Barcamp Bournemouth 2

Over the weekend of 10th/11th April the second Barcamp to be held in Bournemouth took place at Bournemouth University with over 70 participants in attendance. The sponsors of this year's event were: Red Web, G3 Show, BCS, C4L, Fibreband and Squizzleapp.

Sessions I went to on Saturday

Usability vs Accessibility - Phil Heywood and Luke Guppy
In this session Phil and Luke gave the pros and cons of Usability vs Accessibility and how they should be carefully considered in web projects as one may conflict with the other. They gave examples of the downsides of JQuery and what we can do to improve the accessibility if people have Javascript turned off in the browser.

Smashing Mag sucks or how to blag it as a webdesigner - Rich Quick
In this talk, Rich gave examples of application websites that were obvious rip-offs of each other in terms of design and content. He also questioned who is to blame for designs looking the same, the designer or online articles and tutorials.

Creativity - top 10 tips for better brainstorming - David Burton
In David's presentation he gave the understanding of creativity, how it works and how we can get the most out of brainstorming. He went through the fives types of creative behaviour including Fact Finding, (Re) organising, Improvising, Meaning and Maverick and how people can sometimes shift between them. He also went through how we can come up with freshness and new ideas.

Rolling a turd in glitter, 10 steps to design awesomeness - Damian Proctor
In this talk Damian examined various websites and different design techniques in each site and how they are used effectively. The 10 steps that Damian talked about were: Power of 3, Leading the eye, Creating emotions with elements, Contrast, Hierarchy of type, Whitespace, Unity, Depth, Grids and Colours.

Chat roulette - Dom Hodgson
You know the score.

The rest of Saturday night was spent generally hanging about and playing a few games of Werewolf including probably the best game I've played which had Cristiano as the moderator and no werewolfs were involved. Lets just say it made for a very interesting game.

Sessions I went to on Sunday

XSS with JQuery - Kevin Prince
In this presentation, Kevin showed how we can use widgets across sites using JQuery and JSON and how XSS isn't always evil.

Get Inspiration for Photography - Martin Cunningham
In this session I gave examples of how we can get inspiration for photography when you aren't really inspired to get out with the camera.

Version control with Git - Abizer
In this session Abizer talked about version control with Git and commands that can be used to make life easier when dealing with version control.

Lightning talks - Various Speakers
A session including various 5 minute presentations given by a number of speakers.

As always for these types of events a big thank you to the Organisers, Sponsors and the Attendees. Oh and also Dom and Heather for the cups of tea in Leeds.

UK Maker Faire 2010 and Soul Technique release the ST EP!

A couple of weeks ago, I spent Saturday along at the 2nd Makerfaire to be be held in the UK as part of Newcastle Science Fest, a ten day event which aims to increase the North East's enthusiasm for science and to encourage the younger generation to consider a career in the science field. Makerfaires have been going for quite a while now in America and have only just came over to the UK in the last couple of years, much to the surprise of me being held in Newcastle. Makerfaires celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science and the DIY attitude.

I went to the 1st Makerfaire to come to the UK last year, again held in Newcastle and thoroughly enjoyed myself, the visit also incorporated a photo walk with some of the usual's from the Newcastle Photo Walk group on Flickr and when I saw the event organized again and coming back to the North East I just had to go along. This year you had to pay an entrance fee to get into the Center Of Life where the event was held (Last year it was held in Times Square), still it was quite reasonable at around £4 which also included access to the other exhibitions in the building. This year the event was also a lot bigger both with the amount of attendees and the amount of makers and stalls available to look around.

Here is a run down of some of the makers which I found most interesting.

Sugru – Make things more user friendly by hacking them
Out of all the stalls I saw at this years Makerfaire this was the most useful product. A product called Sugru which allows further hacking of an everyday product to make it easier to use. It is a putty/rubber like substance which then sets and can be used on basically anything.

The 3 Drunks
Three robots which act drunk and who interact with passers by.

ZomeTool and Polydron
Exploring the ideas of symmetry in 2D and 3D by building mathematical sculptures.

Shapeways
A fascinating project which I first noticed at last years Makerfaire which print objects in a variety of 3D shapes using various different materials.

Twinkly, Sparkly cocktail bar
Demonstrated by Oli Wood, this is a cocktail bar made with LEDs and recycled products.

Web Cycle
A project created by Tom Scott and Matt, the Web Cycle uses open source Arduino technology and open source Ubuntu software. By cycling faster, the internet connection speeds up allowing you to browse pages faster.

Compukit UK 101
A project that is 30 years old, built from scratch and demonstrated at last years Makerfaire.

Percussion Kit II
Alistair McDonald's scaled up version of the original Percussion kit which he built at a hack day last year in London. Very interesting to see how the younger people interacted it.

Power Tool Drag Racing
Racing power tools such as modified Angle Grinders, Dremels and Saws down a 30ft track.

Complete a Rubicks cube in under 30 seconds
A robot which detects the rubicks cube, computes the possibilities and solves the problem in under 20 seconds.

Soul Technique release the ST EP!

Following the Makerfaire on Saturday night we headed over to the World Headquarters as Soul Technique, a Newcastle band I've followed for a while now were releasing their EP which had been in the pipeline for a few months.

The gig was down to start at 8pm but as with any event like this, the unwritten rule is is that it will start at least 30mins later. We turned up for 7:50pm, the doors were closed. Odd I thought, but then a woman came to the door and told us that we had to stay outside (Event asking if we could use the toilet, she pointed to the bar across the street). 15 minutes later we were allowed in, and even then the girl taking the money on the front counter wasn't ready. I found this very bad customer service and World Headquarters nearly lost two customers by doing this.

After paying the money to get in (and getting a free EP CD), I caught up with Ruth, the lead singer and had a bit of a chat. The night started with a set from Skrufz a rap group for the North East. I quite liked some of their stuff, but wouldn't have minded seeing them again as I'm sure they would have grown on me.

The second set of the night was given by the main group of the night. A brilliant set including a lot of their older tracks and some new ones. I've found with a lot of Soul Technique gigs and their style of music that when people get a couple of drinks down them and the audience gets into the spirit of things, they can bring the building to the ground with their mix of soul, pop, bass and grungy music and the EP release was no exception!

Some of the tracks played on the night included: “Move with me”, “Ugly”, “I've been here before”, “Golden Era”, “Freakshow” and “Slow Down”.

Even with the troubles we had when we first arrived this was a truly fantastic evening. Soul Technique regularly play in Newcastle, so get yourselves along to the next gig!

Soul Technique can be found here: myspace.com/soultechniqueofficial