In my last post I previewed a forthcoming project where we track a marathon as it’s run in real-time, with a whole heap of maps, graphs, tweets and APIs flying about the place.
It has now been named Beats Per Mile.
We’ve put up a holding page on Gemma’s site (she’s the one having to run the thing) and she’s written up a preview on her blog, too.
I mentioned before that I’m working on a new project that combines two big interests of mine, programming and running.
Whenever I run I use a Garmin device for timing and recording. It’s GPS-enabled, so also tracks my location, evelation, speed and pace. It also has a wireless heart-rate monitor. Once I’ve completed a workout, it’s logged in the desktop software they provide, to track my progress and compare with similar activities.
It also provides an option to export the activity as an XML file. This is usually for transferring to other devices, but as a developer, presents a huge opportunity to mess around with the data.
Plenty of people have created mashups with run data (usually map-based) and I’ve often wanted to try my hand too.
I’ve entered the ballot for the London Marathon for the past three years but haven’t ever been successful. I figured if I ever did run, the race would give me a huge volume of data to play with — and besides, would would be far too big an occasion to pass up doing something.
I was unsuccessful this year too, but a friend of mine gained a last minute place at the end of January, so the spotlight turns to her to be the star of the show.
Gemma doesn’t train with a Garmin, she uses the RunKeeper Elite iPhone app which records the same kind of data, so we can perform the same kind of analysis.
Brilliantly, it also publishes the activity to the RunKeeper website live as she’s running.
Where my data would be only accessible after the race, to manipulate and visualise after the fact, her data will be readily available as the marathon is being run.
This means we can map her progress around the course on race day, tracking her position, so we’re able to watch from home or on a mobile device at the event. We will have real-time access to her elapsed time, total distance and metrics like current pace, so we can keep up-to-date with her performance as the race is run, rather than retrospectively look back on the result.
RunKeeper isn’t the only toy to play with.
Gemma is running the race for the charity Rett UK and hopefully, if the application is interesting enough, we can drum up some additional fundraising contributions. She has a Just Giving page, who offer an API to access their data. We can show to-the-minute fundraising levels and take donations from our site.
She’s also inseparable of her iPod when running and has asked friends to contribute tracks to a race day playlist. We’re considering using either the Soundcloud API or Mixcloud API to stream this playlist on the site, synchronised with her start time so visitors can hear exactly what she’s listening to.
Knowing when and where she is on the course, we are able to Tweet updates such as mile paces and intermediate timings, when she’s passed notable landmarks or approaching the finish line. Collecting good-will tweets is also pretty easy with a hash tag or mention.
Another idea is to pull in photos taken on the day, using the time and location data around busy spectator spots. For example, Instagram have recently released an API to retrieve their geolocated pictures.
By querying the API at certain locations at the time we know Gemma has passed them, we can create our own gallery of Where’s Wally style photos in case anyone paps her — if not, we’re left with some nice pictures of the race.
So an assortment of APIs to play with, we should be able to produce something pretty cool. I’ll likely be blogging my experiments with each platform, none of which I’ve worked with before — other than Twitter, back when it was Basic Auth.
Less than three weeks to go, can’t be as hard as actually having to run the twenty-six miles can it?
At some point I seem to have forgotten I had a blog.
It’s handy when you get into a habit of blogging regularly, be it as I did documenting thoughts or ideas for my own reference or writing up the odd workshop or seminar report for anyone that may have miss it, or unravelling some epiphanic solution to some stumbled-upon (most likely programming) problem on the off-chance that someone else may one day search for the same answer.
Writing was, at that point, with a habitual ease but I guess I got into the habit of not doing those things – and as a result haven’t touched this blog since January of last year. Annoyingly, departing with an unwitting optimism in retrospect.
Anyway much has happened since that time, including a change of career path – I’m now working freelance full-time.
Also within that time I published a portfolio of work, from my time with various agencies and a period moonlighting before making the jump to fully-realised freelancing. Another effort far-too-long in coming finally achieved (insert some proverb about shoemaking) and you can see it here: http://marchibbins.com/projects/.
Comments welcome.
Activity with iheartplay has also picked up. We have a few new projects in motion and recently took a trip to Berlin for the superb Transmediale festival.
So far the projects go, I’m hoping those will supply most of the ammunition for getting back into the swing of writing here.
One of our technical objectives is to write and publish the code that we produce. A recent undertaking with a local urban farming initiative called FARM:london, may bring the first of those offerings in the form of an open source HTML5-based WordPress framework theme.
Though nothing ground-breaking technically, sentimentally it will stand as the first code-based output from the group. Initiating not only a philosophical accord but more practically a reusable application for other projects, whether they be ours or yours. It’ll actually be used for the redesign of this blog.
Oh and that’ll be released through GitHub, which I have no clue about – so there’s be a post, right there.
It’s an incentive for us all in taking on extracurricular work with iheartplay that we’re able to explore all opportunities to play with new technologies, platforms and people that our everyday jobs may not otherwise produce.
Recently I’ve been able to combine two personal loves of programming and distance running in a project which tracks the live location, pace, speed (and all the rest) of an iPhone-carrying athlete with a pretty nifty hack and a bespoke API layer written from scratch.
That’s something I’ve only had a few days to work on but already clocked up three new API and frameworks encounters that deserve a few paragraphs of diatribe.
So, reinvigorated with an passionate (none whatsoever trivial) outlook on blogging, building, the Web and the future, watch this space – or I’ll just see you again in a year.
Sorry about that.
With the D&AD New Blood exhibition finishing yesterday our final year together is pretty much complete.
It was good for BAIMPs to represent Bournemouth’s debut at the show and we return with the good news of Chris Herring and Tom Schrimshaw having won Best New Blood awards for their projects Ruled by Secrecy and Douteki respectively.
Although again tarnished by being called out as ‘The Arts Institute at Bournemouth’ at the award ceremony, at least this time it was more laughable in being half expected and now a long-running joke since Computer Arts’ mistake in their Graduate Showcase.
As for other awards, Talkboards finished as a Finalist in the Rhizome Artist Commission 2007-2008 (the very deserved winners here) and a Semi-Finalist in the Adobe Achievement Awards – so while I won’t be flying out to San Francisco, I have got a nice shiny certificate 
Seems now with everyone now slowing beginning to disperse, our three years have gone stupidly quickly. It really doesn’t seem that long ago that we were working through the night on our Flash Animation projects in the first year.
From: One of the Geek Team All-Night sessions – 19th April, 2005.
Not that I’m even going to begin to get soppy or anything but I think our coursemates and tutors have been truly decent and we’ve only benefited from being so close friends and always on hand to cooperate and help each other out – or lend hardware. A huge huge thank you to Craig, Matt, Chris, Joe & Chris for screens and computers loaned for the exhibitions.
To: The Final Studio 3 All-Nighter – 15th May, 2007.
It’s a shame to hear our other years don’t get on nearly half as well as we do – let lone do these ^^ kinds of things – so much so that it’s possible that rivalry and unhealthy competitiveness may have significantly negative effects on projects or prospective shows.
I think iheartplay was a huge success, with most people getting interviews, internships or even jobs already secured as a result. A whole load of card-swapping and networking went on, very promising for individuals and in promoting Bournemouth University and the proud IMPs that we are.
While there were only four of us demonstrating at New Blood, we plastered the iheartplay promo materials – visually and literally – all over our pitch. We also rinsed the remaining iheartplay catalogues, showing the work of everyone involved and did our best discussing everyone else’s projects as relevant to visitors’ interests.
The huge majority of the other stands mainly exhibited graphics, illustration or print media. So although there were a lot of visitors to the exhibition as a whole, we found (as most did in Brick Lane) that an instant panic and chronic fear of computers and touching mice came over to anyone in the vicinity and they rather take our brochures to browse links and read the copy in their own time and space rather than risk showing their lack of computer skills or whatever. Either way, for all these people it was actually irrelevant who was physically there, as much as any projects that caught their eye inside the books.
I’ve only been able to find two reviews of the iheartplay exhibition so far. Daniel Harris’ of SubSub, though brief, described the show as ‘well coordinated, felt coherent .. and in placed damn interesting’. The only other from a disappointed BAIMP student who unfortunately didn’t think to note the opening times and missed the show completely (found here).
If anyone discovers any more dotted around the web be sure to send me a message or link on del.ici.ous.
Finally, sincerely the very best of luck to everyone on the July 11th. Personally I feel if two hours of Image Studies for a year has set us up for top marks all round then we deserve them just for sitting through ‘em
With the iheartplay exhibition almost upon us things are beginning to get hectic again.
I’ve been asked to put together some viral games in Flash that we can host and bombard forums with to create a little extra buzz and get a bit more exposure.
Anyway, I’ve adapted some very simple classic arcade games, basically just substituting sprites with iheartplay logos and with a bit of restyling hopefully they’ll do the trick.
Some very buggy demos are online as follows:
Space Invaders:
http://impserver.bournemouth.ac.uk/~mhibbins/iheartplay/invaders.html
Pac-Man:
http://impserver.bournemouth.ac.uk/~mhibbins/iheartplay/pacman.html
Asteroids:
http://impserver.bournemouth.ac.uk/~mhibbins/iheartplay/asteroids.html
A few more tweaks and they’ll go live on the iheartplay site, but feel free to have a go now and get yourself on the scoreboard – the more the better!
It seems everyone is putting together new online portfolios in preparation for the show, considering mine still claims my current project is design for small screens I think it’s time I sort one out too.
Tunnelling is almost done – *so* close to having it fully ready to roll, kind of a necessity Meanwhile I’m trying to get hold of some machines to run it locally at the show, that’ll hopefully be smoother too, as well as guaranteeing I can actually show something.
Congrats to those who got into the Computer Arts Graduate Showcase, good to see some Bournemouth Uni representation – well, Bournemouth, at least.
Also: New Header Alert! It’s actually Talkboards related now. The previous showed Alan Reed’s ‘City Poem’, which was part of the Public Pages project.