Jai's Laboratory

What’s with all these wild fires? There are 400 wildfires reported in BC earlier this week, and let me tell you, my lungs sure can tell. I cough a lot more, and getting up the 3 flights of stairs to work makes me feel like a 400lb competitive eater after a bacon-eating contest. UGH. It reminds me all the time of the Firestorm I lived through in Kelowna, about 7 years ago. The air was heavy, had a tinge of woodsmoke in it. Now, when I smell the same air, it makes me homesick for Okanagan Lake. Maybe I’ll head back there soon & see the fam.

Work has been awesome, and in the name of science (SCIENCE!) I found a new app that lets me track my work. It’s called IOGraphica and it’s a great little tool. Basically, you set it to record, and then it tracks your house movements, rest points, and clicks. Then it turns it all in to a really great data map that you can do whatever with. I see a lot of long-term potential for this app, not just for professional purposes (see: tracking user behavior when launching new sites), but also for art.

Here, I made one over a day of work, coding a new site at the office (notice the dual monitor):

…and one I made at home while working in Photoshop for a client:

I think it’s interesting that on the first one, it’s all over the map where I click to access the code I need to edit in both windows, and the major clicks are where my browser windows overlap so I can select them. In the second one, since I was only using Photoshop, and Firefox, you can really see where the layers palate is, and where on the canvas I do most of my work. I can also notice where I color with my tablet, just like a real pen, diagonally.

Have an awesome weekend & be excellent to each other!

J

Hey everyone,

Check out Emma Lehto’s portfolio when you have a chance. It’s up and running at EmmaLehto.ca
You’ll have to check with her, but I think she is open for commission work, so if you’re tickled by the work you see, fire her an Email and see about getting your own Emma Lehto signature piece for your home or office! (I would suggest trying to get your hands on the Cartel Coffee Table. It’s stellar!)

Enjoy the rest of your day!

JF

I’ve had the pleasure over the last month or so, to be working with a great talent like Jason Danielson. Aside from being a pretty amazing human being, he is also multi-talented in many different disciplines. An accomplished musician, and nigh-expert coder, he never ceases to amaze me. When I got the call from him that he wanted to work together on a new project he is starting, I of course jumped at the chance.

Jason is building a music website that will function both as a record label for DJs & Producers, but also as a place to purchase new music, templates, stems, and DJ tools to be used in programs like Ableton Live. I think he’s on to something here, since most online resources for DJs tend to not cater to producers who also perform live.
So, the company is called “Swingset Sounds”. It gets it’s name from a bunch of different places, and has various meanings behind it. First off, is the musical inflection. In a swing-set, the drummer hits the ride cymbal with a double-1/4  beat before the 2 & 4 of a 4/4 time bar (If I’ve lost you, don’t worry). You hear it all the time in Jazz, Blues, and Swing tracks.

<<Pictures & more reading after the jump>>

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I have been working with BoogieNet on a project for a client where they needed an Email template for an group mail-out to their clients. I was approached to do some graphic template work, and then some light coding.

After about 2 weeks (thanks to my dear friend, Influenza), I had the graphics signed off on, and I began coding the form. What I wasn’t aware of was that the form needed to be in PHP (oh-shit), and it required the use of tables (double oh-shit) for it to work in the WordPress-style user interface. I had only used PHP a couple times in my life. Once when I was working with LB, since the forum ran on PHP and BBCode… but I wasn’t the webmaster at that point so my contact with it was minimal. The site Admin, Sven, was responsible for most of the hard-coding (& thanks to his dedication and skill, the site is still running smoothly with little maintenance). The other time was in the 2nd month of school when we were forced to eat the big “PHP shit-sandwich” at knife-point. It wasn’t that bad, but imagine trying to eat a shit sandwich at knife point. Oh YOU’LL eat it, but you’ll have a constant gag-reflex, a constant conflict going on in between your mind and your body, and a tear in your eye with every bite. So… more PHP? GREAT. Read more »

I have been working freelance lazily for years. Now that I am out of school, I find that I am taking more projects that I haven’t considered before. Like this one. I was contacted to make a 3D animated logo for a BC company. I took it out of excitement to be able to flex my 3D muscle, and a great opportunity to fill-in my portfolio.

When approached, I was presented with a logo that the client was already pleased with. I couldn’t find anything wrong with it and was actually impressed with it’s design. Let me tell you, having a good starting point speeds up the process immensely. The client wanted to have a logo animation that was simple, elegant, and clean. They didn’t want anything too complicated, or busy as they wanted to underscore the minimal impact their mining technology had on the environment, and the surroundings of the mining sites.

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