Blog – Page 36 – Johan Ronsse

I tried some augmented/virtual reality games

May 19, 2015 - Posted in games interface

I don’t know what’s happening lately, maybe it’s because I’m in Japan, or maybe because we finally reached a certain point in tech, but every 2 weeks there is some new announcement that makes me feel like I am living in the future. Just a few days ago I saw a video of 2 guys flying over Dubai with a jetpack. I saw some guy with a surfboard that had a jet engine attached to it – they called it a new sport. There was the HoloLens announcement. There are drone deliveries and people are excited about space again.

I was talking to some coworkers in our coworking space and showing them the video I recently made about Tokyo Indie Fest. At that game conference I got to try the Oculus rift as well as the Samsung Gear VR. The difference between these is that one uses a computer to render the data to the Oculus whereas the second one uses a smartphone for the display. I am not sure where the renderer is located in the case of the Samsung Gear VR.

So when I say coworkers I mean the other guys in my coworking space. Not my Mono colleagues. Anyway, for months they have been working on their project, which is an augmented reality game. I got to try it today. Basically you have a sensor on your wrist that connects to a smartphone. The sensor is this product called the Myo:

Then just like the Samsung Gear VR product you strap a smartphone to your head (in this case it was a Sony Xperia) and it’s time to play! The game involved shooting fireballs from your hand. No, really. Fireballs from your hand.

Basically you would clench your fist so the muscles in your arm would tighten. When you release your fist the muscles untighten, the sensor gets a signal and BOOM! – you see a fireball coming from your hand. I probably looked like a total dork but for one moment I felt the power.

We chatted a bit about possible uses cases and this could make a game like laser shooting a lot more interesting. The idea for now is to make a 3 vs 3 game as seen in Hado’s concept video. From what I’ve seen it’s hard to pull off VR, and from the demo I tried it isn’t quite there yet. This counts for all VR stuff at the game conference as well. The resolution is too low and the software is too slow, but I think with some dedication and newer hardware we can reach that VR point that it actually becomes nice and a preferred way to play video games. I love it when people are working on hard problems so to these guys I say: がんばって!

I made a small documentary about Tokyo Indie Fest 2015

May 13, 2015 - Posted in film games

One of my main software projects (which I unfortunately can tell nothing about) is close to a first release. The developers are working hard to iron out the last bugs. As the designer I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time on my hands.

My dream has always been to make a movie. Every time I watch a movie I analyze the shots carefully. I’m usually more interested in the technical side than the actual story.

I had dabbled with iMovie and Final Cut (Pro X) before but it never felt like I could actually make a proper movie with them. These apps felt like toys to me.

I decided to learn Adobe Premiere and I must say it’s pretty awesome. Lynda.com was a great help to get up to speed with the different functions of Premiere. The photography skills I picked up before helped with this project as well.

The problem was that I didn’t really have any material to practice with, so I decided to make it a real project. I wanted to do a small movie on indie game makers. I went to the Tokyo Indie Fest conference and interviewed 5 people about their game. I had the lovely assistance from my girlfriend to be the second camera person.

The material was then edited using Adobe Premiere and Audition. What we used for this film is pretty bare bones: a cheap lavalier mic from Sony, a DIY lavalier mic, a tripod, 2 iPhones, a recorder and a Sony RX100 III. It worked but as you will hear in the video the place was noisy as hell. Even after a lot of sound editing it still sounds kind of bad; that’s a lesson for later.

I am already thinking about new documentary ideas and how to make the next one better. Enjoy the movie!

Re: The Death of the Agency Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

March 15, 2015 - Posted in Uncategorized

The Death of the Agency Has Been Greatly Exaggerated:

“Now this doesn’t mean that agencies won’t struggle. With services like SquareSpace and Shopify eating into the lower end of the market, I think many smaller agencies or individuals will find it difficult to complete.”

I think the opposite is true, services like Squarespace and Shopify enable smaller agencies or individuals to actually deliver a service that they never could before. When an organisation has a need to be represented online, to sell things online etc. these tools make a single talented individual super-powerful.

You can add payments to a website with stripe in less than a day, it used to be a mammoth task of integrating Ogone and dealing with all kinds of issues. These days you can buy software that used to be thousands of dollars for one tenth of the price (I am talking about Logic and Lightroom). This software enables small companies to deliver a lot of value for their clients.

Emoticons

March 15, 2015 - Posted in other

Taco Bell recently lobbied the Unicode Consortium to add a taco emoji to its keyboard. The brand circulated a Change.org petition that’s secured 30,000 signatures.

Here’s Why Your Favorite Brands Are Making Their Own Emoticons →

The State of Hiring

March 15, 2015 - Posted in Uncategorized

There’s another alternative too. Companies like Automattic (WordPress) require a one month no-obligation trial before any new employee is officially hired. This works for them, but can have its downsides too. The lack of commitment on the company’s behalf may deter potential candidates. This is clearly a cost Automattic is willing to take though, as making the right hiring decisions is so important.

The State of Hiring →

Hiragana/katakana learning application: developer wanted

January 11, 2015 - Posted in interface

I have a side project related to learning Japanese. You can find a demo here. I’m looking for a Javascript developer to improve it so we can launch a version on the app store. We can do a revenue split depending on how well it does.

For me this is a side project to experiment with Apache/Cordova and application design while learning Japanese. I am also scratching a personal itch: I couldn’t any decent looking app to learn hiragana and katakana. I have a deep understanding of CSS and can provide the design/features direction.

I would like most parts to be webviews but if it’s logical to use a native component, let’s do that. For now I am mostly looking to release this as an iOS app. Currently the code is based on Angular using Ionic framework but this is up for discussion. If you are interested, let’s talk: hirakata@johanronsse.be.

Weapons of Choice

December 3, 2014 - Posted in other - 2 comments

The end of the year traditionally comes with tons of end of year lists. Like many people I have a love/hate relationship with these kinds of lists.

I love them because I like to discover new things. I hate them because they always promote the latest and greatest when it’s not always the latest and greatest that’s the best.

If the hdmyboy project excites me more than the offerings of the latest consoles, maybe I am just getting a bit older. I fully realize how stupid this statement sounds to those reading this well in their forties and older but hey, that’s just how I feel.

I used to make yearly reports with the best films or music I discovered that year. After a while I couldn’t be bothered with keeping these lists. Every year has great new music albums and great movies. I will leave these kinds of recommendations to the relevant publications.

Talking about yearly reports, I admire how Nicholas Felton has been doing his Feltron report since 2005. I wonder how he doesn’t go crazy tracking all these facts about his life. I track the business side of things but tracking my personal life? No thanks.

I like Marco’s qualification that you need to have used a product for at least a year to recommend it.

So these are the things I’ve used for more than a year and I can heartily recommend, starting with hardware:

Bluetooth speaker: Big Jambox by Jawbone
Laptop: Macbook Pro retina
Phone: iPhone (5S)

Then, on the software side:

Cloud syncing service: Dropbox
Photo editing software: Adobe Lightroom 5
E-reader: Amazon Kindle
Project management software: Basecamp
Browser: Google Chrome
Todo sofware: Omnifocus
Bookmarking service: Pinboard
Read it later service: Instapaper
Feed reader: Reeder
Text expansion software: TextExpander
Quick sharing software: CloudApp
FTP client: Transmit 3
Text editor: Textmate II
E-mail client: Gmail

These are some newcomers that still have to prove their worth – but it looks like these are here to stay:

Document scanner: Fujitsu Scansnap S1300i
USB Hub: Anker USB 3.0 9-Port Hub
E-mail replacement: Slack
Compact camera: Sony DSC-RX100 III
Noise cancelling headphones: Bose QC-15
Graphics software: Sketch 3

If you know similar lists like this — preferably from single bloggers and not from big sites like Ars — please let me know.

Bloomberg Terminal

November 29, 2014 - Posted in computers

According to an episode of The Newsroom, the Bloomberg terminal is a $24,000 machine used wanted by traders to be able to watch the markets as closely as possible. According to their website it’s a software solution these days.

Whatever may be the case, I thought the UI looked interesting. It seems pretty standard for a financial application but the array of windows and charts makes the whole of it looks impressive.

The fastest way to convert images

November 26, 2014 - Posted in computers

For me, this is the quickest way to convert and optimize a bunch of images. This example converts a bunch of PNGs in JPGs and resizes them to a width of 1100 pixels. It then opens ImageOptim to further optimize the output.

Install ImageOptim
Install ImageMagick – if you have Brew the quickest way is: brew install imagemagick
Run this command: mogrify -format jpg *.png && mogrify -resize 1100 *.jpg && open -a ImageOptim .

Be aware that mogrify replaces the original file – use convert if you want to keep the original files.

UI in Jurassic World trailer

November 26, 2014 - Posted in interface

When I watch science fiction films – or any film really, I am always fascinated by how computers are displayed. Here are some UI screen grabs from the just-released Jurassic World trailer:

And one from the original film:

A map with color coding seems more useful to me than an all-blue/black one.