For god’s sake shut up

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Dan Chambers

I don’t know if you’ve spent any time trawling through estate agency websites, but if you’re anything like me (crotchety, pedantic, prone to tutting) you get fed up with the awful mangling of language that goes on. It seems like every flat is a “property” or “instruction” and “benefits from” wood flooring and is “moments from transportation links”.
I took matters into my own hands, and with the help of a Firefox add-on called FoxReplace, 4 hours on a Sunday evening, and a rudimentary knowledge of regular expressions, managed to turn this:

into this:

Just the facts,  please!

Here’s a sample of one of the regular expressions, designed to weed out pointless adverbs. I even managed to build in a filter for common spelling errors (the question mark in regular expressions means that the preceding character can appear or not and the operation will still be carried out, so both “truly” and “truely” will be caught):

<input type=”regexp”>”(increasingly|beautifull?y|enviably|generously|very|extremely|conveniently|wonderfull?y|true?ly)”</input>

There are still a few things to iron out, and I can’t keep up with their spelling mistakes so will have to concede defeat there. But it crunches down the text by as much as a third and makes a grim task a bit more palatable.

Filed under: computing, downloads, grammar, gripes, miscellaneous, oddities, tips, writing | Leave a Comment »

The OpenOffice Fork

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Dan Chambers

I’ve recently splashed out on a new computer to replace my aged, groaning PC which was one of the machines we used at Pesky for The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers. The new one has a fast (although loud) graphics card and more memory to play with, which should help me get acquainted with After Effects and 3D packages (I’m starting in Blender, mainly because it’s free, but also because I used it a while ago and always enjoyed piddling around with it). Having been faced with the task of re-installing all my software (Flash, Photoshop, Final Draft, antivirus, Steam, new drivers, Notepad++, Audacity and Lame, Blender, Firefox, Acrobat Reader, CCleaner, 7Zip, Skype, Deluge, KeePass) I found I needed an Office suite, mainly for word processing, but also the occasional expenses/income spreadsheet. I always used to use OpenOffice, but Googling around led me this time to LibreOffice, which is a spinoff of that product. There’s an interesting story behind the difference between the two suites – told here. If you haven’t got time to read it, the short version (from Wikipedia) is that “On 28 September 2010, several members of the OpenOffice.org project formed a new group called “The Document Foundation”. The Document Foundation created LibreOffice from their former project in response to Oracle Corporation‘s purchasing of Sun Microsystems over concerns that Oracle would either discontinue OpenOffice.org, or place restrictions on it as an open source project, as it had on Sun’s OpenSolaris.” Which basically means OpenOffice is dead, and the developers are all working on LibreOffice.

Filed under: adrenalini, animation, computing, directing, downloads, friends, gadgets, miscellaneous | Leave a Comment »

Dim

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Dan Chambers

I downloaded the Steam client the other day, having enjoyed buying retro games from GOG which will run on my computer. It’s about 6 years old and before a month ago didn’t have a graphics card apart from the very low-powered onboard one. Incidentally my advice is to steer well clear of Dream Pinball 3D because it is horrible.
Anyway I’ve enjoyed the stuff I got from Steam, apart from my minor discomfort about DRM and having another process running in the background. After doing some surfing looking at indie games, I decided to buy Lume, which looks gorgeous and has a nice tinkly soundtrack, and struck chords in me about bodging things together on a small scale and talented people who do many things at once.

I played it for a while, and got stuck when asked to enter a combination for a lock on a sink cupboard wherein I knew I would find useful things to help finish the game. And got frustrated, and got annoyed. And so being the I-want-it-now kind of guy I am, I found a walkthrough, and got even more annoyed at the impossible solution that I couldn’t even have dreamed was required. I mean, shame on me for doing what is essentially cheating, but how was I ever supposed to guess the following solution?

***SPOILER ALERT***

I found the following from the site Gamezebo, and reading it still curdles my brian and boils my integuments:

The object is to take the various clues you’ve found and figure out how to illuminate the 3 lights and unlock the Cabinet.Clue for the first number: When viewing (close-ups) all the Pictures hanging on the Walls, there were 1, 2 and 3 picture frames showing (only part of a third picture frame in the third set).
Clue for the second number: While standing in the Hall, you can see there are, from left to right, 2, 1 and 1 round objects on the Walls.
Clue for the third number: 1. In the Hall, there are 8 Pictures. 2. Upstairs, the shadow of Lumi’s Topknot looks like the number 8. 3. Outside, on the Lower Level, there are 3 objects with a total of 7 sides (the round Window has 1, the Door has 4 and the Ladder has 2).
On the other hand, this clue could just be Upstairs: 1. The shadow of Lumi’s Topknot looks like the number 8. 2. Her actual Topknot looks like the number 8. 3. The shadow of the lower, left side of the Drafting Table, on a diagonal, next to the Bookcase, looks like the number 7.

The clues for this lock are really obscure, so what I listed may not be accurate. They’re just what I used when I chose the numbers to enter. They worked; so, the numbers are:

1 2 3
2 1 1
8 8 7

I finished the game (disappointingly short for 4 quid) with an appreciation for the lovely colours and music and innovative cardboard-y graphics, but with a grudging feeling that this was all set-dressing for a do-this-then-do-that game with insanely arbitrary puzzles.

Bah.

Filed under: animation, computing, design, downloads, gripes, music, oddities | Leave a Comment »

Pew pew pew

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Dan Chambers

For simple spot FX in animations, I found Tomas Petterson’s Sfxr to be a simple and powerful tool. It was written, in the author’s words, for those who “need some basic sound effects, don’t really care about top quality, have no idea where to get them.” Now there is a new version Bfxr which is even more fully-featured.

It’s simple to use, produces fun old-school sounds, and serves as a great introduction to electronic sound generation. I’ve always loved making electronic noise – my favourite tool for just mucking about was the Korg DS-10 cart, and before that I spent countless hours making my Gameboy SP splutter, glitch and hiss with the spartan beauty of Oliver Wittchow’s Nanoloop, which I now learn is available for iPhone and Android.

I have a fondness for 8-bit and glitchy old-school sound, having grown up with a computer that made no sound at all, and graduating to one that produced lots. I’m a sucker for anything (except the very experimental stuff) on the website 8bitpeoples.

Filed under: animation, cartoon, computing, directing, downloads, gadgets, miscellaneous, music, tips | Leave a Comment »

Noise Removal

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Dan Chambers

I had a lot of trouble with noise removal using version 1.2 of Audacity. My good buddy Sal gave me a fantastic Samson C01U microphone for Xmas and being very sensitive it picks up all sorts of background sounds, including the birds twittering in the trees outside my window. It was very difficult purging my tracks of these beautiful but incongruous intrusions, until I tried the latest beta of Audacity 1.3, with its enhanced controls.

Filed under: animation, computing, downloads, miscellaneous, music, tips | Leave a Comment »

Lady Geek Show 10

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Dan Chambers

We’re nearing the end of the series… this current show is about games, and features Angry Birds (which is about literally Angry Birds), Words With Friends (which is literally about Words) and more games-related puns than you can withstand without your blood-pressure increasing slightly.

Filed under: animation, computing, downloads, friends, gadgets, miscellaneous, publicity, tips, tv, writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Showreel Updated

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Dan Chambers

I’ve changed my showreel to incorporate the animation I did for Cartoon Network on a few Pink Panther promos for their Boomerang Channel.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14093345&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Dan Chambers Animation Reel 2010 from Dan Chambers on Vimeo.

Filed under: animation, charlie and lola, downloads, miscellaneous, publicity | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Lady Geek Show 7 – Fitness

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Dan Chambers

Here’s the latest Lady Geek App Show.

Lady Geek TV – The App Show – Episode 7 from Super Mega Action Plus on Vimeo.

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New Showreel

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Dan Chambers

Here’s my new showreel. It doesn’t include the promos I directed and animated for Cartoon Network, they’ll have to come later.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14093345&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Dan Chambers Animation Reel 2010 from Dan Chambers on Vimeo.

Filed under: animation, charlie and lola, downloads, miscellaneous, publicity | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Lady Geek App Show

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Dan Chambers


I’ve been writing scripts and animating for Lady Geek TV. It’s an app show specifically aimed at women and trying to show apps which make a practical difference. You can find all the episodes here. or subscribe via iTunes.

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