting music from other sources – particularly from twitter (the other half of this equation). I end up there by accident so often that I’ve become familiar with the place, and have decided that they’re getting something really, really right… and that they’re worth looking at a fair bit more. I’ll be looking into them further to see how they tick, I can tell you that!

If you go to their homepage, it’s not hugely geared towards consumers. Sure, consumers can go there, and it has some browsing tools, but they’re not given priority on the homepage. The homepage is for artists. Bandcamp isn’t selling itself to consumers, really. The main purpose of the homepage is to sell the site to artists and explain their approach. The approach is also clearly geared to help artists sell their work to fans. It sells itself to the artists, and gives those artists a platform on which they can sell their stuff with some pretty simple charges – to me as a layman in music and finance, the setup seems remarkably fair.

Where does twitter come in?

That’s the next trick. I followed him on Twitter at the same time I bought the CDs. I also gushed a bit about how awesome they were on twitter (and rightly so – they’re awesome – buy them!).

But here’s the first kicker. He replied and followed me right back. A proper reply.

Even better, he doesn’t spam me about his music all the time – he posts like a real human being instead! If I happen to tweet about another band that he likes or works with, even without referencing him or music at all… he’ll quite often reply or chip in. Now that’s community engagement. That’s how to get and grow a fan base around your product, and how bands can help each other out right there. It’s not all about him or his music. Okay, so I think he has some fingers in other pies as well, and may benefit from pushing some other artists a bit… but if the way he pushes them my way is to engage with me personally? I think I’m fine with that. Better than fine, actually, I think it’s bloody awesome. It’s online community and social media done right.

Here’s the next kicker. He didn’t just reply to my tweets when I mentioned him or bands he has ties to. He replied to some other stuff too… if I mentioned other bands, quite often he’d reply to enthuse about them too. How often do you find a recording artist who’s prepared to froth about other recording artists with some random dude on the internet? In this case, I think the band / recording artist I frothed about and got some froth back from him about was The Echelon Effect. Where might you find their stuff? Guess. As a brief aside, just the title of one of their songs is so awesome it br
ings me out in goosebumps. I’m not exactly a floaty romantic type, but the title “Defying Gravity to Meet You” just works for me. I’m a rustic, practical, stocky country type… but as song titles go, that one’s just a winner. It hits me right where it needs to, and it helps that it’s a masterful piece of music, too. The whole album’s awesome. Go listen. I can’t listen to it enough – you have to do some listening for me!

Every now and then, I’ll see Mr. Stevens frothing about some other band, which immediately gets my attention. I’ve found quite a few that way. Initially from him as a seed, but also by following the other he mentions too. When he mentions another band, I notice. I’ve found a whole bunch of other bands from that initial seed. Some were his other projects, like Yonks or The Fierce and the Dead. Others have been more diverse, and have lead me to other bands entirely, sometimes by direct connections, sometimes by compilations.

The combination of a social network like Twitter and a platform like Bandcamp is, for me, the “killer app” for music. I get engagement with bands, and a quick and easy way to give them my money in exchange for their music.

Compilation albums – didn’t they die in the 90s?

Sometimes a bunch of the artists I’ve been discovering pull together for something incredible.

After the Tsunami in Japan, there was a charity compilation put together extremely quickly, called Hope For Japan. For an album to channel funds to disaster relief, it was the fastest I’ve seen – it was out less than a month after the quake, with all money made from it going straight to charity. I think it was put together within days of the disaster – although I don’t recall exactly how many days. I threw money at the album and don’t regret it in the slightest. You can still buy it, and I advise you to do so. The cause is a good one, and it’s 36 tracks of incredibly high quality music to boot. In fact, mentioning it has reminded me how awesome it is, and I’m listening to it now as I type.

Several of the artists I’ve mentioned above are on there. So are a whole bunch more that I’d not found yet. I still have to catch up with them, but I’ll do so in the near future. A bunch of them are going to be on bandcamp.

On top of the good cause, there’s not a duff track on there. I’ve found a bunch more artists thanks to that album as well, and have many more still to follow up on. I’m actually listening to the album now, because writing this post reminded me how high the quality is.

I threw links to it around on twitter at the time, but I really, really can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s always atmosperic, sometimes brooding, sometimes uplifting, sometimes melancholy, sometimes hopeful. It’s a damned fine album.

The platform for this compilation? The way it was released? Bandcamp. The way it was marketed? Twitter and other social networks. A community of recording artists engaged with each other to pull it together, and then engaged with the public via social networks to get the word out.

A New Musical Landscape

This is probably the richest time in my life when it comes to being able to find new music that suits my taste and buy it. The barriers between me and trying new music are low for the first time I can remember. I can discover one artist, and then using Twitter and Bandcamp, that single artist blossoms out to a whole forest of them. I can engage with artists over twitter and pick up on the music they themselves like. I don’t need mainstream media to connect me to the music I want anymore (which is handy, because it never really managed it) – I can now connect directly with the artists, and give them money for their work. I can find new artists and support them. When I combine it with services like kickstater (which is a whole different conversation), where I’ve been able to help fund a couple of artists recording their first albums… and you’ve got a winning combo.

The costs of buying the music are low, and I know that a sensible amount of the money ends up with the artists themselves, not lost along the way to a host of overheads. I get to engage with the artists in a way I never could before, and for the last year or so, I’ve felt engaged with the music scene in a way I’ve never felt before.

Long live Bandcamp and long live Twitter, and long live other services in the same vein. Long live every band that I’ve mentioned here, and the many I’ve failed to mention. Between the lot of you, you’ve connected me to music in a way that every other medium or service in my entire life had so far failed to achieve.

It’s rare that I get to say that about what are, when it comes down to it, some pretty simple online services. It’s rare that I get to say that about anything, really.

It counts for a lot.

Just popping out to the shed to commune with the machine spirits

December 20, 2010 / Eggwhite / 0 Comments

A few months back I made a crack elsewhere about how you could tell I was a geek because I was going out to my workshop to program a LARP costume. It’s possible that people who don’t know me may have thought I was joking in some way. Foolish people. I don’t joke about such things! Well, okay, I might joke about such things… but hey, I was serious this time.

Death Unto Darkness – Event 4 – The Long Way Down

I used to dabble a bit with Warhammer 40,000 when I was a teenager and dinosaurs still walked the earth… and have recently found a rekindled interest through the PC game “Dawn of War“. On top of this, I’ve known a few of folks involved with the Death Unto Darkness live-action games for a while – some of whom are players, some crew. I’d even managed to find my way along to crew some of the previous games myself, where I died repeatedly whilst wearing a succession of foolish hats. This time, though, I was actually able to make the whole event.

I’d already been putting thought into how to create an Adeptus Mechanicus costume for a while. They’re a faction within the Warhammer 40,000 game world that I find quite interesting. So when I heard that they were going to be involved in the plot, it made my day. It meant I had an excuse to tinker with electronic gubbins even more.

The Core Idea

My initial idea was that I wanted to have a glowing powerpack mounted on my back, and that it should be resilient enough that I could bash it about a bit and light enough that it did’t restrict me too much. I didn’t quite achieve all of these due to time & money constraints, but I did end up with something that I think looked pretty cool.

Getting Started

First, I needed a base on which to start mounting everything. This needed to be something I could fix things too and strap on to my back, but it also needed to be something that was reasonably comfortable when I was wearing it. I looked at a few options, and even bought a cheap water-carrier rucksack as an option… but in the end I found an old rucksack in my wardrobe and used that instead. I’d had it for more than two decades, so it was starting to show a bit of wear and tear… so I figured this technological enhancement would give it a new lease of life.

This rucksack had a simple metal frame in it that meant it would keep it’s shape when I was wearing it, and the straps were good and sturdy without having too many extra fixings or doodads on them. So I just cut away the main “sack” part of it so it was just a nearly flat backpiece, the shoulderstraps and waist-belt. Because the metal frame was shaped to fit a back, rather than completely flat, I couldn’t just fix a lump of wood to it, so I had to attach three flat MDF sheets to it instead to work with the curve. Once these were fixed, I fixed the remains of the “sack” to the MDF as well, helping secure it to the frame.

I then sprayed the whole lot black, because “green and beige” isn’t a very techpriest colour scheme.

Electronic Bits – Prototype One

LEDs

Next up, I started to experiment with LEDs until I found some that were good and bright. After several false starts, I found I could get some from Oomlaut – not the cheapest, but they came with bundled with resistors to soak up some voltage… so I went ahead and bought a load to use. I’ve been back and bought more since for other projects, because I know they’re bright enough for what I want.

Test LED Array

For my prototype, I put together a test LED Array. This array was made up of 20 sets of LEDs and resistors – not the most efficient way – but easiest for me to put together with what I had. Basically, each LED was wired in series with a resistor, with the resistor making sure that the LED only had the right amount of voltage between it’s two legs. There’s some magic involving Ohm’s law and the LED specifications involved in working out what resistor to use, but this probably isn’t the place for me to explain all that! It probably would have been better to use 10 sets of LED+LED+Resistor, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to do that properly at the time.

So anyway, I made 20 of those LED+Resistor pairs, then wired those pairs in parallel – this meant that each LED+resistor pair was going to be getting near enough the same amount of voltage…

Transistors?

I also picked up a bunch of transistors to drive my planned LED arrays. I used some TIP-120 darlington transistors (or their equivalent – I can’t actually remember which I used) which were almost certainly overkill, but they did the job. I’ve always been rubbish at picking transistors, so I tend to go for overkill rather than efficiency.

For the uninitiated, I needed the transistors because the electronics I was planning to use to control this lot can only supply a small amount of current, and a bank of 20 or so LEDs will try and suck up more than that small amount, which, in WH40K terms, would anger the machine spirit. By using a transistor, I can use the controlling electronics to control the transistor instead – basically using it as an on/off switch for a source that can supply a larger amount of current. This means that the machine spirit in the controlling electronics remains happy, and will continue to do my bidding.

Testing

I tested this prototype initially by just hooking it up to a 5v supply to make sure it lit up properly. Sure enough, it did.

Electronic Bits – Prototype Two

The next step was making the LED arrays have variable brightness. To do this, I needed to use something called “pulse width modulation”, which is a fancy way of saying “turning it off and on again really, really fast”. You can use this to control the brightness of the LED by varying the ratio between “on” time and “off” time. Since I wanted this to be both variable and software controlled, it was time to break out the Arduino so I could knock something together quickly.

An Arduino is a handy little microcontroller board that you can program via a PC and then use independently. They’re really good for prototyping widgets and devices, and also good for where you want to knock together circuits where you don’t want to put time and effort into making a custom board.

For this prototype, I hooked one of my LED arrays up to the Arduino’s PWM pins, as this makes it really easy. The Arduino has 14 output pins, six of which are capable of provising pulse width modulation (PWM) out of the box, meaning that I just have to write a value between 0 and 255 to those pins, and it will use pulse width modulation to make it a value between 0v and 5v. So setting it to 255 gives 5v, setting it to 128 sets it to around 2.5v and setting it to 0 turns it off.

Sure enough, this worked just fine, and I could set the LED array to whatever brightness I fancied. I also confirmed the levels where it was good and bright, and where it was just too dim to be seen. It was never going to be really effective in full daylight, but indoors or in shade it stood out pretty well at anything above around 60% brightness.

Physical Bits – The “Glass”

The effect I was trying to achieve was that of a set of small glass panels in a gothic decorative frame, with the pulsing light of the “power unit” inside it. Handily I had some clear polycabonate around, which is pretty resilient stuff (they use it in riot shields, after all) so I figured it would be tough enough to survive being knocked about a bit in a LARP. I cut this down into three large sections and three small sections, which would be used to crea
te the windows in three panels joined by hinges, which I would then fix onto a shaped frame.

Because I knew that I didn’t want a clear view of my bad soldering through the windows, I sprayed the polycarbonate sections with a few coats of frosting. This wasn’t hugely effective, so I think I might look into using either privacy film or starch and tracing paper next time – it’ll probably be quicker and less hassle. I did experiment with engraving patterns into the window sections, but at the time I didn’t have a good set of engraving tools and it was going to take days to do… if I was quick. I considered panting patterns on the inside of the glass, too, but in the end I just decided to leave it plain – it worked okay without any extra decoration.

I then used various bits of plastic moulding and edging to create frames that the the polycarbonate sections could be securely fitted into. I then used upholstry strapping and impact adhesive to join the three panels together with a flexible hinge, so that I would be able to fold them to make the shape I wanted. At this point the construction was fairly loose, with the exception of the good and sturdy hinges, and could be pulled apart easily. So I added more upholstry strapping in various places to hold it all together. This was ugly, but it was on the inside of the “power unit”, so that didn’t really matter. It still wasn’t as sturdy as I wanted it to be, but to hold it together any more firmly, I was going to need to have the skeleton to fix in onto – I couldn’t make it tougher whilst it was still a separate piece.

Physical Bits – The Skeleton

To make the skeleton, I first needed to knock up a prototype to make sure I got the dimensions right. For this, foamboard is my friend. Conveniently, I still had loads left over from when I made Arty the Artifact for another game. For this prototype I made three trapezoidal “ribs” (one for each end and one for near the middle of the backpack) that the panels could fold around, and two end caps that would cover the top and bottom of the panels. When I’d made sure that the panels folded around them properly, I replicated these ribs from MDF. This was slightly more complicated as MDF is thicker than the foamboard, so the endcaps would have been too thick… so instead of having separate ribs and endcaps, I carved a step into the edge of each endcap so that they could double as the end ribs.

I them fixed these sections onto a backplate and started to attach the LED arrays.

Electronic Bits – Final Assembly

Fixing the LED arrays in was slightly harder than I’d planned for, as the ribs of the frame took up more space than I’d intended, so the LEDs were pushed too far forward, making them too close too the glass. Rather than living with this, I actually chopped them in two and replaced a bit of wiring with a longer gap. This meant that I could put the two halves either side of the rib, so they were set further back. It was hassle, but it looked much better for it.

Once these were in place, I drilled a hole in the bottom endcap for the wires, then drilled a matching hole in a pretty basic black plastic box and fixed that to the bottom of the backpack. Once that was in place, I pulled the wires through and tested that the arrays still worked. Once I’d confirmed that it was all working, it was time to put the window panels on, sealing the LED arrays in place.

Whilst I was doing this, I also wired in a third LED array, made from a modified head torch and the same transistor arrangement as above. Basically, this was 9 ultrabright white LEDs with a reflector. I fixed this inside the bottom endcap, pointing along the inside of the power unit. I decided I wanted this to add occasional strobing into the backpack rather than any fading.

My plan here had been to use the arduino for prototyping, then build a dedicated circuit… but I didn’t manage to maintain that idea in the end – just not enough time. For this kind of job, it’s a bit overkill to use one, but since I’m only going to get occasional use out of the thing, and can pull out the arduino and use it elsewhere, I decided to stick with it – although I did swap out the arduino for a cheaper arduino clone (a Seeeduino) rather than risking my main board.

Physical Bits – Enclosure

The first stage of this was simply to place the panels over the skeleton and get everything lined up. Which fitted pretty much perfectly first time.

The second stage was to glue upholstry strapping on the outside of all of the hinges and joins, but also to loop it around the whole assembly and fix it (with both staples and glue) to the outside of the backplate and endcaps. Once I’d done that, there was no way that it was ever going to shift again! Okay, so the thing looked like a monstrosity of black strapping and frosted plastic, but I already knew I was going to be fixing a protective and decorative layer on top, so I decided I could live with it.

The Software

Now that things were mostly built, it was time to deal with the software. What I wanted was for the backpack to pulse red whilst it was on, until I turned a keyswitch somewhere, at which point I wanted it to switch to fade across to pulsing green. I also wanted a way to undo that change so that I could move it back to pulsing red without having to power the whole lot down and start again. At this point I hadn’t wired in the keyswitch, but that didn’t matter very much. A switch is basically two bits of wire, and when you touch them together it’s “on” and when you separate them it’s “off” – so I just used two bits of wire for the time being. Good enough for me.

The tricky bit came because I wanted the change from red to green to be a smooth fade rather than a sudden switch… and because I’m picky like that, I wanted it to be a dipless fade. Usually, if you have two lights next to each other and you reduce the power to one at the same rate that you raise it to the other, what you’ll actually get is a dip in brightness, because they cross at 50% power on both, and 50% power rarely matches 50% brightness. In fact, I usually find that 50% brightness comes in at around 70% power, so that’s where I wanted the power levels to be even. If I was doing it properly, I’d have used two logarithmic curves to make the two meet at around the right spot… but I’m not quite that picky. Instead, I wrote the software so that it waited until the current pulse was at it’s lowest point, then it would fade the red up to it’s highest point, but also the green up to 40%. Then, it would use a linear fade to bring the red from 100% to 40% and the green from 40% to 100%, crossing at 70%. Then, it would fade the green down to the low end of a pulse, and fade the red out.

The result was that the power cell would pulse red, then do a pulse where it started red, crosssed over, then ended up green, after which it would continue pulsing green. It was then easy enough to tweak the code so that it could do the same going from green to red when the switch was turned off again as well.

I added in a few hard-coded pulses of the white LED array as well, so that there were some bright flashes at various points in the sequence.

I’m not going to post the code up here becuase it’s quite, quite horrific. It’s not difficult or complex – just bad because I was writing it in a hurry. One day I might replace it with something clever and efficient.

Electronic Bits – Mounting and Control

Once I’d got the software working enough to use, it was time to fit the Seeduino into its box and close it up, so I fitted leads for the keyswitch and added transistors to drive two more LED arrays (so I could add them later if I want to)… Then screwed the lid onto the box. I then ran those cables (with a couple of connectors on the way) round to the
waistband of the rucksack, where I fixed another black box. I then fitted the keyswitch in the faceplate of that box, and put the key onto a chain next to it, so I’d never be able to lose the key without losing the whole backpack… which seems like an unlikely occurance.

That meant that all of the technical bits were done, so it was on to the finishing touches.

Physical Bits – Padding and Decoration

At this point, the backpack “power unit” was a bit fugly, being clad in glue and upholstry strapping. Whilst it was pretty resilient in this state, it still had a few solid edges that could damage other people’s kit if they hit it. I had no concerns about it taking damage, but LARP weapons hitting it may have suffered damage… so I wanted to soften the edges up a bit. I wasn’t planning on repeatedly beating people with it, though, so I didn’t need to go the whole hog… I just needed to soften the edges, make it look good and make it able to take a couple of knocks.

What I ended up doing was making a foam decorative layer, which was coated in latex and painted bronze on the front and edges. When this eventually all dried (which took about a day and a half), I coated the outside in clear varnish. I didn’t have time to let that lot dry completely, as it was still tacky two days later… so I pressed on and glued that lot on top of the strapping with impact adhesive.

Then, the finishing touches. Going in with a fine paintbrush and filling in any unsightly little bits of visible white plastic moulding with black paint. I still missed a couple, I think.

How did it handle?

All in all it worked pretty well. I had a couple of issues with wiring around the battery as I hadn’t had time to add a proper power switch or put any kind of boot onto the power leads, so I sheared off the wire to the battery connector at one point. I replaced it easy enough when I found a screwdriver, but it could do with some sturdier cabling and some work to make it a bit more resilient in future.

You can see what it looked like here:

Edited to add: In this video I talk about estimating the battery life being 6-10 hours. I’d miscalculated. A more accurate estimate is 12-16 hours on a single Lithium PP3.

Future Plans

Make use of the two extra transitors and cabling I added to put some LEDs on the front of the costume somewhere.
Rewrite the software with less horrible code.
Make the software more versatile, maybe adding more control to the inputs.
Make the white LED array independently controllable, and able to do continuous strobe flashing at a controllable rate.
Improve the sturdiness of the wiring around the power connector.
Tidy up the mounting of the seeduino in its box.
Add a usb connector to the box so I don’t have to open it up to change the software
Improve the non-techy bits of the costume to go with it