Have been to the two day conference of the May You Live In Interesting Times (an ancient Chinese curse, apparently...) festival of creative technology at the Chapter Arts Centre.

The first day was about Location Media, with contributions from a number of artists, the most strange/interesting/pointless were the two Jens, who are paid good money for this kind of stuff.

I much more enjoyed Saturday's session, where the subject of games was discussed.

The one I most enjoyed was a presentation by Stuart Nolan. His presentation had obviously been researched and scripted thoroughly, and was delivered professionally. I thought that some of the other contributors' presentations were dismal, having not prepared, thinking that "I'll just fire up the website and go from there" was a good approach. This tends to fill the presentation with "umms..." and pained expressions when trying to put thoughts into words. I think that any presentation that finishes with "so that's it" is inherently bad.

I do not mean to say that all presentations were boring, but it's easy to get fired up about this kind of thing.

The day had me thinking about what's possible and what I can do with the stuff I'm about to learn.

Chapter also has an excellent selection of lagers and beers.

I've finally finished the digistory, and am happy with the result. The only negative point I have is the images, but my story is not the easiest to set to pictures.

I will look at it next week, to see if I can improve it in any way.

I have been intensely involved in it all week, and so it's hard to look at it from an objective viewpoint. I hope that the viewer will 'get' the message that I'm trying to convey.

I've finished editing the voiceover, and mixing it with the soundtrack (Track 3 from 'The Best of Bill Evans' Live 1964-1968' album).

Tomorrow I need to finally decide on the images, and put them all together with Premiere. Then we're off to open the May You Live In Interesting Times festival in the Millenium Stadium.

We started on developing our ideas for the digital story.

Fairly emotional day. It was hard talking about my idea in front of the group. And I wrote things that I have been thinking about for months, but have not discussed with anyone.

But felt a feeling of elation after I finished, as if some heavy load was off my back.

We were given an introduction to Digital Storytelling, which is something that has really taken my interest, and I'm looking forward to making my own.

I've had some ideas about what to do over the past few days, but I thought of something today which I believe I should do. However it is very personal, and it will be difficult discussing things with the group that I have never discussed with anyone before. I'll have to think about if I will do it or not.

Introduction to Photoshop (and to Illustrator).

It is stuff that I already know, and now take for granted, but I remember when I first started using image editors and that I did not have a clue, so I will have to be patient.

However I did learn that the X key swaps the background and foreground colours, and so this (along with D) has made editing masks much easier.

Looked at DVD ROM's, and how their interfaces are designed.

Some good, some bad. I hope that I'll learn from their mistakes when/if I ever do anything similar.

In the morning two people from BBC interactive visited for us to test their websites (Colin & Cumberland and Raise Your Game).

They wanted our opinions as 'high end users' on various aspects of the design and build of the sites.

In the afternoon we explored the interface design of various CD ROM titles.

More usability today.

Looked at, used and critiqued three different sites.

All were designed in Flash, with some interesting applications of the technology. My favourite was the Shop Composition's site. I really hope that I get to do stuff like that soon.

While looking at interfaces, we had a go with the PlayStation's Eye Toy. I'd never heard of it before, so it was a treat to use for the first time. I wonder if this kind of interface will develop into something that will be used more generally.

Looked at some experimental stuff today. Early net-art and other stuff cooked up in director. One notable creation is play-create, which is Dan Brown's online playground. He has a strong mathematics background, which shines through in the applications he has created for randomly growing flowers.

We also looked at usability, and glanced over Jakob Nielsen's heuritics. Further examples can also be found on webpagesthatsuck.com.

Attended a Royal Television Society Wales conference in the Wales Millenium Centre. Many speakers, some interesting, some...not so interesting.

Highlights were the talks given by Marcus Liassides, CEO of Ubivisium Ltd, who spoke of his company's develpement of providing content over many different platforms; and by Roger Lewis of ITV Wales, who was by far the most animated speaker.

Iona Jones CE of $4C also announced that they will be giving archiving rights back to the production companies.

The buffet was also excellent.

Monday, October 10th

The first day of the course in Cardiff.

We were shown the building and our machines for the next three months, and given an outline of what we will be learning over the coming weeks.