I searched for similar scripts and found this excellent one on Doug’s scripts which opens files in Quicktime. I took the basic syntax and structure and modified it to work nicely with vodcasts and VLC.

It checks the selected tracks in iTunes and whether they are unplayed video podcasts, it then plays the oldest one it finds. It also plays any video track it finds (if the first condition is not met) and maintains the new/not new marker on podcasts. I installed it in iTunes and gave it a keyboard shortcut; now my vodcast viewing is easy!

• The script file

I wrote a set of Ruby scripts to take several XML files, concatenate them and reformat them for input to another database. I had several problems to overcome including; checking for the existence of files and directories and sorting the data by nested properties.

I believe the script is still in use.

• The script file

I’ve been using a great script from Remy Sharp to pull updates from Twitter (using JSON) and present them using AJAX. It’s a versatile tool but only works with Twitter, so I wanted to build on it to create a similar script to present a lifestream pulled from various web services – Digg, Facebook, Flickr, etc.

The problem is getting the data as JSON, some services offer this up but for the others I had to use Yahoo! Pipes to convert RSS feeds to JSON.

I’ve added methods for each web service I wanted to use (although I want to create generic methods in the future) and used a call-back to process the returned JSON and update the page using the DOM.

The methods are called as follows:

getDiggs(‘target_id’, ‘username’, ‘root_site’, 5, { clearContents: true, timeout: 5000, enableLinks: true, printDescription: true, printDiggCount: true, printTime: false });

It was fun to play around using JSON and DOM manipulation, I’ll probably get around to updating this code at some point.

• The script file

I chose to research into the area of automatic photograph orientation, with the aim of implementing an application to correctly orientate images of incorrect orientations. I achieved a mark of 78% and was awarded the first prize for a multimedia project from the year.

Automatic photograph orientation is the method of detecting the correct orientation of an image, through several possible feature extraction techniques, and rotating that image to be correctly orientated. I researched into this area, implementing several methods of feature extraction, to produce an application to correctly orientate images.

I produced a full report of my research and findings as well as details of the implementation of the application.

Automatic photograph orientation

The application I produced was developed using C++ and Cocoa with an Objective-C bridge between the back and front end. It implemented several feature extraction techniques and achieved a fairly high success rate with outdoor images; mainly due to a sophisticated colour feature detection algorithm.

The application interface

I learnt how to keep focus and work on a long-term, large scale project. I also had to work independently across various disciplines. It has definitely been the biggest challenge I have faced at uni.

The virtual environment

The scene was modelled with 3D Studio Max and called for many of the techniques I learnt in my computer generated graphics course. You can watch the movie fly-through of the scene below.

Virtual environments

The crossword interface

By using all these things in a single project I think I’ve actually understood how they interact together. It’s totally opened my eyes to the benefit of a cleverly designed project, now I’ve just got to start the next one!

Computer graphics modelling and rendering

I examined the original scenes, noting down measurements and taking photographs, before translating these into a 3D model of the environment within 3D Studio Max. Producing a realistic image employs 4 core disciplines; accurate modelling, realistic texturing, appropriate lighting and precise rendering. The perfect simulated image is a result of getting all four of these things right. The scene with the red door is my favourite, the lighting and modelling are particularly good.

Computer Graphics Modelling and Rendering report

The watch simulation

The coursework was to create a demonstration of a watch using Flash. The challenge was to make it accurate and with interactive features. I’ve used intricate keyframe animation and actionscripting with vector graphics of the watch parts.

I’ve got some great basic experience with Flash now and I can easily combine actionscript, vector drawing and animation.

Multimedia Video Systems report

• Watch animation (24KB)