Tech Services - Software

By profession, I'm a computer programmer. So, over the years, I've created all sorts of software for business & scientific applications, controlling machinery, image processing, multi-media; custom device drivers, web site frameworks; you name it really.

I've got a little collection of screen-shots on the Software Design Page.

I've programmed in: BASIC, ForTran, Assembly Language, Algol, CoBOL, DCL, Pascal, dBase, Forth, Sculptor 4GL, Awk, Object-Pacal, C, C++, Clipper, FoxPro, Ada, Perl, Python, TCL, PHP, SQL, Ruby, JavaScript & JQuery, ActionScript, & Various Unix shells. And then there's all those "not-quite" languages like HTML, CSS, XML, JSON, Tex, & POV-Ray (world chamption of "is it a programming language or not?").

As a result of this, I do tend to be rather dismissive of digital-artists who don't write at least part of their own software.

But, on the plus side, it's put me in a good position to help and support other artists who aren't as geeky as me.

The illustration on the left is the code for a special video effect that I developed for a colleague & I did some 3D modelling for a video for Lloyds Somers (there's a little bit more about these on the Video Services page).

Ken White, Sarah Checksfield & Swindon Magnetizer all have websites driven my my web-o-matic system.

And the ever more streamlined Gallery-O-Matic has been playing video in The Artsite Gallery, & The Post Modern for a good few years now.

I've done a load of other digital-media & installation-tech too. And will, hopefully, be doing a lot more in the future. What do you need?

import os, Image def CopyPic (PicName, NewName): print 'Copying ' + PicName + ' to ' + NewName os.system ('cp ' + PicName + ' ' + NewName) picdir = 'demo' os.system ('rm -r render') os.mkdir ('render') files = os.listdir (picdir) picdir = picdir + '/' files.sort() frame = 0 count = len (files) files.append (files [0]) for idx in range (count): for chunk in ['block', 'transition']: ini = open ('temp.ini', 'w') # ini.write ('Declare=test_mode=1\n') ini.write ('Antialias=On\n') ini.write ('Sampling_Method=1\n') ini.write ('Antialias_Threshold=0.5\n') ini.write ('Antialias_Depth=2\n') ini.write ('Width=720\n') ini.write ('Height=576\n') ini.write ('Cyclic_Animation=on\n') ini.write ('Pause_when_Done=off\n') ini.write ('Input_File_Name=scope.pov\n') ini.write ('Initial_Frame=' + str (frame) + '\n') if chunk == 'block': CopyPic (picdir + files [idx], '1.jpg') CopyPic (picdir + files [idx], '2.jpg') frame = frame + (25 * 4) # 4 seconds else: # pic 1 has already been copied during the prev step CopyPic (picdir + files [idx + 1], '2.jpg') ini.write ('Declare=transition_mode=1\n') frame = frame + (25 * 11) # 11 seconds ini.write ('Final_Frame=' + str (frame) + '\n') l = len (str (frame)) prefix = '' while (len (prefix) + l) < 6: prefix = prefix + '0' ini.write ('Output_File_name=render/p' + prefix + '.png\n') ini.write ('Post_Frame_Command=./frame.py render/%o\n') ini.write ('Post_Frame_Command=./clock.py render/%o %n\n') ini.close () os.system ('povray temp.ini') os.system ('find -type f | grep render/p | sort > list.txt') os.system ('transcode -o scope.dv -i list.txt --use_rgb -x imlist,null -z -k -g 720x576 -H 0 -y dvraw="qno=0" -F d -Z 720x576 --export_fps 25 --export_asr 2') os.system ('rm temp.ini 1.jpg 2.jpg list.txt')